News & Stories
Hamburg. The last border to the wide world of the shopping has fallen - smartphones, Tablet PCs & Co. are to thank. Shopping is not only possible at any time, but now also at any place. The owners of mobile devices capable of Internet value the independence from time and space, a study points out.
Frankfurt. The hotel industry is in the throes of understanding that it needs to regain sovereignty from online travel agencies and reservation portals in terms of rates and content. Hoteliers have paid enormous sums in the form of commissions to Expedia, booking.com, hotel.de, HRS and other providers in the past decade. Now, these portals are pushing the hotels’ own websites even further back in the Google hit lists. The consequence: hoteliers are losing another portion of their business. They have failed to understand the electronic distribution model to this day. As a result, they got a slap in the face last Monday: at the "Pricing & Distribution Day” staged by Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association in the Sheraton Frankfurt Airport Hotel, where competent speakers found crystal clear words. They spoke about parity of rates, content and products, fair distribution, distribution strategies and the spectre of Google. The discussion about Google alone revealed the fears of the industry. The experts countered: withdrawing is not the best defence, but attacking!
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.