Sales & Marketing

In my view, people who claim that the OTAs generate travel demand completely ignore the complexity of the Digital Customer Journey and its five phases Dreaming, Planning, Booking, Experiencing and Sharing/Retention. According to them, the customer Journey consists of a very simplistic "cast the hook" (marketing) and "catch the fish" (booking).

The key word here is GENERATE versus STIMULATE. Generate implies production versus stimulate means raising the level or encouraging development. So, do the OTAs produce demand? Well, they are a distribution vehicle, not a producer.

In May 2023, during their annual Expedia Connect event in Seattle, Expedia shared recent insights from this latest "Path to purchase" report, due for publication this summer. At the inspiration stage, for example, we see that OTAs are NOT the main online source.

No. They shouldn't. Tips are things we pay to a person who has helped us. In Europe it is to someone who has helped us beyond the usual. In the US it seems like the tip has replaced the salary. Asking for tips like this is like the resort fees, the green fees and all the other random fees that companies are adding in a way to give a false appearance of a lower price.

So hang on, the tip goes to hopper for making the booking and then charging commission to hotels on the other hand? Sounds to me like being married and having an affair same time.The Tip should go to the person providing the service.

A tip? For what... exceptional programming, unique product selection, a brilliant write-up? This is the ultimate in arrogance. First of all, let's just step back a bit. An OTA is a self-serve, distribution system. This compares to a traditional travel agent, which is (what I would call) full-service.

If there is one area in particular I would recommend hoteliers to focus in this year, it would be gathering zero-party and first-party data from customers. I mean, this should be a priority any given year, but third-party data is getting more difficult to gather since Apple ceased tracking customers on Safari and iOS platforms since 2021.

Hotel marketers can succeed in 2023 by honing messages around the key themes of value and experience, both of which are expected to resonate with high-end audiences seeking a much-needed getaway. For budget audiences, the message should also be about value, but digital marketing needs to carefully consider the channels used in 2023.

2023 will be the year that personalisation on the hotel website becomes more commonplace. Digital marketing hotel professionals will promote the hotel's revenue strategy in order to have a consistent approach on indirect and direct hotel booking channels.

The concept of a pass with 'unlimited stays' makes no sense for an individual property. However, for a large chain with multiple locations, a modified version might be viable. Before dismissing the idea out of hand, consider a pass with the limitation of no more than one, two-night's stay at any property per quarter.

Airlines are in a better position to offer this type of promotion as they can recoup incremental revenue via additional fees for luggage, seat allocation and more. Hotels are not likely to be able to charge incremental fees for these types of services, at least not yet.

Unlimited stays? sounds like a great alternative to paying rent! And I guess that's the challenge... the headline offer is great (for PR and buzz) but the restrictions will need to be locked down.What I love about the unlimited-stay idea is it would require a hotel to ramp up revenue from ancillaries and attributes.

In my view this is a natural progression of leveraging an engaged audience to provide them with greater opportunities. Today most businesses are pursuing a program of amassing a database of contacts and associated behavior to grow their business and extend commercial value.

I have anticipated the major hotel chains to do try and monetize their huge website and mobile app traffic and loyalty membership data for quite some time now. In the past, the membership data was monetized primarily through the cobranded credit cards: Ex.

Curated experiences are always a tricky thing as what is curated today might not be tomorrow and there is a very blurry line between curated to truly benefit the customer vs enahnced curated experiences based on the algorythm pushing "curation".

Consumers like and demand travel companies to offer a one-stop shopping experience. Hence, it is not surprising to see OTAs, Airbnb, and even Google and Amazon strive to provide a “total travel experience.” Everyone in the market wants to become a mega tourism enterprise.

It's a fantastic move by Expedia and Kudos to them for doing it. It will be a nightmare for hotels though as this provides great opportunities but also put hotels against the other OTA´s. We cannot forget that those actions are to drive more travellers to Expedia as well as make money for Expedia across all connection points and data points.

After reading Kern and Murthy's description of Open World, I can't help thinking that this is just a rebrand of EPS. Not sure? Spot the difference: From EPS' website: "Expedia Partner Solutions unlocks the power of Expedia Group for thousands of partners around the world.

The website itself is part, admittedly a critical part, of the entire digital marketing ecosystem. Think of an iceberg: there is the small visible part that we see (the website) and the larger submerged portion that is invisible to us (back end coding, links, SEO, digital media, etc.).

I firmly believe the hotel website is the most underutilized and quite often forgotten hotel asset. Your hotel website - for a single property or multi property brand - allows you to balance your distribution mix so that your property is the least susceptible to seasonality, group cancellations and calamities, or over dependence on the OTAs or any single distribution channel.

The answer first, then the rational. Get out of your own way. It's hard as an individual and near impossible as an organization, but if it is kept in the daily dialog of activities and decisions, it can creep into the results of your actions.

Can the new crop of OTA-like superapps become viable hotel booking channels? Previous attempts by Google (Book on Google), Tripadvisor (Book on Tripadvisor) and three attempts by Amazon to enter the OTA space all failed due to one simple reason: these players were not considered as credible hotel booking channels by the traveling public.

The age-old question that will always remain unanswered until hotel CEOs, CMO, and CROs take their destiny into their own hands. As long as hotel companies continue to invest below 2% of their turnover, in marketing, technological and digital development, data management, data privacy & CRM, they will remain eternally subject to the dictates of OTAs and their outrageous commissions.

For hoteliers, this new crop of OTA-like superapps is merely an extension of their online distribution options. From opaque sites to bedbanks to metasearch and mainstream OTAs like Booking, Trip.com or Expedia, not to mention GDS sales with travel agencies, there are already numerous possibilities.

OTA penetration fell during the pandemic for one key reason: travelers could only opt for local destinations. Due to confinement and travel restrictions in a majority of countries and borders, it was just simpler to travel to local areas and regions.

I believe it is with certainty that OTAs will again built their dominance and more. Covid was like roadworks where travellers didn't travel at all or those who travelled took a detour as the "normal road" was "closed". The market is always right is a sentence often used in trading and it applies here as well.

I am not sure that the word 'drastically' applies here, as that adjective is hard to quantify. This may be a short term effect, but OTAs are not going away any time soon. Any lost share will be recovered, and very quickly. Consumer habits do not change overnight.

Storytelling is an important component of Content Marketing for any hotel property, brand, company, or chain. Storytelling should permeate across all Content Marketing formats like website content, social media, PR, blogs, etc.

Storytelling always requires a minimum of 3 aspects: The Plot, the characters and then of course the narrators point of view. The major issue with hotels and brands is that in order to tell the story, you need a story. You need to create it and in many cases we just don't.

It starts with consistency. Many hotel want to jump into content marketing before they have established the basics. Who is their target market? What is their brand message? What are their differentiators against the comp set? The second step, once the above is defined, is audit the content across ALL online channels.

There are so many different technology solutions that to list or rank them is all but impossible. The opportunity is to convince owners/brands to make the commitment to, and investment for these solutions. The 'good old days' of operating unchaged through the late 20th century are over.

This is a tough question... but if I had to single out the biggest opportunity in digital marketing for hotels in the upcoming year, I would say Google! To be more precise, Hotel marketers should double down on Google Business Manager - the tool formerly known as Google My Business - to ensure they have completed their profile, products and services.

Changing travel conditions and new COVID variants that have fewer symptoms but still register on PCR test make travel a bit of a gamble. The biggest issue in the recovery is going to be reassuring travelers that their $7K trip will be fine.

It's going to be beautiful!!! We finally will see an evolution that will dwarf anything we have seen before. Fast is: People hate changing, but they love to escape. If there is one thing that Internet has shown us is that we are able to get away with anything and everything (generic usernames allow us to detach ourselves from the comments we make).

The recent video launch of Metaverse by Mark Zuckerberg will trigger the ultimate failure of this toxic social media behemoth (in my humble opinion). The hospitality industry is a precious business sector that enriches lives through the visceral joy of travel, food, wine and culture.

Can the Metaverse bring significant changes, solve some of the pressing issues and become the way forward for the hospitality industry? Sure, it can! Can it do it within the next 5 to 10 years, as predicted by Zuckerberg? Hell, no.

I contest the reference to the word 'becoming'. It has always been a distribution channel. To that end, I would also contest the designation that it be regulated solely by revenue management. If anything we have learned (at an accelerated pace due to the pandemic).

Given today's radical transparent online hotel marketplace, the dividing line between sales, marketing, e-commerce, revenue management, pricing and even loyalty needs to disappear. These traditional organisational structures only create silos that get in the way of insuring that we put the right product at the right price in front of the right customer at the appropriate time moment in their purchase cycle.

Hotel metasearch has become a distribution channel and is no longer an advertising channel ever since Google introduced its Pay-per-stay (PPS) fee model. Other metasearch players like Trivago and Kayak all offer CPA (Cost per acquisition) model, which is not in tune with the current era of high cancellation rates due to Covid uncertainties and ever-changing travel restrictions.