Get the Best Hotel Channel Manager Tips from RateTiger – Page 32 – Hotel Channel Management

October 23, 2019October 23, 2019

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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October 22, 2019October 22, 2019

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.

October 17, 2019January 28, 2020

The Week, That Was – October 2019 Week 3

In five minutes or less, keep track of the most important news of the week, curated just for you. We present to you hand – picked news on latest industry perspectives and some general updates. Read on!!

Openhotelier completes technical integration with eRevMax

With online sales growing at a fast pace in Maldives, hoteliers can benefit from such integrations as it offers them more distribution options directly from their Frontdesk PMS. This partnership is aimed at creating a frictionless environment offering hoteliers end-to-end solutions for their online distribution and connectivity needs to attract more guests.

https://bit.ly/2BfRHZY

Accor and Expedia believe there’s a path to save the hotel-OTA relationship

On a panel at the WiT Singapore 2019 Main Stage, Louise Daley, deputy CEO for Accor in Asia Pacific, and Melissa Maher, senior vice president for marketing and innovation at the Expedia Group, entered diplomatic talks about how the hotel-OTA relationship should really function and what will it take for both sides to come out as winners.

https://www.phocuswire.com/Accor-Expedia-Group-online-travel-agency

How to Increase Bookings from Hotel Booking Website?

It is important for hospitality business to have a brand website of their own as it has a strong digital identity to attract maximum visitors. When you are building a website for your hotel property, here are some important factors that hoteliers need to take into account. Read more –

https://erevmax.com/blog/index.php/2019/10/how-to-increase-bookings-from-hotel-booking-website/

OTAs in prime position to benefit from rising APAC internet penetration

Internet penetration in APAC is expected to breach the 50% mark and continue growing as it overtakes the US. Results of joint research from travel data co-operative Sojern and Phocuswright involving a survey of 5,782 online travel customers from seven countries was recently presented at the event – read further for the findings.

https://www.travolution.com/articles/112894/web-in-travel-otas-in-prime-position-to-benefit-from-rising-apac-internet-penetration

Chinese tourism growth slows as overseas travel loses its luster

Chinese tourist sites received 782 million visits during the holiday, up well over 7% from last year’s 726 million, according to the Ministry of Culture and Tourism. But that’s slower than reported growth of more than 9% in 2018, and down from a 10% increase in 2017.

https://www.cnbc.com/2019/10/09/chinese-tourism-growth-slows-as-overseas-travel-loses-its-luster.html

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October 11, 2019January 28, 2020

The Week, That Was – October 2019 Week 2

HospitalityUnited.Club to host Cocktails & Conversations in Singapore

The consortium of travel technology specialists, HospitalityUnited.Club, is ready to host its exclusive ‘Cocktails & Conversations’ evening in Singapore this month, on 16^th October 2019. The Club will be hosting the event in partnership with AgentX101, HotelTonight, Ecommpay, LiveOS, RateTiger and WIHP, to present the latest in travel technology.

Booking.com’s top travel trends for 2020

The company predicts 2020 will be a year of travel exploration like never before, fueled by technology as well as a growing sense of responsibility and deeper connection with the people and places we visit.

https://travelpredictions2020.com/#5

If you think email is dead, think again

Adobe’s recently released Email Usage Study for 2019 reveals new insights about consumer habits and preferences around receiving marketing emails. The respondents are spending up to five hours a day checking their emails (both work and personal). In fact, they actually feel that the amount of time they are spending is ‘just right.’

https://www.clickz.com/email-usage-study-adobe-2019/255955/

RoomIt by CWT expands channel manager connectivity

RoomIt by CWT the global hotel distribution division of CWT, announces new strategic partnerships with multiple global hotel guest acquisition platforms. The partnerships provide business travelers with more choice and hotels with greater access to customers.

https://news.carlsonwagonlit.com/pressreleases/roomit-by-cwt-expands-hotel-distribution-with-new-strategic-global-partnerships-2924419

Hotels are start, end points of travel experiences

As affluents become more drawn to experiential travel, the role of the hotel has evolved to become more about the destination than simply about hospitality. During a panel at Condé Nast Traveler’s Points of View Summit, industry experts discussed how high-end and boutique hotels are becoming more reflective of their location. Design, sustainability practices and programming are different ways hotels can incorporate local elements.

https://www.luxurydaily.com/hotels-are-start-end-points-of-travel-experiences/

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October 10, 2019

How to Increase Bookings from Hotel Booking Website?

These days, it is important for hospitality businesses to have a website of their own. Whether you have a small hotel in a quiet town in the country or running an independent hotel or managing hotel chains in some of the best destinations across the world, you have to know how to develop and design a hotel website that grabs the attention of your targeted market and makes travelers interested enough to drive bookings. When you are building a website for your hotel property, here are some important factors that you have to take into account.

How to Increase Bookings from Hotel Booking Website

Brand

You would like your website visitors to keep your hotel brand in consideration. For this reason, you have to consistently showcase your brand through your whole website. A lively color scheme and logo will let you establish a wonderful identity and let you associate with your target audience and establish a personal relationship.

Target market

Your site’s features have to be appealing to the wants and needs of your target market. In case your hotel is targeted at luxury vacationers, you have to post lovely images of the fantastic amenities in your hotel property. Post content that can be attractive to your audience. If you like to draw travelers who are from the millennial generation, your photos have to feature active, young adults who enjoy your property completely.

Booking form

Guests have to make the booking experience on your site a simple experience. This is the reason you have to spend on a hotel reservation engine that can be used easily and which also lets you boost conversions. It is also essential that you integrate a major call-to-action message such as “Book Now” to grab the attention of users.

SEO plans

There is no point to spend on a new site in case it cannot be found on the Google SERPs (Search Engine Results Pages). Make sure that your website content is properly optimized to rank for keywords that are relevant and is a vital factor in drawing traffic. Your SEO (Search Engine Optimization) plans are necessary to consider.

Site speed

Your website has to load fully and quickly in just a few seconds. Otherwise, your hotel can be at risk of losing potential guests to competitors. Make sure that your hotel site is designed to be fast loading. Keep in mind that even a delay of 2 – 3 seconds can make users impatient enough to go to the website of your competitors and opt for whatever they have on offer, even if it means opting for a more expensive deal.

Mobile capabilities

You require a website design that is responsive, and your hotel site builder has to assist you in achieving the same. A responsively designed hotel site can let your users navigate easily to your site – whether they use a mobile device or a desktop. The booking engine for your hotel should also accept mobile reservations, given that more and more travelers are making bookings with mobile devices. It can enhance the experience of users, and aid your SEO efforts.

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September 27, 2019January 28, 2020

Daan Utsav: eRevMax celebrates the Invaluable Joy of Giving

Daan Utsav, also known as the ‘Joy of Giving’ festival is celebrated every year from 2 – 8 October in India. It brings together people across the country to participate in their own ways and give back to the society.

eRevMax, the leading hospitality technology solutions provider, has been celebrating the ‘Joy of Giving’ festival over the last few years. The company organizes internal collection drives to raise funds or gifts as per the wish list of the children it works with under its CSR initiatives. This year’s event was aimed at providing school bags for all the children of two primary schools in Kolkata.

By encouraging and enabling employee volunteering, eRevMax brings together people and good causes to create a wave of change. Volunteers from across different eRevMax offices took an active interest in this noble cause. It is moments like these when we choose to be warm, generous and kind that marks the quality of our lives and makes a difference to the world around us.

We aim to spread this movement by encouraging one and all to come forward and spread kindness and be generous. Here are some glimpses from eRevMax Daan Utsav 2019 celebrations –

September 26, 2019January 28, 2020

The Week, That Was – September 2019 Week 4

Saudi based SAS Hotel recommends eRevMax for its Mobile Channel Manager

SAS Hotel, an upscale 4-star property in Saudi Arabia, has strongly recommended RateTiger and its Mobile App for hoteliers to effectively manage their online business. The property has been using RateTiger’s web-based channel management solution from eRevMax and has been a prolific user of the RateTiger-LiveOS mobile app.

https://bit.ly/2nqPtDu

What blockchain in corporate travel could mean for GDSs, TMCs

Technology companies, from startups with hardly any funding to the likes of IBM, are exploring how blockchain can be used in travel, including in the corporate space. One such company is Blockskye, which is using the technology to solve issues around distribution.

https://www.phocuswire.com/the-beat-live-blockchain-corporate-travel

50 years of the hotel PMS (and why it matters)

The hotel PMS has been around for about 50 years. Despite the technological progress made during all of those years, for most of that time hotels have relied on legacy systems with relatively basic functionalities and mainframes that kept everyone glued to a desk. Then in 2010, the cloud-based system came along, which changed so much more about the PMS than most hotels realize. And now, we’ve come even further to the API-first era.

https://www.hotelmarketing.com/articles/50-years-of-the-hotel-pms-and-why-it-matters

Hotels are gaining brand power

The demise of Thomas Cook is a testament to the profound changes faced by the tourism industry. It also contains clues as to its future direction of travel. However, something fundamental did change: brand power. Before the rise of online booking – let alone when Thomas Cook was born in 1841 – travelers relied on the tour operator brand not just for simplicity and peace of mind, but also to ensure a certain level of quality when staying in unknown countries.

https://www.wsj.com/articles/what-thomas-cooks-collapse-says-about-modern-tourism-11569248853

Behind Airbnb’s purchase of HotelTonight and push into hotels

Sam Shank, co-founder of HotelTonight, now heads up Airbnb’s hotel division and spoke about the push last week at the Skift conference in NY. Shank noted that his team is building out the hotel category on Airbnb for the San Francisco-based company, which purchased HotelTonight, an app that popularized the last-minute booking trend, in March.

https://adage.com/article/cmo-strategy/behind-airbnbs-purchase-hoteltonight-and-push-hotels/2198561

The cause and effect of slowing business travel

With geopolitical and macroeconomic issues causing some concern for large businesses, hotel executives speaking during second-quarter earnings calls noted a drop-off in business transient. Global geopolitical issues apparently had businesses feeling anxious in the first half of 2019, and that impacted how much they were willing to spend on employee travel.

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/297668/The-cause-and-effect-of-slowing-business-travel

Managing RevPAR for profits

To assist revenue managers, CBRE Hotels Research analyzed the impact of the components of RevPAR (occupancy and ADR) on changes in profits. Per the name, the historical role of revenue managers has been to maximize revenue – specifically rooms revenue or revenue per available room. RevPAR growth is achieved by increasing occupancy and/or average daily rates.

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/298239/Managing-RevPAR-for-profits

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September 25, 2019September 26, 2019

Is Your Hotel Website ADA-Compliant

ADA or The Americans with Disabilities Act demands that every business need to make sure that customers can get access to the same services, irrespective of how physically capable they are. The Government is taking active steps to make sure that ADA-accessibility extends not only to offline businesses but also to online properties like mobile apps and websites. If you have a hotel website, you have to make sure that it is ADA-compliant, or you could be staring at trouble before long.

Is Your Hotel Website ADA-Compliant

Focus on the text

Your website should have text that can be resized easily. Make sure that there is a high-contrast mode option which can make it easier for slightly vision impaired visitors to read the text. The site should have a text-only option, and all the functionalities need to be accessible via a keyboard for guests with mobility problems. Ensure that there is minimal formatting for the text. Those who experience problems in seeing might be incapable of reading colored text on colored backgrounds or text that is especially small in size. It is best for you to adhere to a common, large-sized font with dark colored text on white background.

Look at the photos and images

The photos must have proper text descriptions. Your social marketing strategies and website videos should comprise of transcripts and audio descriptions for all those who are hearing impaired. There is a text-based analog for all the visual media. The images must have “alt” text for content description. Suitable descriptive text must be added to videos. You can use screen reader software to describe your website images.

Offer accessibility information all through the site

Throughout your website, you have to feature accessibility information. Say a disabled traveler wants to know whether she can arrive and reach his room, get inside, take a shower and sleep and move about without problems, your hotel website should make all the details easily accessible. You have to include full information about how his experience with your hotel property would be upon arrival. You have to describe every space in your hotel, as well as how it would be like to move to and from each space. Mention all possible obstacles along your way, and also specify any inaccessible area.

Keep in mind that room details are not enough. Your hotel site needs to spot as well as describe every accessible area of your property in complete detail – such as the common spaces, the pathways from and to these spaces all through the hotel, the on-site amenities and more. There can be lawsuits in the absence of all these details. Due to this reason, hotel sites have to include entire accessibility content for every area of the property.

After you make all such changes to your hotel website to satisfy ADA guidelines, get your site evaluated by a web development firm that is familiar with all the issues of ADA compliance. Make sure that visitors using screen readers and other assistive technologies can fully access your website content.

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September 19, 2019September 20, 2019

Google Hotel Ads – Beginner’s Guide to Increase Bookings

The huge reach of the internet and social networking websites have changed how people view the world about them. Many travelers are using the World Wide Web and search engines such as Google to know where they can go for their next vacation and which hotel they can stay in. Many of them begin the booking process only after they carry out a Google search. As a hotelier, you have to use SEO best practices in order to boost your chances to get a high ranking on the SERPs. You can also use Google Hotel Ads for proper marketing of your hotel property. Google has undergone an evolution over time and there is a change in how hotels show up in its search results. If you are a beginner, find out how you can use Google Hotel Ads to increase your hotel bookings.

Register for Business View

For people across the world who use the Google search engine for almost every query, Google Street View has turned into an expectation. These days, businesses – including hotels as well as others in the hospitality industry – the Google Business View Tool can be used for displaying the insides of properties.

Capture high-quality videos and photographs

With Google Hotel Ads, you can get the ability to regulate which things show up under your search results. As a matter of fact, you may change the photos that get displayed whenever a user makes a search for a property similar to yours. Keep in mind that Google has very high standards, so that people using it for search queries can enjoy the best information and data. If you wish to feature photos of the insides of your hotel, and add the same into Google Hotel ads that you publish, you would have to post videos and photos in high-resolution and superior quality. The photos have to show your property in full focus, typically in natural light and minus too many filters. The images have to be a minimum of 14MP or higher, so as to be regarded by Google as high-quality. You may also introduce interactive tours into the ad display section.

Advertise special features and offers

While creating an ad copy, you would of course have to highlight all the special features that make your hotel property special and outstanding from the others. Also mention any discounts that you would like to offer. Mention any promo codes or discounts that you are running at present. In case you have recently constructed a new suit or room at your hotel, your description needs to feature that along with photographs of the same in high-resolution.

Use the Google Ad Preview Tool

The Ad Preview Tool from Google is a great way to track your competition. It can help you to confirm whether or not your ads are performing the best, or as expected. You may use particular keywords to check the ads and ensure that these are giving the best results. You need to find out how exactly your ads are showing up before vacationers who are searching for a hotel property similar to yours.

September 19, 2019January 28, 2020

The Week, That Was – September 2019 Week 3

Morocco Enjoys A Positive Year for Travel

The tourism sector in Morocco is experiencing a significant growth. Over 12 million tourists visited the country in 2018. Morocco witnessed an impressive ten-fold increase in Chinese tourist arrivals over the last three years – from 10,000 in 2015 to nearly 180,000 last year.

https://erevmax.com/blog/index.php/2019/09/morocco-enjoys-a-positive-year-for-travel/

Mapping your hotel’s 2020 digital marketing budget

It’s budgeting season, which means your hotel is probably ready to start planning how, when and where you’ll be investing during 2020.

https://www.traveltripper.com/blog/budget-season-tips-mapping-your-hotels-2020-digital-marketing-budget/

Google reintroduces promoted hotels to hotel search

After a brief appearance during 2018, the long-awaited and high-impact product from Google, Promoted Hotels, is back on the front pages of Google Hotel Search.

https://koddi.com/google-reintroduces-promoted-hotels-to-hotel-search/

The Future Of Travel: Hotel game-changers

The annual Radical Innovation competition challenges the hotel industry to elevate the guest experience by calling for new ideas in design and operations. This year, the 13thof the competition, the three finalists were selected from over 50 entries, submitted from 20 different countries.

https://www.forbes.com/sites/angelinavillaclarke/2019/09/15/the-future-of-travel-hotel-game-changers/#7cb75c9b603c

Hotels could look like this by 2034

An interactive hotel room created by Guestline, in collaboration with technology, AI (Artificial Intelligence) and hotel experts, revealed how the hotel of the future will look and function by 2034. The highly accredited experts provided their predictions and valuable insights, to show what we can expect to see in our hotel rooms over the next 15 years.

https://www.traveldailymedia.com/hotels-could-look-like-this-by-2034/

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