News & Stories

San Francisco. The last-minute hotel reservation App, HotelTonight, has introduced an additional overnight category with "CrashPad" – accepting hostels.

Hamburg. The TripAdvisor travel website wants to remain as a pure review portal and not – like HolidayCheck – mutate into a booking engine. Is this intention still realistic? With its latest product "TripConnect", TripAdvisor is offering hotels a new calculation model for the "Business Listings". Which model will most appeal to the hotel industry in the future? Tom Breckwoldt, Territory Manager Business Listings in the Germany, Austria and Switzerland regions, regarding TripAdvisor – with comments by eCommerce Specialist, Michael Pütter.

Cologne. HRS had lodged a complaint in February against the decision by the German Federal Cartel Office for which the hotel reservation platform may no longer require rate parity in Germany.

Berlin/Minneapolis. At ITB Berlin starting next Wednesday, about 30 new exhibitors will be represented and make the travel technology segment grow further and move on to the next hall. Accordingly, IT and software provider offer more. IDeaS Revenue Solutions now announced the first mobile revenue management App.

Rome. At their meeting in Milan at the tourism fair BIT, the board of directors of the Italian hotel association Federalberghi unanimously decided to appeal to the national Antitrust Authority against online travel agencies.

Bonn. As reported, the German Federal Cartel Office had definitively prohibited the online mediator, HRS, from the Best Price guarantee on the 20th of December, 2013. The authority has now made their explanatory statement public. Those interested can find the full text here. Austrian hoteliers are protesting violently in the meantime – the judgment is valid only for Germany.

Berlin/Vienna. Celebrations in both the German and Austrian hotel sector following a decision on the "best price guarantee" at the end of last year have now become somewhat quieter. On December 20, 2013, the German Cartel Office stopped the online travel agent HRS from using the best price guarantee - but only for the German market. The discussion now continues cautiously in Germany as the sector now faces the challenge of following its criticism of HRS resp. OTAs with acts. In Austria, information from EU circles has come to light which again leaves a question mark above the change. It is expected that HRS will appeal the decision by the end of March 2014.

Geneva. Expedia and Booking are engaged in a marketing battle about millions and billions; therefore, many small OTAs are no longer present in the perception of the customers. However, they also have to compete with other market participants increasingly, e.g. evaluation platforms like TripAdvisor, which have turned into meta search engines. On the other hand, the question arises whether the search engine Google Hotel Finder is becoming an Online Travel Agent. Author Macy Marvel investigated these facts in the last edition of hospitalityInside.com, and in today's second part, he analyses how mobile will change the market, how many bookings are already carried out on mobile devices, and how much power providers like HotelTonight have in the meantime. Moreover, the first hotel group has enabled bookings in the US via Twitter.

Geneva. At the beginning of the new year, distribution is increasingly at the forefront of discussions amongst hoteliers. Although there is considerable concern at major chains about the cost of OTAs, which typically retain between 15% and 25% of a hotel booking in fees, the fact is that it is smaller independent hotels that are most impacted. While on average, major chains get about two-thirds of their online booking on their own websites, leaving one-third for intermediaries according to Travelclick figures for Q4 2012, these numbers are more-or-less reversed for non-affiliated hotels. Macy Marvel analyses the marketing battle of Booking.com and Expedia and the increasing role of metasearch sites, such as Google Hotel Finder.

Bonn. The best price clause of the Cologne-based Online Travel Agent HRS, infringes anti-trust laws. This was decided by the German Federal Cartel Office on December 20, 2013 and with this, has returned pricing sovereignty back to the industry, at least in Germany. How it will now proceed in concrete terms, at least so early in the new year, is still unclear.