Continual re-inventions

Berlin. Those who are looking for the fairy tale of selfless sharing will not find it in the Sharing Economy. On the contrary. A new branch of industry that makes use of missing resources and of missed developments within individual industries has sprung up before our eyes. "The Sharing Economy creates no better capitalism," believes Robert Wissmath, Managing Director DICON Marketing and Consulting Company, "but rather, it extends the present economic processes." It did not take long for Airbnb, the signboard for the Sharing Economy and great scapegoat of the hotel industry, to be the subject. The discussion of the "Sharing Economy" subject during the 10th "ITB Hospitality Day" at ITB Berlin at the beginning of March demonstrated that the hotel industry is now on the path toward loosening its opposition and thinking more strongly about synergies or even cooperations with sharing suppliers.

Berlin. Two different concepts, but several parallels: The Yotel brand – renowned for its "sleep cabins" in windowless airport hotels and the "Yobot" robot – repeatedly causes surprises within the industry thanks to its innovative power. Freshly founded Barefoot Living follows an entirely different concept: it approaches the hotel business from an emotional aspect instead of solely trusting in design and hardware. An exciting contrast at the 10th "ITB Hospitality Day", the hotel conference of the world's largest tourism trade fair in Berlin early March.

Berlin. Online Travel Agents that do not want to be such consider as such are afraid of system operators such as Google or Android which could turn out to be the true powers of evil that could make the hotel industry depend on them in the future. The intense "ITB Hospitality Day" at ITB 2015 was coming to an end when an illustrious panel addressed the question whether the independence of the hotel industry was in the process of nearing its end as well. Trusting the vote of the audience at the end, this question must be answered with a clear yes: only 26 percent expect the hotel sector to generate the majority of reservations by itself.

Berlin. Google is an excellent assistant when it comes to illegally hacking other IT systems. Webcams can easily be used to observe and eavesdrop. And filtering the right password is often only a matter of time for the experienced hacker. The consequences of the widespread negligence in handling customer data were dramatically illustrated at the 10th ITB Hospitality Day at the ITB Berlin last week, live in front of an interested audience. "Check out - Hack in" was the title of the 'live hack' at the beginning of the conference. See it for yourself!