With the recovering markets, we were excited to see how major trade events in Spain would open. The first major event of the year – FITUR 2011 hosted a total of 10,500 exhibitors from 166 countries and regions in January. It showcased a good representation of hospitality companies and technology providers while the increase in visitor turnover reached 200,000.
Her Majesty Queen Sofia inaugurated the 31st edition of FITUR. This official opening by the Royal family once again proves their unconditional support for the tradeshow and, in general, for the Spanish tourism sector.
During the FITURTECH conference, the discussions focused mostly on topics like online sector, web 2.0, innovative technologies, social networking and video marketing among others. Further hoteliers were also keen to discuss about the market conditions as well as means and ways to improve the Average Room Rate.
We represented RateTiger at the event and had various meetings pre-arranged at our stand. We also attracted a lot of general visitors which gave us an opportunity to showcase the main product line RTSuite and at the same time highlight new tools like RTReview and other additional modules.
It was a well-planned event and we look forward to many more editions of this wonderful event.
Catch all the action at RateTiger stand here in these pictures.
Pilar Sanchez Aita and Cristina Hernandez are Sales Managers at eRevMax and are responsible for sale of RateTiger products in Portugal and Spain. Reach them on pilara@ratetiger.com and cristinas@ratetiger.com respectively.
eRevMax Kolkata played a great game of cricket on 18 December 2010 when they organized the annual Cricket Tournament at the Sports Authority of India grounds. From the start the four competing teams were fizzing and itching to go, ready to battle it out.
The knock out matches were a treat to watch as each team gave its best to reach the finals. eRevMaxians are known for their passion for the game, however on this day, all teams knew that they will have to let their cricket do the talking.
The four teams under the able guidance of Briti S Biswas, Mahendra P Sharma, Sabyasachi Chakraborty and Surajit Kar put up great performances and after some thrilling matches, Sabyasachi & teamlifted the trophy with a one-run winover Mahendra & teamwho finished second. At the award giving ceremony, the winners and runners-up were presented with beautiful trophies while all participants were given participation medals.
After a grand cricket day and irrespective of the game winners, it was the sportsmanship spirit and team bonding of eRevMaxians that emerged as the ultimate winners. I look forward to next year edition of this annual event.
The Sales and Marketing Online was a one-day conference in Warsaw, Poland organized on 16th November 2010. With various sessions focused on online distribution, there were speakers from across the industry including the likes of Daniel Łukaszewicz – HOOBI, Alexander Ryll – Avvio, Jakob Riegger – TrustYou, Brendan May – IdeaS as well as Keith Povah – RateTiger.
RateTiger was invited to present in the Plenum session on “Channel Management” and the presentation title was “How does online distribution help improve Yield Management strategies”. Keith gave interesting examples on how our client hoteliers have leveraged online channel management strategies to increase occupancy and revenue. The presentation by Brendan from Ideas was also very well received and he mentioned how their partnership with RateTiger brings added value to hoteliers.
Over 55 delegates comprising hotel owners, Revenue Managers, Managing Directors and Sales Managers attended the event. The delegates received us very well due to the relevant content of our presentation. We were also invited to conduct a workshop on RTSuite products which was a great success.
The organizers Concept Media conducted a survey and found that 26 hotels out of 55 attending hoteliers wanted to learn more about RTSuite products and RateTiger. Overall it was a great event which provided us with good networking opportunity especially with small to medium sized groups.
The NASSCOM Product Conclave held annually in Bangalore is a confluence of innovative minds and entrepreneurial spirit of the Indian Products Ecosystem. This year, the focus was on “Scaling New Heights – From cloud adoption to lean startup models” and the Conclave took place from 10 -11 November 2010 at Hotel Lalit Ashok.
Among various sessions that formed a part of this conclave, I found Cloud computing – Transformation to the cloud, Building products for Billion Indians, The New Internet: An Economy of Scale and partnership and Product companies’ problem and solution, to be particularly interesting.
I gathered of lot of information and this knowledge would be of immense help to me going forward. Some of my key take-aways include a clearer understanding on various concepts like entrepreneurship, people management as well as virtualization and cloud computing.
Further the event turned out to be a good networking platform and I got an opportunity to meet many like-minded people including some industry colleagues. The interaction with some of the speakers was also very encouraging and I look forward to attending more of such events in the future.
I cannot complete this post without mentioning NASSCOM who did a fantastic job of organizing, coordinating and executing this whole event so efficiently and professionally.
The Kolkata team at eRevMax welcomed Goddess Durga on 7th October through a small evening celebration. We all turned up in our full festive fashions and decorated the office in an attempt to win some coveted prizes.
The festivities started with a cultural song followed by participation from all members for the various competitions which included traditional dance (Dhunuchi Naach), Uludhwani contest, slogan writing and memory games.
The Departmental Decoration trophy attracted a lot of interest and the teams started preparations well in advance in order to conceptualize different themes for decoration. Using an innovative theme and brilliant decoration, the Customer Support team emerged Winners closely followed byRTConnect team who finished second while the Finance team won a special third prize for their tribal Durga decoration.
Sandeep Jha and Anita Guha won Best Dressed Male and Best Dressed Female prizes respectively for their traditional and ethnic attire.
I will cherish this Mahalaya celebration for a long time to come as this was the first time I saw a corporate house allowing employees to celebrate a festival whole-heartedly. It felt as if we all came out of the box and enjoyed the evening to its fullness. We will keep these wonderful moments with us now and forever with the hope ‘Aaschhe bocchor abar hobe’.
Mohua Dey has recently joined eRevMax and is a Sr. Content Executive. She is based out of Kolkata and can be reached at mohuad@erevmax.com
The International Sales Meeting stayed in the home country of RateTiger’s operations office. The team in London traveled south bound to the British coast to my home town Bournemouth, here the rest of the international sales team joined us for four days of intense team building, strategy deliberation and skills development. This was the first time I had been in the same room as all our global reps and it was a great way to learn more about the specific regions and how the marketing and communications campaigns are working.
OurVP International Sales, Keith Povah, organised a very thorough but fun and engaging itinerary. Surrounded by our Management Team and Board of Directors, our sales managers demonstrated their success over the past 12 months and the opportunities that lie ahead.
Our new VP RTCorporate, Keith Watson, told me “The ISM managed to combine the sharing of information amongst a large team with the chance to get to know them better in a non-work environment. The sessions allowed for many different topics to be covered, which for a new starter is a great introduction.” Having only been in his role for a few weeks it seems this was the perfect intro to the madness of the Tiger!
Casey Davy, our UK Sales Manager (while he had to stay home – no international travel for him) said “There were great training sessions to expand and reinforce product knowledge, opportunities for knowledge sharing, and exercises to help develop individual skill sets and overviews of strategic sales and marketing plans. It was also an opportunity for Management to share with the team the big picture, corporate goals, and development within our budding company.”
While our US team did get to travel halfway across the world, from Orlando our Sales Manager Sandy Fanucci also a new member of the team said: “I have been in sales for over 9 years and have participated in many Regional/National Sales Meetings. I have to say this is honestly the first one I enjoyed as much as I did. The meeting format was perfect. Sitting in meeting rooms all day, consecutive days in a row can be very rigorous for someone that’s used to being on the go. So the fact that we got what we needed from a full day’s meeting then a “day break” in between with LOTS of fun was ideal.“
The ‘day break’ she is referring to was a day of Paintball. All members of the team conscientiously participated. The groups, split in two, came out winning four games each – although the hot dogs were much to be desired.
Following the ISM, the team is now back at their desks rapidly working through developments and ideas that came from the session. It’s non-stop for the Tiger!
Ryan Haynes is the Marketing Head at eRevMax and is responsible for driving all PR and Marketing activities of RateTiger and eRevMax brands globally. Ryan is based out of London and can be reached at ryanh@ratetiger.com
Earlier this month, I got an opportunity to host leading Bangalore hoteliers at an evening event organized by RateTiger. The idea was to provide a social platform for hoteliers to connect over cocktails while sharing vignettes of their channel management experiences.
With 25 hoteliers present, it was a cozy get-together with every member being very warm and forthcoming with their strategies, suggestions, challenges and queries. Some of our client hoteliers were present too and were happy to share their experience of new channel management modules that they have been using in RateTiger.
As the evening wore on, everyone embarked on a stimulating discussion on revenue strategies. It turned out to be a productive day for them, they also realized that they have not really interacted earlier and many had met their counterparts from other hotels for the first time. They just knew and viewed each other as competitors and not as industry peers. I was so glad to have modified their outlook and they were appreciative of our effort for having hosted such an interesting meet.
Chancery Pavilion was the chosen venue for the evening and being a RateTiger user they were happy to be part of this event. I look forward to doing similar events in other Indian and Asian cities so as to help Revenue Managers meet up outside work and share their valuable experiences with each other. And with our technology, I am sure we can further help revenue managers achieve increased online sales and optimize revenue.
Sudhir Ghildiyal is Sales Manager – Asia Pacific at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. He is based out of India and can be reached at sudhirg@erevmax.com
On 28th August the Kolkata sky was overcast with dark malevolent clouds which burst into heavy showers on and off. The outfield was wet and there were even puddles across the pitch; hardly an ideal situation to play an outdoor game, let alone a Football Tournament. Try as much as they might but the elements of nature never stood a chance when it encountered head-on, the indomitable spirit of Team eRevMax who were out for a spirited game.
With full attendance from all six participating teams, the game started with much cheer and fanfare. The teams led by their captains – Royal Blue(Suvranshu Mohanty), Dark Blue(Pushparghya Mandal), Olive Green(Surajit Kar), Green (Abdul Hasan), Yellow (Kaushik Kapat) andRed (Briti Sundar Biswas), looked every bit international. And why not? Along with the Kolkata members we had Ragnar Strerath, VP Product from our Germany office and Jorge V Rico, Project Manager – RTConnect from Spain who were here on a business visit. We also had our new French MM who joined the Kolkata office just a few weeks back – Frank Tchere who is originally from Ivory Coast, USA. So it was a team comprising members from across continents and what a beautiful game they played!
After a series of games, teams Royal Blue and Yellow emerged as the top contenders in their respective Leagues. The teams in second position were Dark Blue and Green. After a nail-biting match, Team Dark Blue emerged winner for the third position under the able captaincy of Pushparghya Mandal.
The finale was a nerve wrenching game; it went into extra time, at the end of which both the teams had scored 3 goals each. With no definite result, the referee announced penalty shoot-out. Team Yellow played a tactful and patient game emerging aswinners for the coveted Trophy.
Except for a toe injury suffered by Surajit Kar, Captain – Team Olive Green, the games went pretty smoothly. After an exciting afternoon, Udai Singh Solanki, MD India presided over the prize distribution ceremony and awarded the Champion’s Trophy to Team Yellow and Jorge Rico presented the Runners-up trophy to Team Royal Blue. The Best Goalkeeper title went to Sumanta Pramanik while the Best Scorer title was picked up by Joydeep Chakraborty; Ragnar Strerath did the honors for these two young men.
At the end, what did we all say? eRevMaxians Rock… Long Live eRevMax 🙂
Kushal Dasgupta is Market Manager – Austria, Czech Rep., UK & Ireland at eRevMax and is responsible for providing product training and handling client queries. Kushal is based out of Kolkata, India and can be reached at kushald@ratetiger.com
It was a successful day of training with Paradores after a long road of joint collaboration. The training was organized jointly with Juan Manuel Merino and Javier Blanco from Paradores and Nuria Bermejo, Key Account Manager RateTiger with me coordinating the session.
Over 70 people attended the session at Parador de Alcala de Henares on September 13, 2010, eager to learn and start using our tools. Optimism filled the room with full support to incorporate it as they have the certainty thatRateTiger provides an opportunity to manage their online sales and obtain privileged information to reinforce the strategy of online growth to Paradores group.
Paradores de Turismo is a publicly funded limited company with eight decades of history and which currently manages more than 90 hotel establishments thanks to the work performed on a daily basis by its thousands of employees. Many Paradores properties are located in nature reserves and in historic buildings, such as castles, palaces, convents and monasteries.
One of the aspects that has endured in time and which characterizes Paradores de Turismo is its mission – “Paradores is a tourism policy instrument which projects the image of modernity and quality of our tourism abroad and which contributes to the territorial integration, to the recovery and maintenance of Historical and Artistic Heritage and to the conservation and enjoyment of natural areas, all the while functioning as a driving force behind the set of revitalizing actions in areas with reduced tourism or economic activity.”
A corporation with just one shareholder, the Spanish state, Paradores de Turismo is also an instrument of the government’s tourism policy, as well as a leading company in the Spanish tourism sector which obtains important benefits which nourish the public objectives for which this company was created.
Pilar Sanchez Aita is Sales Manager – Spain & Portugal at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of Spain and can be reached at pilara@ratetiger.com
