Tag: RateTiger

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3 areas where Hotels need to incorporate big data analytics

If I have to choose the buzz word for the hospitality technology industry in 2015, it would surely be big data. From BI (business intelligence) to BB (Big Data) the shift is definite, and here to stay. Big Data, which Wikipedia defines as ‘a broad term for data sets so large or complex that traditional data processing applications are inadequate’ has become the central to the business strategy of a smart hotelier in the recent years. With the data volume growing about 50% a year, hotels need big data analytics to define and shape consumer behavior, and maximize their efforts to reach, engage and compel target audiences to action.

Monitor your customer at every touch point

Here’s an interesting fact from Google’s recent study on traveler. Almost half (46%) of travellers who carry out mobile for travel research make their final decision on mobile and then turn to another device to make the booking. With users constantly switching devices during the purchase journey, and getting influenced by social media, mobile and other web-based exchanges, hospitality industry is being forced to constantly adjust and refine their marketing strategies. 

Faced with a multi-faceted and multi-platform traveler whose preference would change depending on the type of trip, hotels need to get close to them by capturing prompt, accurate information – and correctly interpreting it – to change the course and outcome of interactions.

Integrate Big Data Analytics into your Revenue Management System

Revenue management is all about selling the right product to the right person at the right channel. Dynamic pricing helps hotels to optimize demand with flexible pricing, however, with the online distribution landscape continuously throwing new challenges, the complexities of managing hotel’s revenue has increased many-fold.  With each channel having its rule, segment, buying behavior and platform, managing rate and availability in real-time to these channels can become a nightmare.  Gone are the days when hotels would depend on historical data for rate forecasting – today’s revenue managers need to consider consumer’s buying behavior, search pattern, social networking habit for right pricing. This is where big data analytics come into help revenue managers include individual consumer behaviors, including loyalty and lifetime value, past purchases of ancillary services, and online shopping activity in their pricing model.

Personalized marketing for maximum benefit

Each customer is different. So treat them differently. According to an Adobe research, about 70% of today’s online buyers expect personalized service from brands. For hospitality industry, expectation is even higher. OTAs, with their scale of marketing budget and technology superiority, has been one of the earlier adopters of Dynamic Content Personalization’ which allows websites the ability to recognize a past visitor, tag them and create personalized, unique and optimized experiences for consumers – finely tuned for each individual preference. For hotels, personalization also gives them an opportunity to serve the guest better, earn loyalty, while gathering 360 degree view of the guest throughout the guest journey to provide more relevant offers, improve communications and increase engagements. Big Data involves the collection, management and analysis of multiple sources of data, both structured and unstructured, while analytics give the insight to optimize the information.

Swapan Kumar Manna is the Sr. Executive – Marketing at eRevMax. He can be reached at swapanm@erevmax.com.


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WTM London 2015: Three hot trends in global travel industry

WTM London continues to be a crowd-puller and a great networking platform and this year is no different for us. During the four days of the event hundreds of hoteliers, travel technology professionals from all around the world gathered at eRevMax stand TT550 to witness the launch of LIVE OSand I personally got chance to interact with them to discuss more about recent trends in the hospitality industry.
Here I find these are top three trends which are influencing the global travel industry at this moment.
Online Travel Leads the Way
Online travel channels (OTAs) continue to outpace other distribution channels, and the two giants Priceline and Expedia dominating the show by no small margin. According to a PhoCusWright estimate, close to 50% of the total OTA bookings are controlled by them. For Europe, the figure is even more skewed, with the duo controlling over 70% of the market. With smartphones and tablets in nearly every consumer’s hands today, bookings from this  channel is growing faster than any other channel, and currently accounts for 12.5% of overall bookings. By 2017, Euromonitor predicts that more than 30% of online travel bookings by value will be made on mobile devices. The emergence of mobile as a serious channel has also forced the hospitality industry to focus on a seamless experience for travellers as they switch devices on the road to purchase. The OTAs have been frontrunner, and with big hotel chains also joining in, it’s only a matter of time before the personalized marketing strategy becomes the norm for the hospitality industry.
Smart Travel is the new regular

As the travellers’ personal preferences are changing constantly hoteliers are also incorporating new technologies to transform the travel experience of their guests. Hotels are now investing on the big data analytics to identify future trends and changing preferences of customers. Analytics also provide a better sense of direction for the hotels to segment guests according to booking trends, behavior and other factors in order to reveal their likelihood to respond to promotions and emerging travel trends.
The understanding guest preferences, purchase behavior like frequency, length of stay, booking channel and profit potential are critical for hotels to increase the brand loyalty and upsell opportunity of their most valuable guests. Global hotel chains are already experimenting with personalized pricing based on customers’ online activity, preferences and predictive analytics. One of the challenges hotels face today is the dependence of multiple systems which produce own reports. A single platform, offering integrations of all technology solutions, and actionable intelligence based on data is the future. 
CPC to CPA
Hospitality industry is constantly evolving – this year we’ve seen big players have changed their business models. Now the travel giants are shifting from CPC (Cost per click) to CPA (Cost per action) model and this is welcomed by the hotel industry due to its cost effectiveness. Recently, TripAdvisor announced Instant Booking feature – now consumers can book their accommodations right from the TripAdvisor site without leaving the booking window. Google has also followed in the same footsteps of TripAdvisor, killing its metasearch site Google Hotel finder. Earlier last month, the search engine giant launched Google Hotel Ads Commission Program allowing hoteliers to take full control starting from a guest’s search process to the completed booking contrary to the OTAs. As in this new meta-OTA model, hotels only have to pay to Google after a successful booking this will help hoteliers to increase their revenue and lessen dependence on online travel agents.
Global Travel is Booming
Though the economic condition across the globe is uncertain due to rising geopolitical unrest, a potential US interest rate rise, oil price volatility and the Eurozone crisis, growth of travel industry were remain the same. In 2014 international tourist arrivals was 1.1 billion up by 4.3% and by the end of this year the figure will be slightly down. Despite recent economic slowdown travel expenditure is rising, with the Asia Pacific region predicted to see the fastest growth in inbound expenditure over the next five years.
The global hospitality industry has become more competitive in last five years. Organizations which are responding quickly to the technology led opportunities are creating new revenue streams and driving higher profits than ever before.

Image Credit: WTM Trends Report
**With inputs from PhoChusWright & Euro Monitor International

Claudia De Leo is the Sales & Marketing Manager at eRevMax. She can be reached at claudiad@erevmax.com






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5 Online Travel Agents shaping the travel industry in the Middle East

Close to 12 million travelers will visit Dubai this year, making it the fifth most popular city in the world for international visit. In spite of the political volatility in the Middle East, the outlook for the hospitality industry in the United Arab Emirates remains strong. The growing importance of Dubai International Airport, which has become the world’s busiest airport in terms of international passenger traffic, has contributed immensely to the growth of the hotel industry in Dubai.



One of the youngest regions of the world with over 50% of the population aged between 18- 34, travel in United Arab Emirates is largely influenced by digital experience. Always connected and eager to research, millennials in the country have become trend setters in the online travel segment. Empowered with easily available information, they are forcing hospitality brands in the region to realign their marketing strategies according to their preferences.


A high spend market, OTA sales in the Middle East have reached USD$3 billion in 2014, representing about 17% of total sales. With 94% of the populating owing a mobile device, there is a clear shift in booking patterns toward mobile and tablet booking devices. Traditionally a last-minute market, the surge of mobile connectivity has also reduced the booking window considerably. Compared to the word average of 23 days, the average hotel reservation lead time for UAE is now a mere 13, one of the lowest. Online travel bookings, which represent 25% of all bookings in the Middle East, are forecast to grow in 2015 and 2016 to reach 36% by the end of 2017 when online revenue is expected to reach $35 billion.
In this article we list out five online travel agents who are playing vital role in shaping the online travel industry in the region.

Booking.com

With over 1000 listed properties, Booking.com is the most popular travel agency in UAE. The Priceline owned OTA major has expanded its listings in the region by about 25 percent over the past year, comprising 200 new properties. Dubai ranks sixth in terms of global inbound travel bookings for Booking.com, and the channel controls over 50% on OTA market in the region. With 166 million unique visitors per month to its website Booking.com still rules the online travel by a large margin over its competitors Expedia and TripAdvisor. The online travel major is not only holds number one position in terms of unique page visits but also in total room nights booking. Every day over 850,000 room nights are reserved onBooking.comthrough its website and mobile apps attracting travelers from both the leisure and business sectors across the globe. Though travelers in this region search their favorite destination, preferred hotel online, but when it comes to bookings, they prefer to traditional travel agents to make a purchase.

Expedia.com

In the last couple of years OTAs in the Middle East has grown rapidly at compound average growth rate of 18% with Expedia.com—the first OTA and one of the key players in the region. In 2012 online travel sales in the Middle East estimated 2.3 billion or 13% of total travel sales. To reach out growing customer base with high disposable income, familiar with advanced technology and excited about living a modern lifestyle online travel agent like Expedia is coming up with new offerings that suit their customer portfolio. With 59.3 Million monthly uniquevisitorsExpedia.com is the third largest online travel agents right behind Booking.com and TripAdvisor. The company has around 800 properties listed in its website and is the second most sought after online travel agents in Middle-East.

In the later part of my article I’ll discuss three more top performing online travel sales channels are shaping the travel industry in the Middle East.

Image Credit: Freepik PublicDomainPictures


Hisham Diab is Sales Manager, MEA/ Africa/ Turkey at eRevMax. He can be reached at hishamd@erevmax.com
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eRevMax’s LIVE event series prove to be a great platform for London hoteliers

As part of the London Technology Week, the LIVE in London event had all the ingredients of a great networking evening. Well, it turned out to be spectacular and how!

eRevMax and Luxury Hotels Groupjoined forces to bring LIVE in London – an exclusive evening event to top city hoteliers at the five star ball room of The Montcalm London Marble Arch last week on June 18.

With over 150 hoteliers in attendance, the evening witnessed educational sessions covering latest market trends, new distribution techniques and consumer behaviour patterns to understand the world of BIG data and how to leverage actionable intelligence by integrating all systems to be operationally managed from one single dashboard!

The event proved to be one-of-a-kind opportunity to interact and build business relationships with top hoteliers, technology solution providers and distribution channels, all unanimously agreeing to the relevance of integrated platforms in today’s business scenario.

The sessions were followed by great peer-to-peer networking over drinks and canapés. The casino table grabbed its share of attention and people enjoyed playing with fun money. The icing on the cake was the big Prize Draw where lucky winners got to take away some valuable market intelligence reports from STR, complimentary product setup from eRevMax and AVQuest, digital marketing audit and revamp of digital strategy by Luxury Hotels Group and other treats for the summer from other sponsors.

The event closed with a thumping applause and rave reviews. A special thanks to all our partners and presenters for their contribution and for helping make LIVE in London a great evening!

Partners and presenters include Luxury Hotels Group, Duetto, Revinate, STR, AVQuest, HoistLocal, Skyware and SnapShot.



Cristina Blaj is Sales Director at eRevMax.  She can be reached at cristinab@erevmax.com

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Top five trends which will shape US Hospitality industry this year – Part II

In my previous article (See Here) I’ve talked about Last Minute Bookings & Mobile Wallet that are the ongoing trends in the US here is the later part of the article.

Don’t underestimate the power of Meta & OTA

In the last couple of years metasearch has become a strong and separate medium for providing hotels more direct bookings – though OTAs still the largest medium for hotels to sell their rooms. But with the launch of InstantBooking by TripAdvisorlast year hotel veterans prophesise this is going to change the concept of contemporary hotel distribution. Hoteliers who were present at the event stated that in the coming future more and more hotels will opt for CPA (Click per Action) model which is more cost effective and gives better ROI. The future of hotel distribution is going to be mix of OTA and metasearch- one is stand for its dominating market share and the later to give more direct booking reducing commission money paid to the OTAs.

Customer Journey: It’s evolving

An eMarketer report states that 4.55 billion people in our planetsown a mobile phone. The global smartphone audience in 2014 was 1.75 billion and by the end of 2017, 50% of world population will have a smartphone. In US alone every people (327 million) own a mobile phone and more than 64% people (182 million) have smartphones – the number simply cannot be denied.   Such tremendous growth of mobile and accessibility of high-speed internet have changed the purchasing behaviour and travel journey of the people.  Over last three years US economy has reached to a stable position after its Great Economic Recession. Now, with more capital flows the middle class millenials continues its surge- spending their money on shopping and travel planning. The tech-savvy travellers with their always connected device are constantly researching about their favorite travel destination, hotels and sharing these experiences on social media. A traveller’s decision is taken much before he/she chooses an accommodation. They look for the right time to get their favourite rooms at right price doing comparison search at the very last moment.


Reputation management: It matters

While exchanging our views at the event I realized one thing in the coming years user generated content is going to be a top priority area for the hoteliers. Currently, there are total 3 billion internet users and 1.96 billion social media users in the world- it is no wonder that key hotel investment trends in 2015 would include the development of one-to-one relationship with guests through reputation management and personalized marketing. Managing reputation is no longer considered about how many positive reviews you have on TripAdvisor. It is about a conversation with your guests and what are their overall views about your property they are sharing on various social media channels.

A recent survey by Laterooms.com suggests that 90% of travellers would avoid booking hotels labelled as “dirty” in online review sites. As an increased number of travellers using Facebook, Twitter to search about hotel information it is becoming crucial for hotel operators to manage their property’s reputation through a reputation management tool. Properties who want to monitor and manage their reputation will need a one-stop solution like RateTiger Review to consolidate all online guest reviews from various travel review and social media websites engaging in one-to-one conversation. If you engage with your guests in a conversation and respond to their needs publicly will definitely help you to win the trust of your guests which will drive more loyal customers for the future.


US travel market is the most diversify market in the world. Future of travel in this country is going to depend upon data-driven strategy.  As travel market is becoming more complex you need to understand various steps of travel journey through semantic analysis based on the available data to take more predictive decision.

Jan Murza is Director of Sales- Americas at eRevMax.  He can be reached at janm@erevmax.com
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Stay Connected with latest news: Update from eRevMax- June 17, 2015

Top five trends which will shape US Hospitality industry this year

The first generation travellers who are connected to the world with internet have become the fastest growing customer segment in hospitality industry. Travellers aged between 18 to 34 comprise the largest and most diverse segment of US population. These hyper-connected travellers are communicating with the entire world in a new way with their always connected device- using laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

See more at: eRevMax Blog

News Trends

THE BATTLE FOR ONLINE TRAVEL CONSUMERS: WHO WILL WIN?

Will the Internet – and online travel in particular – end up being dominated by juggernauts? Do online travel agencies (OTAs) stand a chance in a world where search engines offer e-commerce facilities, and giant retailers get into travel?

See more at: Web In Travel

Pushing Rates: Getting More Out of Every Room Night

The major hotel brands are assembling integrated software systems for their hotels that are stocked with advanced revenue management tools that automate the pricing process as much as possible, allowing operators to be much more strategic in their distribution and room rate decisions.

See more at: Lodging Magazine

Website, GDS and OTA: the right mix in hotel distribution channel investments

Investing marketing dollars in these online distribution channels is becoming essential if hoteliers want to retain customers, improve hotel positioning, and gain a competitive advantage in markets that are sometimes saturated with hotel supply. The Internet has made marketing more measurable and accountable with different metrics and analytics that show the contribution of marketing to the bottom line.

See more at: HVS

Hotel brands must travel cross-channel route to bookings

To engage consumers on their path from discovery to purchase, hotel marketers must sell the way their customers wish to buy and ultimately, that means distributing the brand effectively across all consumer facing touch points.


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Top five trends which will shape US Hospitality industry this year

The first generation travellers who are connected to the world with internet have become the fastest growing customer segment in hospitality industry. Travellers aged between 18 to 34 comprise the largest and most diverse segment of US population. These hyper-connected travellers are communicating with the entire world in a new way with their always connected device- using laptop, tablet or mobile phone.

In the LIVE in New York, an event organized by us to discuss the hotel technology trends, from our partners BookingForce, HRS and roomlia to hoteliers from Hilton, Marriot, Wyndham, Warwick Hotels, Wellington Hotel all talked about the challenges of dealing with the hyper-connected segment. With the advance of technology, the shift towards mobile is dramatic and disruptive. According to a PhoCusWright report around 75% of U.S. travelersown a smartphone and the numbers are continuously increasing with 4 out of 5 mobile travel booking are being made for hotel accommodation. With half the year gone, here are five definite trends that I reckon, are shaping the US hospitality industry this year.

Mobile does not mean last minute

The growing popularity of HotelTonight and BlinkBooking is a testimony to the growth of last minute bookings. PhoCusWright reports that one in four mobile bookings are made at the last minute, where OTAs with stronger presence score high against the brand sites. In fact for every 10 last minute bookings, 7 are being made at the OTA sites. This has prompted major OTAs like Booking.com to invest heavily in this segment. Earlier this year, Booking.com launched Booking Now, a mobile app which lets guests book up to 48 hours in advance.



However, mobile’s influence on traveler goes beyond last minute, and now has impacted all phases of the travel life cycle. Research says, about 37%of US travelers use a mobile device in their trip planning – with a significant majority of them switching between the tablet and smartphone. Interestingly, a significant 27% of the mobile travel audience belongs to the high income category earning over $100,000 per year. Clearly, if you have not yet invested in your mobile channel, it’s high time to do that.

Mobile Wallet: New smart payment option

You might have your hotel in finest location and offer thebest rate on your brand.com site and pride yourself of providing superior facilities to your guest, but have you integrated the mobile wallet?



Today’s modern guests want a hazard free travel experience- expects not to face front desk of the hotel to check-in or pay bills. According to a recent survey by SmartBrief and The Wall Street Journal shows more than 75% US travellers carry a smartphone and 50% travellers carry at least two devices while they are on vacation. This means your guests expect there should be an arrangement so that they can use their technology at your hotel- whether to conduct business, contact the valet, request service from housekeeping or pay from their mobile device. Here comes the mobile payment option which eliminates unnecessary delays. One of the largest hotel groups in the world Marriot Hotels was first to launch mobile check-in and check-out options on its mobile application back in 2013 and now offering its guestsApple Payment option. Another big name in Hotel industry Starwood Hotels is also offering the same service to its guests- now guests have the ability to pay accommodation charges using their mobile wallet, Apple Pay. This means hotel guests will no longer have to carry their credit cards or cash in their wallet. As smartphone going to replace physical wallet more and more hotels in the coming years will implement this medium to enhance their guest experience.

In next part of the article I’ll talk about three more trends which are shaping the US hospitality industry.


Jan Murza is Director of Sales- Americas at eRevMax.  He can be reached at janm@erevmax.com  
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The impact of guest review on Hotel Business – Part II

In my first article (see it here) I’ve discussed about how to understand guest’s emotional journey and hidden story behind guest reviews. Here is the second part of the article.

More positive reviews, more bookings and more revenue
According to a TripBarometer report by TripAdvisor, 90% travelers choose an accommodation based on ratings on a review site and 88% travellers are guided by online reviews and posts on TripAdvisor. Reviews with a rating on 4 – 5 generate more than double the conversion compared to a review with 1.0 – 2.9 rating on Expedia. Hotels that have a higher guest score typically will have better placement on the travel sites.  A better placement on the travel site means more bookings and more bookings mean a higher room rate, and eventually higher revenue for the hotel.  Identify what emotions your guests’ value at the key touch points in their journey with you and also those they want to avoid. No matter how difficult it is if you are not taking care of your guests’ emotion then you are doing a terrible mistake.


Go for Reputation Management Tool
As a hotelier, keeping track of who is saying what on which channel can be a nightmare.. Hence, it is essential to take an analytical approach to understand your strengths and weaknesses as per your guests and take a cohesive approach to address these issues. Guests share feedback on various review and travel sites – all this valuable information lay scattered and unstructured. Online reputation management tools play a big role in consolidating these guest reviews and presenting them to hotels in structured report formats. Usually, these tools pull guest feedback from various review websites including Qype, Holidaycheck, Yelp, Expedia, Facebook, Twitter etc. Data is then compiled together into review reports which include guest details (as it appears on the site) along with their feedback and the rating they provide to the hotel. A strong visible position on guest review websites indicate that your Price Quality Index is working well, that will enable you to make the right pricing decisions based on RevPAR performance.  This will allow the hotel to flex their rates based on a number of pricing strategies depending on booking levels. However, there are no short cuts. It is an evolving process that has to start today! As we move towards the age of consumer controlled brand conversations, hotels need to integrate customer feedback into their business approach and strategy planning.

















Contrary to popular belief, the greatest pitfall to customer reviews isn’t negative feedback. If all reviews are positive, or considered too similar, then the validity of the reviews can be called into question and the credibility of the brand put into doubt. The greatest mistake is actually not responding at all to your negative reviews, leaving your brand exposed and your customers find alternatives who give more attention to their needs.

So what’s the next step? Here are some suggestions for you to optimise the benefit of customer reviews:

– Encourage feedback, both on the brand website and third party platforms.
– Respond to comments quickly, outlining any action planned to address concerns.
– Ensure all reviews are genuine and never consider creating feedback artificially.

– Monitor brand noise across the entire web with regular online searches to ensure all channels are managed.


Francesca Stagi is Sales Manager at eRevMax.  She can be reached at francescas@erevmax.com
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The impact of guest review on Hotel Business – Part I

Being a part of the industry, hotel reviews are something I always take with a pinch of salt. Especially those on the extreme sides.  However, internet is a place for opinions and if many more people join in the chorus to say negatives about a property, then I would rather give it a miss instead of taking a chance. But does that really make it a bad hotel? 
Truth be told, if most people are un-happy with the property, then there must be something wrong with it. Guests are expressing their dissatisfaction as they have had bad experiences. And hotels need to take them seriously. As the first rule of the service industry says customer is the king, and in this age of hyper-internet activity, they rule.


Understand your guests’ emotional journey

While interacting with hoteliers and visitors at ITB Berlin this year, I realized that in coming years personalised content will going to be a priority for hoteliers. With 3 billion internet users and 1.96 billion social media users in the world it is no wonder that key hotel investment trends in 2015 would include the development of one-to-one relationship with guests through reputation management and personalized marketing. As a form of direct communication, customer reviews clearly identify what are the most important things to the customers and what’s not. This also highlights where the hotel is performing well and where there is more room for development. Engaging with your guest in a direct conversation can possibly expose a more personable side of the hotel, build a greater level of trust with the customer and in the course spread a positive brand story. With TripAdvisor now offering direct bookings from their platform, a strong social media presence along with intelligent meta-search marketing can give hotels a real chance of improving, increasing conversion rates.
The Hidden Story within Reviews
A recent survey by Laterooms.com suggests that 90% of travellers would avoid booking hotels labelled as “dirty” in online review sites. Sure, the situation might not be as bad as the guests made it seem, but the hotel cannot prevent the reviewer from expressing his/her opinion. However the beauty of online reputation sites is that most will give the property an option to respond. And it needs to do just that – Respond! More so for negative reviews. No hotel deliberately sets out to create negative emotions for guests, but it happens, and you need to know what those are so you can work out how to reduce their impact on your guests.

As revenue management evolves, it is getting away from simple rate management and is now incorporating customer relations and social media into its strategy. The more satisfied guests you have, the more likely they are to return and spend more money, as well as recommend you to others. Reputation has a positive correlation with the hotel’s overall Average Daily Rate (ADR) and revenue. It’s time now for the revenue management department to work hand in hand with the marketing team, if they are not already doing that.
In my next edition I’ll talk about how positive reviews and reputation management tool can can add more revenue to your hotel.



Francesca Stagi is Sales Manager at eRevMax.  She can be reached at francescas@erevmax.com

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The Big 5 – a look into top performing channels in the APAC region – Part II

There are total 2.92 billion people in the world having access to internet. Nearly half of them or 1.3 billion are from Asia Pacific. Last year, Asia Pacific became the largest regional ecommerce market and now contributes for more than a third of all business to consumer ecommerce sales in the world. The increase in online penetration has changed the travel behavior which traditionally preferred travel agencies, group bookings and in-person sales. Many are now choosing to travel in smaller groups, or even alone and preferring to self-manage travel by booking online.


PhoCusWright reports that in 2012 APAC region surpassed Europe to become the world’s largest regional travel market with US$326 billion in gross travel bookings. Despite slow economic growth and political turmoil in some countries in the region, an average 8% growth is expected this year taking the online travel market to $126billion, which is pretty mind-blowing. With 46% APAC travelers planning to book online, no wonder global giants like Expedia and Booking.com are eyeing for a share of the pie, where regional OTAs still rule.
Consider this – 69% of Chinese OTA market is controlled by three regional travel agencies Ctrip, eLong & Ly.com. In India MakeMyTrip, Cleartrip and Yatra have 60% of the market share. Japan, one of the largest online markets in the region, is dominated by Rakuten Travel.
In this article I list out five online travel agents who are playing vital role in shaping the online travel industry in Asia Pacific.


Agoda, acquired by Priceline in 2007, is the most popular online travel agency (OTA) in five countries, namely Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Philippines, Singapore, Hong Kong and South Korea in South East Asia and the only OTA to hold the top spot in multiple Asia Pacific (APAC) markets as per PhoCusWright.  According to a recent report by Skift, Agoda receives total 30.7 million unique visitors per month of which 14.2% came from Indonesia and 7.8% from India. The channel is gaining preference as a leading site among Asia-Pacific bookers by adding inventory, enhancing mobile functionality and localizing content.
Baidu controlled Qunar.com is the fastest growing online travel agency in China. Qunar, which has its roots in meta-search has been offering bookings on its site. Given most of China’s hundreds of thousands of hotels are independent and previously offline, Qunar is working on a hybrid model – meta-search plus transaction one to bridge the needs between the hotels and the Chinese consumers. The channel now features over 200,000 properties in the domestic market for travel accommodation of which over 140,000 are small independent hotels, B&B and apartment-oriented listings.
Japan’s online leisure/unmanaged business travel market is by far Asia Pacific’s largest. 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, a 100% subsidiary of Japanese e-commerce giant Rakuten 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.
Even though majority of travel booking in Asia still comes from offline, travelers in the region are rapidly moving from offline to mobile and online travel penetration is expected to reach upto 31% by end of this year. PhoCusWright predicts that aggregate mobile travel bookings in China, Japan and India will jump from US$4.6 billion in 2012 to $18.7 billion in 2015. Channels which have been early adapters to mobile travel will be ready for the challenge.
As hoteliers, are you ready to tap into the Asia Pacific market? Are you managing your channels well and keeping them automatically updated with rates and availability on a regular basis? eRevMax is developing 2-way XML connections with all global and regional distribution channels. Contact us today if you want to connect with these channels or want a platform to manage these channels smartly.

Image Courtesy: Hong Kong Street: Frédéric DUPONT – Freepik Images



Christy Toh is Sales Manager at eRevMax based out in Singapore.  She can be reached at christinet@erevmax.com