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This event has excellent potential especially as the organization repositions itself beyond accounts to include financial and revenue managers providing interesting and educational sessions on revenue management and channel management techniques


Casey Davy – Sales Manager UK
John Seaton – Sales Manager Global 

The Asian Hospitality and Travel Show is a showcase of hotels selling their rooms to tour operators, who attended as buyers (1st – 3rd October 2010, Phuket

Over 100 hotels and resorts exhibited at the event therefore we had easy pray. They welcomed me to their stand for vibrant conversations on their sales strategies and what they were looking at achieving in 2011. Many however felt their manual process updates were effective to-date and the number of channels was not affecting the operations.

This is a good event to check on the status of the market and how it is performing. I look forward to revisiting in 12 months and seeing how the market has matured.

Kenneth Yeo (Mr)
Sales Manager, Asia Pacific

This was the second year that RateTiger attended ITB Asia as exhibitors.The turnout was a good mix of hoteliers, technology companies, OTAs and tourism boards etc. Technology companies like Sabre, Travelport and couple of our competitors were also present this time. About 6,500 trade visitors, up by 5-8% from last year.  Our target, the Hotel exhibitors were 38% of the total exhibitors, which includes Hotel consortia groups, mid-range hotel chains, handful of International hotel chains & independent hotels in Asia, Middle East, India & some key EU cities.

Sudhir:  We were busy with meetings with hoteliers both on and off the booth. I met a lot of hotel groups this time with approx 25-30 new leads.  It was good to see those hotels where we already had a discussion about our products.  Yes, I am sure we covered all the hoteliers present in the show.

Angela: The turnout was good as most Hoteliers had heard or aware of Revenue/Channel Management distribution tool in place.  Our “Tiger Time” party was easy to manage as we have small crowd coming in staggered timings. Our GDS partners, Abacus, Sabre, Travelport/Galilio were our alliances and endorsing our products to Hoteliers. OTAs & Media partners gave us an extra helping hand by introducing hoteliers to us.

This has been a busy time for the Asia sales team with four key travel trade events occurring in close succession; PATA, ITB Asia, WTM and CITM with some hoteliers dropping off ITBAsia and PATA.

Sudhir Ghildiya & Angela Wong
Asia-Pacific Sales Team

With representatives looking after their own regional markets it’s important to occasionally stop and go local. I decided to host an Introduction to Channel Management event in Nice for hotels in the area to find out how they can further improve their online sales.

I invited three existing client hotels to host 13 hotels unfamiliar with channel management and RateTiger. It went very well, in the end my client hotels were doing most of the work by casually talking to the attendees about RateTiger and our premium channel manager.

On going to a more local level of sales activity it’s fascinating to see the level of knowledge and awareness of online sales and the impact the OTA environment has on bookings for hotels. It’s definitely important to continue to educate the industry on the possibilities of online sales and how to improve revenue. 

Stefan Casimir
Sales Manager France

At RateTiger, we see ourselves not only as technology providers. Besides offering state-of-the-art software solutions, our aim is to educate the hotel industry comprehensively about online distribution and marketing, pricing strategies and revenue management. We are hotelier’s consultants rather than a mere software supplier. Hence, we have been offering intensive training, seminars and workshops to hotel practitioners from the start. Moreover, considering today’s students are tomorrow’s hotel managers, we believe it is key to educate the future generation as early as possible, that is, while they’re still at hotel school or university. However, whilst many teachers are open for new developments and keen to offer their students first-hand-insights into digital trends, others aren’t willing to change a long-taught curriculum, which would force them to learn something new themselves. Hamburg’s ‘Hotelfachschule’, in Germany’s north, is happy to have a teacher of the former category.

This teacher, Ansgar Jahns, believes in a practical approach to hotel studies. In his course, students learn about sales and revenue strategies, while concurrently using their new knowledge to analyse two renowned hotels that participate in this project. He has also invited RateTiger to give an overview about the online hotel market and its risks and chances; to inform about the necessities in channel management and benchmarking; and to present our products. Following this invitation, Ulf G. Guldi, RateTiger’s Sales Manager for Germany, Austria and Switzerland, took the trip to Hamburg.

On 20 October, 11 students in their 20s and early 30s, all of which have finished an apprenticeship in a hotel earlier and are now studying for two years to finish a BA in Hotel Business, proved as keen listeners and willing to discuss figures, tricks and trends. Even the school’s director did us the honour and not only welcomed us at the door, but also attended the first half of the session, eager to learn himself. Ulf’s overall overview about the development of online bookings and OTAs was followed by an expert introduction to channel management and its techniques. A lively discussion followed, during which many students compared Ulf’s information to the experiences gained at different hotels. A former hotel pro himself, Ulf had a lot of tales and anecdotes to tell, from his times as Sales Director for various renowned hotel brands. After a necessary break, the students got introduced to RateTiger’s software solution RTSuite. By means of a product demonstration, Ulf presented the features of RateTiger’s benchmarking tool Shopper and the channel management system Allocator. Once more, many questions followed and lead to a productive discussion. Ulf’s resumes: “It’s been great to see the interest of the new generation! They have a strong desire to learn about the online market and supportive technology. It’s a wonderful opportunity to share our knowledge and learn about their needs at the same time. We’ll certainly continue our aims to educate besides selling.”

Scheduled for 2, the session lasted 4,5 hours. All students stayed until the end despite their timetables and postponed work commitments where necessary.