Category: Hotel Online Distribution

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eRevMax wins the ‘Bosses Cook-off’ at Holiday Inn Kolkata

Holiday Inn Kolkata hosted the first edition of Bosses Cook-off on 28th July 2017 and invited the top bosses of select corporates in the city for a cooking competition along with a team of their employees.
Our CTO, Udai Singh Solanki received the invitation and decided to participate. He chose a team of 4 members – Aditya Mohanty, Isabella Grundmann and myself, Meenakshii Shivnani, with Udai being the team lead. The theme for the evening was ‘Asian’ and we needed to prepare one main dish live at the venue. So, we brainstormed and decided on a Thai dish – Gai Pad Krapow (Thai Chilli Basil Chicken) with a pickled raw papaya and vegetable salad.
When we reached Holiday Inn for the competition on Friday evening, we were in for a surprise. What we saw was like a mini Masterchef type setup – with a cold section containing a variety of meat, fish and seafood, a vegetable mart with the choicest of vegetables, local and exotic, and lastly shelves full of sauces, spices and other dry ingredients. All participants were explained the rules of the competition and the event flow.
And like in true Masterchef style, we were given a surprise task – we had to prepare not one, but two dishes – an appetiser and a main course which must include a protein, starch and vegetable. With only 10 minutes left to start, we had to quickly think of an appetiser to go with our Thai theme. We finally decided on Panko Crumbed Prawns marinated in a Thai red curry paste with a peanut dipping sauce as the appetiser to go with our main chicken dish.
At the start of the clock, there was a hurried frenzy on all the tables.  We started our preps and were surprisingly done within 30 mins, thanks to the amazing coordination we had as a team. It is interesting to note that all 4 of us come from cross-functional departments, however we made a great team for this competition – the binding factor being a strong passion for food! It became like a team bonding activity for us, thanks to Holiday Inn.
While we waited for others to finish, we interacted with the hotel sales team, chefs and the 2 famous food/lifestyle bloggers – Indrajit Lahiri & Poorna Banerjee, called in as the Judges for the evening. What flowed was some good wine and great conversations.
During this time we walked around to check out what our competition was up to and saw most teams cooking up mostly dishes from the Pan-Indian region, from Bengali to Punjabi to Rajasthani. 
However, we believed that our preparation, although quick and simple, was authentic, flavourful and different than what others were doing.
The last 15 minutes went by in a blur, our dishes were ready and plated and our work stations were clean. The scoring was to be done on taste, presentation and cleanliness. The 3 judges – the Executive Chef of Holiday Inn and the 2 food bloggers made their way through each of the 8 teams’ tables.  After the tasting, we were escorted back into the banquet hall for the announcement of the winners.
The first set of awards went for various categories like cleanliness, time management, etc. Finally the actual winners were announced and we were pleasantly surprised to be awarded the 1stprize. Our prize kitty included – a staycation voucher at the hotel, F&B vouchers, chocolates and a “Winners” trophy.
The four of us went in not knowing what to expect. We came back with a fun experience of an evening worth remembering!
A big shout-out to Holiday Inn Kolkata for organizing a refreshing conceptual corporate event, executing it very professionally and giving us a chance to be a part of its success!
Meenakshii Shivnani is Lead Implementation Consultant at eRevMax and is a key part of the Implementation team. She is passionate about food and loves to experiment with different cuisines. She can be reached at meenakshiis@erevmax.com

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InterContinental Istanbul improves efficiency with RateTiger, saves over 1.5 hours daily to focus on strategy.


InterContinental Istanbul, one of the luxurious addresses in the Turkish capital, has endorsed RateTiger for reducing workload and time to manage OTAs. The hotel has been using award winning channel management solution from eRevMax to update rate and allotments across online sales channels since 2014.
The Turkish hospitality industry is characterized by smaller booking window and high volume online bookings. InterContinental Istanbul, a part of InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, is at present, receiving about 65% of their total bookings from online sources. The extreme competition fuelled by additional supply of rooms in the city, safety issues and geopolitical uncertainty has made managing online sales channels even more complex.
“Mostly bookings happen at the very last minute – a lot of bookings come in closer to the stay dates, booking window is getting shorter. This has changed the way we do business. We now update OTAs daily – sometimes multiple times a day,” said Nil Hepiseri, Director of Revenue, InterContinental Istanbul.
InterContinental Istanbul is leveraging RateTiger Channel Manager to update live rates and availability across multiple booking channels directly from their Property Management System (PMS) using the pooled inventory concept. All reservations made on these distribution channels are captured and available inventory automatically redistributed helping the hotels push last-room availability thus ensuring maximum occupancy.
“We are saving over 1.5 hours daily through the automated updates – just one change in the dashboard – and it gets reflected across all connected OTAs. With chances of manual error getting totally eliminated, we can focus on strategy,” commented Nil.
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HotelTonight partners with eRevMax to integrate RateTiger into its platform


HotelTonight, the leading mobile app for last-minute hotel bookings, today announced a new partnership with travel technology leader eRevMax, which assists hotels to maximise online revenue opportunities through real-time distribution, market intelligence and connectivity solutions.
Today’s new partnership gives the 9,000 hotels currently using eRevMax’s industry leading RateTiger channel manager the ability to seamlessly send inventory directly to HotelTonight as a new distribution channel. HotelTonight is focused on selling hotel inventory up until the last minute, generating revenue for hotels from rooms that otherwise might not be sold. For HotelTonight, this partnership gives its customers access to inventory from eRevMax hotel partners globally, including large hotel chains, mid-market segment and boutique hotels.
“We are excited to connect our customers to RateTiger’s outstanding hotels while offering them a powerful new distribution channel — one that has an engaged consumer audience looking for great hotels, right up until the last minute,” said Amir Segall, HotelTonight VP of International. “HotelTonight wants to help all partner hotels reach maximum occupancy on any given night.”
Ashis Saha, SVP, Project Management at eRevMax comments, “We’re thrilled to connect to the industry’s leading last-minute booking app, providing our partner hotels a seamless way to move last-minute inventory. The key to success here is our ability to deliver reservations immediately so the hotel front desk has the booking details ready when the guest checks in, which could be any time
after they book a room via the HotelTonight app.”
As the entire travel space moves increasingly mobile and last minute – more than two-thirds of U.S. domestic hotel bookings and half of E.U. hotel bookings are within one week of arrival.*
HotelTonight has established itself as the leading last-minute booking app. With an average of one-third of hotel rooms unoccupied on any given day, HotelTonight enables its hotel partners to move last minute inventory while bringing incremental revenue and a new audience: 76% of HotelTonight users are first-time customers of the hotel.
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3 ways to gain market share from OTAs

The online travel agents are becoming more powerful day-by-day and they are eating others lunch, especially of hoteliers. The more powerful OTA means higher commission for hotels that lead to lower profit for the hotels and this has become the pain points or bottlenecks for the hoteliers. This is the high time for the hotels to take action to gain market share from the OTA’s to retain their profit percentage. In this case hoteliers are left with two choices either to increase their room rate to maintain their profit or to find out other way where they can increase direct booking maintaining a fair balance with OTAs to get maximum outcome from their revenue strategy. Since hotel business is very price sensitive the first option is little difficult to implement in this competitive market – if a hotel increases its room rate then they may not get business at all. Now the hoteliers are left with the second option and they can better think of increasing direct booking coming from their Brand.com.

In last couple of years I’ve been constantly reviewing how the hospitality industry is changing and how hoteliers are looking into more direct business. Here in this article I’d like to suggest three ways in which the hotelier can gain market share from the OTA’s.

User driven design:
Responsive Design: You should have a responsive website which should be used in mobile because now a day’s most of the people only use mobile for doing their hotel booking. 
Content Marketing: The content is powerful. The photo gallery, room details are something what a user look for and content drives new traffic from the search engine. A website with good and organised content always drives more traffic to your website that can convert your potential guest to loyal customers.
Website- Your Best Salesman
Your hotel website is your sales conversion engine. You should design your website in a manner where it will help you to increase your look-to-book ratio. The increase in look-to-book ratio means more sales and your attempt should try to convert each of the visitors as your potential customers. For doing this you need to keep few things in mind: 

    Meta Search Allows for Direct Bookings
    Meta search is considered to be one of the biggest digital marketing trends for hoteliers in current time. It is anticipated to be the fastest growing method of brand awareness and growth, and hotels should be encouraged to utilize these channels, including them as part of their distribution portfolio.
    While OTAs continue to lead the third party sales industry, they have one very big disadvantage for hoteliers – bookings are made exclusively through the merchant site, for which the brand will pay a nominal fee.
    Meta search allows for visitors to book either through OTAs or through the brand website, helping to increase direct sales. Meta search sites such as TripAdvisor have been criticized for favouring OTAs with which they have a partnership, but direct information is available, which is more than can be said for OTAs themselves.
    Turning OTA booking into direct booking
    The hotelier should always try to convert the OTA booking into the direct booking. The first step to this can be to have the guest email address and to add him to your loyal customer’s data base. One of the best ways to attract these guests can be emailing them about the special rates and plans of your hotel.  In addition to this the hotelier can reply to the comments and reviews of guests on different OTA’s. Replying to the reviews help a lot in increasing the loyalty of your brand and converting them from OTA to direct booking.
    As technology advances with enormous pace we’ll see more hoteliers will implement a clear balance of direct and OTA strategy to drive more revenue.
    Posted by Omprakash Singh, Business Analyst, eRevMax
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    Oakwood selects RateTiger for channel management and competitor intelligence

    Oakwood Hospitality Group, the world-class accommodation provider has selected RateTiger Channel Manager for its twelve properties to manage rates and availability across multiple sales channels from single platform.
    “We are looking at implementing a channel management system that helps us achieve rate parity efficiently. RateTiger will help us save valuable time and give us a better overview of the market, enabling us to concentrate on the strategic aspects of marketing,” said Tabatha Ramsay, Vice President Sales, Marketing and Revenue.

    The group has 28 properties in 15 cities across eight countries and territories, operates under three brand names Oakwood Premier, Oakwood Residence and Oakwood Apartments which offer distinct guest experiences to cater to different lifestyles. Leveraging RateTiger solutions Oakwood Asia can maximize its revenue opportunity and reduce its distribution costs by quickly and efficiently increasing its distribution reach.


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    eRevMax launches RateTiger & Connect Analytics for hotels

    eRevMax, the leading provider of electronic distribution, smart travel channel connectivity, market intelligence and revenue management solutions for the hospitality industry has launched RateTiger & Connect Analytics, a first of its kind of Business Intelligence solution for the hospitality industry. Hoteliers using Analytics will be able to get instant visibility into their business performance at anytime from anywhere.

    On the launch of the Analytics Michael McCartan, CEO, eRevMax said “In today’s extremely competitive business environment, it has become critical for our hotel clients to filter data meaningfully to detect problems, identify opportunities, and respond to market dynamics. Our new solution combines eRevMax’s extensive expertise on online distribution, intuitive benchmarking and deep analytical capabilities.” 
    Designed in collaboration with revenue managers Analytics, offers benchmarking on important parameters obtain real-time production data, analyse gaps to give hoteliers a clear picture of their business.
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    Spa & Golf Resort Weimarer Land Selects eRevMax for maximising online sales

    The four-star-superior hotel Lindner Spa & Golf Hotel Weimarer Land, a luxury hotel brand in Germany, has selected eRevMax to streamline its online distribution. The property, is using CONNECT by eRevMax to ensure real-time connectivity between the property and online travel agents, meta-search agencies, travel agents and corporate clients.


    “eRevMax solutions give instant control over yield management, allowing our properties to handle more product types while automating the distribution process. We were able to identify the best producing websites, while also improving our overall online booking,” said Mark A. Kühnelt, General Manager, Spa & Golf Resort.

    Opened in 2013, the 160 hectare complex, including a 36-hole-golf course Lindner Spa & Golf Hotel Weimarer Land offers 94 rooms on 5 channels. From now they can utilize eRevMax’s superior connectivity with over 100 global and regional distributors including OTAs, Tour Operators and Wholesalers to reach out to new markets.

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    Leading Indian OTA Goibibo partners with eRevMax

    Goibibo, one of the top three online travel aggregators in India has partnered with eRevMax for smooth distribution connectivity to its growing client base. With this superior 2-way XML connection the accommodation providers connected to the channel using eRevMax’s online distribution platform will be able to update Availability, Rate & Inventory in real-time helping them control pricing strategies and optimise revenue.



    Commenting on the partnership, Sanjay Bhasin, CEO, Goibibo.com said, “This integration is aligned with our commitment to deliver fastest and most trusted user experience. This will help our hotel partners to further reduce their time to update rates and availabilities while automating reservation delivery directly into their PMS. In addition, connecting with eRevMax Hotel Ecosystem will give us the opportunity to explore new supply partners for improving our global inventory supply.”


    One of the fastest growing online booking sites in India, Goibibo is presently connected with over 9800 domestic properties and 1, 50,000 worldwide. With this integration Goibibo will be a certified eRevMax Channel Ecosystem partner, and will directly connect to the leading PMS and CRS to gain access to broader products and more inventory.


    Read more here

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    eRevMax redefines rate shopping with RateTiger Managed Report Service

    eRevMax, the leading hospitality technology & solutions provider of channel management and connectivity solutions has launched Managed ReportsService  which will offer high quality market intelligence data for informed pricing decisions. Hoteliers now can get high quality rate intelligence data from over 42000 hotel sites and around 100 travel sites.

    Vishal Arora, VP – Product Management, eRevMax states that understanding market trends and implementing balanced pricing strategy is very crucial in this ultra competitive world. Managed Reports will help hotels evaluate pricing strategies for their properties and that of competitors and turn that insight into bottom-line results based upon actionable business intelligence.

    The data goes through a strict Quality Assurance (QA) process for maximum accuracy, thereby hotels get highly accurate data to plan and forecast with greater precision through historical and future rate analysis.

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    Trust Customer Conference

    Being a Trust Partner, we got invited to the Trust Customer Conference in Amsterdam recently. This year’s event theme was “Blossom your distribution”. It was very well organized and provided a great platform to engage with hoteliers and also showcased the upcoming plans that Trust has for its product range.

    The forum was designed mainly to exchange ideas and conduct informative, lively and interactive discussions between the Trust team and its business partners. Speakers were invited from leading companies including Google, TripAdvisor, Kayak, ICEPortal, and Essec Business School and shared key insights on industry issues, business opportunities and market trends.


    Our COO Greg Berman was invited to present on the upcoming trends and technologies in Channel Management. It was an interactive session where Greg laid stress on eRevMax’s partnership with Trust Voyager and how it simplifies the distribution process to boost the revenue funnels.

    Overall the event was a great chance for me to interact directly with multiple hoteliers, revenue managers as well as sales and marketing heads.
    Pilar Sanchez Aita is Director Strategic Account Management at eRevMax. She can be reached at pilars@erevmax.com