The 2011 Unsuspecting Travel Hero Award goes to the anonymous hrrmph for his outstanding 9,000+ word TripAdvisor review of Kandholhu Island Resort & Spa in The Maldives. The big loser (aka winner) of the 2011 Unsuspecting Travel Zero Award is hotelreputationmanagement.org for serving as the poster-child for brashly promoting black-hat hotel reputation management tactics.
SuperShuttle in New York – Make that Super Shittle
August 8, 2011 By 5 Comments
SuperShuttle operates shared ride services between LaGuardia, Kennedy and Newark airports in the new York area. By booking my daughter with them, in an effort to help her save some money, she wound up experiencing a three hour episode of continual service delivery failures highlighted by a complete disregard for customer needs. This post explores what should have happened, as well as the underlying reasons why she had such a disappointing experience.
Transforming Hotel Industry Growth Strategy
August 3, 2011 By 1 Comment
Video of the hotel industry leadership panel from the 2011 HITEC conference discussing the RockCheetah/Amadeus IT Group white paper, “Transform Your Growth Strategy Now – Remove barriers between hotel technology,marketing and operations.” The discussion with Flo Lugli from Wyndham, Mike Blake from Hyatt and Caryl Helsel from Aramark explores the role an IT Pathfinder can play in facilitating hospitality industry business transformation.
Social Commerce – Yesterday, Today and Tomorrow
June 30, 2011 By Leave a Comment
Social Commerce will evolve from the intersection of social computing, location based services and mobile technologies. Travel companies leveraging SoLoMo-Commerce (SoLoMoCo) will have an unprecedented opportunity to engage customers, create value and capture profits from an enhanced set of technologies by applying creative, traveler-centric marketing strategies.
Seven Travel Planning Steps – Impact on Hotel Distribution Strategy
June 21, 2011 By
My presentation, “Seven Travel Planning Steps and Their Impact on Hotel Distribution Strategy” for the Hospitality Financial & Technology Professionals Annual HITEC Conference in Austin, Texas did not focus on traditional distribution focused on the luxury hotel and resort customer, hospitality industry distribution channels and the future innovations that may be expected to impact the global hotel industry.
White Paper: Bridging Hotel Business and Technology Priorities
June 9, 2011 By 1 Comment
The hotel industry requires an IT Pathfinder to help align hotel business and technology priorities over the next three years so the industry can successfully leverage information technology to drive business growth and profitability. A RockCheetah/Amadeus IT Group white paper, “Transform Your Growth Strategy Now – Remove barriers between hotel technology,marketing and operations” explores the role an IT Pathfinder can play in facilitating hospitality industry business transformation.
Snippets and Factoids from Henry Harteveldt’s OpenTravel Presentation
April 26, 2011 By 1 Comment
Henry Harteveldt’s keynote address to the OpenTravel Alliance North American Advisory Forum warned an audience of travel industry distribution executives that
Hotel Industry Survey – How to Align Business and Technology Priorities?
April 13, 2011 By 1 Comment
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.
Mastering The New Five P’s of Marketing – Tom Patty on How Not to be a Casualty of the Revolution
November 3, 2010 By 1 Comment
In 1995, Tom Patty of Chiat/Day Advertising posted an article the Five New P’s of Marketing: Paradox, Perspective, Paradigm, Persuasion & Passion. Unfortunately, the document has digitally disappeared from the Internet, so it has been recreated here to inspire a new generation of marketers. Patty’s advice was just as right then as it is today – take a look at Apple’s advertising if you want proof.
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.
