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Florida Huddle

Organized at the Daytona Beach from 23 – 25 January, Florida Huddle turned out to be a great event for us.

The event focuses completely on buyer-supplier meetings and is a good platform to meet prospective buyers and close deals. This year’s event saw a turnout of over 350 people which is very good for an event of this size.

The discussions revolved around the hoteliers’ concern over the extremely low ADR in Orlando while Miami and other south coastal areas witness an improvement in performance and rates. More than 200 hoteliers were present and all were eager to find out the best way to take prices up again.

RateTiger’s major advantage this year was our stand’s location in the VIP lounge, receiving a lot of visitor traffic. Jonathan and I managed to meet a lot of attendees to whom we showcased RateTiger and its suite of premium online channel management tools.

From the business perspective, presence at Florida Huddle is always lucrative as it allows decision makers from the buyer and supplier sides to meet directly and cut deals. RateTiger signed many new contracts at the event therefore very successful.

Siobhain McArdle is Sales Manager for south eastern states of USA at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of Florida and can be reached at siobhainm@ratetiger.com
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FITUR 2011

With the recovering markets, we were excited to see how major trade events in Spain would open. The first major event of the year – FITUR 2011 hosted a total of 10,500 exhibitors from 166 countries and regions in January. It showcased a good representation of hospitality companies and technology providers while the increase in visitor turnover reached 200,000.

Her Majesty Queen Sofia inaugurated the 31st edition of FITUR. This official opening by the Royal family once again proves their unconditional support for the tradeshow and, in general, for the Spanish tourism sector.

During the FITURTECH conference, the discussions focused mostly on topics like online sector, web 2.0, innovative technologies, social networking and video marketing among others. Further hoteliers were also keen to discuss about the market conditions as well as means and ways to improve the Average Room Rate.

We represented RateTiger at the event and had various meetings pre-arranged at our stand. We also attracted a lot of general visitors which gave us an opportunity to showcase the main product line RTSuite and at the same time highlight new tools like RTReview and other additional modules.

It was a well-planned event and we look forward to many more editions of this wonderful event.

Catch all the action at RateTiger stand here in these pictures.


Pilar Sanchez Aita and Cristina Hernandez are Sales Managers at eRevMax and are responsible for sale of RateTiger products in Portugal and Spain. Reach them on pilara@ratetiger.com and cristinas@ratetiger.com respectively.
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Annual Cricket Tournament, December 2010

eRevMax Kolkata played a great game of cricket on 18 December 2010 when they organized the annual Cricket Tournament at the Sports Authority of India grounds. From the start the four competing teams were fizzing and itching to go, ready to battle it out.

The knock out matches were a treat to watch as each team gave its best to reach the finals. eRevMaxians are known for their passion for the game, however on this day, all teams knew that they will have to let their cricket do the talking.

The four teams under the able guidance of Briti S Biswas, Mahendra P Sharma, Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Surajit Kar put up great performances and after some thrilling matches, Sabyasachi & team lifted the trophy with a one-run win over Mahendra & team who finished second. At the award giving ceremony, the winners and runners-up were presented with beautiful trophies while all participants were given participation medals.

After a grand cricket day and irrespective of the game winners, it was the sportsmanship spirit and team bonding of eRevMaxians that emerged as the ultimate winners. I look forward to next year edition of this annual event.

Satish Rudraraju
Test Engineer, Kolkata

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Sales and Marketing Online, November 2010

The Sales and Marketing Online was a one-day conference in Warsaw, Poland organized on 16th November 2010. With various sessions focused on online distribution, there were speakers from across the industry including the likes of Daniel Łukaszewicz – HOOBI, Alexander Ryll – Avvio, Jakob Riegger – TrustYou, Brendan May – IdeaS as well as Keith Povah – RateTiger.

RateTiger was invited to present in the Plenum session on “Channel Management” and the presentation title was “How does online distribution help improve Yield Management strategies”. Keith gave interesting examples on how our client hoteliers have leveraged online channel management strategies to increase occupancy and revenue.  The presentation by Brendan from Ideas was also very well received and he mentioned how their partnership with RateTiger brings added value to hoteliers.

Over 55 delegates comprising hotel owners, Revenue Managers, Managing Directors and Sales Managers attended the event. The delegates received us very well due to the relevant content of our presentation. We were also invited to conduct a workshop on RTSuite products which was a great success.

The organizers Concept Media conducted a survey and found that 26 hotels out of 55 attending hoteliers wanted to learn more about RTSuite products and RateTiger. Overall it was a great event which provided us with good networking opportunity especially with small to medium sized groups.

Aldona Kaczmarczyk
Sales Manager, Poland

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NASSCOM Product Conclave, November 2010

The NASSCOM Product Conclave held annually in Bangalore is a confluence of innovative minds and entrepreneurial spirit of the Indian Products Ecosystem. This year, the focus was on “Scaling New Heights – From cloud adoption to lean startup models” and the Conclave took place from 10 -11 November 2010 at Hotel Lalit Ashok.

Among various sessions that formed a part of this conclave, I found Cloud computing – Transformation to the cloud, Building products for Billion Indians, The New Internet: An Economy of Scale and partnership and Product companies’ problem and solution, to be particularly interesting.

 
I gathered of lot of information and this knowledge would be of immense help to me going forward. Some of my key take-aways include a clearer understanding on various concepts like entrepreneurship, people management as well as virtualization and cloud computing.

Further the event turned out to be a good networking platform and I got an opportunity to meet many like-minded people including some industry colleagues. The interaction with some of the speakers was also very encouraging and I look forward to attending more of such events in the future.

I cannot complete this post without mentioning NASSCOM who did a fantastic job of organizing, coordinating and executing this whole event so efficiently and professionally.

C. Dharmaraj
Chief Architect, Bangalore

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World Travel Market 2010

For the fifth consecutive year we have exhibited at this leading industry event. This year saw an increase of delegates by 10% on 2009, a larger excel centre and a completely new layout. Our brand new position within Global Village and a slightly larger stand put us in a prime location close to the Travel Technology area.
The Tiger team of 20 representatives walked the halls to meet hoteliers from all parts of the world accounting for over 150 pre-arranged meetings. Attendees were RateTiger branded with our annual sponsor of the lanyards for the name badges raising the visibility of our attendance throughout the venue.
With our new position on stand GV545 we had much more room and seating to accommodate hoteliers who wanted to discuss products and services or be given a demonstration of our RTSuite product line. Our exhibit was buzzing from the moment the doors opened to the moment they closed with Tiger Time being an effective end of day event. We ran a prize draw to win a very large tiger with people stuffing their business cards in the box to get their hands on the spectacular beast.
Visitors were very keen to get their eyes on the new guest review management tool that had been launched just a few days prior to WTM. RTSuite Review received a lot of interest over the four days; this was spurred by the fact that guest reviews online was the year’s hottest topic, with TripAdvisor stealing numerous large crowds for their presentations and discussions.
The team came away with successful smiles on their faces but with very tired eyes.  Now it’s time to prepare for the next largest event – ITB Berlin.
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BAHA Conference and IT Exhibit, November 25th 2010

The BAHA Conference and IT Exhibit is a one-day annual conference of BAHA which is the UK’s leading educational organisation for professionals involved in financial management, revenue management and IT within the hospitality industry. British and international delegates attend to get an informed and cutting-edge view from an international line-up of inspirational experts, all recognised and respected in their own field, about the latest key financial, revenue and IT management issues and developments.

Another first for RateTiger with a very encouraging experience. The event had a high quality of hotel delegates comprising of Revenue Managers, Group Revenue Managers, Managing Directors, Financial Controllers, and IT Directors which made it a perfect audience for RateTiger. There were approximately 22 exhibitors (including IDEAS, Easy RMS, Rubicon, and XN) and 450 delegates.

The delegates received us very well due to the relevant content of some of the workshops and it gave us a great networking opportunity especially for small to medium sized groups.

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 

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Phuket Hotel Show

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

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RateTiger presentation, Nice, France

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

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ITB Asia – October 2010

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