News & Stories

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.

White Plains. Two Starwood Hotels in Germany can now provide their guests with new telepresence rooms for virtual meetings. With the move, the US chain follows other chains such as Marriott and Taj.

Augsburg. Goldman Sachs' investment in Facebook at the beginning of January underpins the increasing significance of social media as well as the danger of a "new economy bubble", similar to the one seen in 2000. Various surveys conducted around the New Year meanwhile push the subject further to the fore. Even if, as one survey found, much information on the network pages is quite simply untrue.

Brussels. In terms of online distribution, HOTREC worries about the decreasing number of relevant online reservation platforms and criticizes their behaviour with respect to dealing with hoteliers. A working paper on “fair behaviour of hotel reservation platforms” is to stipulate particular key points.

Frankfurt. Since May, a new consortium for serviced apartments The Living Hotels has offered its members the opportunity to book this special segment via internet or the Global Distribution Service from wherever they are in the world. By 2011, over 50 members are to be included in the system. Technology partner is Trust International.

Innsbruck. The Austrian internet platform, Tiscover, owned by the German Hotel Reservation Service since 2008, increasingly resembles its parent company. Nevertheless, it has up to now managed to capture only a fraction of the market.