News & Stories

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.

Cologne. The UK-based Travelport platform has concluded a several years' distribution agreement with the German HRS hotel portal. This ties the hotel offers of HRS together with the Travelport GDS. With this, HRS is connected to all three important GDSs – Travelport, Amadeus, and Sabre. And the new HRS office that has just opened in New York has one more task.

Berlin. Up to now, the HRS hotel mediation portal has almost exclusively focused on the business segment, but in the future, will also focus on the MICE segment and on holiday home mediation. "Integration" is the motto of the hour at HRS. HRS Managing Director, Tobias Ragge, was invited to a press conference during ITB. He sees an additionally enormous potential in the tapping of both segments. To him, the hotel industry is still in their "digital baby shoes". With this, the go-getting HRS chief certainly has not only the hotel industry in his mind.