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.
What is Hotel Booking Engine?
The Internet Booking Engine or Hotel Booking Engine is an application that allows customers to book online directly on the hotel brand website.
What is a Hotel PMS?
PMS or Property Management System is a software solution which can be installable or cloud-based for managing hotel operations like handling guest profiles, check-in and check-out, occupancy management, checking room availability and bookings.
The Week, That Was – November 2019 Week 2
Russian upscale hotel recommends RateTiger for optimizing online revenue
Russian upscale property Petro Palace Hotel has recommended RateTiger, powered by LiveOS, for stable connectivity with online sales channels and competitor rate intelligence. The hotel has been a long-standing customer of RateTiger, using Channel Manager and Shopper for its online distribution.
https://bit.ly/2XkNf6A
Wholesalers impact on corporate hotel bookings
A study from American Express Global Business Travel and GfK finds that as many as 40% of US business travelers book outside of policy. This is not good news for hotels that still agree to static net rates, because as wholesale rates start to appear on the CBTs, these hotels will find their negotiated direct corporate rates undercut yet again.
http://www.eyefortravel.com/distribution-strategies/hospitality-staying-open-race-bottom
TripAdvisor: Trip.com deal ‘exciting opportunity’ in China
The strategic partnership between Trip.com Group, the company formerly known as Ctrip.com International, and TripAdvisor includes content agreements, a joint venture and a seat on TripAdvisor’s board for Trip.com Group.
Google pushes travel websites down in free search results
Google dominates the online search market, with at least three quarters of the market. People use the search engine to research trips, so for at least a decade online travel agents have refined their websites with trustworthy content and easy booking tools to show up high in Google results.
Booking Holdings sees brand collaborations as key to restoring growth on steroids
Are online travel agencies’ glory days, when revenue was growing 25 or 30 percent and room nights booked were jumping at similar clips, long-gone history? Is today’s competition in online travel, with Airbnb breaking through and Google asserting itself ever-more intensely, too rigorous to replicate the robust growth of a few years ago?
Business Travelers Sentiment Remains Strong With Most Frequent Travelers Wanting Even More Travel
Business travelers remain optimistic and sentiment remains strong despite economic headwinds in some parts of the world. Senior-level business travelers including senior/executive management (74 percent) and directors (77 percent) agree the health of the economy is excellent, according to the second wave of research out today from the GBTA Business Traveler Sentiment Index™ in partnership with RoomIt by CWT™, the hotel distribution division of CWT.
https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4095846.html
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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.
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.
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.
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.
Get Hotel Room Distribution Management and Channel manager software.
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.
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.
The Week, That Was – September 2019 Week 1
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!!
Hoteliers take a harder look at how they set room rates
Amateurs cut rates to fill hotel rooms. Pros take more sophisticated approaches, such as coordinating to stimulate demand from the most profitable customers. Revenue managers tend to focus on price-setting. Sales and marketing teams typically look at stimulating demand, such as by running email marketing campaigns or advertising on search engines like Google.
https://skift.com/2019/09/03/mgm-resorts-bet-on-rate-setting-tech-catches-notice-of-rivals/
Metasearch: What hotels get wrong
Metasearch is the industry’s fastest-growing distribution channel, yet many hoteliers still struggle to match the success of OTAs on the platform. So what are hotels doing wrong? In this latest webinar, Dr Jan Sammeck, Director of eCommerce at Deutsche Hospitality, discusses the twelve biggest mistakes hotels are making in their meta strategy.
Listen the recording – http://email.triptease.com/yoLV8mES0O03DJf05D00020
Hotels embrace role as curators of niche products
One of the most interesting opportunities for hospitality brands is to be a new and intimate discovery channel for consumers. This idea is nothing new, of course. Brands have been placing themselves in hotel rooms for ages: Aesop likely owes some of its initial rise to being placed in the rooms at Park Hyatt Tokyo before anyone knew the brand. The taste-making audience who stays there helped with global pollination at an early stage. It was old-school seeding. Right people, right context, new-feeling product. Magic can happen from that.
https://skift.com/2019/09/03/hotels-embrace-role-as-curators-of-niche-products/
Booking.com, Skyscanner, Ctrip and TripAdvisor join travel sustainability pact
Booking.com, Skyscanner, Ctrip, and TripAdvisor, alongside payment giant Visa, have come together to form Travalyst in an effort to “mobilize the travel industry as a catalyst for good, aiming to transform the future of travel for everyone.”
https://www.phocuswire.com/Sustainable-tourism-online-travel-launch-Travalyst
2020 Budget season tips: Mapping your hotel’s digital marketing budget
Should we invest in search marketing, display advertising, and/or metasearch advertising? In truth, there isn’t one standard way to divide your marketing budget up – it really varies from property to property. However, adopting a multi-channel approach is best to expand your reach and target different customers throughout their travel journey.
Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ
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Bahrain – Middle East’s new hotspot
For a country of 1.4 million people, Bahrain,the small island nation in the Persian Gulf, receives about 16 million visitors every year. Driven largely by business travel, Bahrain has recently witnessed a surge in leisure travelers which together is expected to place the country’s tourism industry on track to reach its $1 billion 2020 target. The tourism sector is one of the key investment sectors and contributes 6.3% to the country’s GDP, and is set to grow significantly, as the number of visitors and leisure activities increase.
A popular destination for neighbouring countries, Bahrain has aggressively promoting tourism in the Indian luxury segment and has also emerged as a prime wedding destination. the occupancy of Bahrain’s five-star hotels stood at 53 percent during the quarter, compared to 50 percent in 2018. In the first quarter of 2019 the total number of nights by tourists reached 4.1 million nights, an average of 3.3 nights per tourist.
Online travel is growing significantly in the GCC driven by high penetration for smartphones and adoption of e-commerce. Online travel bookings represent approximately 32% of the overall bookings which is projected to reach 40% by 2021. Bahrain, which has almost 100% internet penetration, makes it an attractive option for hotels to sell more on online.
Hotels are increasingly adopting to the technology. According to a recent study by eRevMax, hotels in the region now use at least three travel technology applications. In lieu with the growth in online bookings, Channel Manager or OTA connectivity solution has become a must have to manage online sales channels.
As the online travel market becomes the key component of tourism ecosystem in the GCC, it has open up new digital opportunities for hotels to engage with their consumers and the rapidly growing young segment of the GCC population.
Bahrain is now a perfect hot spot for every nationality Americans, Europeans, and Middle Eastern travelling in the region. As a travel destination, Bahrain is perfect for all; from families with children to even solo women travellers.
Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ
Source – *voyagersworld, travelwirenews, arabianbusiness,zawya, economictimes
The Week, That Was – August 2019 Week 4
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!!
eRevMax announces strategic partnership with Indonesian hotel technology provider HUNTECH
Indonesian hotel technology solution provider Huntech has signed a strategic partnership with eRevMax to offer RateTiger as a preferred channel manager to its affiliated properties. The agreement makes Huntech the official provider of RateTiger Suite, the industry’s leading distribution platform with smart channel connectivity, market intelligence and revenue management capabilities.
Hotel sourcing in 2020: What’s really changing?
Some companies have made headlines recently by declaring traditional sourcing models dead. However, there are still some practices that will remain the same, according to CWT. There are exciting changes coming to the sourcing world in 2020 including new rates worth exploring, tools that will make data collection and analysis easier, and methods that will improve negotiations.
https://news.carlsonwagonlit.com/blog_posts/hotel-sourcing-in-2020-whats-really-changing-85618
18 ways to boost hotel bookings
Net Affinity shares 18 tips together that will help you get more bookings and, in turn, more revenue.
https://blog.netaffinity.com/18-ways-to-boost-hotel-bookings-and-get-more-revenue-2/
Google wants industry-wide standards to balance privacy and ads personalization
Google is seeking to navigate a middle path that balances privacy and user control over data and personalized advertising, which the internet has become increasingly dependent on.
How hoteliers create, monetize the guest experience
The hotel industry is in an era where experience matters most to guests, which is why it’s important for hoteliers to find ways to create great experiences from the travel search phase to hotel arrival while making those efforts profitable.
http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/297681/How-hoteliers-create-monetize-the-guest-experience
Social preferences of young business travelers
Hilton Hotels & Resorts released new survey findings uncovering the travel highs and lows for young professionals, ages 23-35, who attend meetings while on the road.
The survey revealed that while young business travelers prefer a buzzing social environment and in-person interactions during regular work hours, they would rather spend their evenings on their own.
https://lodgingmagazine.com/survey-reveals-social-preferences-of-young-business-travelers/
What’s next for Google’s expansion into vacation rentals?
Google is constantly improving its offering, so it wouldn’t be a stretch to imagine that Google could open up the Book on Google addition of Hotel Ads for rentals.
https://www.phocuswire.com/google-vacation-rentals-whats-next
How should my hotel market to “Bleisure” travelers?
Travelers, on average, are adding on 2-3 days of leisure travel on top of a business trip, resulting in more revenue for a hotel and filled inventory on days where occupancy slows down.
https://screenpilot.com/2019/08/bleisure-travel/
Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ
Thanks and have a good day!