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.

https://bit.ly/2TXjYgl

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.

https://marketingland.com/google-wants-new-industrywide-standards-to-balance-privacy-and-ads-personalization-265951

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!

 

 

 

The Week, That Was – August 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!!

Business Travel in Europe on the rise: Are you ready?

According to American Express Global Business Travel report, the spend on business travel in Europe in 2019 is expected to grow by over 4.3% making it a focus area for hotels. Here are some suggested channels you need to have in your distribution mix for landing more corporate bookings.

Read More : https://lnkd.in/fUZJ_sv

Today’s empowered traveler views the travel experience holistically

They demand high-quality experiences, competitive pricing across the value chain and expect to be recognized and responded to in real-time according to their preferences or concerns.

https://www.intelligentcio.com/eu/2019/08/13/technology-making-travellers-more-demanding-in-summer-travel-season/

How travel marketers can capture the “momentary market”

Digital transformation has reached a saturation point. Which is why travel marketers should view each opportunity as if it’s an individual market – a momentary market.

https://www.phocuswire.com/travel-marketers-momentary-market

Booking.com expands payment options in quest for “connected trip”

The company is making progress in its vision to create a “seamless, holistic system that gives and does everything for the traveler and makes their lives easier and gives value to them.” The new system apparently allows Booking.com to accept payments in the name of the hotel. That way customers can select the payment method they prefer, removing part of the friction, according to the company’s CEO Glenn Fogel.

https://www.phocuswire.com/Booking-Holdings-q2-2019-earnings

Google My Business launches “Hotel attributes” section

Hotel owners with verified hotel listings can edit their services and amenities in the “Hotel attributes” section of their Google My Business account. By default, Google provides a summary of your hotel’s amenities that customers can view from Search and Maps. Now you can edit this information in your dashboard if you find any of it to be factually incorrect.

https://support.google.com/business/answer/9177958

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!

Business Travel in Europe on the rise: Are you ready?

Despite Brexit and uncertainty over economy in EU, business travel outlook in Europe remains strong. According to American Express Global Business Travel report, the spend on business travel in Europe in 2019 is expected to grow by over 4.3% making it a focus area for hotels. As with the global trend, business travelers want access to best rates and personalized content in both online and offline channels and along with seamless booking experience.

With smart phone being a necessity for today’s traveler, corporate travel has moved to the online space. More and more business travelers now prefer flexibility to search and book accommodation specific to their personal tastes. Over 60% of business travelers in the UK, France and Germany use a mobile device to shop for or book a flight or accommodation. In this article, we look at channels you need to have in your distribution mix for landing more corporate bookings.

HRS

HRS, Germany’s family run online travel agency focusing primarily on business travel, has been steadily keeping its position as the leading booking portal in the region. HRS Group, which controls Germany’s most popular OTAs – Hotel.de and HRS – the Hotelportal, caters to more than 5 million booking customers – over 70% of which are corporate travelers. HRS’s has exclusive contract with over 350,000 hotels — many of which don’t participate in traditional booking channels — gets negotiated rates and HRS’ exclusive corporate discounted rates give them an edge with business travelers. The company provides services to 400 large corporates and more than 385,000 small and medium enterprises. Hotels registered with HRS or Hotel.de can publish their rates and availability across all group platforms.

RoomIt by CWT

An average of 100,000 hotel rooms are booked on RoomIt each day by business travelers. Originally launched with a focus on small to midsize businesses, Carlson Wagonlit Travel’s hotel distribution division RoomIt now caters to large corporates as well, with nearly 1 million providers, including apartments.  The data-driven technology behind RoomIt delivers a one-stop-shop experience with all the rooms, rates, amenities, loyalty bonuses and features necessary to enhance the travel experience. The platform is 100% fenced, and hence corporate clients can access it only through specific login, making it closed for metasearch and public environment.

Egencia

Egencia is the corporate travel solution from the Expedia group. Offering personalized experiences, the channel caters to nearly 2 million business travellers in companies of all sizes. The TMC which initially focused on air travel has been steadily increasing its hotel inventory, which has resulted in a surge in the hotel room-nights booked through the platform. Earlier this year, Egencia rolled out a two-way messaging app through which hotels and travelers can communicate with each other. It is also leveraging Expedia’s relationship with hotels to provide business travelers access to special rates once they’ve booked their flight.

As hoteliers, are you ready to tap into the booming corporate travel market? Are you connected to these channels and keeping them automatically updated with rates and availability on a regular basis?

Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

The Week, That Was – August 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!!

eRevMax expands in the Middle East through technical partnership with Intimus PMS

Hotel connectivity expert, eRevMax has completed 2-way integration with Intimus PMS while offering hotels a wider selection of technical partners in the region. Hotels using Intimus PMS and RateTiger – LiveOS solutions can now manage their online distribution easily from one place removing all manual efforts.

https://bit.ly/2T0M5e2

The true cost of not protecting customer data in travel

For years now, the hospitality business has shared Big Tech’s addiction to customer data. Rather than sell it to advertisers, however, hotels and airlines traditionally use it to personalize travel experiences. Hotels – in particular luxury hotels – collect customer data to build detailed guest profiles, which can include personal preferences, from room, pillow and favorite cocktails, to potentially more explicit guest information.

https://www.phocuswire.com/GDPR-hotel-customer-data

What every hotelier must know about EU’s payment rules

Just as hoteliers have become used to GDPR, another piece of European Union legislation, the Payment Services Directive regulations, known as PSD2, is set to go into effect.

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/297360/What-every-hotelier-must-know-about-EUs-payment-rules

Rise in Mobile Bookings in Middle East Creates New Online Travel Competition

The Middle East traveler has been going digital across all touchpoints of the travel journey, fueling a surge in the online travel market that is projected to reach $15 billion by 2023 across the region. That will mark an increase of 140 percent from current levels, according to research company Mena Research Partners.

https://skift.com/2019/07/23/rise-in-mobile-bookings-in-middle-east-creates-new-online-travel-competition/

Hotel chains demonstrate common B2B eCommerce website blunders

Hotels can earn customers’ loyalty by providing better personalized recommendations that understand their individual price/value tradeoff.

https://go.forrester.com/blogs/hotel-chains-demonstrate-common-b2b-ecommerce-website-blunders/

Amex GBT forecasts modest hotel rate increases for 2020

The Hotel Monitor 2020, published by American Express Global Business Travel, predicts that hotel prices in most key cities will experience only modest rises in 2020.

https://www.hospitalitynet.org/news/4094362.html

Online presence high priority with independent hotels

Trends in how people, and brands, consume and process information online are driving digital marketing strategies for independent hotels. It’s important not only to have an online presence but also to have the proper digital footprint, sources said.

http://hotelnewsnow.com/Articles/297313/Online-presence-a-high-priority-at-independent-hotels

What you need to know about Google Ads’ “Store / Hotel Visits”

Google came out with another way marketers and hoteliers can measure the performance of campaigns through Store Visits or for hotels, Hotel Visits. Hotel Visits can measure whether or not users actually visited your property. Google uses cell towers, wifi signals and more to tell whether or not you’ve actually visited a property and you aren’t just staying next door or across the street.

https://screenpilot.com/2019/07/what-you-need-to-know-about-google-ads-store-visits/

How San Francisco boosted Chinese bookings by 30 percent

Outbound Chinese visitors represent an increasingly important part of San Francisco’s tourist model, constituting 23 percent of international tourist spending in 2018.

https://jingtravel.com/san-francisco-grew-chinese-bookings-30-percent/

Connect with us for your connectivity needs to make the most of online revenue-https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Thanks and have a good day!

The Week, That Was – July 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!!

ARABSOFT completes technical connectivity with eRevMax

eRevMax, the leading travel technology provider, has certified Tunisian PMS developer ARABSOFT after having completed 2-way technical integration. Mutual hotel clients can now leverage the interface to benefit from direct rate and inventory updates to online sales channels and receive reservations seamlessly into their hotel management System, Xlia by ARABSOFT.

https://bit.ly/2M085nW

Deep dive into APAC online travel agencies – Part 2

According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, five of the world’s ten fastest growing tourism cities are in Asia, making it the hot spot for the travel marketers. Propelled by high penetration of mobile, the region has been witnessing double digit growth in online booking, making it a priority region for global OTAs. However, the market is still dominated by local and regional players, even as global OTAs make strategic investments to make inroads.

https://www.erevmax.com/blog/index.php/2019/07/deep-dive-into-apac-online-travel-agencies-part-2/

Google downplays dominant role in travel

If you run a hotel, airline, or online travel agency, and you thought you needed to buy advertisements in Google search or Google Trips, then guess again — it’s probably not as essential as you have long believed because consumers begin their travel searches with “specialist competitors.”

https://skift.com/2019/07/16/google-to-congress-were-not-a-travel-monopoly/

Travelport optimistic about constructing a customer-centric future

The Internet of Things, mobile, Artificial Intelligence (AI), data analytics and cloud computing are combining, to forge a future that’s more customer-centric than anything that’s gone before.

The next generation of systems are not going to own the system of record, but will own the system of intelligence, using data analytics to intelligently connect supply with demand.

https://www.travolution.com/articles/111958/big-interview-the-travelport-architect-optimistic-about-constructing-a-customer-centric-future

TripAdvisor: How reviews impact bookings

The global study, conducted in partnership with Ipsos MORI, polled over 23,000 TripAdvisor users across 12 markets on the use of online reviews and their role when booking hotels, restaurants and experiences.

https://www.traveldailymedia.com/tripadvisor-how-reviews-impact-bookings/

The basics of keyword research for Search Engine Optimization: a guide for hotels

There are a lot of factors that contribute to SEO success. But in short, search engines make it a priority to provide the best content for users based on a given query. This is often referred to as “intent-based search” and it’s at the heart of Google’s machine learning algorithm.

https://bit.ly/2GkMzqx

Could your hotel’s channel strategy be costing you direct bookings?

Hotels of the past faced serious challenges in driving occupancy, with static and siloed inventories spread across a number of third-party partners. A solution to this was to use wholesalers, whose objective was to give travel agents competitive B2B inventory and provide reach all over the world to facilitate bookings.

https://triptease.com/blog/could-your-hotels-channel-strategy-be-costing-you-direct-bookings/

BCD Travel unveils new version of TripSource app

The app will now include self-service features, pre-trip planning and booking, improved design and navigation and will be made available to all travellers in mid-July 2019 in over 113 countries and in five languages.

https://www.traveldailymedia.com/bcd-travel-unveils-new-version-of-tripsource-app/

How hotels should adapt to Google Travel and intent-based search

Today, if you want your hotel website to move up through the search results, you need to give travelers what they’re really looking for. You need to match their intent. There’s another reason why Google has stopped rewarding keyword-focused content. PPC and display ads convert at a higher rate when they match a person’s intent.

https://www.traveltripper.com/blog/how-hotels-should-adapt-to-google-travel-and-intent-based-search/

Google experiments with hotel room booking module placement

Changes could be coming soon to the layout of Google’s hotel search as the company tests some modification on its room booking module. According to Koddi, if Google pushes this change live to a wider set of traffic and device types, this would allow travelers to see a greater variety of information and options for hotels within the same view.

https://koddi.com/google-experiments-room-booking-module-placement/

Connect with us for your connectivity needs to make the most of online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Thanks and have a good day!

 

Deep dive into APAC online travel agencies – Part 2

With increasing disposable income and expanding tourism, Asia Pacific has become the fastest-growing regional travel market. According to the World Travel and Tourism Council, five of the world’s ten fastest growing tourism cities are in Asia, making it the hot spot for the travel marketers. Propelled by high penetration of mobile, the region has been witnessing double digit growth in online booking, making it a priority region for global OTAs. However, the market is still dominated by local and regional players, even as global OTAs make strategic investments to make inroads.

In our series on Online Travel Channels in APAC, we have looked into major players shaping the digital travel space. In the first article of the series, we have discussed the giants in the region – Agoda, Ctrip and Make My Trip and their secret sauce to success. In this second part, we will be focussing on local players who are dominating the online travel space in their respective regions.

Fliggy

Fliggy (formerly known as AliTrip) – the travel booking site from Alibaba, is an important player in the China focusing on the upmarket segment – particularly the travel aspiring millennials and international travellers. Of the 10 million daily active users on Fliggy, 80 percent are millennials with college degree living on tier-1 and tier-2 cities – giving the platform a unique exposure and reach. Alibaba has also positioned it as a “premium” travel booking site focusing on outbound travel. The site is designed as youthful, refined, geared toward long-haul, leisure, experiential, as well as luxury trips, rather than the usual to short-term or domestic business travel. From its partnership with Marriot group to getting Booking.com to launch a flagship store on its platform, Fliggy has been making a series of strategic partnerships to create a global brand. Leveraging Alibaba’s ecosystem, which is used by 699 million mobile monthly active users, the platform is positioning itself as a travel marketplace covering the 360 degree of travel to provide consumers with better travel products and service experience. This means a traveller with high purchasing power can plan and book their travel on Fliggy, buy additional items necessary for travel from Alibaba owned e-commerce site Taobao while using Alipay for transactions, ensuring a seamless user experience throughout.

Rakuten Travel

Japan’s online leisure/unmanaged business travel market is the second largest in Asia Pacific region. Founded in 2002, Rakuten Travel is one of Japan’s largest online hotel reservation website with over 3.7 million room nights booked per month. The channel receives 5.34 million unique visitors every month. The firm has access to more than 20,000 domestic and 15,000 international hotels and has a presence in South Korea and China. Rakuten Travel, which is the most popular OTA in Japan, is owned by Rakuten Group, which provides more than 70 e-commerce services beyond travel. The group, often compared with Amazon connects services within its ecosystem enabling users to access all services within the system by using a single login ID, and the same loyalty program for a seamless experience. The company has invested heavily into artificial intelligence and big data for understanding changing consumer behavior and effective personalization.

Traveloka

Traveloka, one of late entrants in the market and founded by three friends in Indonesia, is one of the biggest success stories in the online travel space in South Asia.  The channel which offers flights, hotels, trains, tours & activities, transfers and packages is present in Southeast Asia’s six primary markets — Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Vietnam and the Philippines. With the introduction of PayLater, an online credit system without the need for a credit card, Traveloka is poised to make further inroads into the region where relatively low penetration of credit / debit card has remained a hindrance to online payment. The channel is also actively pushing into the lifestyle category and has recently rolled out a discovery platform featuring restaurant and wellness activities. The Traveloka mobile app has been downloaded more than 30 million times, making it the most popular travel booking app in the region. With Expedia’s investment into the channel making it the first billion-dollar start-up in Indonesia, the company has been adding more products and services including bundles to mobile applications to make it a one-stop-shop for customers to book and redeem travel themselves.

As hoteliers, are you ready to tap into the Asia Pacific market? Are you managing these channels well and keeping them automatically updated with rates and availability on a regular basis?

Reach out to us for your connectivity needs to make the most of your online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

 

 

10 Tips for Hotels to Improve Operational Productivity by 60%

Here’s a quick guide for hotel owners looking to improve business ROI. Check out the top 10 tips to see how you can increase your property’s operational efficiency by 60%.

It can be quite an ordeal to run hotels, especially small hotel businesses which have limited staff but various functions to manage. You may be looking to improve the operational productivity to boost your hotel revenue, but don’t know how. Here are 10 tips that can help you boost the productivity of your hotel operations by as much as 60%.

Invest in technology

Adopt useful hotel management software systems, such as PMS (Property Management System), rate shopping and channel management tools, which can help streamline online distribution and reservation management process for you. These can save time by automating various daily operations.

Track your customer service performance

Try to evaluate how fast you can address the issues and requests of your guests. With good customer service, you can resolve issues efficiently and quickly.

Associate the actions of your hotel staff to its overall performance

You must show to your staff that all that they do each day has a big impact on the efficiency, productivity and revenue of the hotel. When the workers feel important, they get motivated to perform even better.

Encourage communication

Establish an email message group, set an open-door policy and hold regular meetings to promote staff-to-staff and staff-to-management communication, for better team cohesion.

Use Accounts Payable (AP) automation

It takes a lot of time to process invoices, and you can save this by automating your AP (accounts payable) processes. It can offer the best ROI for hotels of any size.

Offer incentives

Incentives are natural motivators for employees in any organization, and it inspires them to work hard and earn it.

Move to a cloud-based system

Shift to SaaS based system which allows you to manage your solutions from anywhere, anytime. The increase in mobility will help you manage operations efficiently, serve guests better and boost your overall productivity. Back-office operations can be handled more efficiently.

Go paperless

You can obviously improve productivity by reducing the number of hours you go through your papers. Go paperless, and digitize every document in a computer and storing them on the Cloud.

Reduce the work load

Find out which tasks take the longest to be completed, and outsource the same. If possible, you might even consider eliminating them completely.

Get insightful reports

Create a hierarchical structure, where every team leader report into the General Manager who in turn gets a bird’s eye view into the entire operations and can thus provide insightful inputs for the hotel owner.

Connect with us for your connectivity needs to make the most of online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Indonesian aparthotel improves online sales with eRevMax

The Malibu Suites – Balikpapan, an Indonesian aparthotel has improved its online sales with efficient rate and availability management through RateTiger. The property offering 35 serviced apartments in Borneo Balikpapan, has been using RateTiger Channel Manager since 2018 to manage all its online distribution channels in real-time.

Managed by Sissae Living, the Malibu Suites, has begun its operations in the business town of Borneo Balikpapan in February 2018. Primarily catering to business travellers, it is important for the property to connect with leading global and regional OTAs for maximum exposure. Prior to RateTiger, the Malibu Suites was managing the OTAs manually.

“It was difficult to distribute and manage rate and availability across channels. We also wanted to connect with more channels to improve our visibility,” said Frank Inakoe, Director, The Malibu Suites by Sissae Living.

Recommended by their Booking Engine provider, the Malibu Suites signed up for RateTiger Channel Manager in mid-2018. The cloud-based solution hosted on LiveOS, is helping the revenue management team to update rate and inventory (ARI) across all connected travel channels and receive reservations directly into their hotel management system. They are also monitoring their booking and production performance in real-time from the dashboard.

“With RateTiger, we found an easy way to manage our room availability and rates across all our channels from a single dashboard. The 24 hours support is always there for any assistance we need,” commented Frank.

The Week, That Was – February 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!!

HospitalityUnited.Club announces its signature Cocktails & Conversation event in Berlin

HospitalityUnited.Club, a consortium of travel technology companies, brings back its classic Cocktails & Conversation event to Berlin in March. The Club will be hosting an exclusive evening for hoteliers on 7th March 2019, in partnership with Cendyn, Fornova, Hotelbeds, LiveOS, RateTiger, Roiback and Sojern.

https://bit.ly/2XdYEEG

Expedia announces Certified Technology Partner Program

Expedia Partner Solutions (EPS) has launched its Certified Technology Partner Program, an elite program for EPS’ top technology partners from around the world.

https://bit.ly/2GVY09e

Experimenting with the future of business travel: three hypotheses

There are three clear hypotheses that the business travel industry should be experimenting with to be truly customer-centric in the future.

https://www.egencia.com/public/us/experimenting-with-the-future-of-business-travel-three-hypotheses

Growing travelling population shaping the future of the hospitality world

Demographics and growing economies are changing the shape of future travelers in the world. What factors is the future of hospitality looking to deal with? Within the next decade, the number of households making at least US$ 100,000 annually will increase by 30 million, with one out of three of these households located in emerging markets.

https://www.hotelmarketing.com/articles/growing-travelling-population-shaping-the-future-of-the-hospitality-world

Distributed ledger technology can bring rate parity to hotel distribution

The last few years have seen a steady rise in the impact of rate parity and onward distribution issues on hotelier’s bottom line.

 https://www.phocuswire.com/Distributed-ledgers-rate-parity-hotel-distribution

Connect with us for your connectivity needs to make the most of online revenue- https://goo.gl/3gKUJZ

Thanks and have a good day!

 

2019: Time to relook at your Hotel Cancellation Policies

With ‘Free Cancellation’ almost becoming a norm with major OTAs, high cancellation rate has become a source of major concern for hotels. Cancellation is not at all welcoming for the host, and sometimes for guests as well.

For a long time, hotel industry has been fairly flexible with the cancellation policies. However, with the popularity of meta-search sites, even after booking, consumers now keep track of room rates. Whenever there is a drop in the room rates of the booked hotel or it’s competing properties, guests often cancel their existing reservations and rebook.

This high cancellation rate especially closer to the arrival has a major impact on the hotel’s revenue management decision where often inflated estimation of potential occupancy level leads to sub-optimal rates and lost revenue.

In the last few years, major hotel chains have been relooking at their cancellation policies and developing a strategy to address the changed consumer behaviour. While some hotels have followed the airline way, and introduced non-refundable early-bird rates, some have extended the cancellation cut-off. Empowered with comprehensive reservation data sources, including cancellation information, and analytics, hotels are now making thorough assessment of cancellation cost to hotel’s revenue and fine-tuning their cancellation policies in a strategic way. If you are planning to re-work your cancellation policy, here are some tips you can consider.

Limiting the Cancellation Period

Free cancellation is a major draw, especially on OTAs, to attract potential guests. However leading hotel groups are now extending the cancelling notice period from existing 24 hours cut off to 72 hours. Guests who cancel after that are charged with a penalty which varies from the cost of one night’s stay to total booking amount.

Variable Policy

Many hotels are now adapting to a dual strategy where there is a non-refundable rate and relaxed cancellation policy for premium rates.

Partial Payment for Guarantee

High-demand hotels often charge one night’s stay immediately after booking and debit the rest of the amount closer to the arrival while enforcing a strict no-show / cancellation penalty. While booking, guests are made aware of these finer points and as a result think twice before going for cancellation.

Vouchers instead of refund

Boutique hotels and resorts are now adjusting their cancellation policy in a way where for a last-minute cancellation, instead of a penalty, or refund, they are offering a voucher which the guests can use for a future booking within a stipulated period of time.  It’s often a win-win situation where the hotel gets the revenue and the guests the option to modify their plans.

Loyalty member specific cancellation policy

Some hotel groups with their own loyalty programmes have designed member-exclusive cancellation policies where loyal guests are given the flexibility to cancel their stay at the last minute even as other guests have shorter window. This benefit additionally gives hotels another opportunity to improve their loyalty programme which eventually results in more direct bookings.

No Cancellation

While some hotels do have this policy, in the age of online booking and price-comparison sites, this policy is tending to lose its acceptance.

The choice of cancellation policy depends on the dynamics of the market, hotel size and categories. For a business hotel, it’s is very difficult to implement a strict cancellation policy, whereas high-demand leisure resorts can afford to do so.

For years the hotel industry has been relying on a cookie-cutter approach when it comes to their cancellation policy. It’s time for change. Monitor your reservation sources and identify channels where the cancellations are coming from. Based on their data, hotels need to create cancellation policy terms for each rate-category, plan and channel. An advanced system like RateTiger, for instance, allows restrictions and cancellation policies to be assigned and updated for different rate plans on OTAs. The reservation delivery options immediately notify hotels whenever there is a cancellation, making it easier for them to allocate inventories accordingly.

Invest in a system which helps you to optimally manage your revenue and distribution efforts and save time to focus more on strategy.