After radically cutting costs and deferring projects to survive the recession hotel groups are relying on technology to help them maintain operational efficiencies and keep costs low as business volumes return to normal. This hotel industry survey asks for the top business and information technology priorities, plus how any gaps will be bridged over the next 36 months.
Hotel Industry Survey – How to Align Business and Technology Priorities?
April 13, 2011 By 1 Comment
Mobile Marketing Best Practices – HSMAI Resort Special Interest Group
February 2, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Presentation at Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association International (HSMAI) Resort Best Practices Meeting by Robert Cole of RockCheetah. Key areas covered include the current mobile landscape, why mobile dramatically changes the playing field and how the splinternet introduces deployment and measurement challenges. Traveler Engagement must be considered before technology decisions can be made. Future implications are simply described as changing Anytime/Anywhere to Everytime/Everywhere.
2010 Unsuspecting Travel Hero and Travel Zero Awards
January 19, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Enterprise Rent-a-Car’s Seattle location received the 2010 Unsuspecting Travel Hero Award for providing a completely unexpected, pleasant, efficient and highly personalized experience with the typically mundane task of picking up an off-airport rental car. In a year highlighted by stays in luxury hotels, flying first class and endless discussions of how travel experiences can be improved, it is obvious that great service delivery and exceeding customer expectations still reigns supreme. Recognized for undermining its fundamental brand promise by gutting its hotel ratings policy, Hotwire received the 2010 Unsuspecting Travel Zero Award. Hotwire’s new hotel ratings criteria not only replaces formerly clear and detailed descriptions with ambiguous and nonsensical drivel, but creates loopholes for the company to sneak lower quality hotels into higher categories. Hotwire’s leaders should be ashamed of confusing what they apparently thought was cleverness with outright customer hostility.
Five Year US Hotel Occupancy – Average Rate – RevPAR Comparison
January 7, 2011 By Leave a Comment
The US hotel industry is recovering but still has considerable territory to cover before regaining the profitability seen in 2007 & 2008. To offer a more complete picture of the US hotel industry as a whole over the past five years, below are full year-over-year comparisons of the three bellwether metrics for the global hotel industry: Occupancy Percentage (Occ), Average Daily Rate (ADR) and Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR.) Additionally, a linear presentation of the same data is provided to more clearly illustrate the trends over time. Finally, the peaks and valleys for each metric are provided. This information clearly depicts the US hotel industry as showing marginal improvement over the depths of the recession in 2009, but far from nearing the heady performance of 2007 & 2008.
What’s Wrong With the US Hotel Industry Recovery?
December 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment
While the US hotel industry recovery is being highlighted by occupancy growth relative to 2009, considerable ground remains to be covered to attain the occupancy, pricing and profitability levels of 2007 & 2008. At the present time, the hotel business is hovering around 2006 levels. The combined effect of the economic downturn, increased share of online travel agencies and the related merchant model, plus a reduction in US government per diem rates will continue to create challenges for industry rate increases moving into 2011.
Future Lodging Trends and Emerging Technologies – Wisconsin Hotel and Lodging Association
October 26, 2010 By
The closing keynote address for the Wisconsin Hotel & Lodging Association, Future Lodging Trends and Emerging Technologies, targeted the rapidly changing business landscape and the need to address many fundamental changes impacting marketing and technology. Topics covered included: Web 1.0, Web 2.0 & Web 3.0; Four Traveler Mandates; Five New P’s of Marketing; Six Business Impacts and the Seven Phases of Travel. The WH&LA Annual Conference and Tradeshow was held at Hotel Sierra in Green Bay, Wisconsin on October 26, 2010.
Hotwire Breaks Brand Promise by Gutting Rating System
October 25, 2010 By 3 Comments
Hotwire has undermined its brand promise by removing the specific criteria from its hotel ratings used to differentiate hotel classifications. Additionally, by benchmarking hotels using competitive online travel sites with incompatible rating scales, Hotwire may inaccurately classify hotels. In the example provided, Hotwire staunchly defends its flawed rating process for a hotel that it rates higher than sister websites Expedia, Hotels.com and TripAdvisor. Worse yet, these policies and processes have caused them to lose their customer service focus.
When Will Hotels Get Serious About Protecting Guest Information?
August 26, 2010 By 2 Comments
Since the days of roman highways, the foremost requirement of the hotel industry has been preserving the safety and welfare of its guests. In modern times, this task applies equally to the guests themselves, their belongings and also, their personal information. Hotels spend millions convincing travelers to stay with them, but are the underlying systems […]
Orbitz Improves Its Hotel Search – Is It Enough?
August 10, 2010 By 5 Comments
A recent Orbitz press release touted “Orbitz Launches Groundbreaking Hotel Search Experience with Industry-Leading Property Comparison Features.” In reality, the changes are incremental, mostly derivative and unfortunately not significantly innovative. With Orbitz indicating that growing its hotel business is a top priority, they need superior product functionality to climb back up to last year’s second place share of unique visitors from this year’s fourth place share. While the enhancements give Orbitz functionality similar to its competition, its price guarantees remain the most customer friendly in the industry.
Hotwire Expands Menu – Adds Bed Choice
July 20, 2010 By Leave a Comment
Hotwire appears to be testing the ability for travelers to select a specific bed type from participating hotels offering opaque product with its new Bed Choice option. This move benefits travelers by offering greater choice, and hotels with the attractive capability to upsell. This further differentiates Hotwire from Priceline who has not fundamentally changed its Name Your Own Price hotel product since its inception. A greater question is how this move impacts OTA share in the opaque product space and hotel profitability if it increases opaque product sales.
