Consumers shop somewhere between 13 and 22 websites before booking a hotel room. Further evidence that today's consumers love choice, right? Patrick Bosworth comes to a different conclusion in a two-part series he wrote for Tnooz last week.

In part one, he explains why he believes they don't want more choices, but better choices and how this presents an incredible opportunity for hotels to drive more direct bookings and profitability. If hotels could offer the best booking experiences and prices, he believes consumers wouldn't shop 22 websites. In the second part, he offers a new approach that would bring consumers back to the hotel's website. By merging loyalty and pricing strategies, hotels can offer log-in protected rates better than the best available rates offered everywhere else. These wouldn't break parity agreements because they'd be fenced or discreet and customers would always know where to find the best deal: at a hotel's website.

You can catch these articles and more being updated on a daily basis on the LinkedIn group Hotel Revenue Strategy Leaders. Keep up with the news and join the conversation

You can't afford not to engage in social media

According to Medallia data, hotels that responded to more than 50% of social reviews grew occupancy rates by 6.4%, more than twice the rate of properties that largely ignored social media reviews. Socially engaged properties also outperformed the hospitality industry as a whole, which achieved a 4.3% occupancy growth rate during the same period.

Two choices in mobile website design

Smart hotel marketers realize they have no choice but to create responsive website frameworks to accommodate usage on mobile devices. The question is whether to use an adaptive or responsive design approach. While responsive design seems to be the prevailing approach, the author says adaptive design also works and in some cases the two approaches can be used in tandem. According to the story, "Some sources said more costly adaptive design can be used for big hotel websites with rich content and images that might be compromised on mobile sites and tablets. Responsive design, meanwhile, is good to modify an existing website to make it compatible and shareable across mobile devices."

Google upgrades hotel ads

Google continues to tweak its Hotel Ads product. The latest iteration on the results page provides more detailed information on each hotel with prices, reviews and ratings, special offers and photos. Other recent changes give hoteliers the ability to easily change the images of the their properties and add photos specifically for food and drinks, guestrooms and common areas. Hoteliers can also load in interactive tours of their hotels.

Mobile booking trends in France

Unlike other parts of the world, France isn't a place where travelers rely on mobile devices to book travel, including hotel rooms. According to a new study, 78% of adult consumers in France said they had made reservations via PC prior to departure, compared with 7% who had booked via smartphone and 6% who used a tablet. Even travel agencies (15%) beat out mobile devices as a booking source.

Hawaii hotels lose in OTA tax case

The ongoing debate over who pays occupancy taxes on OTA bookings took a turn against the hotel industry, at least in Hawaii. The Supreme Court affirmed an earlier decision that the commissions OTAs receive for hotel bookings is not subject to the state's accommodations tax. According to Tnooz, Expedia alone has faced 88 lawsuits across the country on this issue, and 34 of them are still active. The OTAs, through their lobbying mouthpiece, claim hotels should pay all taxes. So far, rulings on the issue have gone in both directions, with no clear nationwide mandate set.

An even more-optimistic outlook for group demand

Everyone knows the hotel group market has made a comeback. But until recently, that mostly meant an increase in the number of meetings and events. Now, according to PKF Hospitality Research, improvements in group business is also being seen in greater attendance at events and higher levels of spending. That's where the real money is made for hotels. The researchers also cite a study in which 93% of meeting planners expect the health of the meetings industry in the next 18 months to be as good or better than it is today.

How hotels chase high-end guests

No matter in what segment you operate, it's important to really understand what your core customer wants: Price? Service? Pampering? Freebies? In this Skift story, CEOs of four luxury brands articulate what's most important to their guests. Three of the four executives said luxury guests want experience first and foremost. That's certainly true at the top of the market, but even in upscale and mid-market hotels, it's often the personal touch that separates winners from losers. Of course, it's much easier to add amenities and giveaways than it is to provide service and experience. But if it was easy everyone would be doing it.

Mobile is answer to challenges in distribution landscape

Recent movements within the hotel distribution business (namely the creation of the Priceline/Expedia duopoly) have created uncertainty for many hoteliers. The concern, as the author writes, is "that hotels may incur higher distribution costs due to industry consolidation within the major online travel companies." The silver lining is that this is "an opportune time for hoteliers to gain greater control over their inventory by investing in mobile design and mobile optimized reservation booking functionality."

Another record year: When will it end, or will it?

PKF Hospitality Research is forecasting record occupancies (65.6%) this year and healthy gains in RevPAR based on both strong occupancies and increases in ADR. The scenario gets even better in 2016, with ADRs emerging as the main driver of RevPAR growth. The fly in the ointment might be inflation. According to the forecast, the effects of inflation will result in real RevPAR growth of 6.7% this year, the strongest growth since 2005, but just 3.8% in 2016. Not to worry, says PKF's Mark Woodworth: "It is important to note that the 3.6% real gain in ADR forecast for 2016 is still well above the real ADR gains we have observed over the past 20 years. Real ADR growth, combined with a limited increase in the variable expenses due to the slowdown in occupancy growth, should yield some very attractive improvements in net operating income in 2016."

Do millennials use travel agents? Does anyone?

The problem with surveys is they never seem to agree. MMGY did a poll last year that found 28% of millennials used a travel agent in the previous 12 months. This new survey from Skift puts that mark at 10%. That's a big gap, but a better question is who uses traditional travel agents at all in this digital world? Some data in the Skift story tells the tale: According to its results, higher-income millennials are much more likely to use a travel agent than others in the demographic. But isn't that true across the age spectrum. Higher-income consumers are more likely to be take expensive and complicated trips that require professional planning assistance.

Lodging giant hints at new directions in mobile

Marriott is leading the charge when it comes to mobile strategies in the hotel industry, and according to the executive overseeing this area of the business, the company isn't yet done. In particular, George Corbin, SVP digital, says the company has "done a lot of research where we try to identify those moments in the customer journey where we can have the biggest impact on making a customer's trip easier and more simple." One interesting fact from the story is that Marriott sold $1.8 billion in business through mobile last year. That's 19% of total digital revenue, which is up from 1% in 2009.

About Duetto

Duetto delivers a suite of SaaS cloud-native applications for hospitality businesses to optimize every booking opportunity for greater revenue impact. The unique combination of hospitality experience and technology leadership drives Duetto to look for innovative solutions to industry challenges. The software as a service platform allows hotels, casinos, and resorts to leverage real-time dynamic data sources and actionable insights into pricing and demand across the enterprise.

More than 6,000 hotel and casino resort properties in more than 60 countries have partnered to use Duetto's applications, which include GameChanger for pricing, ScoreBoard for intelligent reporting, and BlockBuster for contracted-business optimization.

Duetto was named the world's #1 revenue management system in 2022, 2023, and 2024 in the HotelTechAwards.

For more information, please visit https://www.duettocloud.com/.

View source