Category: Hotel Channel Management

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5 Questions to Ask About Channel Management for Hotels

A Hotel Channel Management Software can be assistive for you, whether you are in search of revenue management or hotel distribution. The primary functionality of this type of application is to make sure that every hotel sales channel keeps abreast of restrictions, rate modifications and any changes that take effect. These types of systems make sure that OTAs can remain in touch with a hotel. Thus, only actual information about hotels is passed on to possible guests. There are many types of hotel channel managers, and all of them are quite useful to use. Here are 5 questions that you have to ask about channel management software systems for hotels.

5 Questions to Ask About Channel Management for Hotels

What kind of support will it come with?

When there is a breakdown, powerful distribution systems have fast support infrastructure and related troubleshooting protocols. This type of support that is offered tends to differ across systems. Although some of these come with an automated backup that can ensure booting as soon as there is a failure of the main system, others come with customer care centers that operate 24X7.

What are the access rights?

Better access rights for this type of software is the tool for proper marketing of products. At times, sound strategies for revenue management are able to protect as well as get data together. These can pave the way for different access rights across various kinds of user levels. Typically, multi-level access rights are offered through 4 main roles:

  • Front Desk
  • Reservations Manager
  • Property Owner
  • System Admin

Every one of these has rights and limitations of its own.

Is it easy to use?

You have to ensure that the system is easy to use. A few channel management systems are also available with a full user acceptance test, which is followed by strict testing for the team of the hotel. This makes sure that the product can be used smoothly. It is important that you consider that the tool can be implemented and adopted with ease.

Can automatically sync inventories?

You have to check whether your chosen channel management software automatically inform the user and update the availability to all connected channels for any modification or cancellation happened on any channel. Lots of software programs can manage more than one channel, although that does not mean that they can sync inventories based on reservation modification, which is possible only when the channel manager has 2-way XML connectivity with channels for seamless data transfer. Thus, it is important that you check this thing beforehand. It is also essential that you check whether the channel manager is available connectivity with the right PMS and Channels.

Does it ensure data security?

Finally, you should also choose a hotel channel manager that gives you data security. Data security has become the biggest challenge for the hospitality industry. For hotels, protecting guest data like address and credit card details has become crucial in post-GDPR age. While finding out the right vendor for your distribution management, do check whether the provider is PCI and GDPR compliant.

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Maldives Travel Trends

Regarded as the epitome of luxury tourism in South Asia, Maldives, with its over 1000 coral islands has emerged as a ‘premier’ brand. Tourism remains the largest economic industry in the country.

To keep up with the tourism demand, which is expected to cross 1.5 million in 2019, the Government has been undergoing renovation of its key airport and actively encouraging new luxury resorts. International brands like Waldorf Astoria, Pullman, Westin and Hard Rock Café have recently opened in the archipelago.

With over 135 resorts and 10 major hotels along with numerous guest houses, the occupancy rate in the country however has remained stagnant for the last few years. While China, Germany, the UK, Italy and India has consistently been the top five source market, in recent times Maldives has seen a surge in tourist arrivals from South Korea.

A long stay destination, where average length of stay is over 6 days, hotels for years have depended on tour operators and travel agents for bookings. However, with the increase in supply of rooms and change in guest booking behavior, hotels have been adapting to online travel.

Global OTAs like Booking.com, Expedia and Agoda  has become quite popular with hotelieres. Booking.com, for instance, has 795 properties listed, Expedia has close to 700 hotels and guest houses in Maldives listed on its channel.

As online distribution evolves, hotels are increasingly adjusting to changes in market dynamics. While GDS remains their most popular channels, they are opening up to OTA and metasearch as well.

Are you connected to right channels and keeping them automatically updated with rates and availability on a regular basis?

Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

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Travel Statistics to Know About in 2020

Travel Statistics to Know About in 2020

The online global travel market was over $629 billion in overall worth in 2017 and is anticipated to reach a figure of around $818bn by the year 2020. These are some travel statistics that you must know about for the year 2020.

Longer family holidays are becoming more popular

These days, family holidays spanning for a longer time are up. While it is always that family trips have been a staple part of annual programs, family holidays are being influenced too much by @travelling_family, @byjetpack, @thebucketlistfamily and the likes. By 2020, it is figured that around 50% of the labor force of America and the UK will comprise of freelancers. 40% more kids got home-schooled in the year 2017 instead of in 2014 (comprising of as many as 48,000). It comes as no surprise that the freedom offered by home-schooling is being embraced by parents.

Rise of Online Travel Research

These days, more and more travellers are carrying out research over the World Wide Web to know about the different types of travel options, accommodations etc available. The travel website Tripadvisor is being used increasingly to find out about hotels, restaurants, flights and more. Tripadvisor, with over 325 users every month, is in the position to have an impact on travel purchases online. Travelers who visit this website are also likelier to take time on research, with over 80% taking over 4 weeks to finish a purchase. This is a popular point to start for lots of travel searches, particularly in the preliminary stages of travel research.

Solo Travel is getting friendlier

These days, the introduction of co-living apartments is being given more and more prominence. These let solo travellers come across people on their trips having a similar mindset. WeLive is a leading name in co-living that has apartment complexes these days, with hot tubs, yoga classes, events programs, shared social leaders etc in Crystal City and New York. Travellers can stay in these complexes for a few months or only a few days. Dublin Airport made a claim that 57% out of its estimated 31.5 million passengers in 2018 were solo travellers. In Solo Travel in 2020, younger travellers can be expected more than ever earlier.

Travel decisions will be impacted by Generation Alpha

The term ‘Generation Alpha’ means the generation of people who were born after the year 2010, and is exhibiting more signs of having an impact on family travel planning and decisions than was supposed previously, as per Expedia Group Media Solutions. According to the study of Expedia Group 2019 globally, on an average, travellers from Generation Alpha are making over 3 family vacations in a calendar year.

According to Short Term Rentals 2019, 95% of family trippers mentioned that their priority was to keep their families happy and entertained, while other important priorities were closest theme parks or main attractions (as mentioned by 85%), making travel plans around the time of school holidays (mentioned by 85%), outdoor activities (mentioned by 85%) and value and deals (mentioned by 89%).

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What Does A Channel Manager Do?

A hotel channel manager allows properties to manage multiple online distribution channels from a single solution, Hotels can update rate and availability and receive reservations directly to its systems like PMS and CRS in real-time. Advanced channel managers provide 2-way XML connectivity with online sales channels including OTAs, GDS, metasearch, wholesalers and booking engines for seamless data transfer.

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6 Great Types of Content for Hotel Website for Increase in Bookings

6 Great Types of Content for Hotel Website for Increase in Bookings

A good hotel website that is rich in content can help you to attract potential customers and influence them enough to book a room in your hotel. Good content can also improve your hotel website’s search engine ranking. Here are 6 types of great content for your hotel website that can increase bookings.

  1. New menu

If you have just released a new menu, you have to announce the same. Use your hotel website to allow guests to find out you are preparing new mouthwatering dishes in your in-hotel restaurant. This can provide them with a good reason to check out your online menu. It can fill them up with enough anticipation to make a reservation. It can even attract local guests who are loyal to your business and who might like to often dine at your restaurant.

  1. Top local attractions

Write down about the places of interest in your area, and all that the region has on offer for travelers. Sharing such information can show travelers that you are knowledgeable and assistive, and the content can also attract random people looking for those topics on Google and other search engines. You may also write about the best restaurants, walking routes, shops etc in your area.

  1. Upcoming events

If there are upcoming events in your region, you may cover them as well, similar to the local attractions. You can write down various details regarding the event, such as the number of people who are anticipated to attend it, how far the venue is from your hotel etc. Write down whether a special discount is being offered with the tickets.

  1. Holiday content

You can create content that is related to holiday events. Mention whether your hotel would be offering complementary wine on Valentine’s Day upon arrival or free dinner to moms on Mother’s Day. You may write a post about a treasure hunt that you might be hosting on Easter at your hotel or the top 5 foods to have in your in-hotel restaurant for Christmas dinner. When you create content timely around particular holidays, you can attract customers enough to turn them into your hotel guests.

  1. Video tour

You may also make a video tour of your own hotel property. It can transport guests straight to your hotel property via their PC / mobile screen. You can hire a professional to shoot high-quality videos that can portray your hotel with all the vivid details, lending a personal touch to the same. You may walk guests straight through the outdoor spaces, restaurants, common areas such as lounge, rooms, suites and more. All these can help customers get a bigger and better view of your hotel property.

  1. New feature

You may also use your hotel website to announce any new feature that you have added at your hotel, such as a redecorated restaurant, Jacuzzi baths, king-size beds in all rooms, spa facility, gym, swimming pool etc. Basically, if you have bettered your hotel in any way, let potential guests know about the same.

Content plays a huge role for traffic pulled and bookings are done on your hotel website. Get Hotel channel manager & Online Distribution.

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Things to Consider Before Choosing a Hotel Channel Manager in 2019

It is necessary to have a wonderful hotel channel manager in the hotel industry. It will let you sell rooms efficiently, reduce the number of unsatisfied guests and minimize your monetary losses as well as reduce the amount of time that you waste on double bookings, under bookings and overbookings. In the absence of a channel manager, hotels need to manually update availability and inventory on every channel. Before picking a hotel channel manager in 2019, here are a few things that you need to consider.

Things to Consider Before Choosing a Hotel Channel Manager in 2019

Real-time updates

Real-time rate and availability updates are important features of any capable hotel channel manager. The channel manager of your choice must let you adjust hotel rates and room availability with convenience. It should be connectible to many booking sites. Thus, when there is booking of a room, the availability should automatically change across every distribution channel.

Channel performance report

A proper channel manager needs to offer you detailed reports on every channel. It will allow you to view how every channel is performing, what has to be fixed, the amount of money that you are making and more. You should get higher visibility on your channel distribution network, which can boost your performance, and reduce your expenses. The channel managers that are best-in-class heavily invest in cutting edge analytics and reports that are easily understandable and show revenues, reservations and occupancy for a particular time period.

Connectivity to many markets and OTAs

You should also check the way your channel manager forms connections to all your preferred markets and various OTAs. The connection established to many OTAs around the globe will let you enter your chosen markets that you supposed to be out of your reach. The process needs to be fast and easy, similar to ending a connection with an Online Travel Agency that you do not regard as important for your business. The best kind of channel managers let you use your most productive channels to advantage, and also experiment with channels that are less apparent and might help you gain access to markets that are tough to reach otherwise.

Support and training

A hotel channel manager of your choice needs to include support as well as training. In case it does not, you will be at risk of losing money and time. Without any training, you will not be able to get familiarity with a new hotel channel manager. It should help you to grasp all the particular features. The support needs to be great as well. Like any other software program, it can come with quite a few problems. When help is required, you need to be assured that it will be available right on time.

Pooled inventory

Proper channel management also needs a pooled inventory model. Make sure that there is sharing of your room inventory across every channel, instead of being manually allocated channel-by-channel. Pooled inventory makes sure that there is proper availability of rooms, so that the hotel rooms may be simultaneously promoted across every channel with no concern of overbooking.

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How to Promote Your Hotel to Business Travelers?

Business travelers form one of the major groups of travelers, and this group is increasing with time. Expenses on global business travel are expected to rise by 7% by the year 2020, which means hoteliers have to go that extra mile to attract business travelers to their properties. Most of the business trippers like to stay in hotels for face-to-face and corporate meetings. The opportunities for business expansion are very high, which has led to a rise in more room reservations, choosing from amazing foods and more. Here are some tips on how to promote your hotel property to business travelers.

How to Promote Your Hotel to Business Travelers

Use social media platforms

The internet is being used too much these days, and there is high demand for social media channels among vacationers as well as among business travelers. They make use of social media platforms to interact with business experts, update themselves on the latest trends in business and find out what their competitors are doing. You can post ads on Face book, YouTube and other websites to offer multi-media experiences to business trippers. LinkedIn is another robust platform that you can use to reach out to business travelers.

Offer them a wide variety of dishes

Business travelers tend to work for more time while traveling, and do not get the time to choose from the available food options in hotels. They like to choose whatever is offered to them. If you offer them the best foods, they will be impressed. It is a good idea to offer them healthy menu items, and provide them with a variety of healthy snacks such as fruits, yogurt, cereal, self-serve toast etc. Offer them vegan meals and gluten-free foods. Ask them whether they suffer from any food allergy, and offer them meals accordingly, so that they can stay fit and healthy.

Offer real-time services

For business trippers, time is something precious. They often spend much time in moving from place to place – such as shuttles, taxis, airport, home etc – before they arrive for rest or check in or to run for their following appointment. You can keep them satisfied with a fast process, like mobile / online check-in, and gathering all the important data and payment processing before guests arrive. You should also ensure a flexible policy for business travelers’ check-out and check-in times, to let them avoid delays in schedule, making life more convenient and ensuring brand loyalty.

Running loyalty programs

Hotels operate loyalty programs that can encourage guests to come back often. These types of programs can let you boost your brand reputation and value in the market. A flexible loyalty program can help hotel groups as well as independent properties to draw in business trippers, and retain repeat business by providing business travelers with the things that they appreciate – such as discounted stays and free nights.

Try to offer amenities that can make trips less tiring for business guests – such as discounted spa services, complimentary beverages and free transportation services. Loyalty programs can drawn in corporate guests very well, and also collect guest information that can be used further to provide them with more personalized services.

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Online travel trends in USA

It’s been a decade since the travel industry has turned around from the global recession. The past 10 years marks the story of remarkable resilience shown by the hoteliers. From accommodation sharing to rate comparison to social selling to travel demand surge – this has been a period of challenges, disruptions and growth.

Fueled by digital innovation, the shift to online travel booking has emerged as a global trend. In 2009, Expedia and Booking – two of world’s biggest OTAs processed around $15 billion in gross bookings. In 2018, they reported gross global bookings of $99 billion and $92 billion, respectively. From $15 billion to $191 billion – this astonishing 1200% increase reflects the change in traveler’s booking behavior and preference.

According to a survey by Wex on US travelers’ booking behavior and preferences ranging in age from 18 to 70, typically 67% of respondents book their travel online with 73% of Gen Z and 76% of Millennial travelers doing so. The online travel market in US, although near saturation, has been outpacing the overall market and now amounts to US$103 billion. While OTAs are expected to control 41% market share in 2020, Expedia and Booking Holdings continue to dominate in the U.S., with the two collectively representing 92% of the OTA market. In this post we take a deep dive into OTAs in the region who are playing vital role in shaping the digital travel.

Expedia

In 2018, 350 million room-nights were booked through Expedia, making hotel reservations its biggest source of revenue. Following the merchant revenue model, the company buys up a large number of hotel rooms at a lower rate and receives booking payments from the customer. Through a network of branded travel booking sites, including Expedia.com, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, Wotif, Egencia, Vrbo along with the metasearch platform Trivago, the group has been able to drive a loyal user base. The Expedia platform had over 1 million properties (including 370,000 of HomeAway vacation rentals) with its site receiving 675 million monthly site visits and its mobile app being one of the most popular one across platforms.

For listed hotels, the company provides an easy-to-use console Expedia Group Partner Central to manage their properties, join promotions and packages to attract travelers, and maximise revenues.

Egencia is the business travel management service offering accommodation, flights, activities, and more to businesses who wish to leverage their services to find the best deals for travelers.

Booking.com

Everyday over 1.5 million room-nights are booked on Booking Holdings platform making it the largest online travel agency in the world, and has a portfolio of popular OTAs, including Booking.com, Priceline, Agoda and Kayak.  Booking.com, its flagship brand largely works on the agency model acting as agents on behalf of accommodation providers. Hotels pay the OTAs once the booking has been paid in full by the guests. Its loyalty reward system called Genius provides members with discounts and rewards which increase as the member books more through the site. Booking.com has been steadily making inroads in the US market which has been historically dominated by Expedia.

Listing on Booking.com is a rather simple process. Accommodation providers need to visit the registration page and complete the instructions. It’s important to select the property type to ensure right category listing. The commission-based service even offers 24/7 multilingual assistance and markets your property on various search engines. Booking.com provides its client properties a Visibility Dashboard with the relevant data to track and improve your visibility in the search results. Hotels can also take advantage of its Genius and Preferred Partner Programme for better visibility.

Airbnb

Over the last couple of years, Airbnb has emerged as a preferred channel for independent and boutique hotels. In fact, properties listed as boutique hotels, bed and breakfasts, and other hospitality venues like hostels and resorts have grown by 152 percent in the last one year. The platform has also emerged as a preferred option for last-minute bookers, which is expected to get further boost following its acquisition of HotelTonight and cross-promotion across these channels. Since last year, Airbnb has been highlighting hotels more prominently on its website and introduced a loyalty program. Earlier this year, the company has eliminated guest fee on new hotel listings making it more competitive with traditional OTAs. To list their properties on Airbnb, hotels need to match guidelines set by the channel like:

  • Vibrant common gathering spaces / events
  • Guest rooms with personal touches that are individually unique and/or local in design
  • High-quality photos on the listing page that showcase the design of the property and what guests can expect
  • Accessibility features that are helpful to guests with limited mobility

Hotels.com

A part of Expedia group, Hotels.com is a strong brand available across 85 local websites in 35 languages. The channel receives over 60 million unique visitors per month.  It’s loyalty program Hotels.com® Rewards has over 15 million members. With a fully responsive mobile site and mobile app with over 50 million downloads to date, customers can book on the go with access to 20,000 last minute deals. To list a property, hoteliers need to apply through Expedia Partner Central (EPC). As part of the Expedia group, the listing gets featured across all Expedia sites including Orbitz.com, Expedia.com, and Travelocity.