News & Stories

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.

Linz. The consumer information of the Arbeiterkammer Oberoesterreich - the legal interest group of employees in Austria - has, among other things, taken a closer look at the hotel prices offered by the four internet providers hrs.de, hotel.de, ehotel.de and expedia.de. It discovered price differences of up to 123 percent.

Augsburg. The confusion about the "best price" is already settled in the hotel industry. The hotel online portals make it even more confusing: They sometimes add their own rating to the "best prices" of the hotel chains and thus change the order of the hotels in the listing. The customer is left carrying the can: he no longer understands anything.

Augsburg. Confusion has become an art form: "Best Price" seems clear enough, but in fact is not the best price. German hoteliers are getting worked up about a phenomenon that yet again proves that everyone does what he wants. Only the common spring board is called "best price".