Archives for July 2009

US Hotel Industry Recession Enters New Rate Erosion Phase

The United States hotel industry is experiencing an unprecedented downturn. All hotel industry performance metrics, Average Daily Rate, Occupancy Percentage, and Revenue per Available Room have all trended downward over the past year. At the end of June, based on reporting from Smith Travel Research, national average room rates began to drop at a more rapid pace than occupancy percentages, marking the start of a new phase in the recession. The deeper discounting that has begun is on top of rate cuts that have already return average room rates to 2006 levels.

HITEC Presentation – Web 2.0 & 3.0 Impact on Hospitality Technology

The hospitality industry has been relatively slow to adopt Web 2.0 technology, so when asked to speak at the annual HFTP HITEC conference, RockCheetah’s Robert Cole and InterContinental’s MiCharl Robinson decided to look forward to Web 3.0 technologies as well. Breaking the presentation into two sections, the first have reviewed the progression from Web 1.0 through Web 2.0 and onto Web 3.0 including the key technologies and key success factors. The second portion highlighted best practices by firms like Morgans Hotel Group, Joie de Vivre and Imagini Youniverse that serve as leading examples of Web 2.0 supporting hotel customer engagement.