Technology

A good website/ digital marketing, a decent loyalty offer, and a solid booking engine are essential for all hotels to keep a meaningful share of guest relationships. The role of the OTA should be to bring new guests to a hotel.

The debate suffers from oversimplification. First-party data is strictly contextual to the operational stage being executed—no single entity holds complete ownership.Digital Discovery & Booking: OTAs capture top-of-funnel acquisition data for indirect channels.

It is neither myth nor luxury; it is the precondition for controlling a hotel's own commercial destiny.The "myth" argument conflates two failures. Yes, most hoteliers have underinvested in direct channels for decades, and that failure lies with the industry, not the OTAs.

After years of sitting on the buying side of these conversations, five things matter most to me. First, prove you understand hotel operations. Not in theory, but in how your solution performs at 2 a.m. when a system goes down and guests are waiting at the front desk.

Operational fit, clean integration, solid data protection, and measurable value across our properties and markets — that's the minimum expectation. Beyond those fundamentals, here's what, in my view, signposts the start of a genuine partnership: Show us the product.

From our perspective, before we seriously consider a technology vendor, we expect the vendor to demonstrate the following: Clear understanding of hotel operations and the business problem being solved.The solution must address a defined operational, commercial, guest-experience, or compliance challenge.