News & Stories

Frankfurt. Worldhotels introduced numerous new services for its members this spring. The current trend toward more individuality inspired the results of the group of independent hoteliers just the same as with the close collaboration with the technology professionals, Trust International. This is why the brand will move to the forefront more strongly in the future, as revealed by Worldhotels CEO, Rob Hornman during the interview with hospitaltiyInside.com co-worker Susanne Stauss. An update.

Milpitas, CA. The proliferation of collaboration and social tools designed to increase productivity is actually costing businesses millions of dollars per year in lost productivity, according to a survey.

Munich. Last week, TripAdvisor also began its flight search engine in Germany. Of course, this is combined with airline assessments.

Bellevue/Washington. Expedia`s Board of Directors has preliminarily approved a plan to separate the company into two publicly traded companies: TripAdvisor become a public company. At the same time, Expedia has to prepare for a fight with a new competitor.

Venice/Berlin. The Internet turns over entire markets, as it makes niches grow. The hostels segment is one of these areas which benefits from the transparency and bookability via mouse click. "The Internet is the number one channel for budget accommodation”, says a happy Andrea Mehanna, Managing Director of the hostelsclub.com Internet reservation platform from Venice, Italy. After major portals like Expedia refused to sell the 1-star guest rooms of his parents, he founded an independent website in 2001. Today, there are several different big reservation platforms on the Internet purely concentrating on this particular segment. A portrait of a young sales concept.

Frankfurt. How do tour operators and travel agencies, airlines, bus companies, hotels and restaurants, congresses, events and cruise companies as well as tourist authorities and other industry players use social media? A survey wants to find it out. German companies are asked to participate.

Bern. Hotels in Switzerland continue to win customers over via online travel platforms instead of their own homepage. According to a recent survey on reservation channels in the Swiss hotel sector, the market share of these platforms has been rising quickly.

Hamburg. He's quite the American business man: Stephen Kaufer, founder of TripAdvisor. His story is one of rags to riches: It began in 2002 with three partners in an apartment above a pizza store. Two years after setting up the company, TripAdvisor had been so successful that it was bought by Interactive Corporation for 200 million USD and later spun it off to Expedia. Every month, TripAdvisor today counts over 40 million "unique users" worldwide, Stephen Kaufer says and compares: That's more traffic than the world's five largest airlines generate on their homepages. The founder is still CEO of the company, and he is also intricately involved in the global strategy. Meanwhile, he has Europe in his sights – and doesn't want to allow HolidayCheck a free reign. He has concrete plans, though entering the European market is more difficult than expected.

Augsburg. The hype around social media seems undaunted; but critical voices are indeed growing. Even to insiders, the speed of development nowadays is difficult to keep up with. What does it mean if TripAdvisor links up with Facebook or if Google suddenly allows for hotel reviews as well and with that, becomes a competitor with TripAdvisor? In which way do these giants actually clash? At any rate, it means that the hotel industry must take a more precise look than ever before and attempt to understand the connections since internet search engines are about to intervene massively in the marketing of the hotels and hotel review platforms and the social networks, themselves, rip content. According to HRS and the like, if the hotelier runs the risk of losing control once more - this time it will not be only over prices, but also control over its content and the reputation of their property on the internet. Marco Nussbaum, CEO of prizeotel Management GmbH in Bremen and social media "Activist", fills his budget hotels through new channels, but he also questions the activities of Facebook, Google and the like critically – just the same as Markus Luthe, General Manager of the German Hotel Association. Both will also take part in the discussion group, "Social Media & Hotel Review Platforms" at the ITB Hotel Conference on the 10th of March.

Madrid. There has been rumour about Opodo being sold since autumn. Then Amadeus sold its Amadeus Hospitality subsidiary first. On Wednesday, the sale of Opodo became public.