Traditional culture and beach lifestyle meet designer couture as Dior opens its first retail space in Bali, with a partial buyout of Sundara Beach Club at Four Seasons Resort Bali at Jimbaran Bay that reaffirms the island’s profile as a destination for discerning travelers and extraordinary events.
Leading Australian accommodation provider Arise Hotels & Apartments has announced it will today unveil an all-encompassing rebrand, signalling an exciting new chapter for the hospitality heavyweight which will now be known as CLLIX Apartments and Hotels.
Loyalty programs are not new in the airline and hotel industries, dating back to early 1980s when American Airlines introduced AAdvantage, one of the world’s first travel loyalty programs. Hotel chains quickly jumped on board, with Holiday Inn and Marriott being credited with the first hotel loyalty programs in 1983. Since then, loyalty programs have not only been an effective marketing tool for increasing customer loyalty, but also for increasing repeat customers and revenue for hotels.
PHUKET, THAILAND - Gender equality is high on the agenda for Thai hotels as a hospitality event held recently in Phuket addressed the imbalance in the industry in leadership positions for highly qualified female executives.Hosted at Dusit Thani Laguna Phuket, “Mind The Gap” gathered more than 100 industry delegates to address the challenges faced by female hoteliers in Thailand.
IDeaS, a SAS company, the world’s leading provider of revenue management software and services, announced today that Swire Hotels has selected its G3 Revenue Management System (RMS) to unify its group approach to revenue management across a portfolio of seven hotels globally.
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.
Trip.com Group's corporate travel arm, Trip.Biz, has released a white paper delving into the trends defining the reviving corporate travel management sector in mainland China.
Pioneering co-living brand, HOMA, has engaged SiteMinder, the world’s leading open hotel commerce platform, to help elevate its distribution strategy and make it easier for guests to book directly online, as reservation volumes to Thai properties extend above 75% of their pre-pandemic levels.
The Indian Hotels Company Limited, India’s largest hospitality company, today announced Ahvaan 2025. Under the plan, it will re-engineer its margins, re-imagine its brandscape and re-structure its portfolio. IHCL aims to build a portfolio of 300 hotels, clock 33% EBITDA margin with 35% EBITDA share contribution from new businesses and management fees by FY 2025-26.
IDeaS, the world’s leading provider of revenue management software and services announced today that its partnership with the International Youth Convention Hotel in Nanjing, China, was able to grow all revenue related KPIs during a difficult COVID environment and revenue increased during the past 12 months by 8.64 million RMB. IDeaS provided extensive revenue management consulting services and implemented G2 RMS at the hotel.
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.
HSMAI's Revenue Optimization Conference (ROC) “The conference comes at a perfect juncture with APAC borders reopening, so now more than ever Hoteliers will benefit from clear data trends, and thought-provoking ideas & actionable insights to guide their strategies” said Jackie Douglas, President HSMAI Asia Pacific.
Northeast India, comprising eight states, is a stunning combination of majestic mountains, lush green valleys, scenic landscapes, rich biodiversity, and historical sites. Rich in flora and fauna, as well as diverse culture and traditions, each state – Arunachal Pradesh, Assam, Manipur, Meghalaya, Mizoram, Nagaland, Sikkim, and Tripura – offers a unique experience to travelers ranging from heritage and cultural tourism to wildlife and adventure tourism.
World Heritage Day, also known as the International Day for Monuments and Sites, is celebrated on the 18th of April every year to raise awareness about the importance of preserving our heritage and culture. Several events and exhibitions were held across India last week to commemorate the occasion. With 40 UNESCO World Heritage Sites and another 49 on the tentative list, India ranks sixth in the world in terms of the number of UNESCO sites.
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.
Lonavala, popularly known as the “city of caves” or the “jewel of Sahyadri” is a small town located more than 2,000 feet above sea level in the Sahyadri range in the Indian state of Maharashtra. It is one of the most visited hill stations in the country due to its tropical climate and pleasant weather all year round, as well as its strategic location 60-80 kilometers from key metropolitan cities in the state such as Mumbai and Pune. Moreover, the town is surrounded by dense forests, magnificent waterfalls, tranquil lakes, green valleys boasting spectacular views, caves, and forts, which have made Lonavala a sought-after destination for camping, trekking, sight-seeing, bird watching, and adventure sports.
It was mid-2020 and my team and I had only months earlier celebrated the grand opening of our beachfront resort Meliá Koh Samui. At the property's January 10, 2020 debut, just before the onset of the global pandemic, we were bristling with excitement, as usually the first two years after an opening make for the gift that keeps on giving.
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.
Next up – Crowne Plaza Hobart in Tasmania, Australia, part of IHG Hotels & Resorts, and one of the world’s largest premium hotel brands. We catch up with General Manager Linda Collis who started with IHG in 1999!