Last week, the small world of French hospitality was the scene of a truly extraordinary earthquake: Booking decided to charge its commission on the crumbs that represent noshows and cancellations, and only when the hotel has indeed cashed. As nearly said Corneille in Le Cid "N'avons-nous donc tant vécu que pour cette infamie ? "
The success of Citizen M, Mama Shelter and The Hoxton or Ace Hotel has been watched by the entire industry. As hoteliers around the world are raising their game, we ask ourselves: who will set the new benchmark? We picked the hotel brands that we believe to have the potential to become the next hits. Discover Mob Hotel.
The UK finds itself in tumultuous times – uncertainty has become somewhat of the norm. Besides questions raised about Brexit implications – ranging from the devaluation of the Pound and the resulting increase in operating costs to securing continued access to qualified and motivated labour – additionally, hotel and restaurant operators have had to deal with new, recently introduced governmental policies and regulations further impacting the bottom line.
We recently attended Travelmedia Congres in Brugge to meet with hoteliers and exchange insights with other hospitality industry experts. Those who attended got to see trivago data on traveler search behavior, learn about the importance of affordable and intuitive hotel technology, connect with travel experts, and gain access to the latest insights on hotel marketing.
'Summer afternoon—summer afternoon; to me those have always been the two most beautiful words in the English language.' Henry James
Franchise contracts are based on a reciprocal commitment between the investor-operator and the brand. Since investment funds set their sights on the hotel industry, such contracts have run into serious pitfalls. More concerned about seeing share prices climb on the stock exchange, financial shareholders have driven corporate communication to the detriment of brand marketing, thereby weakening awareness, the image and the attributes that make up the essential capital of any consumer brand.
You have a beautiful hotel, filled with luxury touches to make your guests’ stay as comfortable and memorable as possible. But are you truly ‘owning’ the guest experience from the moment of booking and beyond? Communication is the key to the new wave of brand loyalty. If you make communication easy, personal and accessible, you open an opportunity to a new level of guest loyalty… And following loyalty, of course, follows revenue. It’s time to own the guest experience through mobile, personalised, digital technology.
The Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) -- the voice of the global business travel industry – and German business travel buyer association VDR – wrapped up their third successful joint conference in Europe this week with record attendance. The event brought together over 950 attendees from 20+ countries for networking, education and top-notch speakers.
At the Filoxenia Conference Centre in Nicosia key hospitality and tech decision makers are gathered today for the Digi.travel Cyprus Conference & Expo 2016. Organized for the first time with the collaboration of the Association of Cyprus Travel Agents ACTA, the summit puts leading technology providers alongside travel and hospitality professionals in the region.
Narratives are powerful in moving, inspiring, making feeling unique, orchestrating emotional connections and qualifying a link between the most top-notch hotels and their guests. Today more and more hotels reconfigure their hospitality strategies towards the adoption of an experiential orientation through stories. They script namely unique, extraordinary narratives and stage escapist events, individually customized and personally meaningful for each guest persona.
On the first day of March in 2011, I received a phone call from a reporter from a local paper to let me know that the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel in King's Cross was going to open its doors to the public soon and he asked me if I could write a feature on this iconic building for his newspaper. I was in Mumbai when I picked up the call, travelling in an auto-rickshaw outside the Victoria Terminus now known as CST - a building that bore an uncanny resemblance to the one housing the St Pancras Renaissance Hotel except that it was made of sandstone whereas the one in London was made of bricks. I'd like to have been back in London to tour the building that had intrigued me for years whenever I visited the British Library. I didn't know the reason for it being left empty. The clock tower of this Victorian Gothic building actually dwarfed that of the recently-built British Library.
Urgent responses from governments happen in parallel to a manifest will to demonstrate strength. Divided between the need to reassure the local population, the desire to prove that life goes on, and the need to not scare off those that feed the tourist economy, managers have been ensnared by critics from all sides.
Take a sector that brings together the leaders in the global ranking in its category. An economic activity that, not only participates in that country's international glory, but provides work for a million employees and feeds the economy with at least as many derived jobs. One would think that it would surely receive the careful attentions of the country's leaders to prevent such a productive machine from breaking down… Especially in these trying times. However, that would happen in a pragmatic country, in a country that values success and provides the support needed to get through difficult times or lay the foundations for development.
As VP of Marketing for Revinate, one of the things I love about my job is getting the opportunity to travel and speak with customers about the challenges and opportunities they face in 2016. In fact, we recently published a white paper that summarizes this.
Every cloud has a silver lining... and this has proved true once again after the ordeals experienced in Paris twice this year. With a sigh of relief, the city of light felt the immense space it holds in the hearts of its citizens and the world in general and tourists in particular. The wave of solidarity, testimonials of support and humanist reactions from around the world somehow smooth over the bad reputation France has often been had to bear. For many, the attack France, was an attack on a symbol that goes well beyond its own borders and deserves to have all positive energies rise up against a new form of inhumanity.
Over the weekend I decided to plan a big, belated birthday trip, and the world really is my oyster. I have no one else to compromise with on destination or accommodations. My inspiration was a Travel & Leisure article about inexpensive flights, including flights from NY to Milan. This, of course, led to a lot of flitting around the internet researching the many different destinations I might enjoy, and now here I am researching a trip to Skiathos, Greece and weighing all the pro's and con's of the political situation alongside getting to check the Greek Isles off my travel bucket list.
The hotel universe has definitively entered the digital era. This observation is true at all team and management levels, although it has only recently become a widespread view.
Is the order of the hotel world undergoing major changes? It is enough to look at how the world hotel ranking has changed to be convinced. At the head of the ranking, where volume counts and thus where the economy and midscale hotel industry feed portfolios thanks to the franchisees, the domination of Anglo-Saxon groups is being contested by the new Chinese players that can rely on an immense territory that is still under supplied and has considerable financial means. TYPO3SEARCH_begin
France's tourism supply isn't making headway. Just a slight understatement... The small bound observed in the growth of the hotel supply last year came after five consecutive years of contraction. Here's hoping we've hit bottom, but there's no guarantee a kick will bring us back up for air very soon.
Whilst there has been a continued investment into increasing the hotel guest experience, the UK hotel industry's general lack of investment in technology and gaining insights from business' data – as well as in its online marketing to potential and existing guests – could become one of the most significant stumbling blocks to the sector capitalising on the current upturn in the UK economy.