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RateTiger @ ITB Berlin 2011

As the organizers describe – “ITB Berlin is THE B2B-Platform for trade visitors – an excellent opportunity to meet business partners and to do business. For all other visitors ITB Berlin is a wonderful possibility to discover the whole world within a few hours.” I completely agree with the event’s definition based on my experience at ITB Berlin 2011.

This year had a buzz like no previous that I had attended – this was my third time in Berlin for this mammoth travel event and no longer did we have people wander past our stand asking us what is channel management? Instead hotels wanted and needed a channel manager. This was such an amazing positive change for us and the industry. 

We had over 6 journalists come by for conversations with us to discuss some of the key trends in social media, new digital sales techniques and integrated channel management technologies. Many were very interested in the NH Hotels implementation of our tools.

Siew Hoon of Web in Travel stopped by and we had a vibrant conversation on how we can best educate hotels and make them into more informed buyers – so it looks like I have a lot of work on my hands to create more content and informative articles.

Among the various topics of discussion, I attended two sessions as part of the hospitality distribution programme; Holiday Hotels and Online Booking Behaviour that showed how the online buyer has changed and should not be stereotyped however it did find that expensive luxury trips are still more frequently being purchased offline – from findings by GfK Research Panels.

I also attended Social Media and Mobile Devices and the types of people using these for booking and research; it was interesting that only a few years ago we were saying that ‘nearly’ 50% of travel is booked online, now we are saying ‘over’ 50% of travellers are engaging with social media and consumer travel reviews that is having a major affect on purchase decisions both before and during the holiday.

We had so much to talk about and so many developments for the business that the discussions were much more diverse than just hotel channel management – this makes me look forward to next year’s event.

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

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Online Revealed, Canada

Online Revealed, the Online Marketing Conference for travel industry professionals has grown rapidly because of its hands-on approach to learning and the pioneering efforts of ‘a couple of chicks’ an e-marketing company that gave birth to this event.

This year Online Revealed celebrated its 6th anniversary at the Sheraton Centre Toronto Hotel. To add to its existing allure, this year it was held in association with the Canadian Tourism Marketing Summit and the Annual Conference of Hotel Association of Canada.

I was invited to be a speaker at a breakout session on ‘Managing Your Online Distribution’, which had a fantastic turnout. During the workshop I covered various topics including online distribution landscape, useful tools for online distribution, finding and working together with online partners, considerations to maximise your online revenue and top tips for selling online. The audience was very interactive which always adds to a great workshop and controversial discussions such as rate parity, commission fees, and online reviews.

It was a great event and I look forward to the next year’s edition.

Casey Davy is Sales Manager – UK at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. He is based out of London and can be reached at


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BAHA: Revenue Management Breakfast Workshop

The Hospitality Revenue Management Community of BAHA organized an open workshop on 4th March 2011 at the Mint Hotel Tower of London.

The aim of this breakfast workshop was to bring together Revenue Managers and those connected to it, to discuss and debate current industry challenges in a way that was lively and participative, yet still challenging and educational.

One of the major challenges facing Revenue Management is the future ‘pipeline’ of talent. Hence the community invited a selection of RM students to give them a chance to interact with current professionals, build relationships with potential employers and gain valuable insight into the realities of the role.

There were 5 workshops held in parallel sessions, namely Long Term Impact of Price Slashing, Customer Relationship Tactics, Total Revenue Management, Centralization of RM and Market Segmentation. My colleague Stefan and I took part in the Total Revenue Management workshop and found it really interesting and worthwhile. We had a great discussion and stressed upon how selling efficiently online can help Revenue Managers achieve targets. We found the event to be a good opportunity to meet industry peers and like all BAHA initiatives, it was well organized.


Sunaina Jagtiani is Sales Manager – UK at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of London and can be reached at sunainaj@ratetiger.com

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BTL

The 23rd edition of Bolsa de Turismo Lisboa (BTL) took place from 23rd to 27th February 2011 after having been postponed from January. The change in dates proved to be a good decision by the organizers as this year’s event saw over 74,000 visitors and around 990 exhibitors, a big jump from all previous editions.

The organizers of BTL were overwhelmed with the response and said, “This year’s success strengthens the position of BTL as a business platform of reference for both professionals (9% increase in national professional credential) and for the public seeking a chance to meet in one place. BTL is today the largest and most comprehensive international tourism fair to be held in Portugal. The date change has proved correct in the areas of internationalization and strategic marketing of package tours for the general public, which corresponded with a great turnout.”

The hotel industry in Portugal is experiencing falling occupancy and RevPar, reason why hoteliers and revenue managers were keen to find ways to boost revenues. We spoke to many hoteliers and helped them with their concerns and queries. I personally consider BTL to be a productive event as I had the opportunity to organize 28 one-on-one meetings with hoteliers and local OTAs to show them the benefits of channel management products. The local media too was interested in meeting with us to gain more information about our products and services.

I have been attending this event for the last four years and I see a growing change in the Portuguese hotel market. Hoteliers now understand the need for a channel manager and are maturing to the concept of online distribution. They are aware of the benefits and ROI they can derive if they leverage the right technologies properly.


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 Madrid and can be reached at pilara@ratetiger.com

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Florida Huddle

Organized at the Daytona Beach from 23 – 25 January, Florida Huddle turned out to be a great event for us.

The event focuses completely on buyer-supplier meetings and is a good platform to meet prospective buyers and close deals. This year’s event saw a turnout of over 350 people which is very good for an event of this size.

The discussions revolved around the hoteliers’ concern over the extremely low ADR in Orlando while Miami and other south coastal areas witness an improvement in performance and rates. More than 200 hoteliers were present and all were eager to find out the best way to take prices up again.

RateTiger’s major advantage this year was our stand’s location in the VIP lounge, receiving a lot of visitor traffic. Jonathan and I managed to meet a lot of attendees to whom we showcased RateTiger and its suite of premium online channel management tools.

From the business perspective, presence at Florida Huddle is always lucrative as it allows decision makers from the buyer and supplier sides to meet directly and cut deals. RateTiger signed many new contracts at the event therefore very successful.

Siobhain McArdle is Sales Manager for south eastern states of USA at eRevMax and is responsible for sales of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of Florida and can be reached at siobhainm@ratetiger.com
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FITUR 2011

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.
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Annual Cricket Tournament, December 2010

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 & team lifted the trophy with a one-run win over Mahendra & team who 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.

Satish Rudraraju
Test Engineer, Kolkata

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Sales and Marketing Online, November 2010

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.

Aldona Kaczmarczyk
Sales Manager, Poland

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NASSCOM Product Conclave, November 2010

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.

C. Dharmaraj
Chief Architect, Bangalore

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World Travel Market 2010

For the fifth consecutive year we have exhibited at this leading industry event. This year saw an increase of delegates by 10% on 2009, a larger excel centre and a completely new layout. Our brand new position within Global Village and a slightly larger stand put us in a prime location close to the Travel Technology area.
The Tiger team of 20 representatives walked the halls to meet hoteliers from all parts of the world accounting for over 150 pre-arranged meetings. Attendees were RateTiger branded with our annual sponsor of the lanyards for the name badges raising the visibility of our attendance throughout the venue.
With our new position on stand GV545 we had much more room and seating to accommodate hoteliers who wanted to discuss products and services or be given a demonstration of our RTSuite product line. Our exhibit was buzzing from the moment the doors opened to the moment they closed with Tiger Time being an effective end of day event. We ran a prize draw to win a very large tiger with people stuffing their business cards in the box to get their hands on the spectacular beast.
Visitors were very keen to get their eyes on the new guest review management tool that had been launched just a few days prior to WTM. RTSuite Review received a lot of interest over the four days; this was spurred by the fact that guest reviews online was the year’s hottest topic, with TripAdvisor stealing numerous large crowds for their presentations and discussions.
The team came away with successful smiles on their faces but with very tired eyes.  Now it’s time to prepare for the next largest event – ITB Berlin.