Digital Marketing in Hospitality (58)

The hotel is the company actually providing the room. If the price and conditions are the same, the AI agent should book directly with the hotel instead of through a middleman like Booking.com. Direct booking can give guests: better prices loyalty points and perks easier changes and cancellations more accurate information better customer support.

Google has already announced: they will not be the merchant of record and they're not even charging a transaction fee. Needless to say, this is a great precedent but it doesn't mean other AI platforms will follow this example.At the same time, there's nothing that prevents us from pushing AI platforms in the direction of a direct booking path integration.

I am firmly of the view that Google will eventually present all offers openly. Complementing that will be the savvier user who explicitly directs their preferred booking channel. If I am a Bonvoy member, I want to book at marriott.com to protect my loyalty assets.Right now, it's a question of structured supply.

Helping independent hotels and small groups use tech to build a healthier P&L, my bias, wishful thinking and true belief is that AI travel search is a treasure trove of untapped profitability for unique properties doing incredible things.

We're at a crossroads and this can go in either direction.And the answer depends on whether we, as an industry, do something to push it in the right direction. That's one of the main reasons why AI Hospitality Alliance exists.

As to who will benefit from AI search, it depends entirely on what hotels are willing to do. And by AI search, I mean mostly agentic search, not chatbot search. For the first time in forever, AI search via OpenAI or Anthropic will give hotels the opportunity to exploit a structural advantage (leveraging customer knowledge) that OTAs won't be able to match.

The idea that “search is dead” is mostly an exaggeration. What is really happening is a change in how people find information online, not the disappearance of search itself. For hoteliers, this difference is important because people are still searching for hotels, but the way they search and where the traffic goes is starting to change.

Traditional search isn't dying — it's disaggregating. The front-end experience is shifting dramatically, but the underlying data infrastructure remains largely the same. When ChatGPT or Perplexity answers a hotel query, it's still drawing from indexed web content, reviews, and structured data that lives in the same ecosystem traditional SEO has always served.

The world is changing, and the rate of change is exponential. Here is an example: I entered my vacation requirements for next January into ChatGPT. In about 20 seconds, I received accommodation recommendations, with options, sorted in price within my price range.

This really resonated with me. People aren't leaving social media; they're moving where they think and decide. The public feed is noise; the real influence now happens inside private conversations. In hospitality, that's seismic: guests no longer "discover" hotels, they ask chatbots where to stay and trust the answer.

Chatbots are not replacing social media, but they are taking over the part that matters most. Social networks are still where people watch, scroll, and perform. Chatbots are where people think, decide, and ask questions they would not ask in public.

It will turn into "anti-social media marketing", where introverts go down the spiral of never-ending conversations with their AI bff, bombarded by paid ads to reinforce the downfall.

The real question is: will hotels need to franchise in 2030? Hotels today (early 2026) franchise because they have to, either because it gives surety to investors and banks at the development stage or because they are locked into a long-term contract with steep penalties.

The article raises a timely and necessary challenge to the traditional franchise value proposition. Distribution, technology, and digital visibility are no longer exclusive to brands, while fees, rigid standards, and limited data access continue to pressure owner returns.

Hotel brands have one key aspect: comfort for the investor. If you are a developer, attaching a brand to your new property may be a logical choice if you are seeking externally raised debt. Brands come with an operational code that eases hiring.

The idea of AI-crafted reviews doesn't worry me as much as the possibility of losing the emotional color that real guests bring to the table. Yes, quick prompts will make feedback easier and remove a lot of noise but hospitality has always lived in the small details that guests describe in their own words.

Can the future of hotel reviews be completely AI-generated? - Yes. Will it? Only if we think reviews will continue to be read by humans, which is highly unlikely, as already they're mostly digested by LLMs through semantic analysis to derive trends, sentiment, and suggested areas of improvement.

In the next 3–7 years, expect: 95% of reviews to be AI-generated from structured input, platforms to become "reputation orchestrators", users to see personalized, not universal, review summaries, hotels to optimize for models, not guests, because models shape guest choice.

This is a really thought-provoking take. I agree that metasearch isn't dead. it's evolving, quietly powering AI-driven interfaces rather than existing as a visible marketplace. The first to benefit will be those who can move fast and think at scale likely OTAs while traditional booking engines risk becoming just another costly layer.

Rather than disappearance, we're witnessing transfiguration: the logic of metasearch is alive, but its form is shifting from a visible comparison table to an invisible, integrated intelligence layer.

Simone's argument resonates strongly with me. If metasearch has dissolved into the invisible infrastructure of distribution, then the next challenge is redefining where real value lies. With conversational AI agents now capable of pre-filtering, recommending, and contextualizing travel options, simply consolidating data from various sources is no longer enough.

In the future, brands and OTAs will need to: Reduce their inventory and storytelling — so it's portable, embeddable, and instantly bookable anywhere. Invest in API-first distribution — enabling social, AI, and agent ecosystems to transact on their behalf.

That's an interesting question. However, I don't believe social media will become transactional when it comes to travel and hospitality. That doesn't mean it can't and won't become so for other industries - I can see this already happening for everyday purchases: apparel, jewelry, consumer goods, clothings, etc.

Good one! 💡 I definitely get a lot of product and service inspiration through my social media feeds. Entertainment is a big factor, but as someone tied into the hospitality sector, I particularly enjoy seeing industry offerings—whether that's cutting-edge technology or tangible experiences like hotels, resorts, and restaurants.

The end of the hyperlink economy may very well also mean the end of Google domination. Owning 92% of online searches worldwide, Google has long been in a quasi-monopoly situation, but this is shifting quickly, as people are catching on the ease of using LLM for search purposes: ChatGPT, Perplexity, Claude, Mistral, Deepseek...

The Fundamentals Stay the Same Discovery may shift from hyperlinks to AI answers, but advertising still rests on the basics: segmentation, targeting, positioning, and brand building. These don"t vanish when the funnel compresses — they adapt.

The investment won't be any less; maybe more. The search landscape, whatever its form, will inevitably migrate back to Google, a shift that the introduction of Gemini inside the browser will only accelerate. If the OTA model is truly sidelined, Google may look to take a significant portion of that revenue stream for itself.

It was inevitable that we would move to conversational AI and on-demand UI. The writing was on the wall years ago. Hotels will be caught off guard as OTA AI agents beat them without mercy at the pricing game. It’s time to build a defensive tool.

We will still need beautifully designed websites and flows — but more as validation layers and brand showcases than as discovery engines. OTAs and suppliers will increasingly serve as structured data ecosystems rather than pure UX-driven platforms.

Are we moving to a future - interesting... Though, you remove glossy images and brand (the websites of today), don't we just return to the flat green text screens of travel agents past, but this time operated by AI? Where description and detail was the important asset to capture interest and convert the booking?

The industry average of 5-10% of total revenue makes sense for budgeting purposes. What's more important is HOW you spend your budget. Comparing a hotel's marketing budget ratio to Expedia is apples to oranges; hotels are in the service sector whereas OTAs are tech businesses.

According to HotelMarketingWorks.com, most hotels allocate between 4-8% of their total revenue for marketing activities. New hotels: 10% of projected revenue Established properties: 4-6% of actual revenue Luxury hotels: Up to 8% of revenue Seasonal adjustments are also recommended as follows: High Season: Increase budget by 20-30% Shoulder Season: Maintain regular budget Low Season: Reduce budget by 20-30% or redirect to advance bookings

The question of what percentage of total revenue should hoteliers be spending on marketing should not be answered by comparing with OTA, but rather by looking at product lifecycle and corporate goals. By product lifecycle, we mean where the hotel is standing in terms of lifetime existence: launching stage, early growth, maturity, descaling or declining?

This is ongoing learning, as LLMs continue to learn. But GEO is built on top of SEO. It has to get its knowledge from somewhere. It means UCG (ie reviews) is more important, specific content is more important and understanding your target market is more important.

I work with many hoteliers and when it comes to the topic of online discovery, the first question I ask is: have you tried to search for your property, or lodging in your area, on different AI tools lately? It's quite surprising how so few have done it.

The speed of change is extraordinary! This rapid shift to AI summaries and conversational search marks a critical turning point for hotel content. Simple keyword-stuffing is ending; AI thrives on deep context and relationships, not raw data.

Why are we always trying to oppose one against the other in terms of online search? Organic search and paid search should be seen as a single, unified digital marketing strategy. They complement and amplify each other. Why? they have a shared goal: visibility, traffic, credibility and conversion amplified by AI personalisation, the data analysis synergy: it allows to focus only on the 'converting' terms and inform the SEO content actions.

The answer is rather straightforward: if somebody is bidding on your brand terms (OTAs and affiliates, for example), you are leaving clicks and bookings on the table if you do not: that additional spot in the SERP affects your conversion rates significantly.

Who searches your hotel by its official name? These are your past guests, people referred by friends and family, people influenced by word-of-mouth, people who have read positive reviews on social media or PR about the property.

Traditional SEO is not dead, but traditional search is! Consumers simply do not search as they did 10 or 15 years ago. Social search is now a big component of the customer journey: from TikTok to YouTube to Instagram, the platforms are diverse and usage greatly vary depending on age and traveler habits.

In spite of all the buzz around genAI, the AI Search market share today is estimated around 6% of the total search market, and estimated to go up to 14% by 2028 (Search Engine Land). Google's own Gemini AI has already been made available to Google's 84 billion monthly users - compare this to ChatGPT's 121 million users!

I don't believe that SEO is dead. I am of the view that the role of SEO is going to develop in alignment with the evolution of search. After all, it doesn't resemble the way it began with the incumbent approach. The challenge remains how to be found.

We can hope regulators will someday "reimagine" policies to enable innovation, but let's face it: this is entirely beyond the industry's control. Expecting governments to grasp the complexities of hotel tech is like waiting for a no-show guest to miraculously fill your occupancy gap.

Technical fragmentation has long been a challenge in all aspects of hospitality. Some of this is a reality. Some of it is by choice and driven from vendor marketing propoganda about 'Best of Breed'. The reality is that to overcome this general challenge in industry, consolidation and unification is required.

Website analytics in isolation from the rest of the hotel tech stack has lost its importance. Combined with the property's CRM, RMS, a personalization engine and the rest of the tech stack, it is priceless and impacts many revenue-generation functions: Revenue Management: The website browsing behavior, booking engine denials, time spent on web pages of various packages, offers and hotel amenities are important data signals for the RMS and property pricing strategies.

ChatGPT Search is definitely a threat to Google as people will look to keep it "all in one app" by melding search functionality with ChatGPT's core content generation functionality. That said, what's more pertinent to hotels is, How will these AI search tools impact travel?" In answering this, just think back to your own last work trip or vacation.

The threat by the genAI search engines has to be taken seriously and this is exactly what Google is doing. First, Gemini AI and its latest version Gemini 1.5-pro-002 is comparable to OpenAI's GPT-4o and better in more complex tasks like coding and problem-solving.

It's an interesting situation. Those who've always had the information and also the commerce. Versus those that have started with the information retasked to be more informative. But not yet the commerce. My view is that the more informative information coupled with commerce will prove out in the end.

Search based ads are going to change, a lot. They're great for bottom of the funnel marketing. The low hanging fruit. But they're not great for discovery. However with AI there's a possible mix of intent and discovery which could be the most powerful of both world.

These are interesting times, indeed, when it comes to search. Specially when it comes to itineraries and travel recommendations suggested by GenAI tools such as ChatGPT, Gemini, Perplexity or Claude. Traditionnally, when you asked Google for accommodations in New York City, you would get a listing with a bunch of hotels, and you'd have to use filters in order to get anything interesting.

Perplexity's shift to CPM is validating for luxury and lifestyle hospitality marketers. Attribution broke long ago for high-consideration, high-value travel purchases like hotels, resorts, and cruises. 7-14 day click windows work for a $20 t-shirt (no dependencies), not a $1,000/night hotel room (plenty of dependencies like booking flights, etc.).

Many hoteliers have adopted interactive widgets on their homepage as well as on pages deeper in the hotel booking funnel. The benefit of using widget technologies such as Userguest, The Hotels Network and TripTease (to name a few) is to attract and convert the website visitors into hotel bookers.

For those languishing under 2% CVR, the answer is usually pretty obvious. The best way to increase your conversion rate is to 'think like a booker'. Find ten minutes. Make a cup of tea, and before you pick up your phone or open a browser window, think about your ideal guest.

Improving conversion rates on a hotel website should ALWAYS be a priority, not just in 2024. Indeed, hoteliers invest quite a bit into SEO, paid search, paid social media as well as content strategies across various digital outposts (newsletter, blog, social media, SMS, etc.).

Amazon missed their one and only chance to enter the travel space by not acquiring Orbitz or Travelocity when these OTAs were for up for grabs. Now it is too late - the consolidation In the travel intermediary space has already happened.

Today Amazon has approximately 200 million Amazon Prime members globally. To put this into perspective, if Amazon Prime was a country, it would be the 8th biggest in the world measured by population. With this enormous membership size, or 'captive audience', Amazon has the necessary market reach to monetize any travel-related product or service.

I laughed at first when I saw this topic, as I recall vividly having had this discussion in the past. In fact, I wrote a blog post titled Will You Book Your Next Hotel on Amazon?... back in 2014!! Amazon did indeed tip its toes into travel distribution but the journey was short-lived.

Yes and no. A good comparison to rationalize how GPTs will be used by hotel marketers is to look back at the advent of front-end CMSs and visual composers for websites. Not only did these greatly reduce the costs of website development and updates, but now marketers could directly make simple edits on the fly, allowing them to test different copy / images.

Tools like ChatGPT or Google Gemini are phenomenal copywriters and should be used as enablers, tools to make our work easier, quicker, and more creative. Thus, it's not a matter of hoteliers "replacing" content creators with generative AI tools but rather making the most of them to become more productive and efficient.

Yes, these tools can provide a significant degree of heavy lifting. With a little more training and relevant targeted content these tools can also pick up on levels of nuance and style. Although care should be taken to ensure that the produced information is not in some ways plagiarized from the existing reference pool of content.

The question is fallacious, as it's set up in black-and-white terms. We're stuck in this loop of "traditional hospitality good, alternative hospitality bad." But, you know what? We have to stop thinking like that! Travelers certainly don't; for them, hospitality is hospitality, no fancy labels needed.Do vacation rentals speed up gentrification?

The impact of inventory loss within the travel and hospitality sector's key markets is a multifaceted issue with far-reaching consequences for both businesses and their clientele. These markets are often the lifeblood of demand, making any decline in resources a matter of significant concern.

I believe the vacation rental industry is to blame itself for these very restrictive regulations and all of its recent woes. For years it fought against licensing its hosts. Fought against including local hotel taxes in its pricing as if their customers didn"t need public infrastructure and safety, street lighting, etc.

AI can certainly do a lot of things and holds great promises at various levels in business and tourism. But let's not kid ourselves - OTAs are way ahead of the game not only in providing great platforms to book on - UX, imagery, etc.

I spoke at a conference in Norway last week and had the privilege of attending a keynote by Terry Jones. He said something that really resonated with me: "AI is the new UI." In traditional UI, the focus is primarily on how users interact with a system.

Ever the optimist, I believe that travelers are becoming increasingly aware of the benefits of booking direct, be that securing a better room, having access to more onsite rewards or accruing points within a loyalty program. Guests want to book direct, if only hotels would give them a user experience that's as seamless and convenient as what the OTAs offer.

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.

I am quite surprised we're still discussing this topic in "Them Vs. Us" terms. I've been in the travel industry since the late '90s, and I think, except for the early '00s (for obvious reasons), I've never seen a single property NOT listed on -at least one- OTA.

OTAs should educate hoteliers on the long-term benefits of improving their guest stay experiences vs burning time, capital and energy on trying to out-perform OTAs in online bookings. To put it simply, OTAs are perfect for a first-time visitor to your hotel destination.

Not working with OTAs is foolish. Their costs are within the average for distribution costs of other industries (auto industry is 30%, DTC e-commerce is 40-50%, Amazon sellers are around 45%). The problem with OTAs is, like many online distribution platforms, they are really bad at caring for their supply-partners.

This theme is re-occurring! Hoteliers have been late to adapt both operational and technological expertise to engage their guests through the world of 'add-ons.' Randomly test book any hotel and see what extras are available. Many great PMS allow for the integration of in-house activities: spa, golf, dining, but few do it well.

Generating ancillary revenues requires a) the implementation of merchandizing strategy and culture at the property/hotel company, b) incentivizing and training your staff, and c) adopting technology solutions to automate as many of the internal processes as possible.

One of the key opportunities overlooked by many hotels is upselling/cross selling in their pre-arrival email. Firstly, a startling number of properties don't even take this opportunity to reach out to the guest a few days before check-in.

This decision will most definitely impact hotels' digital marketing strategies, especially those which do not currently include the Google Ads Suite. One notable consequence is that tracking social media campaigns (among others with the Facebook pixel) will become very difficult and might incentivize hotels to move away from this kind of marketing.

To add some context: 42.7% of internet users worldwide (16-64 years old) use ad-blocking tools at least once a month (source: Hootsuite). When Google announced their intention to stop third-party cooking tracking on its Chrome browser by 2022, other browsers like Safari and Firefox already made that change years ago.

There is two parts to the problem: a) how does a hotel ensure that their ads now hit the right target and b) as you rightly said, how is the tracking going to work at a hotel level but more specifically - how are vendors currently tracking that data will change their mechanism, if at all required?Whilst its nothing new that google just gatecrashes parties and owns verticals once broken into (with travel being a major one i believe going forward) I find it highly interesting that google goes back to "segmentation" whilst always playing the "hyper personalization" card in all other areas.On the other hand - how do most hotels really use that information anyhow?

Welcome to 2020. Airbnb is part of the hospitality industry already. Get over it. I hope IPO cash might help them ease Expedia and Booking's oligopolistic power. I hope IPO cash might have them boost a faster global return to travel.

The Airbnb IPO is interesting but has nothing to do with the success (or failure) of their business. Airbnb is the game-changer in our industry. Their value reduction as stated above is representative and consistent with all publicly traded hotel companies.

A successful IPO will place Airbnb in a much stronger financial position so they can remove the high cost (at 11% interest) of their recent funding and prepare to operate profitably again. The threat of Airbnb will be felt by hotels that are perceived to be "risky" in terms of Covid-19 transmission prevention, eg.

Amazon has tried unsuccessfully to tackle the online travel space twice in the past. Back in 2013-2015, Amazon attempted to do this “organically” with its ill-conceived Amazon Local and Amazon Destinations. In 2019 Amazon launched a flight search and booking service in India, powered by online travel agency Cleartrip, buried deep into its Amazon Pay section.

Amazon is the world's #1 retailer. Period. There is no #2, with Walmart a distant #3 (perhaps). Walmart is expanding as fast as they can into the online space. Amazon needs to build revenue. They already sell pretty much every product on earth, so logically, the next frontier is services.

Amazon has to massively increase its top-line revenue if it is going to continue is share price growth. It gets more difficult to do that as it grows. What industries can it get into that can help deliver that? Travel will not be Amazon's number one choice but they will not ignore it either.

Venerable brands always have the potential for a renaissance. Of course, success hinges on forgiveness (forgetfulness?) of all those stranded travelers. And the continued focus on "fun in the sun" vacations is a smart way to maintain that differentiation and historical brand promise.

I am highly skeptical of Thomas Cook's resurrection as a B2C online travel player i.e. an OTA specializing in selling beach vacations and city breaks, and here is why: a) The traveling public does not know Thomas Cook as an OTA or B2C online vacation packager, hence the need for massive advertising spend to build relevant brand recognition.

I don't think there is a new TC. I think that this was the plan all along. I remember sitting in the UK in 2011/12 reading an article: Britain's Least Admired Companies of 2011 where TC was mentioned. It also let me to look at their share price and saw it tumbled to somewhat below 20c (which for me was surprising)...but then I saw they didn't have a CEO and no-one wanted to take the job since a few month....sinking ship comes to mind.

There are several major developments working against the bed banks sector: 1) Shrinkage of the brick-and-mortar distribution marketplace due to consumers shifting to online travel planning and booking. There are less than 7,500 travel agencies in the U.S.

In the non-US marketplace, bed banks continue to play an essential role, providing both offline and online intermediaries with a long tail of hotel inventory that would be impossible to source otherwise. Assuming historical bad behaviour regarding abuse of net rates can be controlled, newly consolidated and professionalised bed bank companies can have a long and happy future.

Bedbanks business may contract over time, however, they will remain a significant player in the online travel marketplace due to the large number of consumers who prefer to have their local travel agent make their travel arrangements.

Building a hotelier-owned OTA is such a hotelier's pipe dream! Expedia spent billions of dollars building its current CRS platform now being used across its portfolio(Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity and Wotif). In addition, Expedia spends $6 billion on marketing EVERY YEAR.

No - that wouldn't have a strong chance of success. The hotel business is primarily a hospitality retail and real estate business - not a high-performance e-commerce business. The expertise and skills required to be successful as a hotelier are vastly different from the attributes required to succeed in the OTA business.

A hotel-owned OTA? Sorry, everyone, you may have the cart before the horse! How about an OTA that buys a hotel brand? I made this bold forecast back (maybe) six-seven years ago. What is a hotel brand, really, without distribution?

In my view, this new Expedia program is designed as a very clever additional entanglement of hoteliers to Expedia. It is just an additional length of rope that ties hotels closer to Expedia and increases their dependency on this OTA.Will hoteliers buy into Expedia's program?

Of more recent times there's been the beginning of a right sizing in the distribution world. Google's move to democratize the travel search experience has changed the dynamic on how people find their travel ideas and destinations.

In a nutshell: That's not a good deal and with these acquisition costs the hotel can do its own recovery programme.My math teacher at school used to tell me that speaking about a percentage of another percentage is something unused and generally wrong.

Ever hear of a pendulum swing? Finally, revenue managers will have to become real digital marketers, versus simply playing with past data to formulate their plans. This is an exciting, brave new world! What I would like to see is AI-generated marketing programs that look OUTSIDE of travel history, but cross reference psycho-graphics, based upon buying patterns and habits.

These are unprecedented times. Many have cited earlier events such as SARS, the global financial crisis and the Asian financial crisis. I was active in industry and in location through all of these. NONE of these remotely resemble the nature of COVID19.

Excellent post, Max. Thinking long term is hard right now and we can see that in the actions of many in the industry who are scrambling between laying off and furloughing employees, worrying about cash flow, trying to get refunds on media investments, and anticipating a rebound date that keeps moving.

Nothing will mark the end of paid search marketing on Google, quite the contrary, they are doing everything to increase the ad-spend. It will change the way websites are indexed and I think it will affect hotel branding. However, changes like this are more about indexing the content in ways that all replies can be given through simple requests to Google Assistant.

I would never have a black or white statement like this. Digital Marketing capabilities and Search in particular are very complex and cannot be isolated to all other digital marketing levers. Saying that Hotel Paid Search Marketing is changing, this is the right statement.

Google has become the greediest toll taker in online travel and wants to make money - in the form of referral fees and advertising revenue - at every stage of the online travel consumer's Digital Journey and its Dreaming, Planning, Booking, Experiencing and Sharing Phases.

Personalisation isn't dead, but its evolution is far from its final form. There are pockets of personalisation occurring today during the customer experience, such as; pre-arrival upselling offers; geo-location and guest segmented pricing strategies, to name a couple of popular trends.

Personalization in hospitality is not only here to stay, but it will become ubiquitous and indivisible part of the guest acquisition, guest services and guest retention. AI and ML powered technologies have already accelerated the adoption of personalization techniques across many industries and are making serious strides in hospitality: guest acquisition, revenue management, CRM, guest services, loyalty marketing, etc.

Notwithstanding media hype, no hotel company has ever truly committed to personalization. Despite the vast amounts of data that we collect and the potential this represents, we as a sector have largely failed to put appropriate systems in place to do anything above mass customization (if even that) of either marketing or customer experience.

I am a firm believer that rate parity for publicly available rates benefits hoteliers in the current “one-to-many” revenue management practices in hospitality, in which hoteliers come with pricing tiers for different categories of guests: corporate transient managed, corporate transient unmanaged, corporate group, SMERF, leisure transient, weekend, etc.

We can certainly ask if rate parity is good or bad for hoteliers, but do we wonder how customers feel about it? Is there a more annoying thing than researching online for an upcoming trip and seeing 8 different rates come up...

Rate parity benefits no one and should have been euthanized a long time ago. Enforcing it ignores each channels' cost of distribution; causes ill-feeling between distribution partners and limits competition resulting in unwelcome scrutiny from competition authorities.

Despite the many questions about its operating procedures and even its added value, OYO is challenging the stagnant thinking that has characterized hotel chains for nearly a generation. Despite claims about their innovativeness, hotel chains, and in particular their outdated, non-performance related, business models have stifled both creativity and change.

OYO Hotels' meteoric rise resembles a great extent the hyper-growth of WeWork. The question is: Is this rapid growth a good thing, especially in a traditional industry like hospitality? I believe Oyo's growth came at the expense of cutting corners, some big corners at that.

Is there a magic bullet out there for hoteliers? is there some sort of techno-wizard that will in a 'poof' eliminate your need for multiple (often futile) integrations and IT resource back-ups? The answer is NO, and thank goodness!

There are easily more than half a million hotels around the world, so there are naturally thousands and thousands of hotel tech suppliers servicing them. At the lower end of the scale, under 50 rooms, there are several suppliers who do indeed provide an 'all-in-one' solution, as defined by the basic requirements of that market segment.

This is not a question about one vendor or multiple or one stop solutions. Hoteliers are confused because everyone tells them a different story about how they are more important than the rest. On top, it is about the inconvenience and extra charges when dealing with multiple vendors.

When I've started to work in the online distribution in 1999 by my boss and guru Pancho Mazza (r.i.p.) told me: the customer on the Internet is transitional. This is still THE thing. Online customer goes where it's better for it, and nowadays it's pretty easy to get informed and compare.

The new arrangement between Marriott and Expedia is very much like the arrangement Marriott has with the GDS like Sabre, Amadeus and TravelPort i.e. as with a technology distribution platform. If you are a travel agency or a TMC, talk to the GDS how to access Marriott's inventory, availability and retail pricing.

If anything, the deal is another step to dismantle the (dangerous) "Them vs. Us" mentality that most hotels still maintain towards online travel agencies. On the other side of the table, Expedia's move confirmed that the OTAs' model is definitively shifting towards the B2B's realm and, as I've been saying over and over again for the last five years, I won't be surprised to see Expedia and Booking shapeshift to SaaS companies in the near future.

Where ABS could be a game changer is in search, recommendations and in pricing. Too many are focused at how this can be a method to sell ancillary revenue, like the airlines did. But the application in hotels could be totally different.

Attribute Based Shopping (ABS) is a good start, but I believe One-to-One Pricing, powered by AI will be the absolute winner for both travel consumers and hoteliers. ABS is already a departure from the current revenue management one-to-many pricing approach, but 1to1 Pricing will take this to an entirely different level.

I love the customer-centred vision at the heart of ABS. The promise of 'infinite SKUs' and stay packages that are experience-led rather than room-led is intoxicating. For many hotels, the digital sophisticates, these new capabilities will likely be put to good use.

Education always helps, but I think the problem lies a little deeper. Lack of imagination. Hotels are brick and mortar businesses that deal with people. Technology isn't exactly on the top of the list when it comes to making a great hotel and guest experience.

Our industry is certainly lagging behind, but I don't believe this is something unique or exclusive to hospitality. For one thing, the labor shortage is an industry-wide problem across North America, and stems from a wider issue related to salaries, benefits competitiveness, demographics, etc.

Today's hospitality is being transformed from a real-estate industry into a 100% digital technology-enabled industry, powered by online, mobile, cloud, IoT, AI and blockchain tools and applications. Digital technology is making its way into every aspect of the industry: hotel operations, guest services and communications, revenue management, distribution, CRM and marketing.

This is not the first time Amazon has tried to tackle the online travel space. Back in 2013-2015, Amazon attempted to do this “organically” twice with its ill-conceived Amazon Local and Amazon Destinations. Today some hoteliers would welcome another OTA player like Amazon to increase competition and lessen dependency on the OTA duopoly.

Time to short your shorts of Expedia or Priceline? For those old farts out there (like me) who remember the 'poo poo' attitude of hoteliers when the OTAs first appeared, Amazon's entry is (or will be) monumental. Amazon has killed traditional retail, just walk through the streets of your locality and see all the storefronts that are now services: nail salons, dentists, architects, dance studios, etc.

A great question to pose and one that I will take a slightly different view on. Yes, it is obvious that Google is moving deeper into the travel space, but let's not forget their track record of monetizing consumer-led products and services is not exactly stellar.

Following a great panel at HITEC Europe with Uli Kastner, I believe Google will become a dominant player in the hotel distribution landscape after the next big economic shift. Every economic downturn has been the catalyst for a new dominant player on the distribution space.

It is inevitable – and to the benefit of the customer – that Google will become (or is already) the go-to place for researching, planning, booking and providing real-time information throughout a trip. Customers want seamless intelligence and connected experiences, and Google is uniquely positioned to connect all the dots.

The awesome rise of Google's meta and the launch of Booking.basic, make rate leakage the #1 challenge for hoteliers in 2019 and 2020 - and certainly the most requested topic at the Direct Booking Summit this year.There is no escaping the cost of undercutting today - our data suggests direct bookings drop 30% when hotels are undercut.

There is a very simple solution to the rate leakage menace: 1) Subscribe to a rate parity monitoring solution like RateGain or OTA Insights to catch in real-time rate leakage offenders; 2) Investigate quickly each instance of rate leakage; 3) In case of the property working with multiple wholesalers, “put two and two together” to trace the source of the reservation and see which of the wholesalers is the offender; 4) Immediately cancel your agreement with any rate leakage offender.

Given the transparency of the Internet and the growing role of metasearch in the travel distribution process, rate leakage is a challenge that hotels can no longer ignore. Although it might be painful in the short run, AMPUTATION is the only solution that will work!.

There is an inherent value in brands as a way of reassuring guests of a certain quality due to standards imposed by brands. Especially when going to an unknown location. While online reviews have helped independent hotels for some time it is hard to know what standards the reviewer had.

The activity in the market today looks to be more of a 'land grab' for major multi-brand operators. The logic being that if I have enough brands across a broad range of the market from a quantity and quality perspective then I increase bargaining power and also exposure to an existing and future customer base.

Another 'exciting' are brand from the XYZ Hotel Company. Am I excited? Is the consumer excited? Doubtful. Brands without marketing support are merely exercises for marketing gurus who like to play with logos and interior designers.

My view is that it's not a simple topic and there are several aspects to consider. 1 - On moving in to hotel space, this is a natural progression when tracking all of the existing OTA's. Over time all of the third party players will broaden their capabilities into other markets, although all will be secondary to search engine powered travel platforms such as Google.

AirBnB is clearly a phenomenon that is disrupting the hospitality industry as we know it. I am not sure if this can be classified as a “friend or foe” but to me it is clear that the dramatic rise of this type of lodging should pose some real questions to hoteliers.

Looking at competition from the standpoint of how it is hurting profits is never a great way to look at it. That rates can't be raised is a good thing for guests. The question of the acquisition and Airbnb's intention is: what can it bring to the customer.