News & Stories

Brussels. While fighting against monopolies and abusive conduct on the market, the EU has so far not monitored any companies in the hospitality sector. This has ended now. Booking.com is one of the first 19 companies whose anti-competitive practices will be monitored closely. Surprisingly, Airbnb and Expedia don’t fall under the new rules.

Budapest/Vienna. OTA success stories outside of the small group of majors like Booking.com, Expedia and Trip.com are few and far between. Budapest-based Szallas Group has carved out a niche for itself in the Central & Eastern European region through leveraging its local knowledge and contacts. The success story has developed since 2015, also because tens of thousands of hotels in Poland alone are not yet represented on any OTA platform.

Strasbourg. Innovation increasingly relies on data, especially in the AI sector. Not least for this reason, the EU has this week drafted a data law with new rules for fair access to and use of industry data. It clarifies who can access non-personalised data and under what conditions.

Amsterdam. Google Ads is dead. It has been replaced by the new Google Performance Max. This tech-oriented marketing tool promises to help hoteliers drive more conversions through Google AI, simplify campaign setup and reporting, and give them direct visibility across six Google surfaces, all with one ad campaign.

Augsburg. Innovative, funny and frightening news from the digital world. Today: Virtual lifeguard / Ethical algorithm for autonomous driving / Robots in the hospitality industry / Guest communication with chatbot and voice assistant / Self-check-in at Flemings Hotels / Duetto's new product suite.

Amsterdam. Out of curiosity, hospitalityInside author Sarah Douag asked ChatGPT how hoteliers can take advantage of its "super knowledge". She had an interesting conversation as she was challenging its answers. Here are the highlights of their exchange which lasted for about 15 minutes.

Munich. The hype around the AI tool ChatGPT is massive, worldwide. The possibilities offered by the tool appear unlimited. But appearances deceive. What does it offer the hotel industry? While Microsoft is already raving about personal orchestration during the journey, others are more cautious. AI, after all, still makes lots of mistakes. Serious mistakes.

Amsterdam. Overnight, Google faced an unexpected challenger: the AI tool ChatGPT. The global tech scene has been buzzing ever since. The hospitality industry is facing the next disruption. "The Thing" changes the entire interaction with guests: they no longer type their profile into forms but speak their wishes. Google and the OTAs will have to come up quickly with similar AI products because there are immense profits behind them, say experts from H2C, hotel chains, and booking platforms like Kayak and Expedia.

Amsterdam. Giant platforms such as Airbnb and Booking.com are the biggest beneficiary of short-term rentals. In 2022, over 355 million nights were booked through rental platforms, yet they seem to fail to pay their fair share of taxes across the continent. They also seem to ignore EU rules when it comes to tax collection. After France, Italy is going after them for tax fraud, claiming hundreds of millions of unpaid taxes.

Berlin. Digital progress in German companies continues to tread water. As in the previous year, they gave it an average grade of "satisfactory". The companies are doing a lot to catch up. But they are hardly making the leap forward.