News & Stories

Amsterdam. Booking.com continues to innovate. A few days ago, the Dutch-based company launched its new Content API for accommodation channel managers, content providers and property management companies. At the same time, it launched Booking.com for Travel Agents.

San Francisco. With the launch of "Airbnb Trips" at the end of last week, the future doesn't look brighter for hoteliers. With a new app, the rental platform wants "to make travel magical again" allowing people to list "experiences" and to share them with travelers in exchange for money. Through the Travel Package Directive, Brussels made it complicated for hoteliers to sell additional services to their rooms, yet with Trips, Airbnb is doing just that. It will be interesting to see if the platform receives equal treatment or simply plays around legislation again. Meanwhile, a recent Morgan Stanley survey shows that Airbnb could slow down growth in hotel revenue by almost double and hit them harder than OTAs.

Augsburg. American researchers exposed Twitter users: They and their followers only read the visible headlines in links and share them immediately. Obviously true to the motto: Shared stupidity doubles popularity.

Cologne. HRS will in future incorporate external partners on to its hotel website – though doesn't say how many there are at present. For its corporate client segment, HRS has developed a new logo.

Paris. It's been a year since France's government killed the OTAs' rate parity by means of the "Macron law". But it seems to be a long way for hoteliers to regain control over distribution. The OTAs are still powerful but unions are making sure they respect the law. One of them managed to unmask few of Booking.com's misleading promises hidden among its "Charter of Good practice".

Cologne. In selected "HRS Smarthotels", guests can now check in and out via the hotel portal HRS with their smarphone - and also pay for their stay by mobile phone. All possible thanks to Conichi.

Munich. A survey among 459 German hoteliers reveals: They are satisfied with OTAs and are willing to cooperate with them. The result disproves the commonly believed scepticism of hoteliers towards internet travel portals.

Amsterdam. Earlier this year, during the 2015 Q4 earning call with investors, TripAdvisor's CEO, Stephen Kaufer, caught people's attention when he mentioned that "tours and activities is a very fragmented market opportunity worth 80 billion dollars in the US and Europe alone." That's enough to motivate key players from the hospitality industry, from OTAs to hoteliers, to vie for a piece of that cake. It is not surprising that online agencies have already moved their pawns, taking the lead over hoteliers who, as usual, are trying to catch up. Travel activities and restaurants are the next billion-dollar-revenue business stream Booking.com, Airbnb, Google, TripAdvisor, AccorHotels, etc. are getting on the bandwagon. Sarah Douag describes their new tools for tours and activities – and efforts for cross-selling.

Brussels. The dependency of hotels on OTAs continues to increase: the three booking platforms Priceline/Booking.com, Expedia and HRS are dominating with a common market share of 92%, of which the Priceline Group takes over 60%.

Vienna. Austria's Council of Ministers is adapting two laws, effective from January 1, 2017: the national law on unfair competition as well as the price labelling law. Thereafter in the future, parity clauses which are stated in general terms and conditions of booking platforms will be declared as aggressive and therefore void business practices.