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Supranational Hotels Conference 2013

This year’s edition of Supranational Hotels Conference took place at County Hall Park Plaza, London last week. The event meant exclusively for Supranational members offers them the opportunity to network with peers and leading industry figures, participate in seminars on key industry topics and conduct one-to-one meetings with invited consortia and corporate clients.

Chaired by its Managing Director, Cho Wong, the conference witnessed interesting discussions on various topics including Total Revenue Management, Outlook on Corporate Travel, Reputation Management and Corporate RFP.  

Michael McCartan, CEO, eRevMax, one of the speakers at the conference, took the opportunity to announce RateTiger’s selection as the preferred supplier and Channel Manager of Choice by Supranational Hotels.


He presented on The Distribution Landscape in 2013 – outlining the impact online travel has on total hotel bookings. Today, one in six travelers prefer to book online. They visit between 17 – 20 websites and check reviews before finalizing accommodation. Hotels need to ensure they are visible at every important touch point to get customer’s attention. However given the wide variety of channels it is difficult for them to identify the best demand generators from among the ever expanding channel universe.

Further, more channels mean more updates. The only way out is leveraging technology to automate distribution and avoid getting tangled in the channel-web. By utilizing a smart channel manager, hotels can collect and access the multitude of data in their systems to analyze rates, market pricing trends, competitor selling activities, historical and trend information to achieve the best possible room rates from the most desired guests.

Michael shared suggestions and examples on how to drive direct online bookings and how hotels can optimize product value through innovative room packages, new promotions and better positioning across different online distribution channels. The idea was to help hotels deal with the distribution challenge efficiently!

The conference was followed by interactive sessions where I got a chance to speak to member hotels about managing distribution and optimizing revenue strategy through RateTiger solutions.


Cristina Blaj is Sales Manager – UK, Ireland and Scandinavia at eRevMax and has gained extensive experience in the hospitality industry. She is based out of London and can be reached at cristinab@erevmax.com

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Real-time technology lets hotels respond faster than ever

With so many channels to track on a daily basis, hotel companies can’t afford to slip up. On the positive side, technology has evolved considerably to keep distribution and revenue management executives up-to-date in this multi-channel environment. 
Hotel companies continue to pursue a connectivity strategy that provides the broadest reach possible at the lowest unit cost while being as accurate as possible. In today’s multi-channel environment, hoteliers need quick access to hotel-rate data and inventory positions on various sales channels. With online sales bringing increased revenue, it’s vital that hotels proactively manage their online presence and ensure room rates and availability accurately reflect their current status on all sales channels.

The process of doing this manually is now a thing of the past and even having separate pieces of software to manage different aspects of online sales is almost outdated. “Over the last couple of years we have seen increased focus on integrated applications, wherein hotels can do most of these complex tasks through a single system,” says Michael McCartan, chief executive officer, eRevMax International.
Full story on Eye For Travel
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RateTiger Q2 Sales Meet


I attended the recently held RateTiger Sales Meet in Glasgow. This was the first time I attended this event in my new capacity as Sales Manager UK and I found the whole experience to be very rewarding.

The EMEA team gathered in Erskine Bridge Hotel for two days of team building activities, presentations, trainings and a lot of fun. Brainstorming sessions were conducted on current industry trends and detailed analysis of the company’s sales and marketing strategies were shared. We were treated to a professional training session on advanced presentation skills to enhance our expertise.

Our CEO Michael McCartan shared important company and product updates while Keith Watson, Head of Commercial Operations, gave us inputs on new support structure and processes. Casey Davy, VP Sales EMEA, provided the team with useful tips to a more successful sales process, and ran through some administrative aspects of sales, while Ryan Haynes, VP Marketing, shared the upcoming marketing plans and encouraged us to work closely with partners and associations. 

I was given the opportunity to present my recently prepared competitor mapping analysis and I received a lot of kudos for it. All the sessions were productive and it was a great opportunity for us to come together and share a sense of camaraderie.

And obviously the after-hours parties were a complete hit. We were delighted when we found that we have been booked for ‘A Journey with Taste’ going back into the history of whiskey tasting, sampling the products from the top distilleries across Scotland. This was followed by a late night at The Corinthian Casino Club downtown in Glasgow – a perfect closure to the two day marathon meetings!


More fun pictures here 😉

Cristina Blaj is Sales Manager – UK at eRevMax and is responsible for sale of RateTiger products in the region. She is based out of London, UK and can be reached at cristinab@ratetiger.com