News & Stories
Southlake. Travellers young and old are increasingly using mobile devices for flight notification, check in, seat selection, and for viewing hotel locations. A global survey also reveals: Surprisingly, Europeans rank ahead of North Americans in adopting newer features.
New York/Silver Springs. The recent severe conflict is terminated: Choice Hotels International and the online travel company Expedia signed a new three-year agreement to include Choice properties on the more than 80 Expedia and Hotels.com-branded sites that Expedia operates worldwide.
Munich. Online agent Expedia removed all Choice Hotels from its website overnight on October 15. The reason: the negotiations on the new agreements had come to a standstill. In the meantime, however, Choice's CEO Steve Joyce says in plain words: Expedia wants to force the franchise group to allow Expedia unconditioned access to its entire inventory and pricing systems. The story is not causing massive waves in the US alone. Mainly European franchisees of Choice have been affected by this turmoil.
Vienna/Brixen. Andreas Falkensteiner, hotelier from Southern Tyrol, tour operator and brother of the hotelier Erich Falkensteiner, Vienna, has founded a joint venture with TUI Austria for incoming, direct travel distribution and hotel management. New dimensions in tourism are on the rise.
Frankfurt. Worldhotels has a new Managing Director and soon one hotel group fewer. As of immediately, Robert Hornman will assume the post of Board Chairman, replacing Michael Ball. At the same time, it was announced that Lindner Hotels & Resorts will leave Worldhotels on 1 January 2010. Lindner is the biggest hotel chain in the Worldhotels international marketing and reservation association. The move is painful but Rob Hornman, with Worldhotels for one year already, has meanwhile acquired new smaller groups and with them has identified new member hotel needs. In 2010, the former reservation system will be transformed into a comprehensive service platform for private hoteliers.
Munich. swoodoo started off as a flight search engine. Now, the hotel search engine will follow. It compares rates of many well-known providers including HRS, booking.com, hotels.com and Expedia. The aim is to become market leader among meta search engines.
Hamburg. Apparently, the economic crisis affects the travel plans of the German-speaking internet users, too. According to a current online survey, the users are much more restrained with regard to travelling costs compared to the previous year.
Hamburg. Even after many years of online shopping, the fear of Internet users of a major data theft remains the same in Germany. Doubts on data security are still a serious problem for online shopping. Interestingly, this is not only true for Internet newbies, but also and particularly for experienced users.
Langenhagen. The fact that Internet portals hardly put any leisure offers on the market can be attributed to their own restrictions. Should providers be willing to strengthen this particular segment in future, they need to integrate emotional and playful features. As Carolin Brauer, Managing Director of Quality Reservations, describes in the final part of our series on Internet portals today, new standards are meant to achieve this.
Langenhagen. The Internet reservation platforms are scattered almost across the entire world, as part 1 of our series showed last week. But are they a ”holistic” solution in terms of selling complex packages, arrangements and wellness offers? Carolin Brauer, Managing Director of Quality Reservations in Langenhagen near Hanover and author of this three-part series knows: Internet portals obviously find leisure customers too difficult. The online platforms are unable to offer the demands of this special clientele at attractive package rates. This is why they are turning back to business travellers.