News & Stories
Paris. When it comes to finding better ways to serve its customers, Choice Hotels obviously think practically and in terms of connectivity. In France, thanks to a partnership signed with the French startup Travel Wifi, the chain is now allowing its guests to rent their own Wifi hotspot.
London. Online travel agents such as Priceline and Expedia have become ever-more powerful as a result of strategic acquisitions of smaller, regional players. Now they attack the industry with their own loyalty programs.
Paris. Last week, representatives of the French National Assembly surprised everybody after voting an amendment that will exclude any kind of parity rate clause from contracts between local hoteliers and OTAs. A first in Europe. Named after the Minister of Economy who is battling to bring back "national growth and activity”, the Macron's bill should officially pass before July 14th. According to the French newspaper "Les Echos", first measures will apply by the end of August, which means current contracts between hoteliers and online agencies will become null and void, effective immediately. Booking.com predicts heavy price pressure in the market. In Australia, the Competition and Consumer Commission prepared the ground to increase the power of OTAs – and is being criticized for this.
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.