London startup Event Intelligence (www.eventintelligence.travel) collected €132k in indications over the past 7 days, as part of their planned €500k funding round. The U.K. company is using the unique global funding and trading platform Funderbeam (www.funderbeam.com) for their campaign, which allows unique investor liquidity through a "startup stock exchange".
Tourico Holidays, the world's fastest growing wholesale travel brokerage company, today shared data reporting inbound hotel room nights to the Middle East have increased by 112 percent year-over-year in 2017. Equally as encouraging, outbound travel from the market is on the rise, as well. Hotel room nights sold from the Middle East are pacing at an increase of 138 percent through the end of 2017 - meaning future hotel reservations through the end of the year have more than doubled compared to the same time in 2016.
This is the industry benchmark report indicating the key directions the market goes – as industry players see that. Reading the report you will see how various markets, namely German, Spanish or Russian speaking markets differ in terms of: important market segments, growth areas for service providers, growth areas for services and treatments, average spend/guest, market growth % over 2012 and 2014
For accommodation providers in 2017, it's no longer enough to rely on the well-trodden paths to acquiring occupancy. You must also become experts in emerging distribution platforms, predict what guests expect when they walk into your lobby, and remain agile enough to navigate the ever-shifting trends to make the right decision, all the while staying committed to providing the best possible experience during a stay. Avvio knows how to get the right mix for your property and provides Europe's best booking engine – partnering with many serviced apartments and boutique hotels, including Cheval Residences, Apple Apartments and The Ampersand Hotel to grow direct bookings. Avvio's co-founder and CEO Frank Reeves has compiled his Top Tech Predictions for Hoteliers in 2017. Inside this report, you'll discover the big movers and shakers in the online distribution space (hint: it's not the OTAs), the developing sharing economy and a look at new technology that's fast-becoming part of the mainstream.Download your copy of the report today.For more details, please email [email protected] to arrange a time to talk.
The results are in: the firm that has put driving direct bookings first for 15 years generated an average 2200% ROI and 4.5% direct distribution cost for its hotel partners last year. By increasing their direct bookings and lowering distribution costs, hoteliers across the globe saw their investment in HeBS Digital returned to them at a rate of 22 to 1. Compared to standard OTA commissions of 18-25%, these numbers leave no doubt the direct online channel is the most cost-effective channel for hoteliers today.
Sojern, the world's leading traveler audience engagement platform that delivered $3B in direct booking revenue for travel companies last year, today released its Q1 Global Travel Insights report. The report uncovers emerging travel patterns and destinations for spring travel around the world and arms travel marketers with insights on how to tailor more effective consumer messages to drive bookings for a specific travel window.
Cloudbeds and Only Apartments have teamed up to give vacation rental owners more options to distribute on a global scale. Vacation rental owners using myallocator can now easily list their inventory on Only Apartments and join their extensive network of properties.
Leading hospitality investment banking firm RobertDouglas announced the promotion of two senior members of the firm to the level of Managing Director. Evan Hurd, based in New York, and Christopher Ropko, based in San Francisco, have each contributed significantly to the firm's rapid growth working as advisors to private and institutional clients throughout North America.
PITTSBURGH – Nick Massad, Jr. and his wife Vicki purchased American Liberty Hospitality 26 years ago on a foundation of service to its owners and investors. They worked hard, hired good people and treated every penny as if it were their own. Today American Liberty Hospitality (ALH) operates 20 properties with Hilton, IHG and other flags in Texas and Louisiana. The company is a real American success story.
International card payment processor PXP Solutions and Maestro PMS announced general availability and implementation of a new EMV automated Chip and PIN approval interface. The interface enables Maestro PMS hotel management software clients that use, or wish to use, PXP services to accept and automatically process guest Chip and PIN cards for more efficient guest service.
While summer 2016 logically presented a downturn for the hotel industry in the Paris region and on the French Riviera due to security concerns, other seaboard areas, the provinces and certain new regions in particular brought a welcome ray of sunshine. This summer's first overview including all the figures by sector in our infography.
The pace of new bookings is down this summer, with the business segment experiencing a -4.0 percent decline over the past 30 days. However, average daily rates (ADR) are slightly up 2.0 percent over the same time last year based on reservations that are currently on the books, according to new data from TravelClick's July 2016 North American Hospitality Review (NAHR).
eRevMax, the leading travel technology provider to the hospitality industry has released an infographic shedding key insights of the hotel industry in Brazil. The Infographic titled Brazil Hotel Industry Snapshot highlights that nearly half- million foreign tourists are expected to visit Brazil during Rio 2016 Olympics and the country is set to welcome a total of 7 million international tourists by the end of this year.
Holding some of the biggest modern manmade marvels, Dubai is one city that can't be missed to visit. It homes 7 of the 10 tallest hotels in world and the tallest building, the Burj Khalifa. The Building is so tall that people on the top floors have to wait a while longer than those on the ground to break their fast. From hotels and manmade beaches to upcoming climate controlled cities, Dubai has accomplished incredible feats engineering on the harshest of environments.
The Spanish hotel group, Barcelo Hotels & Resorts, announced the signature of a franchise agreement with the Chinese operator Plateno. The aim is to develop about 100 units within 10 years in China. Barcelo Hotels & Resorts, which announced its Chinese development perspectives at the beginning of the year, now announces the signature of a franchise agreement with the Chinese Group Plateno, which was taken over by Jin Jiang last fall. It is now the fifth hotel group worldwide.
The hospitality industry's tech vendor landscape is changing rapidly. For many operators, particularly independents, this can bring challenges. Vendor transition often means working with an unfamiliar support team, entering into a new software license agreement, and in some cases implementing a new hotel management system at contract renewal. None of this benefits a hotel or its guests. A property management system is an integral part of hotel management operations. Vendor stability is essential.
The Zanzibar Hotel Group, a multi-property group comprising of properties located throughout the island, has chosen Hotelogix's cloud-based property management system (PMS) to run their operations. Having seven individual properties to manage, the group was looking for a system that could enable them to oversee operations across all establishments from one point of control.
LONDON -- Through a rigorous analysis of more than a billion travel intent data points, Sojern, the world's leading performance marketing platform for travel brands, released its quarterly report of global travel insights.
While consumers in the United States anticipate spending less on travel this summer, the growth of digital travel bookings remains healthy, according to Adobe Digital Index's "2016 Travel Report." In fact, online spending for flights and hotels is rivaling numbers seen in retail during the peak online shopping days of the holiday season.
Onyx Payments, the world's leading provider of commission payment processing, reconciliation and related data for hotels and travel distributors, today announced new research confirming the strength of online travel agents (OTAs) within the hospitality industry.According to an Onyx Payments study, OTAs now represent the second-largest travel booking channel (after direct hotel channels) with a 24-percent share of bookings in the EU-3 countries of France, Germany and the United Ki ngdom. The recent growth in share of bookings was taken from global distribution systems, traditional travel management companies and hotel call center bookings."OTAs have clearly established themselves as a dominant booking channel and are here to stay, with new entrants and consolidation signaling this channels maturation, said Mark Dubrow, CEO at Onyx Payments. Over the past five years, OTAs in the EU-3 grew solid double digits, and were one of only two channels that grew in that period. With this healthy competition, we anticipate continued innovation across the entire industry as players find new ways to reach the buyer.The study, which looked at the market share of booking channels across the EU-3 and the United States between 2010 and 2015, found that: OTAs are the second-largest channel in the EU-3, experiencing a 14-percent increase in booking volume to reach a 24 percent market share by 2015. The channel is projected to grow an additional 15 to 20 percent by 2020. This growth will be driven by consumers continued preference for digital platforms and websites that provide extensive information about bookings particularly in the EU markets where supply is more fragmented than in the United States.In the United States, the OTA channel has seen a dramatic increase of over 50 percent to comprise a 17 percent share in 2015. OTAs are projected to grow an additional 20 to 25 percent by 2020. Despite the higher prevalence of chain hotels in the United States, OTAs are now the third-largest channel in the United States.Direct hotel website bookings have increased 25 percent to comprise a 15 percent share in 2015 in the EU-3, while the channel has increased 15 percent to comprise a 23 percent share in the United States in the same time period. This growth has been driven by increased investment to build and retain loyalty and to discourage commoditization of hotel offerings through the traditionally low-cost OTA channel for direct bookings.While direct hotel bookings certainly provide a low-cost distribution channel, we encourage hotels to examine their revenue management practices to optimize their channel mix and maximize their yield-per-booking regardless of distribution channel, said Dubrow.Onyx Payments connects hotels and OTAs through an end-to-end commerce suite that addresses the ever-changing business needs of both segments, eliminating commission processing and reconciliation barriers and increasing transparency between hotels and travel distributors.In 2014, Onyx Payments substantially expanded its market footprint by acquiring Norwegian commission reconciliation services leader Net Trans Services and international payment processing provider Worldwide Payment Services (WPS). The company is continuing to innovate to simplify complexity of transactions in the hospitality marketplace through "friction-free" commerce.