LodgeGate implements RateTiger for seamless online booking connectivity


Dutch-based company Hotels Online, provider of LodgeGate Hotel Management System (PMS), has selected RTConnect, the premium XML interface, for electronic rate and inventory distribution as well as reservations delivery.

RateTiger recently completed the 2-way XML connection integration with LodgeGate and its 150+ hoteliers are currently adopting the technology to better manage sales. Over 30 properties will soon be using the enhanced service and benefit from a two-way connection to their electronic distribution network. Customers of the PMS will be able to automatically maximize their online presence while avoiding over-booking through an easy-to-use interface.

LodgeGate’s customers can now easily manage and update multiple sales channels including the Global Distribution Systems (GDS), various Online Travel Agents (OTA), e-commerce and social media. Rate and availability data already present in their PMS can now be shared automatically with RateTiger’s channelmanager. This will save time and provide opportunity to make additional money.

As part of the interface, hotels will also receive booking confirmations directly into their property management system, therefore sparing the effort of manual data entry.


Channel Connectivity: The Changing Trends, Part 1: Yesterday v/s Today


Heads in beds is the key driver for all hotels – you need good daily occupancy to meet your property’s running costs and thereafter make profits. With thousands of hotels listed online, how can you ensure your property stands out from the rest?

As online travel grows, accommodation owners need to position offerings appropriately, using the right channels. Google’s success is based on page ranking through keywords and relevance, all searchers will type in what they want to see and results will be made of popular channels. In other words, on the internet, the more visible and optimized you are, the more customers you will attract to your hotel!

Just 10 years ago the environment was wholly different. Booking a hotel room over the telephone or through a travel agent was the norm as only less than 5% of all travel was booked online. Today the travel booking landscape has changed significantly:

We used to distribute inventory evenly between tour operators, corporate contracts, telesales and the GDS. Most of our business was stable and regular rate changes and inventory changes were not required. Sales departments were busy but not overloaded.

However in recent years the internet has taken over GDS and telesales; a 2010 eTRAK Reservation Sources for Major Hotel Brands Report shows that major hotel brands experienced 52.3% of all reservations coming from the internet compared to 22.9% from GDS and 24.7% from Voice (2006 figures show Internet: 37.6%, GDS: 31.3% and voice: 31.3%).

In this respect let’s take a peek into the developments of Y2K, a significant period in many ways. The internet has been growing at a fast pace with the likes of Expedia, Travelocity, and Priceline having launched in mid-late 1990s during the dot-com boom.  The bubble burst and many online industries had to rebuild their sales model. Online travel was not greatly affected, on the contrary it started to grow – though it meant the offline hotel industry had to start paying attention and, more importantly, hotels had to realize that something was changing.

By 2000 the total annual online hotel booking rate was around 4% of total bookings. In only 10 years this has reached around 35%, according to a report by PhoCusWright’s Global Online Travel Overview Second Edition, 2011.

This goes to prove the ongoing importance of the internet and the changing consumer buying trends. While it took almost a decade to achieve this level of sales, within the maturing APAC market there has been increasing focus on mobile internet as this is adopted faster than the traditional computer access. This is deemed to grow at a faster rate than the internet over the next decade.

With such changes comes the necessity to adapt. Business has become more volatile and requires adequate planning. Product has to be constantly optimized, prices analyzed and yielding performed. Tasks that do sound natural to hotel operation but are still not honed to perfection.

Staff needs training but not only sale is affected. All departments within a hotel need to brush up as the consumer has options to review services with the general public. From rooms division to management, the hotel has to be organized and prepared.

Another factor, often not recognized enough, is that marketing has changed too. Gone are the expenses for costly brochures. Not that we can spend less now, but the likes of Google, Kayak, trivago, Groupon have taken their place, still marketing but a different caliber with different rule sets. Also, some OTA’s require additional commission for better placement. One could argue that this is not just cost of sales but to a degree brand marketing too. A battle the two departments will need to have in order to best place the house.

Check out Channel Connectivity: The changing trends Part 2 next week.

Brook Hotels improving revenue by managing advanced rates


The British hotel chain with 21 historic properties has introduced channel management technology within its Sales and Marketing department to gain greater control over future bookings. Brook Hotels has seen an increase in advanced bookings, particularly with the upcoming national events in 2012, Diamond Jubilee and London Olympics, and is seeking to further benefit from OTA exposure.

“It’s imperative now that we engage in more future planning across our sales channels,” said Amit Ummat, Sales and Marketing Manager, Brook Hotels. “We are seeing that room rates need to be much more flexible for future dates as our guests look at booking further ahead.”

Brook Hotels chose RateTiger’s RTSuite Channelmanager to meet the increasing demands of selling online to multiple travel agents. Implemented two months ago, RateTiger has already significantly reduced the time managing rates and ensuring they are accurate across all channels.

The hotel group manages both large booking portals like booking.com and laterooms.com as well as local tourist boards and extranets with the prospect to add more sites in the coming months. This additional sales exposure has also lead to increased direct bookings to the website while keeping each property high in the search rankings.

Read on further on HotelMarketing

RateTiger Shortlisted for Travolution Awards 2011

RateTiger, the premium channel management solution provider, has been nominated as a finalist for the Travolution Awards in the Best Technology Provider category. The nomination has been made based on its channel connection achievements.

The Travolution Awards, considered one of the industry’s highest accolade for online innovation and excellence in the UK, aims at recognising companies, brands and individuals who excel in the fields of online travel distribution, digital marketing and technology.

RateTiger has been recognised for its success in creating the largest online channel network, offering hoteliers’ access to more than 750 OTAs globally. The full service channel manager constantly develops technology to help hotels to take advantage of new opportunities to optimise marketing and sales online including utilising social media platforms like Facebook. It recently became the first channel manager to distribute hotel inventory and rates to eBay, the largest international ecommerce platform representing 14% of global e-commerce.

“We encourage innovation and integration of technologies to support the evolution of online sales and channel management. Hoteliers are fond of our solutions because we provide them meaningful single-point access to all required channels, and continue to add new platforms” said Michael McCartan, COO RateTiger. “GDS, via CRS, booking engines, tour operators, OTAs to social media, online advertising and auctioning platforms has been very successful. Now with this prestigious award nomination, we know we are on right track and will continue to create value for our customers.”

These connections help hoteliers to broaden the reach of newer market segments, further maximises online revenues while minimising the workload involved in researching and managing new media.


Newshound: Trends and Reports – Hotel Online Distribution

Social Media and Review Analytics Guide for Hotel Marketing
While online reviews understandably receive a lot of attention in the hotel industry from a reputation management perspective, there is another use that is equally important: setting the direction of your marketing and advertising campaigns.
The TripAdvisor effect: Are online reviews making hotel brands irrelevant?
Take a destination based Google search for Super 8 Motels, for example. On the front page, you’ll see ratings that hotel guests have written about particular Super 8s on TripAdvisor, Yahoo Travel and Yelp. Importantly, the reviews vary widely.

The Smart Hotelier’s Guide to 2012 Digital Marketing Budget Planning
2012 is quickly approaching and budget-planning season is upon us. Whether you are just starting to think about where you are going to allocate your dollars, or are moving towards finalizing your budget for next year, this is the perfect time to take a step back, review the state of the industry as well as your property’s successes and failures in 2011, and prepare for a year of driving the most revenue ever through your most cost-efficient channel – the hotel website.
ADR, guest satisfaction: Opportunity and action
This is the first in a series of columns from J.D. Power’s Stuart Greif that analyzes and provides deeper insights into the company’s 2011 J.D. Power and Associates North America Hotel Guest Satisfaction Study.
 

Newshound: Trends and Reports – Hotel Online Distribution

The 5 Defining Moments of 2011 (So Far)

Tumultuous. This is the word that springs to mind to characterize 2011 for our industry. Whereas last year saw online travel companies at the mercy of economic conditions it seems that 2011 has been more defined by competitive forces and players. Survival of the fittest has evolved into only the savvy prosper.
http://www.eyefortravel.com/news/industry-analysis/5-defining-moments-2011-so-far

Are travel shopping sites killing technical performance?

This is a guest article by Dorian Harris, founder of hotel booking site Skoosh. I stumbled across an amazing piece of software recently called Splunk. It does for server logs what Google does for web-pages, more or less.
http://www.tnooz.com/2011/09/05/news/are-travel-shopping-sites-killing-technical-performance/

Dubai hotels posts biggest jump in occupancy in MENA region | EY Reports

Hotel occupancy in Dubai witnessed a 10.5 percentage points increase in July 2011 year-on-year, the biggest such increase within the region, global consultancy Ernst & Young said in its Middle East Hotel Benchmark Survey.
http://ahla.hsyndicate.com/news/4052831.html

GBTA Convention 2011

The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) – the voice of the global business travel industry had a record breaking 2011 GBTA Convention in Denver, Colorado last month. Over 6,000 people attended the event, amongst which were 1,200 travel buyers, making this one of the largest GBTA Conventions in its history.

The RateTiger stand at the convention experienced a good show with a large number of pre-confirmed visits gaining a lot of interest among travel buyers. The main topics of discussion revolved around identifying how real-time hotel rate benchmarking can best benefit the corporate travel market and the individual corporate travel manager.

Travel managers mostly use historical rate data for price-comparison; but they know that real-time benchmarking will take the industry to a new level, which led to their added interest in RTCorp. This product fulfills two main areas of demand for the corporate travel managers – (a) To show supervisors how their negotiated hotel rate compares against publicly available rates on the internet to support their negotiations; (b) To provide corporate travel managers with email alerts that identify future instances where the publicly available rates may be cheaper than their negotiated rates and therefore provide them with the opportunity to renegotiate with those hotels in advance of their travelers booking their travel. In addition corporate travel managers are looking for a tool that audits their negotiated rates and availability across their chosen GDS.

Another point of interest for us was RateTiger’s nomination for the GBTA Travel Innovation Award 2011 under the Travel Management category. This was very encouraging for us given that RTCorp was launched to the corporate travel segment only recently. We look forward to coming back to the GBTA convention next year for many more productive discussions and yet another meaningful show.

Mark Neter is the Sales Manager for RTCorp. He is based out of Orlando, Florida and can be reached at markn@ratetiger.com

Newshound: Trends and Reports – Hotel Online Distribution


How much exactly a hotel should invest in Internet marketing in 2012

Allocating the appropriate amount of your property’s overall marketing budget to online marketing can be more of an art, than science. Here’s why you need a significant investment in online marketing to increase direct bookings and key areas to focus your efforts on to realise the highest digital ROI.                                                                                                
http://www.eyefortravel.com/news/hotels/how-much-exactly-hotel-should-invest-internet-marketing-2012

Google, Facebook and TripAdvisor on what’s next for online travel

 Which emerging trends will fizzle, and which will pop? What is the most significant opportunity (or critical threat) that our industry faces? Which disruptive forces will re-shape the online travel landscape as we know it in the next years?                                                                                                    
http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/google_facebook_and_tripadvisor_on_whats_next_for_online_travel 

How OTA hotel reviews drive bookingsMove over, TripAdvisor. There’s a new leader of hotel reviews in town: online travel agencies. According to a PhoCusWright study of 27,000 U.S. hotels comprising 65 major brands, two out of every three online traveler reviews were posted to an OTA. The remaining third, or 34%, were posted to a travel review site like TripAdvisor.                                                                  
http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles.aspx/6295/How-OTA-hotel-reviews-drive-bookings

Study: Despite Soft Spots, 2011 Global Business Travel Poised To Surpass $1 Trillion
Global business travel this year will jump 9.2 percent and surpass $1 trillion, according to a Global Business Travel Association Foundation study. That increase would follow an 8.4 percent bump during 2010, which more than offset a nearly 8 percent decline in 2009.                                                                                                                                                                               
http://www.businesstravelnews.com/Worldwide-Travel/Study–Despite-Soft-Spots,-2011-Global-Business-Travel-Poised-To-Surpass-$1-Trillion/?a=trans 
 

RevPAR Growth Momentum Expected to Yield to New Economic Reality According to PwC US Lodging Industry Forecast
An updated lodging forecast released today by PwC US shows that the lodging recovery is largely intact, yet a resetting of the economic outlook has lowered expectations of revenue per available room (RevPAR) growth for the remainder of the year.                                                                                                                                                                  http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/154000320/4052784.html 

eRevMax – RateTiger Marks Its 10th Anniversary

eRevMax International, global software and services provider and owner of RateTiger, SimpleDistribution and Lunar Logic Polska, today celebrates its tenth corporate anniversary.  The company has specialized in revenue and distribution solutions for the hospitality industry for a decade, having launched one of the very first electronic, online and hotel website room rate shopping services in early 2002.

The lead product brand, RateTiger, was one of the first to focus on bookings and revenue from the internet. The channel manager launched within a couple of months of incorporation and was built to specifications requested by hoteliers. RateTiger today is setting a standard in the online revenue maximization market with the largest and most diverse distribution network of over 700 connect channels worldwide.

“Over the last ten years, eRevMax has seen significant growth as the company has strictly adhered to the founders belief in innovative and qualitative solutions,” said Sascha Hausmann, CEO, eRevMax International, “I would attribute this success to our focus on deploying only the best high-quality technology and the dedication we’ve had from our employees over the last 10 years, especially from our founding CTO, Udai Singh Solanki. Reaching this milestone in our company’s history is a true testament to everyone who’s been involved, from the technicians to our customers – who have really helped shape the technology that it is today.”

This year also marks the expansion of eRevMax International to new territories in Australia, New Zealand, China and South Africa. Earlier in the year the company acquired Lunar Logic Polska, a Poland-based web and digital development company to spur channel management, rate shopping and strategy technologies into the next generation. 

http://www.etravelblackboard.com/article/122877/erevmax-8211-ratetiger-marks-its-10th-anniversary

http://www.hospitalitybizindia.com/detailNews.aspx?aid=11641&sid=1

http://zeenews.india.com/biz/businesswire/28090news.html 

http://www.technology4hospitality.com/2011/09/erevmax-%E2%80%93-ratetiger-marks-its-10th-anniversary/

Newshound: Trends and Reports – Hotel Online Distribution


What’s Around the Corner for Hospitality Distribution & RM?

As the hospitality sector continues to morph and be shaped by forces old and new, I caught up with Mark Molinari, Vice President of Revenue Management & Distribution at the Las Vegas Sands Corporation, to find out what key issues lie ahead for the hospitality and gaming industries. 
http://www.eyefortravel.com/news/europe/what%E2%80%99s-around-corner-hospitality-distribution-rm

Paid search producing positive results for hoteliers

Paid search advertising is becoming more commonplace by hotel marketers as a cost-effective, high-yielding e-marketing tool to help drive consumers to their respective website booking engines.
http://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/154000392/4052649.html

European hotels on recovery track

The European hotel performance picture is a positive one, according to STR Global’s Konstanze Auernheimer. “Hotel performance is doing really well,” said the director of marketing and analysis at STR Global, a sister company to HotelNewsNow.com.
http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Articles.aspx/6255/European-hotels-on-recovery-track

Demand records are made to be broken

Last summer, in July 2010, you probably heard a lot of hype about the U.S. hotel industry selling the most hotel roomnights ever, breaking records and setting milestones. http://www.hotelnewsnow.com/Blog.aspx/6258/Demand-records-are-made-to-be-broken