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The Paul Hotels Achieves Online Rate Parity

The Paul Resorts & Hotels has further developed its revenue management operations to improve rate parity across multiple online sales bookings channels. The group implemented advanced allocation management capabilities through RateTiger’s Channel Manager to improve its position and rate management with third parties.
The award-winning luxury property in India has been selling across 15 online channels and wanted to ensure the same rates were available to customers across all channels. However, managing so many OTAs manually was becoming a challenge, especially when guests were discovering rate inconsistencies. To main group sales sells across global booking portals as well as regional OTAs with the prospect to add more channels the properties chose RateTiger.

“Given our small inventory and high occupancy rates throughout the year it’s essential we engage in more future planning across our sales channels.” said Shelley Thayil, Director of Revenue Management.


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RateTiger presents at HSMA’s Pricing & Distribution Day


Germany’s Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association (HSMA) hosted its annual “Pricing & Distribution Day” in Frankfurt recently. An audience of around 300, consisting for mostly hotel executives involved in distribution and revenue management, was keen to learn about the latest trends and strategies in their sphere of action.

In the light of rising distribution costs and the increasing feeling amongst hoteliers that they are no longer in control of their own rates, sales channels and products, the guiding theme of the event was how to find and apply the right balance between direct and third party distribution. Clever online marketing, a strengthening of direct distribution channels, Web 2.0 applications and mobile technologies were among the options discussed to lower the costs of distribution. Speakers included top managers from major hotel brands such as Accor and Best Western, HRS CEO Tobias Ragge, consultants and industry experts. Amongst the latter, Ragnar Strerath, Division President RTConnect at RateTiger, was invited to share his expertise.

His presentation titled – “Learning against helplessness – How hoteliers can rid themselves of feeling dependent on their distribution partners” – dealt with options to get back on eyelevel with OTAs and other sales channels. The key message: it needs both distribution management technology and market insight, none of these two will do the job alone. Ragnar explained which competencies are essential, these ranging from insight in the distribution landscape and its options and conditions, product development and placement skills to revenue management, online marketing and competitor analysis. But how can hoteliers obtain this knowledge? While technology can be bought – and Ragnar pointed out relevant features for channel managers and the most important questions to ask possible suppliers – the latter can be acquired in various ways: by training existent staff, by employing specialists, or by working with external experts.


Ragnar listed the pros and cons of each option: while in-house training takes time and hardly ever reaches the level of focused experts, it might also be too expensive for smaller hotels to employ a specialist. For these, consultants who help setting up a strategy and choose suitable technology can be a promising alternative, particularly if these consultants are largely paid per booking and consequently interested in the hotel’s success. Ragnar concluded with some statistics on Ramada’s performance, which has improved significantly since implementing RateTiger, quoting hotel’s Regional Director Markus Barth as testimonial.

The presentation was followed by an intense discussion, which showed that the speaker touched the needs of today’s hoteliers and that his insights were well received.

Jasmin Keller is PR Representative for the German speaking markets and is responsible for driving all PR activities for RateTiger and eRevMax brands in the region. Jasmin is based in Hamburg and can be reached at ratetiger@jasminkeller.com

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Tianguis Turistico 2012

I had the pleasure of attending Tianguis Turístico this year which is considered Mexico’s largest tourism trade show. Previously held in Acapulco for the last 36 years, this year the Mexican Ministry of Tourism decided to organize the event in Riviera Nayarit and Puerto Vallarta in order to promote different regions of the country.

Tianguis Turístico is an ideal platform to promote Mexico’s vacation destinations to a very specific local and international market, with the purpose of developing destination tourism and related products and services for the tourism sector.
With over 300 hotels participating, it was good to see discussions revolving around pricing trends and revenue management. With Mexico seeing an increase of 5.5% in inbound tourism, hoteliers are targeting more OTAs and have started realizing the importance of using a channel manager.

Kudos to the organizing committee at Riviera Nayarit and Puerto Vallarta for their excellent teamwork in successfully promoting and executing Tianguis Turístico. It was a well organized event which provided terrific exposure to the region as well as great value to attendees and exhibitors alike. 

I look forward to Tianguis Turistico Mexico 2013 at a new destination.

Sheila Martinez Sotelo is Sales Manager – Mexico & USA at eRevMax and is responsible for sale of RateTiger products in the region. She can be reached at sheilas@ratetiger.com
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Newshound: Trends and Reports – Hotel Online Distribution

Distribution experts share key to success
For all its complexity, the distribution game comes down to one simple factor: value. If a channel doesn’t offer value, then hoteliers shouldn’t use that channel to yield inventory, concluded a panel comprising a diverse array of representatives in the field.

Making Social Media An Asset To Your Hotel, Part 3: Sales & Marketing
Marketing using social media requires a different discipline and expertise from traditional and online marketing. Just as radio ads don’t translate well to television, branded online ads typically don’t work well in social media. Marketers wanting to utilize social media will need to think differently, and this section explains how.

A New Era for OTAs
Tension between hotels and online travel agencies has been palpable for the past several years, as the Web distribution marketplace has seen heated competition both online, through the battle for booking revenue, and off, through business negotiations and legal disputes. But as economic purse strings have loosened, consumer demand has risen, and hotels themselves have become more savvy in corralling their own direct customers, several of the major online travel brands have changed their game to reflect what they see as the current state of the business.

Online now accounts for more than half of travel sales across Europe
Online bookings accounted for more than half the travel sales across Europe for the first time last year, according to industry analyst IPK International. But agency sales continue to dominate Europe’s biggest travel market: Germany. IPK reported 55% of all travel bookings in Europe were online last year, up 15% on 2010. Attached is the key findings of the report.

Global average room rate rose by 4pc last year: report
A report released by Hotels.com has indicated that the results are showing the green shoots of recovery for many countries with the average price of a hotel across the world rising four percent, placing them on a par with prices from 2005. According to Hotels.com’s Hotel Price Index (HPI), the relative strength of the global hotel sector can be seen as an indicator of a potential turnaround in the economic outlook with the average price of a room around the world rising four percent in 2011.