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eRevMax to present LIVE OS at ITB Asia in Singapore


Hospitality technology leader, eRevMax will be attending ITB Asia, being held at Marina Bay Sands Singapore, to talk about technology and innovation in travel.
The company’s COO, Yoram Ben-Zvi has been invited to present LIVE OS at the Innovation Travel Tech being hosted by InnoVel on 27 October 2017 at the Knowledge Theatre, Basement 2 at ITB Asia.
“ITB Asia is one of the premier hospitality events and InnoVel, which is hosting the travel technology track, is a new breed of innovation center. LIVE OS is the first hospitality operating system providing hotels a platform to integrate all their tech providers for better control and efficiency of every day operation. LIVE OS has been attracting a lot of interest from hotels and technology partners alike, and will now be showcased at ITB Asia for the first time. We are happy to join forces with brands that focus on innovation for the hospitality industry, putting hoteliers at the centre,” said Yoram Ben-Zvi, Chief Operating Officer, eRevMax.
Meet the team at ITB Asia from 25 – 27 October 2017 – contact marketing@erevmax.com to set up a meeting.
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eRevMax expands meta-search distribution platform with MyHotelShop


Hotel distribution expert eRevMaxhas established 2-way connectivity with leading meta-search management solutions provider MyHotelShop. Mutual hotel customers can now update rate and availability to TripAdvisor, Trivago and Kayak to get more direct booking traffic through RateTiger and LIVE OS interface. 
MyHotelShopis a leading meta-search bid management solution provider in Europe currently serving around 1400 properties. This integration is another addition to eRevMax’s expanding partner ecosystem which provides hotels 360-degree solutions for distribution and revenue management. eRevMax provides seamless connectivity to all categories of third party booking sites (OTAs, Wholesalers, GDS, Tour Operators, Social Media, Metasearch sites) from a single platform. 
“Meta-search engines have become an important marketing channel for hotels. Following this integration, hotel customers can leverage the real-time rate and availability distribution across multiple meta-search sites. Due to the complexities of Bid Management process, a managed service for meta-search channels makes it easier for hotels from a digital marketing perspective based upon a monthly advertising budget,” said Ullrich Kastner, Managing Director & Founder, MyHotelShop. 
“This integration give our hotel clients a bid management solution for better positioning in meta-search channels and drive potential guests to brand website for more direct bookings. It is a highly effective tool that will allow our customers to reach out to a much larger audience and offer an extended scope for improving direct bookings through an eco-system of meta-search sites,” said Ashis Saha, SVP – Project Management, eRevMax.
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In Two Years, 2-Way Connectivity with OTAs Results in 240% Growth in Online Sales for Frogner House


Frogner House is a serviced apartment operator in Oslo offering over 400 apartments in 13 locations across the Norwegian capital. Our portfolio has a range of options from studio to 4-bedroom apartments suitable for both long and short-term stay. All our apartments can be booked online from our website as well as OTAs.
When we started in 2005 by converting the well-known Frogner House Hotel into serviced apartment blocks, the ‘Serviced Apartment’ concept in the Scandinavian market was still at a very nascent stage. Buoyed with our early success, we overhauled our system and concept in 2009, and focussed on expanding our portfolio.
The Nordic hotel market is characterized by regional operators that have a strong position. A major oil business destination, Oslo gets a sizable number of visitors from Europe and USA, and hence it is important for us to be visible in these markets. We have been using Protel as our property management system for some years now, and tried another channel manager to manage OTAs. However, the experience was far from satisfactory due to excessive mapping and manual allotment.
After all, updating rates and availabilities for over 400 apartments in different categories across multiple OTAs is a time-consuming affair, and we were struggling. This being a labour intensive process, there were high chances of human error. A tiny mistake in rate or availability, and we could have lost out long-stay guests causing revenue loss. Being popular choice of guests, not having the ability to immediately update our rooms and rates was a potential handicap for our revenue stream and constant hindrance on our revenue management team.
I came to know about eRevMax at a hospitality trade event in 2013, and immediately liked it because it was easy to use and understand. It also offered seamless connectivity with all leading online travel sites we wanted to connect. That it has already integrated with Protel was a bonus, and, we implemented RTConnect, their enterprise connectivity service automating the distribution process for each property in 2014.
The best thing about the solution was to manage all our properties centrally and enjoy the support of centralized contracts with distribution channel easily. We are always visible online by continuously distributing our live rates and inventory to multiple booking channels, and deliver updates back into our property management system (PMS) in real-time, without worrying about overbooking.
Right away, we experienced positive results. Over the last 2 years from 2014-2016, we have seen our online sales grow 240% with a 305% increase in room nights via online sales. We have experienced an overall growth in business and our occupancies have gone up by 15%. This brings me to mention how reliable RTConnect is as a connectivity solution and the system uptime that eRevMax offers – considered amongst the best in the market.
We are also using RateTiger Shopper, their rate intelligence service to monitor our competitor rate movements and closed-out dates. From the LIVE OS dashboard, we keep an eye on key producing markets, analyse channel performance, demand index and accordingly adjust our rates and availability for maximum yield.
The LIVE OS dashboard is pretty cool – there are in-built tiles that provide quick summary of reservation, budget, booking pace etc including a shopper tile which shows us how we match against competitors. I can easily say that we have not yet been able to utilise the full potential of these tools.
Which brings me to recommend the excellent support that eRevMax offers. Our Service Manager Isabella Angela Grundman has been a great support and also a major reason why it’s been such a pleasure working with eRevMax. She is always ready to guide us in the right direction and gets our queries resolved on priority.
It is important to highlight that RTConnect has made a significant impact on our bottom line:
  • Our online sales grew by 240% in the last 2 years
  • Occupancy have gone up by 15%
  • Amount of time spent on channel management has reduced substantially

By Lene Thorsen, Booking and Revenue Manager, Frogner House Apartments
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eRevMax completes 2-way integration with Winhotel PMS


Hotel connectivity expert, eRevMax has completed 2-way integration with Winhotel PMS. Mutual hotel customers can now get the benefit of automatic distribution of availability and rate to third party online booking sites whenever they are updated in the property management system and receive reservations from OTAs seamlessly. 
Developed by Sequoiasoft, Winhotel PMS is one the largest property management systems in the French market and recommended by leading hotel chains like Logis, IdéHotel – SEH (InterHotel, Relais du Silence, Ptit Dej Hôtel, Qualys Hôtel), Châteaux & Hôtels Collection, Cadhi and UMIH Purchases. eRevMax’s distribution solutions are used by over 9000 hotels to update inventory and rates across various booking channels and seamlessly manage availability in the PMS as soon as a booking comes in. 
“Sequoiasoft is delighted with this new partnership, which will offer an additional choice for channel managers to our customers and prospects. By connecting our PMS Winhôtel and CBP hotels to RTConnect solution, our hotel customers can take advantage of the power of eRevMax’s distribution solutions to market their rooms and increase their visibility on online booking sites,” said David Falcon, Product Manager at Sequoiasoft.
 
“This interface compliments our continuous efforts to offer our hotel customers superior connectivity between their technology solutions and OTAs. Our integration with Sequoiasoft eliminates the need for accommodation providers to maintain online inventory manually across each booking website and manually re-enter online reservations from booking websites into their PMS. This results in saving time, overheads and resources, while also helping avoid manual mistakes,” said Ashis Saha, SVP – Project Management, eRevMax.
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eRevMax completes integration with hotel management system provider hoteliport


Hotel connectivity expert eRevMax has completed two-way integration with Scottish hospitality solution provider hoteliport. Through this partnership, hotels using the hoteliport PMS will be able to update all the channels available in the eRevMax Channel Ecosystem, directly from their hoteliport dashboard. 
hoteliport Hotel Management Software, developed by  acdit.com, equips hoteliers with a rich suite of tools for management of reservations, rate-plans, agents, sales channels, billing and performance reporting. 
“Our integration with eRevMax into hoteliport connects our PMS channel manager module with a host of Online Travel Agents, GDS and meta-search solutions and compliments the already rich suite of hotel management tools that hoteliport provides. Now, hoteliport automatically distributes rates and availability and downloads new bookings into the PMS via RTConnect, saving hotels countless hours of work on various OTA extranet sites while optimizing their online marketing efforts,” said Craig Dunn, Founder, hoteliport. 
“Our interface with hoteliport provides small-to-medium sized hotels ability to access and manage a whole range of online channels cost effectively without worrying about maintaining inventory manually across each booking website. A greater number of hotels can now leverage the benefits of our Channel Ecosystem while streamlining their distribution efforts,” said Ashis Saha, SVP – Project Management, eRevMax.
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Beacon Hotel & Corporate Quarters leverages RTConnect for automating revenue management


Beacon Hotel & Corporate Quarters has recommended eRevMax distribution solutions for improving online sales. One of Washington DC’s premier hotel, the property has been using RTConnect for managing rates and inventory on  multiple online sales channels directly from its property management system.
Beacon Hotel & Corporate Quarters, an upscale boutique hotel with 199 rooms, caters to business and leisure travellers – both international and domestic. The team is leveraging RTConnect to manage rates and inventories in real-time to ensure availabilities are up to date on all sales channels  for maximizing booking opportunities.
RTConnect assists hotels to manage their pricing strategy, monitor booking pace and demand analytics in real-time via the reporting dashboard.
“We have been using eRevMax for a few years now and up to today everything is great. Very reliable and the customer service is always helpful and are committed to resolving any issues in a timely manner. I will definitely recommend eRevMax to all my colleagues and partners in the hospitality industry,” said Edith Mendoza, Reservations Manager – Beacon Hotel & Corporate Quarters.
“As a technology partner, we are committed to empowering our clients with tools that help ease their day to day work. RTConnect provides a key integration between the Beacon Hotel’s property management system and the OTAs, thereby helping them to manage availability and rates centrally from one single interface which helps simplify operations, improve efficiencies and gives the revenue team time to focus on strategy,” said Alex Moura, Regional Sales Director North America, Brazil and Caribbean at eRevMax.
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Know your Chinese Guests


133 million Chinese travelers took international trips last year – that’s more than the population of Japan – the world’s 10th most populous country. And if we consider the spending of Chinese travellers who spend nearly equivalent to what American, German and British tourists spend, it’s no wonder globally hotels are focussing on China specific marketing campaigns.
Chinese free independent traveller (FIT) has become the talk of every trade event and conference. With affluence and sophistication, more and more travellers are seeking experiences, and shedding tour operators. More than 70 percent of Chinese outbound travelers now plan and travel independently, a huge shift in their travel behaviour. According to a recent report, about 68% Chinese Independent travelers are millennials with high disposable income and education degree. And predictably, they prefer online.
Ctrip rules, and rules big
While traditional tour operators still get the biggest share of the pie, about 20% of all travel bookings are made online. That makes it about 26 million people who usually book online. After Ctrip’s partnership with Qunar, the local OTA giant – Ctrip now controls about 60% of China’s online travel market, well ahead its closest rival Alibaba Travel with 15% market share.
Mobile Booking
Internet in China is led by mobile, with about 731 million  people  using it to go online and that somewhat explains the emergence of mobile as a serious booking channel. According to a survey by 
Travelzoo, over 85% of their Chinese members rely on travel apps for the easiest way to book a holiday, and over 70% plan to book flights, cruises, package holidays and hotels via apps –  a stark contrast from their European counterparts who have shown resistance to adapt to mobile.
The Social Network
Chinese have their own social network, and they are in love with them. Chinese Internet users spend majority of their time on social networks – so if you are not visible in Weibo or Wechat, chances are that you are unlikely to capture their attention.
As China starts expanding its tourism industry, catch them early. The potential is enormous.
To reach out to Chinese Travelers, connect with us. We offer 2-way XML connectivity with all leading Chinese OTA and metasearch sites.
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eRevMax wins the ‘Bosses Cook-off’ at Holiday Inn Kolkata

Holiday Inn Kolkata hosted the first edition of Bosses Cook-off on 28th July 2017 and invited the top bosses of select corporates in the city for a cooking competition along with a team of their employees.
Our CTO, Udai Singh Solanki received the invitation and decided to participate. He chose a team of 4 members – Aditya Mohanty, Isabella Grundmann and myself, Meenakshii Shivnani, with Udai being the team lead. The theme for the evening was ‘Asian’ and we needed to prepare one main dish live at the venue. So, we brainstormed and decided on a Thai dish – Gai Pad Krapow (Thai Chilli Basil Chicken) with a pickled raw papaya and vegetable salad.
When we reached Holiday Inn for the competition on Friday evening, we were in for a surprise. What we saw was like a mini Masterchef type setup – with a cold section containing a variety of meat, fish and seafood, a vegetable mart with the choicest of vegetables, local and exotic, and lastly shelves full of sauces, spices and other dry ingredients. All participants were explained the rules of the competition and the event flow.
And like in true Masterchef style, we were given a surprise task – we had to prepare not one, but two dishes – an appetiser and a main course which must include a protein, starch and vegetable. With only 10 minutes left to start, we had to quickly think of an appetiser to go with our Thai theme. We finally decided on Panko Crumbed Prawns marinated in a Thai red curry paste with a peanut dipping sauce as the appetiser to go with our main chicken dish.
At the start of the clock, there was a hurried frenzy on all the tables.  We started our preps and were surprisingly done within 30 mins, thanks to the amazing coordination we had as a team. It is interesting to note that all 4 of us come from cross-functional departments, however we made a great team for this competition – the binding factor being a strong passion for food! It became like a team bonding activity for us, thanks to Holiday Inn.
While we waited for others to finish, we interacted with the hotel sales team, chefs and the 2 famous food/lifestyle bloggers – Indrajit Lahiri & Poorna Banerjee, called in as the Judges for the evening. What flowed was some good wine and great conversations.
During this time we walked around to check out what our competition was up to and saw most teams cooking up mostly dishes from the Pan-Indian region, from Bengali to Punjabi to Rajasthani. 
However, we believed that our preparation, although quick and simple, was authentic, flavourful and different than what others were doing.
The last 15 minutes went by in a blur, our dishes were ready and plated and our work stations were clean. The scoring was to be done on taste, presentation and cleanliness. The 3 judges – the Executive Chef of Holiday Inn and the 2 food bloggers made their way through each of the 8 teams’ tables.  After the tasting, we were escorted back into the banquet hall for the announcement of the winners.
The first set of awards went for various categories like cleanliness, time management, etc. Finally the actual winners were announced and we were pleasantly surprised to be awarded the 1stprize. Our prize kitty included – a staycation voucher at the hotel, F&B vouchers, chocolates and a “Winners” trophy.
The four of us went in not knowing what to expect. We came back with a fun experience of an evening worth remembering!
A big shout-out to Holiday Inn Kolkata for organizing a refreshing conceptual corporate event, executing it very professionally and giving us a chance to be a part of its success!
Meenakshii Shivnani is Lead Implementation Consultant at eRevMax and is a key part of the Implementation team. She is passionate about food and loves to experiment with different cuisines. She can be reached at meenakshiis@erevmax.com

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InterContinental Istanbul improves efficiency with RateTiger, saves over 1.5 hours daily to focus on strategy.


InterContinental Istanbul, one of the luxurious addresses in the Turkish capital, has endorsed RateTiger for reducing workload and time to manage OTAs. The hotel has been using award winning channel management solution from eRevMax to update rate and allotments across online sales channels since 2014.
The Turkish hospitality industry is characterized by smaller booking window and high volume online bookings. InterContinental Istanbul, a part of InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, is at present, receiving about 65% of their total bookings from online sources. The extreme competition fuelled by additional supply of rooms in the city, safety issues and geopolitical uncertainty has made managing online sales channels even more complex.
“Mostly bookings happen at the very last minute – a lot of bookings come in closer to the stay dates, booking window is getting shorter. This has changed the way we do business. We now update OTAs daily – sometimes multiple times a day,” said Nil Hepiseri, Director of Revenue, InterContinental Istanbul.
InterContinental Istanbul is leveraging RateTiger Channel Manager to update live rates and availability across multiple booking channels directly from their Property Management System (PMS) using the pooled inventory concept. All reservations made on these distribution channels are captured and available inventory automatically redistributed helping the hotels push last-room availability thus ensuring maximum occupancy.
“We are saving over 1.5 hours daily through the automated updates – just one change in the dashboard – and it gets reflected across all connected OTAs. With chances of manual error getting totally eliminated, we can focus on strategy,” commented Nil.
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HotelTonight partners with eRevMax to integrate RateTiger into its platform


HotelTonight, the leading mobile app for last-minute hotel bookings, today announced a new partnership with travel technology leader eRevMax, which assists hotels to maximise online revenue opportunities through real-time distribution, market intelligence and connectivity solutions.
Today’s new partnership gives the 9,000 hotels currently using eRevMax’s industry leading RateTiger channel manager the ability to seamlessly send inventory directly to HotelTonight as a new distribution channel. HotelTonight is focused on selling hotel inventory up until the last minute, generating revenue for hotels from rooms that otherwise might not be sold. For HotelTonight, this partnership gives its customers access to inventory from eRevMax hotel partners globally, including large hotel chains, mid-market segment and boutique hotels.
“We are excited to connect our customers to RateTiger’s outstanding hotels while offering them a powerful new distribution channel — one that has an engaged consumer audience looking for great hotels, right up until the last minute,” said Amir Segall, HotelTonight VP of International. “HotelTonight wants to help all partner hotels reach maximum occupancy on any given night.”
Ashis Saha, SVP, Project Management at eRevMax comments, “We’re thrilled to connect to the industry’s leading last-minute booking app, providing our partner hotels a seamless way to move last-minute inventory. The key to success here is our ability to deliver reservations immediately so the hotel front desk has the booking details ready when the guest checks in, which could be any time
after they book a room via the HotelTonight app.”
As the entire travel space moves increasingly mobile and last minute – more than two-thirds of U.S. domestic hotel bookings and half of E.U. hotel bookings are within one week of arrival.*
HotelTonight has established itself as the leading last-minute booking app. With an average of one-third of hotel rooms unoccupied on any given day, HotelTonight enables its hotel partners to move last minute inventory while bringing incremental revenue and a new audience: 76% of HotelTonight users are first-time customers of the hotel.