News & Stories

Paris. Earlier this week in Paris, following the Senate’s previous decision, representatives of the French Assemblée Nationale, voted for a new law requalifying contracts between hoteliers and OTAs and prohibiting any kind of rate parity between the two partners.

Amsterdam. Great news! Giant, successful, powerful yet controversial and quite secretive, Booking.com is opening up. To its partners - they should always come first - but also to the media. hospitalityInside.com managed to get an exclusive interview with Peter Verhoeven, ex AccorHotels and current Booking.com EMEA Managing Director. We met him at the company’s amazing headquarters in Amsterdam, in a colourful room, right next to a play space where IT geeks lookalike were playing ping-pong. An opportunity for us to clear things up with the OTA and talk about important topics such as: Booking and hoteliers’ "tough love" relationship, EU probes, parity clause, data control, technology challenges and innovations, corporate travel, travel agent partnerships, sharing economy, AccorHotels’ new booking platform, and much more.

Paris/Munich. AccorHotels' decision to allow independent hotels on to its booking platform and to offer this at lower rates set the industry alight last week. hospitalityInside.com asked HRS, Booking.com as well as hoteliers from Germany, Austria, Switzerland, the Netherlands, France, Spain and Italy for their response. We also asked Accor further detailed questions and got the first answers. A snapshot from seven countries shows how the decision has mixed up the discussion on distribution within the hotel industry.

Paris. Accor's revolution is a mutation and it is definitely happening now. After splitting the group activities into the two divisions HotelInvest and HotelServices, in order to boost profitability, Accor is now fully focused on its digital transformation. A lot is going on. First, branding. The world's fourth largest hotel group just stretched its name to AccorHotels for an unambiguous image about its core business. Second, its distribution platform is now an open market place willing to list independent hoteliers being suffocated by OTA pressure. Third, one "super app" will host all AccorHotels brand applications under the same roof from now on and will offer what the CEO thinks "no OTA can provide today": personalized service, selective information in a nutshell customer experience.

Berlin. Have you ever been angry about finding out that you paid 100 euros yesterday for something that only costs 50 euros today? It's a free market one would say, rates fluctuate all the time answering the basic rule of offer and demand; we all understand that but it’s still very annoying! To avoid you being frustrated after you have booked a hotel room online, DreamCheaper has created a new service that searches for the best rate available. The Berlin-based startup optimizes the rates found by the customer and then rebooks his room. "We were able to optimize over 50% of all bookings so far," managing director Nathan Zielke says. For OTAs, this means: DreamCheaper takes business away from them and helps the hoteliers in the long run.

Amsterdam. Booking.com recently launched a new service called Booking.com for business. Hotels offering 10% discount are stamped with the logo "Genius".

Amsterdam. Last week, the Austrian Hotel Association published a leaked document originally issued by the EU. The internal report prepared for EU Digital and Society Commissioner Guenther Oettinger, dated February 2015, shows the serious concern of inspectors in Brussels about platform domination over data and abuse of market leverage. Both of these are a direct threat to the European economy. Sarah Douag found incredible facts about how the EU is going to be fooled, e.g.; three providers control 90% of the distribution in Europe.

Augsburg. As the hospitality industry gradually ramps up its mobile platforms, a new study published by the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research finds that travelers consequently delete useless Apps. Will Wearables – spearheaded by the new Apple Watch – change the game? Starwood, Accor, Expedia and HRS are the first to connect with the Apple Watch.

Berlin. Under CEO Denis Ciofu, the HotelTonight App provider has chosen the Russian market as its next target area. And at the same time, the office in Berlin is being developed.

Wiesbaden. The demand for Revenue Managers has risen sharply across the sector. Hotel chains have meanwhile even set up external revenue management centres and stock them with highly-paid experts. The concerns of many a director that an in-house revenue manager may steal his thunder in the hotel itself therefore appear unfounded. In terms of responsibility for operations and for the wages of the Cluster Revenue Managers, things look different though. The power of the Revenue Manager is rising. International chains like Accor and Carlson Rezidor, like the owner-operator Pandox or the German operator HMG describe their models and experiences, whilst two headhunters weigh personnel costs of the new revenues makers.