Posted on

The Week, That Was – September 2019 Week 4

In five minutes or less, keep track of the most important news of the week, curated just for you. We present to you hand – picked news on latest industry perspectives and some general updates. Read on!!

Saudi based SAS Hotel recommends eRevMax for its Mobile Channel Manager

SAS Hotel, an upscale 4-star property in Saudi Arabia, has strongly recommended RateTiger and its Mobile App for hoteliers to effectively manage their online business. The property has been using RateTiger’s web-based channel management solution from eRevMax and has been a prolific user of the RateTiger-LiveOS mobile app.

https://bit.ly/2nqPtDu

What blockchain in corporate travel could mean for GDSs, TMCs

Technology companies, from startups with hardly any funding to the likes of IBM, are exploring how blockchain can be used in travel, including in the corporate space. One such company is Blockskye, which is using the technology to solve issues around distribution.

https://www.phocuswire.com/the-beat-live-blockchain-corporate-travel

50 years of the hotel PMS (and why it matters)

The hotel PMS has been around for about 50 years. Despite the technological progress made during all of those years, for most of that time hotels have relied on legacy systems with relatively basic functionalities and mainframes that kept everyone glued to a desk. Then in 2010, the cloud-based system came along, which changed so much more about the PMS than most hotels realize. And now, we’ve come even further to the API-first era.

https://www.hotelmarketing.com/articles/50-years-of-the-hotel-pms-and-why-it-matters

Hotels are gaining brand power

The demise of Thomas Cook is a testament to the profound changes faced by the tourism industry. It also contains clues as to its future direction of travel. However, something fundamental did change: brand power. Before the rise of online booking – let alone when Thomas Cook was born in 1841 – travelers relied on the tour operator brand not just for simplicity and peace of mind, but also to ensure a certain level of quality when staying in unknown countries.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-thomas-cooks-collapse-says-about-modern-tourism-11569248853

 Behind Airbnb’s purchase of HotelTonight and push into hotels

Sam Shank, co-founder of HotelTonight, now heads up Airbnb’s hotel division and spoke about the push last week at the Skift conference in NY. Shank noted that his team is building out the hotel category on Airbnb for the San Francisco-based company, which purchased HotelTonight, an app that popularized the last-minute booking trend, in March.

https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/behind-airbnbs-purchase-hoteltonight-and-push-hotels/2198561

The cause and effect of slowing business travel

With geopolitical and macroeconomic issues causing some concern for large businesses, hotel executives speaking during second-quarter earnings calls noted a drop-off in business transient. Global geopolitical issues apparently had businesses feeling anxious in the first half of 2019, and that impacted how much they were willing to spend on employee travel.

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/297668/The-cause-and-effect-of-slowing-business-travel

Managing RevPAR for profits

To assist revenue managers, CBRE Hotels Research analyzed the impact of the components of RevPAR (occupancy and ADR) on changes in profits. Per the name, the historical role of revenue managers has been to maximize revenue – specifically rooms revenue or revenue per available room. RevPAR growth is achieved by increasing occupancy and/or average daily rates.

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/298239/Managing-RevPAR-for-profits

Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Thanks and have a good day!

 

Posted on

Is Your Hotel Website ADA-Compliant

ADA or The Americans with Disabilities Act demands that every business need to make sure that customers can get access to the same services, irrespective of how physically capable they are. The Government is taking active steps to make sure that ADA-accessibility extends not only to offline businesses but also to online properties like mobile apps and websites. If you have a hotel website, you have to make sure that it is ADA-compliant, or you could be staring at trouble before long.

Is Your Hotel Website ADA-Compliant

Focus on the text

Your website should have text that can be resized easily. Make sure that there is a high-contrast mode option which can make it easier for slightly vision impaired visitors to read the text. The site should have a text-only option, and all the functionalities need to be accessible via a keyboard for guests with mobility problems. Ensure that there is minimal formatting for the text. Those who experience problems in seeing might be incapable of reading colored text on colored backgrounds or text that is especially small in size. It is best for you to adhere to a common, large-sized font with dark colored text on white background.

Look at the photos and images

The photos must have proper text descriptions. Your social marketing strategies and website videos should comprise of transcripts and audio descriptions for all those who are hearing impaired. There is a text-based analog for all the visual media. The images must have “alt” text for content description. Suitable descriptive text must be added to videos. You can use screen reader software to describe your website images.

Offer accessibility information all through the site

Throughout your website, you have to feature accessibility information. Say a disabled traveler wants to know whether she can arrive and reach his room, get inside, take a shower and sleep and move about without problems, your hotel website should make all the details easily accessible. You have to include full information about how his experience with your hotel property would be upon arrival. You have to describe every space in your hotel, as well as how it would be like to move to and from each space. Mention all possible obstacles along your way, and also specify any inaccessible area.

Keep in mind that room details are not enough. Your hotel site needs to spot as well as describe every accessible area of your property in complete detail – such as the common spaces, the pathways from and to these spaces all through the hotel, the on-site amenities and more. There can be lawsuits in the absence of all these details. Due to this reason, hotel sites have to include entire accessibility content for every area of the property.

After you make all such changes to your hotel website to satisfy ADA guidelines, get your site evaluated by a web development firm that is familiar with all the issues of ADA compliance. Make sure that visitors using screen readers and other assistive technologies can fully access your website content.

Get Hotel booking channel manager software

Posted on

The Week, That Was – September 2019 Week 3

In five minutes or less, keep track of the most important news of the week, curated just for you. We present to you hand – picked news on latest industry perspectives and some general updates. Read on!!

Morocco Enjoys A Positive Year for Travel

The tourism sector in Morocco is experiencing a significant growth. Over 12 million tourists visited the country in 2018. Morocco witnessed an impressive ten-fold increase in Chinese tourist arrivals over the last three years – from 10,000 in 2015 to nearly 180,000 last year.

https://www.erevmax.com/blog/index.php/2019/09/morocco-enjoys-a-positive-year-for-travel/

Mapping your hotel’s 2020 digital marketing budget

It’s budgeting season, which means your hotel is probably ready to start planning how, when and where you’ll be investing during 2020.

https://www.traveltripper.com/blog/budget-season-tips-mapping-your-hotels-2020-digital-marketing-budget/

Google reintroduces promoted hotels to hotel search

After a brief appearance during 2018, the long-awaited and high-impact product from Google, Promoted Hotels, is back on the front pages of Google Hotel Search.

https://koddi.com/google-reintroduces-promoted-hotels-to-hotel-search/

The Future Of Travel: Hotel game-changers

The annual Radical Innovation competition challenges the hotel industry to elevate the guest experience by calling for new ideas in design and operations. This year, the 13thof the competition, the three finalists were selected from over 50 entries, submitted from 20 different countries.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelinavillaclarke/2019/09/15/the-future-of-travel-hotel-game-changers/#7cb75c9b603c

Hotels could look like this by 2034

An interactive hotel room created by Guestline, in collaboration with technology, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and hotel experts, revealed how the hotel of the future will look and function by 2034. The highly accredited experts provided their predictions and valuable insights, to show what we can expect to see in our hotel rooms over the next 15 years.

https://www.traveldailymedia.com/hotels-could-look-like-this-by-2034/

Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Thanks and have a good day!

Posted on

Morocco Enjoys A Positive Year for Travel

Morocco, considered as the gateway to Africa, is a country offering heritage cities, sprawling mountain ranges, golden deserts and warm hospitality. The country has been experiencing a surge in tourism over the last few years and continues to feature in the bucket list of many travelers.

Between 2000 and 2018, Morocco has averaged an annual growth of 6 percent in tourism arrivals, which is two points higher than global tourism growth. In 2018 itself, Morocco received 12.3 million tourists, up 8% from the previous year. Marrakech, the most visited Moroccan city, recorded over 2.4 million tourist arrivals from January to November, in addition to 2.6 million scheduled hotel stays through the end of 2018.

These figures are a testimony to Morocco’s growing prominence as a major tourist destination as well as the contribution of tourism revenue towards the country’s GDP. Research studies show that this growth is partly due to the rise of internet and mobile bookings, allowing people from far off places to be able to research, compare and make flight and hotel bookings online – easily and conveniently.

While the traditional offline booking channels continue to remain strong, the growth of online sales channels and travel intermediaries have been phenomenal over the last few years. So much so that online and offline booking numbers now have very similar levels of value sales. This growth, however, has not been overnight and has various factors that led to this change.

Over time, domestic tourism has received a major boost, especially with the introduction of secure online payments. Further, OTAs and other sales channels have been offering promotions and discounts on online bookings, which is proving to be attractive for travellers. Not only has this impacted domestic tourism – it has led to a rise in international tourists who are now making a beeline for Morocco to experience its rich culture and ornate architecture.

With the Government chipping in to increase tourism by relaxing visa requirements for certain countries, Morocco witnessed an impressive ten-fold increase in Chinese tourist arrivals over the last three years – from 10,000 in 2015 to nearly 180,000 last year.

Further, the rapid development in mobile technology and popularity of social media platforms has literally put travel research and booking into the hands of people. Not only can travelers search and book, travel suppliers too can advertise on these platforms to get in front of potential guests and generate online bookings by providing a defined customer journey through various touchpoints.

With increasing competition and price sensitive guests, hoteliers need to ensure they are visible on multiple OTAs and metasearch channels as well as keep their brand website updated to be able to achieve maximum occupancy and meet revenue targets. Hence, knowing the right channels that bring business to your city is a key and being connected to them is very important for your online sales strategy. To find out how you can improve online revenue, contact us today and speak to our connectivity advisor – https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

*source- mordorintelligence, moroccoworldnews

Posted on

The Week, That Was – September 2019 Week 2

In five minutes or less, keep track of the most important news of the week, curated just for you. We present to you hand – picked news on latest industry perspectives and some general updates. Read on!!

EuroParkHotel International’s formula for success with online distribution –  RateTiger + BookOnlineNow

Optimizes connectivity and improves online room sales

https://bit.ly/2kxDSS7

Analysis of Google’s Room Booking Module and its impact on direct sales

Google Hotel Ads is the fastest-growing metasearch engine, attracting over 60% of all investment in metasearch. And Google continues to move forward at a giddy pace, surprising us every now and again with new and significant developments.

https://www.mirai.com/blog/analysis-of-googles-room-booking-module-and-its-impact-on-direct-sales/

Why hoteliers are primed to be the ultimate retailer

The days of hotels simply providing rooms and rates are numbered. Armed with guest data, physical space and local perspective, hoteliers are in a prime position to become the ultimate retailer.

https://www.sabrehospitality.com/blog/why-hoteliers-are-primed-to-be-the-ultimate-retailer/

Expedia to use AI to improve online search in Asian languages

Expedia will use Artificial Intelligence to enhance travel search query understanding and improve the accuracy of search query resolution in Asian languages. The group announced it is collaborating with AI Singapore (AISG) under its flagship 100 Experiments (100E) program to develop an artificial intelligence (AI) solution.

https://www.webintravel.com/expedia-to-use-ai-to-improve-online-search-in-asian-languages/

Ctrip changing name to Trip.com Group

Ctrip will become the third major online travel agency to change its name since 2018. The new proposed brand for the Shanghai-based company would be Trip.com Group Ltd. That follows the Priceline Group rebranding to Booking Holdings in 2018, which was followed shortly thereafter by Expedia Inc. becoming Expedia Group.

https://finance.yahoo.com/news/ctrip-changing-name-trip-com-020042959.html

Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Thanks and have a good day!

Posted on

The Week, That Was – September 2019 Week 1

In five minutes or less, keep track of the most important news of the week, curated just for you. We present to you hand – picked news on latest industry perspectives and some general updates. Read on!!

Hoteliers take a harder look at how they set room rates

Amateurs cut rates to fill hotel rooms. Pros take more sophisticated approaches, such as coordinating to stimulate demand from the most profitable customers. Revenue managers tend to focus on price-setting. Sales and marketing teams typically look at stimulating demand, such as by running email marketing campaigns or advertising on search engines like Google.

https://skift.com/2019/09/03/mgm-resorts-bet-on-rate-setting-tech-catches-notice-of-rivals/

Metasearch: What hotels get wrong

Metasearch is the industry’s fastest-growing distribution channel, yet many hoteliers still struggle to match the success of OTAs on the platform. So what are hotels doing wrong?  In this latest webinar, Dr Jan Sammeck, Director of eCommerce at Deutsche Hospitality, discusses the twelve biggest mistakes hotels are making in their meta strategy.

Listen the recording – http://email.triptease.com/yoLV8mES0O03DJf05D00020

Hotels embrace role as curators of niche products

One of the most interesting opportunities for hospitality brands is to be a new and intimate discovery channel for consumers. This idea is nothing new, of course. Brands have been placing themselves in hotel rooms for ages: Aesop likely owes some of its initial rise to being placed in the rooms at Park Hyatt Tokyo before anyone knew the brand. The taste-making audience who stays there helped with global pollination at an early stage. It was old-school seeding. Right people, right context, new-feeling product. Magic can happen from that.

https://skift.com/2019/09/03/hotels-embrace-role-as-curators-of-niche-products/

Booking.com, Skyscanner, Ctrip and TripAdvisor join travel sustainability pact

Booking.com, Skyscanner, Ctrip, and TripAdvisor, alongside payment giant Visa, have come together to form Travalyst in an effort to “mobilize the travel industry as a catalyst for good, aiming to transform the future of travel for everyone.”

https://www.phocuswire.com/Sustainable-tourism-online-travel-launch-Travalyst

2020 Budget season tips: Mapping your hotel’s digital marketing budget

Should we invest in search marketing, display advertising, and/or metasearch advertising? In truth, there isn’t one standard way to divide your marketing budget up – it really varies from property to property. However, adopting a multi-channel approach is best to expand your reach and target different customers throughout their travel journey.

https://bit.ly/2lzohRY

Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Thanks and have a good day!

Posted on

The Week, That Was – August 2019 Week 5

In five minutes or less, keep track of the most important news of the week, curated just for you. We present to you hand – picked news on latest industry perspectives and some general updates. Read on!!

Booking.com and Expedia are growing in very different ways

eRevMax partners Expedia Group and Booking Holdings reported total revenues of $11.2 billion and $14.5 billion in 2018, respectively. Moreover, both the company’s revenues have grown at a similar CAGR of 19% since 2016.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/greatspeculations/2019/08/26/booking-holdings-and-expedia-are-both-growing-steadily-but-in-very-different-ways/#7515a5d21f04

A blockchain to reconcile hotel commissions

Travelport working with IBM, BCD Travel and three hotel chains—has created a minimum viable product solution that uses blockchain to reconcile the commissions hotels pay travel management companies.

https://www.businesstravelnews.com/Distribution/A-Blockchain-Way-to-Reconcile-Hotel-Commissions

Learning from the past: Cutting rates hurts everyone

An analysis of how quickly hoteliers responded to other hotels dropping rates in their competitive sets during the recession shows no one comes out a winner.

To have a better idea of what a potential downturn could mean for the U.S. hotel industry, it’s worth observing how hoteliers behaved during the last one.

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/297755/Learning-from-the-past-Cutting-rates-hurts-everyone

How Google’s machine learning technology can ace up the travel industry

The technology of machine learning is benefiting almost every industry but the most significant modification can be seen in the travel sector. Interestingly, tech-giant Google is making a major shift into the travel industry while enabling customers to book air tickets, hotels, and packages. It is also aiding customers in accessing stuff which they might have never come across on their own.

https://www.analyticsinsight.net/googles-machine-learning-technology-can-ace-travel-industry/

Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Thanks and have a good day!

 

 

Posted on

Business Travel in Europe on the rise: Are you ready?

Despite Brexit and uncertainty over economy in EU, business travel outlook in Europe remains strong. According to American Express Global Business Travel report, the spend on business travel in Europe in 2019 is expected to grow by over 4.3% making it a focus area for hotels. As with the global trend, business travelers want access to best rates and personalized content in both online and offline channels and along with seamless booking experience.

With smart phone being a necessity for today’s traveler, corporate travel has moved to the online space. More and more business travelers now prefer flexibility to search and book accommodation specific to their personal tastes. Over 60% of business travelers in the UK, France and Germany use a mobile device to shop for or book a flight or accommodation. In this article, we look at channels you need to have in your distribution mix for landing more corporate bookings.

HRS

HRS, Germany’s family run online travel agency focusing primarily on business travel, has been steadily keeping its position as the leading booking portal in the region. HRS Group, which controls Germany’s most popular OTAs – Hotel.de and HRS – the Hotelportal, caters to more than 5 million booking customers – over 70% of which are corporate travelers. HRS’s has exclusive contract with over 350,000 hotels — many of which don’t participate in traditional booking channels — gets negotiated rates and HRS’ exclusive corporate discounted rates give them an edge with business travelers. The company provides services to 400 large corporates and more than 385,000 small and medium enterprises. Hotels registered with HRS or Hotel.de can publish their rates and availability across all group platforms.

RoomIt by CWT

An average of 100,000 hotel rooms are booked on RoomIt each day by business travelers. Originally launched with a focus on small to midsize businesses, Carlson Wagonlit Travel’s hotel distribution division RoomIt now caters to large corporates as well, with nearly 1 million providers, including apartments.  The data-driven technology behind RoomIt delivers a one-stop-shop experience with all the rooms, rates, amenities, loyalty bonuses and features necessary to enhance the travel experience. The platform is 100% fenced, and hence corporate clients can access it only through specific login, making it closed for metasearch and public environment.

Egencia

Egencia is the corporate travel solution from the Expedia group. Offering personalized experiences, the channel caters to nearly 2 million business travellers in companies of all sizes. The TMC which initially focused on air travel has been steadily increasing its hotel inventory, which has resulted in a surge in the hotel room-nights booked through the platform. Earlier this year, Egencia rolled out a two-way messaging app through which hotels and travelers can communicate with each other. It is also leveraging Expedia’s relationship with hotels to provide business travelers access to special rates once they’ve booked their flight.

As hoteliers, are you ready to tap into the booming corporate travel market? Are you connected to these channels and keeping them automatically updated with rates and availability on a regular basis?

Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Posted on

Is your hotel using an efficient room rate comparison tool?

Download our complimentary e-book  on how to leverage pricing for profit optimization

Hotel revenue management relies heavily on accurate market intelligence. Being aware of competitor price movements and change in their distribution strategy is important for any hotelier to stay ahead of competition of multiple sales channels.

Given the perishable nature of hotel inventory, it is important to optimize room pricing such that it is in sync with market demand and is attractive enough for potential guests to make a booking. Hotels today offer multiple room rates for different room types – so tracking these different room-rate combinations across your competition manually can be a herculean task and hence arises the need for an efficient and automated rate shopping tool that can fetch you rates in real-time for apple-to-apple comparison.

With the current range of price intelligence solutions available in the market, hoteliers are spoilt for choice. To assist with your decision making easier – we present our complimentary e-book – ‘Shopping Matters – The Power of Real-time Hotel Rate Intelligence’ that will help you to know more about –

  • Importance of real-time rate intelligence
  • Understanding the marketplace to fine-tune your rate strategy
  • Why rate shopping tool is crucial to your profit optimization

Download the ebook today – https://www.erevmax.com/travel-solutions/erevmax-shopper-rateintelligence.html

Posted on

The Week, That Was – August 2019 Week 1

In five minutes or less, keep track of the most important news of the week, curated just for you. We present to you hand – picked news on latest industry perspectives and some general updates. Read on!!

eRevMax expands in the Middle East through technical partnership with Intimus PMS

Hotel connectivity expert, eRevMax has completed 2-way integration with Intimus PMS while offering hotels a wider selection of technical partners in the region. Hotels using Intimus PMS and RateTiger – LiveOS solutions can now manage their online distribution easily from one place removing all manual efforts.

https://bit.ly/2T0M5e2

The true cost of not protecting customer data in travel

For years now, the hospitality business has shared Big Tech’s addiction to customer data. Rather than sell it to advertisers, however, hotels and airlines traditionally use it to personalize travel experiences. Hotels – in particular luxury hotels – collect customer data to build detailed guest profiles, which can include personal preferences, from room, pillow and favorite cocktails, to potentially more explicit guest information.

https://www.phocuswire.com/GDPR-hotel-customer-data

What every hotelier must know about EU’s payment rules

Just as hoteliers have become used to GDPR, another piece of European Union legislation, the Payment Services Directive regulations, known as PSD2, is set to go into effect.

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/297360/What-every-hotelier-must-know-about-EUs-payment-rules

Rise in Mobile Bookings in Middle East Creates New Online Travel Competition

The Middle East traveler has been going digital across all touchpoints of the travel journey, fueling a surge in the online travel market that is projected to reach $15 billion by 2023 across the region. That will mark an increase of 140 percent from current levels, according to research company Mena Research Partners.

https://skift.com/2019/07/23/rise-in-mobile-bookings-in-middle-east-creates-new-online-travel-competition/

Hotel chains demonstrate common B2B eCommerce website blunders

Hotels can earn customers’ loyalty by providing better personalized recommendations that understand their individual price/value tradeoff.

https://go.forrester.com/blogs/hotel-chains-demonstrate-common-b2b-ecommerce-website-blunders/

Amex GBT forecasts modest hotel rate increases for 2020

The Hotel Monitor 2020, published by American Express Global Business Travel, predicts that hotel prices in most key cities will experience only modest rises in 2020.

https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4094362.html

Online presence high priority with independent hotels

Trends in how people, and brands, consume and process information online are driving digital marketing strategies for independent hotels. It’s important not only to have an online presence but also to have the proper digital footprint, sources said.

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/297313/Online-presence-a-high-priority-at-independent-hotels

What you need to know about Google Ads’ “Store / Hotel Visits”

Google came out with another way marketers and hoteliers can measure the performance of campaigns through Store Visits or for hotels, Hotel Visits. Hotel Visits can measure whether or not users actually visited your property. Google uses cell towers, wifi signals and more to tell whether or not you’ve actually visited a property and you aren’t just staying next door or across the street.

https://screenpilot.com/2019/07/what-you-need-to-know-about-google-ads-store-visits/

How San Francisco boosted Chinese bookings by 30 percent

Outbound Chinese visitors represent an increasingly important part of San Francisco’s tourist model, constituting 23 percent of international tourist spending in 2018.

https://jingtravel.com/san-francisco-grew-chinese-bookings-30-percent/

Connect with us for your connectivity needs to make the most of online revenue-https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Thanks and have a good day!