News & Stories
Amsterdam. Though the first quarter 2016 was okay, Online Travel Agents share less enthusiasm for the next coming months. From Priceline and TripAdvisor to Expedia, all three leaders have reasons to believe that Q2 will not be as exciting financially. Their CEOs find a lot of reasons to blame the market and justify declining figures in the groups' own reports.
London. On Wednesday Booking.com announced the release of its new Booking Messages interface, a chat-inspired communication platform that enables customers and accommodation providers to effortlessly connect with each other from the moment a booking is made.
Paris. While Marriott, Hyatt or Hilton are spending millions on TV campaigns inviting future guests to book direct, AccorHotels has chosen to play the OTA game and launched its own booking platform. That was almost a year ago. Today, just like a "boutique OTA", the marketplace has recruited a thousand new independent partners who have agreed to co-exist along with AccorHotels' own brands and luxury apartments from Onefinestay’s portfolio, which will soon be joining the platform. After a slow start, Accor's unusual proposal to open up its booking platform to competition, seems to finally be tempting a certain profile of hoteliers eager to multiply distribution channels in total transparency, while keeping control over customer data. During ITB, Sarah Douag met with Guillaume de Marcillac and Jean-Luc Chrétien, co-CEOs of Fastbooking, the entity in charge of the marketplace. How it works, what's in the contract, commission rate, loyalty program, data protection, digital innovations…they explained all the details and gave us a hint about future developments.
Vienna. A start-up in Vienna is launching a new booking platform for hoteliers in Austria and Germany. Entry provision: nine euros per booking, but the guests need to find the lowest price on their own.
London. SiteMinder just published its top ten revenue-generating booking sites of 2015. And is ranked at three itself.
New York. There are an estimated 480 hotel bookings per minute in the United States according to the American Hotel Association. Everybody wants them, so "booking scams" have become popular. Hotels, OTAs, review sites, P2P platforms, third parties, etc. are doing everything to ensure they will secure the highest number of bookings. Playing fair is a detail here. Hoteliers around the world are facing many hurdles on their way. One of them is "booking scams", a nasty practice which continues to spread, ruining the client booking experience and very often the client's relationship with the hotel.
Paris. Watching Airbnb's business behavior for a long time, it becomes obvious that the P2P platform's ultimate weapon in its war against city legislators/regulators and hotel unions has become lobbying. Airbnb tries to influence the "influencers" and decision makers – by presenting its own studies at the United States Conference of Mayors for instance. Former administration officials of the US government have allegedly joined Airbnb trying to turn hosts and guests into unionists and protesters. On the hotel side, CBRE Hotels US has developed an "Airbnb Competition Index" giving the hotel industry a more precise idea about its position.
Amsterdam. After more than a decade comfortably relying on OTAs, hoteliers have realized that they have lost direct contact with their guests. Now Triptease steps in – a tech startup that focuses on helping hoteliers build up the relationship they traditionally had with the customers – precisely, to help them in acquiring and converting direct bookings. Triptease also tracks user behavior in real time and tries to prevent users from leaving the website. Sarah Douag asked Charlie Osmond, co-founder and "Chief Tease" at Triptease about the issue of direct bookings, the tools his company provides and his hopes for the future of independent hotels.
Amsterdam. Booking.com is still unwilling to accept the rate parity ban imposed on the OTA by the German Federal Cartel Office shortly before Christmas. This was revealed by a new inquiry in Amsterdam this week.
Brussels. Last year, HOTREC worked on all fronts to communicate the European hospitality industry's contributions to society as well as represent, promote and defend the sector's interests. The European umbrella Association of Hotels, Restaurants and Cafes won several battles, is still battling for others and will try to do even better this year, hopefully with faster answers from the European institutions. As we start a new year, Sarah Douag asked HOTREC CEO Christian de Barrin to comment on the past actions but mostly to explain the industry's key priorities for 2016: the Digital Single Market, the necessity to level the playing field on the Sharing Economy, the importance of a workable fiscal environment, the impact of terrorist attacks in key European cities, the mixed success of the Hospitality Skills Passport, the need to share hoteliers' expertise cross-border, and how crucial it is to promote the attractiveness of the hospitality sector in order to develop skills and competences.