News & Stories
Amsterdam. eCommerce giant Amazon is entering the travel world again, this time through its voice-activated assistant Alexa. Programmed specifically to fit into the hospitality world, Alexa is being invited into hotel rooms. Is this the end of privacy in the hotel room?
Paris. AccorHotels's subsidiary Availpro recently signed a technology partnership with Airbnb. This move makes complete sense for the French channel manager's Availpro future relationship with its customers but is confusing from AccorHotel's perspective. Unless the group intends to make Availpro look as beautiful as possible before selling it. According to our sources, both Fastbooking and Availpro are indeed currently on the market for grabs.
Berlin. German Hotelgenossenschaft, present in the market with stayya.de, is sharpening its profile as an online booking portal for small and owner-managed hotels with a new approach and name: hotels-5.de reduces the commission for hoteliers and increases the discount for guests.
Berlin/Guangzhou. In future, guests checking themselves into the hotel will get their rooms cheaper. And guests can interact personally with housekeeping staff. These are just two examples of the work of WeHotel, the technological experimentation platform of Jin Jiang and Plateno Hotels. Louvre Hotels will join WeHotel in 2019. WeHotel is stock-market listed and was launched in 2016 with the objective of turning the platform into a one-stop booking system for the mobile internet. WeHotel currently serves 100 million loyalty customers of Jin Jiang and Plateno – and uses these for its tests. Maria Puetz-Willems met two young managers from technology/innovation and marketing in Berlin and learned what is already possible in China today – a country with no data protection rules – and what is being tested systematically.
Dallas. Sabre Labs has been testing and learning with and for its customers for 22 years. Over the years, the product focus has changed into a research focus and finally Sabre is now involved in innovation. The US company based in Dallas, Texas, is somewhat more critical of startups today than five years ago. Also with the topic blockchain one wants to learn even more to be able to pass on his knowledge conscientiously to customers. Philip Liken, Director of Sabre Labs, his colleague Timothy Hagues, Head of Research at Sabre Labs, and Richard Wiegmann, Managing Director & Chief Commercial Officer EMEA at Sabre Hospitality, explain their views on technology trends and their life cycles. The experts are certain: man and machine will become a twosome. Sabre wants them to get along.
Amsterdam. The battle between Airbnb and OTAs couldn't be better represented than with Booking.com creating a Home Division and hiring Airbnb's former EMEA director to run it. Although they are chasing the same hosts and guests, both competitors have less in common than one thinks... at least for now.
Southlake, Texas. Sabre Corporation has released the Sabre Labs "2018 Emerging Technology Report", its latest technology forecast focused on evolving technologies and trends that will impact travel over the next decade. The 2018 report evaluates automation, authenticity and blockchain as three major areas for consideration.
Dallas/Berlin. "If you give me an offer that I don't need or like, then it's spam, it bothers me. But if you offer me something that I want and value, then it makes my life easier and I have a better guest experience". At ITB Berlin, Clinton Anderson, President of Sabre Hospitality Solutions, explained the company's thoughts and activities around the cloud, AI and the impact it has on hoteliers' business. For example, matching a guest's shopping behavior of the past with his/her present behavior leads to a "private" story of the persona and to an increased conversion. Clinton Anderson thinks that, today, only the leading one third of the hoteliers is ready to take the next step in digitalization and personalization. Dallas-based giant Sabre is a 3.5–billion-dollar business, with Sabre Hospitality contributing 300 million dollars to it.
Paris. In May, Louvre Hotels Group will launch a new digital solution dedicated to reservations of leisure groups. The hotel chain has invested 500,000 euros to develop the state-of-the-art group booking engine and expects a high return on investment from a market worth 190 billion dollars.
Amsterdam. Over the past five years, a billion dollars has already been invested in Blockchain companies, yet the vast majority of us still do not have a clear vision of what this technology is all about and the impact it can have on businesses. The technology behind the famous Bitcoin has attracted many people's attention, including professionals in the travel industry. From Sabre to Lufthansa, Air New Zealand, Nordic Choice Hotels, Amadeus, Booking.com, TUI, but also Kempinski and citizenM, travel companies are all looking into Blockchain hoping to lower their costs, secure their transactions, facilitate payments, improve trust, and in the process, get rid of the middleman. Experts expect Blockchain to disrupt the industry, except this time, hoteliers have more to gain than to lose from disruption.