News & Stories

Berlin. JustBook, an app for spontaneous hotel bookings, is now expanding across the whole of Europe. The portal was launched in January 2012.

Brussels/Berlin. HOTREC unanimously agreed at its General Assembly in Limassol, to update its list of "Benchmarks of Fair Practices in Online Distribution”.

Florence. The Italian Lungarno Collection provides its guests with their own temporary social network. This links guests and hotel staff.

Wiesbaden. The Internet will displace all other reservation channels known – this is what "reservation experts" currently agree on, thereby referring to strong growth rates of reservations carried out via mobile devices. At all industry meetings, trade shows and conferences, contributors present impressive figures and describe a dramatic change in reservation behaviour which is already taking place. hospitalityInside.com wanted to know from big chains how these assertions and forecasts are concretely reflected in their sales and distribution – and was quite astonished by their answers. Such information is "confidential", says Marriott – the same company that has described itself as "sales machine" for the past few decades and showed off with its annually increasing figures on their website. Very little specific information was disclosed.

Berlin/Bern/Vienna. Online distribution is becoming increasingly important for the hotel industry in Germany, Austria and Switzerland. On average, 27 percent of the bookings in the DACH area are generated electronically in real time via online booking platforms, the company's own website, global reservation systems, the computer reservation systems of hotel chains and hotel co-operations or social media platforms.

München. Einerseits konnte man die zukunftsweisenden Vorträge über Google, Facebook und mehr beim "E-Marketing Day" der HSMA vor knapp zwei Wochen als pure PR werten, andererseits erlaubten sie einen guten Einblick in die nächsten Entwicklungsstufen der digitalen Reise-Welt. Social Networks und Suchmaschinen verschmelzen zu einer neuen eCommerce-Dimension. Hinzu kommt das enorme Tempo in der Mobile-Entwicklung. Konkret heisst das: Bei einer europäischen Fluggesellschaft kann man seit Anfang Februar den eigenen Sitznachbarn definieren, und in einem Stockholmer Hotel per Handy einchecken, das Zimmer betreten und alles per Handy bezahlen. Schöne neue Online-Welt?

Berlin/Cologne. The young mobile app provider Justbook has applied for an injunction against HRS: A court judgement found the HRS Best Price Guarantee to be in breach of competition law and held it to be void. The judgement applies to a concrete set of events. HRS doesn't see itself as affected.

Vienna. It was just ten years ago that Austria's regions held a leading position in e-tourism. But as they were not able to translate this into commercial success, today's hotel industry is moaning about its dependence on external portals. Austria's 4 and 5-star hotels alone paid about 46 million Euro commission to various reservation platforms in 2010. 37 million Euro of this went abroad – the majority to booking.com. However, Austria's tourism experts had been on the right path, but the German HRS online travel agent thought more strategically and bought Tiscover. And HRS sticks to "best rates" in Austria today too.

Munich. Google and Facebook are lining up "to digitize" mankind. Search engines and Social Media are developing new business models from the internet euphoria and increasing mobility. The traveller is becoming a transparent commodity that will be paid for by the click in the future. What the four talks at the "eMarketing Day" by the Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association and the Instituts Tourismuszukunft praised on Monday in Munich as a nearby, digital future sounds quite creepy. In contrast, the renewed discussion over the commission rise and the altered terms and conditions by the online mediator, HRS, looked like a medieval knight's tournament. Nevertheless, the latter was under heavier discussion. This subject gained a new dimension with the warning by the German Federal Anti-trust Commission toward HRS on last Friday. On Monday, Managing Directors, Tobias Ragge and Michael Simon, positioned themselves for the questions by HSMA members - and afterwards, took an opposing stand with hospitalityInside.com once again on the points that the hoteliers as well as the German Federal Anti-trust Commission hold as critical. After the interview with HRS, hospitalityInside.com asked the former Marriott distribution specialist and currently independent consultant, Bruno Wolf, from Frankfurt to comment on the answers by HRS.

Augsburg. HRS's decision to raise commissions across the board last week to a standard rate of 15 percent for all distribution channels and subsidiaries caused ructions within the German hotel industry. Whilst some demanded an "HRS free week", others were more sanguine and began to analyse the change.