News & Stories
Frankfurt/M. What began in 1970 as a small hotel consortium has developed into an international reservation and marketing system and now strives to be recognized as a global hotel group for top private hotels: Worldhotels. After four decades as a classic reservation platform, completing this change in image within the branch itself is proving no easy task, despite the fact that Worldhotels now makes tools available to its members which many an "old" hotel group would also do well to provide. "We’re returning to Worldhotel’s basic strategy," CEO Michael J. Ball says. "We are no longer a mere intermediary." And the surprising news on the side: In December, an international investment fund acquired the majority of shares in Worldhotels.
Hamburg. The virtual shopping channel, the internet, is becoming increasingly essential to shoppers - even and especially for business at Christmas. This is the finding of an internet poll.
Madrid. Amadeus has recently completed the migration of 75,000 hotels on to the IT distribution platform for the next generation. Open system technology allows Amadeus to introduce new search functions and provides the basis for extended search functions to be developed in future. The Amadeus GDS distribution application for hotels now runs on the Linus operating system and uses standards which allow a complex interaction with other systems.
Vienna. In future, all 15,000 hotels and B&Bs represented on the Austrian internet portal Tiscover may offer their rooms free of charge on Ebay. The official starting signal has yet to come, but is expected to follow shortly. At the same time, Austria is once again advertising with its "snow guarantee" for the winter season.
Hamburg. The internet opinion poll W3B conducted in Autumn 2007 confronted online users with a question of great significance for the media: "Imagine that you have to make a choice: In future you must give up either television or the internet. What would you prefer to have to do without?" A clear majority of German speaking internet users decided in favour of the internet - and so against television.
Munich. Schloss Fuschl and the Jagdhof on Lake Fuschl will leave the ArabellaStarwood joint venture as of 1 January 2008. The renowned "Sissi" palace on the outskirts of Salzburg, which reopened only last year after 40 million Euros worth of renovation works, has already joined the Leading Hotels of the World one month ago. According to rumours, further hotels are also to cede from the joint venture. Does this spell the end of the marketing and brand agreement that only one year ago was reaffirmed and extended for a further 30 years?
Neuss. Who needs all these intermediaries and wholesalers while providers/hotels can connect to consumers directly via the Internet? This is what Dr. Bert Rosenbloom, professor of marketing at Drexel University in Philadelphia, USA, asked three years ago. Juliane Knigge, student of tourism management at Heilbronn University of Applied Sciences, picked up this question and worked out structures and trends of online distribution in the German hotel brand industry in her diploma thesis. According to her studies, automation is desired, but it is not exercised.
Chicago. The Mandarin Oriental in Munich is currently in the process of introducing interactive television with 1,000 channels to its hotel rooms. Innovations like these don’t happen by chance. They are the result of targeted research, development and communication. The birth place of such innovations is Chicago, headquarters of HTNG. The abbreviation stands for ”Hotel Technology Next Generation”. Here, leading hotel chains work together with the world’s leading hospitality technology companies on the formulation of technology solutions for the hotel of the future. hospitalityInside is as of today media partner of HTNG. Look forward with us to top information and top interviews from the world of tomorrow’s technology, so that you, dear hospitalityInside reader, know exactly where and how you should invest for the future. To begin, we present HTNG in a short portrait.
Frankfurt/M. A joint road show on the topic of "Pricing & Distribution" will bring the two hotel associations, the HSMA and IHA, as well as the training institute IFH and numerous experts to Hamburg, Cologne and Munich this September. The half-day training session is also open to non-members.