News & Stories

Munich. A new start-up has now digitalised the search for long-term accommodation. Livabout has launched in Munich. The new portal allows travellers looking for long-term accommodation to search in a novel way using artificial intelligence which sifts through over 100 criteria.

Paris. It's been 20 months now since AccorHotels opened up its booking platform to independent hotels worldwide. Taking the fight to online travel agencies, the market place is growing strong and fast – faster than perhaps expected by AccorHotels' CEO Sébastien Bazin. During the group's presentation of the annual results on February 22, he mentioned that "the real difficulty is not recruiting new hotels but being capable of distributing all of them." As he didn't say much more that day about the marketplace, hospitalityInside.com asked Romain Roulleau, AccorHotels' Senior Vice President eCommerce and Digital Services, to give an update on new recruits, online sales, new services, ambitions and challenges.

Bad Ischl/Vienna. At last week's annual congress of Austria's OEHV hotelier association, there was again much ado about online distribution. Since January, Austria's hotels have been permitted to offer their rooms at a lower price than online travel agencies. But the online giants still have the hotels – and particularly the small, private ones – in their clutches. The drop in rate parity is slowly beginning to show first effects. But the fight still has a lot of power: by late 2017, half of all hotel reservations is likely to be carried out online.

Las Vegas. Artificial Intelligence is finding its way into hospitality: The Wynn Las Vegas is installing Amazon Echo in all rooms. In Europe, the first hotel piloting a voice-activated chatbot that services guests in their suites is the Clarion Amaranten in Stockholm.

Rockville. Franchisees of Choice Hotels expect a good year 2017 and have ambitious refurbishment plans again. As in the year before, they require a strong impulse in sales and marketing.

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".