News & Stories
Hong Kong. On the occasion of its fifth birthday, the IT-specialised consultancy of Pertlink, headquartered in Hong Kong, has published a useful checklist about hotel technology. The list points out numerous important details from the guests' perspective, details that often get lost in everyday hotel business. We recommend taking many of the listed aspects seriously!
Lausanne. The UK operator First Choice projects that online hotel sales in Europe will increase by about 50% from 2004 levels to exceed €6 billion in 2006, by which time they will make up 24% of all hotel sales in Europe and the US. For the time being, the great majority of hotel nights sold on web are in urban destinations. The resort hotels are still left out.
Lausanne. Should hoteliers prefer "dynamic packaging" to the "merchant model"? After 9/11 two-thirds of hotel bookings via the major travel websites were merchant sales. Fact is: the pressure on rates induced by web distribution remains high. The price of a room night booked through conventional travel agents was 31.2% higher than the average for room nights booked via the internet. The industry looses milllions and millions of Dollar per year due to increased internet transparency. A comparison of the models.
Vienna. Very recently, the Oesterreichische Hoteliervereinigung ordered the assessment of 289 reservation platforms relevant for the national and the Swiss hotel industry. The number of travel platforms keeps growing every day and the survey shows there is no correlation to an increase in quality. Despite this, the accuracy of web marketing can be improved, provided that the hotels are able to deal with the numerous possibilities provided by the web portals.
Augsburg. Travel search engines like Google or Yahoo become a new channel of distribution for travel services. They support hotel groups’ direct distribution efforts by driving traffic to their own websites, thus cutting out the relatively expensive online travel agents.
New York. In a move to better compete against hotel-owned Web sites, Hotels.com announces the launch of new Web site features that give consumers all the expert tools they need to plan, shop and book lodging on or offline.
Frankfurt/M. International hotel chains increasingly refer to "free internet access" in their advertising campaigns. This signals an important trend change in the fee jungle seen in most hotels. Result: Where today extra charges are made will tomorrow be rarely frequented by the business traveller.
Frankfurt/M. The Frankfurt based firm Hotelassistance promises time and expense saving assistance for the maintenance of booking portals with new computer software. A gratis trial period is possible.
Washington (August 26, 2005). The Travel Partnership Corporation in Washington D. C. received the permission to operate the new top-level domain ".travel" in April this year. As of October, it will be possible to apply for domains with the new ending for the first time. But not everybody is able to have such a domain.
Washington. Marriott launched a new component on marriott.com to let American users buy plane tickets and rent cars - even if they don't want to book a hotel room. It will sell flights on 60 airlines, including all major carriers.