Hospitality & Tourism Industry Intelligence | ''Knowledge is power!''

I have been hunting for articles about hotel & tourism management on the Internet for over three years now. Honestly, since then I learned a lot - news, trends, articles and reports can be easily accessed and even delivered to your inbox for free.

 

My point is: these are an invaluable source of information for any individual involved in the management of hotels or any travel related organization.

Hoteliers should use these news and articles for their day-to-day decision making; they should gather all the articles related to their industry on a daily basis, analyse, assess, and distribute them to the concerned departments, and then store them for future use.

My suggestion is to appoint someone in the company for the purpose, it could be the general manager or the administrative assistant.

Being informed permanently about what happens around you leads to better decisions and that helps to improve the organization's performance overall - better customer service, better human resource practices, better marketing strategies means more Sales!

The following is a selection of the best Travel and hospitality related websites out there: 

01 - The Center for Hospitality Research

www.cornell.edu

02 - HVS

www.hvs.com 

03 - Hotel News Now

 www.hotelnewsnow.com

04 - Hospitality Trends

www.htrends.com

05 - VFM Leonardo Blog

 

www.blog.vfmleonardo.com

06 - PhoCusWright

www.phocuswright.com

07 - Hotelier Middle East 

 

www.hoteliermiddleeast.com

08 - China Hospitality News

www.chinahospitalitynews.com

09 - TravelClick 

 

www.travelclick.com

10 - ITB Berlin

 

www.messe-berlin.de

11 - Hospitality eBusiness Strategies

 

www.hospitalityebusiness.com

12 - Eye for Travel

 

www.eyefortravel.com

13 - Lodging Hospitality

 

www.lhonline.com

14 - 4 Hoteliers 

 

www.4hoteliers.com

15 - eHotelier

 

www.ehotelier.com

16 - Hotel Interactive 

 

www.hotelinteractive.com

The list could be a lot longer but I reckon the above are the best so far. Please feel free to suggest any other websites you may know.

Categories: Hospitality Resources, Marketing Planning

Is your distibution channel strategy helping you make the right connections?

The economic downturn hit hard the international tourism and hospitality industry. As if that were not enough, the uprisings in the Middle East and North Africa knocked over bookings in the region. Then came the unprecedented earthquake in Japan which had a tremendous impact on travel business in the country.
 

Since Q4 of 2010 a huge flow of conflicting news has been released on the Internet, some reported that the international economy is on its way to recovery, some others claimed that we may be expecting a double dip recession during 2011.

To set the record straight, the international economy is recovering - how fast? that have to be figured out!

According to the new report from The pegasus solutions Inc that has been released yesterday, the travel and hospitality industries are officially recovering!

A near record growth for global leisure and corporate travel has been reported during March 2011.

Global Distribution Channel  - Business Travel
Both reservations volume and revenue, worldwide, rose up to near-record growth rates in March 2011, increasing by +30% and +46.1% respectively with ADR delivering a notable increase of +7.3%.

Concerning North America, not only booking volume rise up but also rate growth. Bookings increased by +25%, with ADR reaching a new growth record increase of +4.8% over prior year in March.

Global Distribution Channel  - Leisure Travel
March global ADR channel results are extremely uplifting for the leisure travel. March global reservations reached the second highest growth pace over the last 12 months, increasing +10.8% over prior year. Revenue for the same month also rose to its second highest growth peak over the past 12-months period.

March ADR channel results for North America displayed reinvigorated guesto for the leisure sector. Bookings rose up to the double-digit increase of the +10.9% over prior year. ADR grew by +3.4%, the largest margin this region has experienced since the recession.

Now, with the spring season upon and the summer ahead, the question is: How well-connected with your target markets is your hotel?

Besides presenting data about GDS bookings, the report also comes out with a very interesting thoughts about distribution. Hoteliers should know that Choosing one channel of distribution on another does not necessarily mean increasing bookings. In fact they should know how best to use and position themselves on channels - and how their competitors are positioned.

Download the full report at www.pegs.com

Categories: Distribution Channels Management, Marketing Planning, Pegasus reports

Travel Distribution in the European Travel Industry

I have been busy studying a paper released by PhoCusWright Inc.on September 2010. The paper is entitled ''technology and Independent Distribution in the European Travel Industry''.  I have been amazed by the amount of information put into it. If you are in the Tourism and Hospitality industry, I strongly recommend you reading it.

This work aims to assess the role and impact of independent travel distribution services and technology across Europe. It defines major distribution channels, explains their role and exhibits the interrelationships between key players in the travel industry.

According to the paper, There are two types of distribution: direct and intermediated.  Direct distribution is when suppliers, or owners of the product (airlines, hotels, etc.), sell their products directly to consumers, whether on the phone, in person, or over the Internet. Intermediated distribution involves a third party, such as a travel agency, tour operator, travel management company, or OTA, which sells the travel product to the consumer on behalf of the supplier.

Travel agencies, OTAs, and other intermediaries often (although not always) access that supplier content via one of the GDSs.

The study focalizes on GDSs and their role as a central component of the travel distribution system. Actually, GDSs are the key technology infrastructure connecting suppliers, tour operators, and retailers. Just as travel intermediaries play a key role in travel distribution, GDSs play an important role for intermediaries. The GDSs aggregate the billions of possible airfares, schedules, hotel and car rental rates, availability information, and other content, and present these options in a real-time shopping and booking environment for travel intermediaries. GDSs processed more than 1.1 billion transactions 5 in 2008. That equates to just over 2,100 transactions per minute.

The three major GDS companies (Amadeus, Travelport, Galelio) together power the critical reservations and technology infrastructure of more than 163,000 travel agency locations and enable bookings by nearly half a million travel agents 7 around the globe.

OTAs play a considerable role in the industry and according to the paper they continue to gain market share; it will double by 11% by 2011.

get the full paper at  http://www.phocuswright.com

Categories: Distribution Channels Management, Marketing Planning

The new generation of travelers

It is a no surprise that the next group of travelers are going to be  the younger generations, those aged between 18 and 29, they sleep with their cellphones, tweet 4 times a day, and update their Facebook pages twice!

Hoteliers who are keen to maintain and expand their market share have to learn how to attract this new segment - how to provide this new group of travelers with suitable accommodation, and how to cater for them to best match their taste, which is widely different from any other segment.

Actually, these travelers have very distinctive traits: 

- They are All About Relationships: Highly influenced by friends and family in selecting places to visit and hotels to book alike. Two-thirds of them will visit places recommended by family and friends - Using social media, this recommendation often comes in the form of real-time descriptions of the experience. 

- They are savvy: Their use of technology dominates everything. In fact, while they are always online hunting for information they make their decisions quickly; Their average look-to-book ratio is 75 days, that’s about 20% less than the amount of time it took the older generations to plan trips.

- They have an appetite for learning: They know a lot. According to the Pew Study, this generation of travelers is more highly educated than other generations at comparable ages. More than half of them (54%) have at least some college education during the ages 18-28, as compared to 49% of Gen Xers and 36% of Baby Boomers.

Nearly four in five (78%) say they are interested in learning something new when they travel. Based upon their ratings, their interest in learning something new is stronger than that of other generations.

- They are Good Citizens: Involved and volunteering in their communities, they exhibit a genuine concern for people and the environment.They care about environmental issues, expecting attractions to demonstrate a commitment to sustainable practices.

Study released by PGAV Destinations - Global leader in planning and design

For more information download the full document in pdf format at www.pgavdestinations.com

About PGAV Destinations
PGAV Destinations is a global leader in the planning and design of unique destinations. The firm uniquely combines award-winning storytelling and creativity with business strategy to create some of the world's most important cultural, natural, and entertainment destinations. PGAV's staff develops growth-oriented master plans and translates these plans into innovative new destination products. Now in its fifth decade, the firm has authored hundreds of highly successful projects in places such as SeaWorld, the Grand Canyon, Biltmore Estate, Niagara Falls, Busch Gardens, the Georgia Aquarium, Kennedy Space Center, and the Hoover Dam. www.pgavdestinations.com

Categories: Hospitality News, Marketing Planning

Online Content management for Hoteliers

75% of those who stay in hotels when they travel start their stay by researching hotel accommodations online and many of these online travelers consider visualsials (Picture, videos...). When looking at the factors that online travelers rate as “very important” when selecting a hotel, visuals rate higher than a number of other key factors, including the property’s star ratings, destination information, loyalty program, the hotel brand, and customer testimonials and reviews.

Quality detail and up-to-date information allow shoppers to better judge whether a property meets set criteria. Obviously, photographs are important in hotel booking decision making; still images are common online visuals used by hoteliers today and nearly two-thirds (64%) of online travelers say these still photographic images are “important” or “very important” to their booking decision.

The dull hotel room that you probably have seen on the internet, and stayed on for decades, is going to be a thing of the past. Actually, RateTiger has just launched its latest hotel product RTSuite Content, a convenient solution to centrally manage, upload and distribute marketing content across multiple booking channels.

Hoteliers have no excuse anymore to not regularly update their content online in different channels. The brand new RTSuite Content, once updated, automatically loads relevant property information to the relevant

sales channels. Users are able to select and preview content that will be transmitted to the sites.

Hoteliers can easily access and maintain data without having to know the specific sales channel requirements. The tool will help saving significant time as training and updating of multiple channels independently is no longer necessary. It will further help ensure the property and brand are accurately and fairly represented across all channels ensuring the right customers see the right content.

For more information please visit http://www.ratetiger.com

About RateTiger:

RateTiger, the leading division of eRevMax, has become the industry's benchmark for rate shopping; revenue management and online distribution. RateTiger enables hoteliers to save time and make money by making price comparison and updates of room rates and availability to multiple online channels as easy as possible. With over 600 distribution outlets connected to RateTiger (a large number of those using robust XML technology) hoteliers can now easily update multiple distribution channels and travel portals, report on bookings, help calculate rates, and gather rate data to benchmark competitors. RateTiger is also connected to the four major GDS. The RateTiger portfolio works in real-time to provide accurate and representative information and functionality for online sales and revenue opportunities.

Categories: Distribution Channels Management, Marketing Planning

China to generate 20 million new outbound tourists

China is the key emerging market the travel and tourism industry should focus on over the next five years, according to new research announced at Thursday’s inaugural WTM Vision Conference in Milan.

The country is predicted to be the biggest outbound tourism market of the emerging BRIC (Brazil, Russia, India, China) economies with a total of 20 million new outbound departures between 2010 and 2015, according to the Euromonitor International report, which was launched at the first session of WTM Vision Conference. Russia comes next with an increase of nearly 12 million, and India with more than nine million new outbound trips. Brazil will generate just two million new trips, although its focus during the period will be on attracting inbound travellers, driven by its hosting of the FIFA World Cup 2014 and the 2016 Rio de Janeiro Olympics.

 Get the full story at www.chinatraveltrends.com

Categories: Hospitality News, Marketing Planning

Employee Turnover in the Hospitality and Customer Service Field

Some interesting thoughts by an actual front office employee that I thought worth sharing

Categories: Marketing Planning, Videos

Resort Master Marketing Plan Development #Series05

As previously mentioned, the master marketing plan of your hotel should start with an executive summary. It should be a synopsis of what you have done, what you plan to do, and how you are going to get there.
 

When it comes to writing your hotel’s marketing objectives, these should be established after determining your company’s strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, as well as the marketing environment in which you operate in.
 

Let’s suppose your hotel’s new objectives include increasing room sales by 10% over the previous year. Accordingly, your new marketing objectives might include targeting an emerging new market segment, Chinese market for example.
 

The marketing objectives will guide your entire marketing initiative and be used for evaluation.

Situation Analysis

In this section you will take a close look at the internal and external factors that will influence your marketing strategy, this is called a SWOT analysis. A SWOT analysis combines the external and internal analysis to summarize your Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

A strength is an asset or a resource that can be used to improve the hotel’s competitive position, for example the location of your hotel being near a natural attraction, historic buildings, or a strong retail base. A weakness is just the opposite, a resource or capability that may cause your hotel to have a less competitive position. For instance, the fact that your hotel is not directly placed near the beach is categorized as a weakness.

Opportunities are developed from set of positive circumstances, and can include for example taking advantage of emerging markets or an overflow from a nearby metropolitan city.

Threats are viewed as problems that focus on your weaknesses and which can create a potentially negative situation. Terrorism or, recently the economic downturn in the country and abroad are considered as threats.

Target Markets

The concept of target markets is one of the most basic, yet most important aspects of marketing. There is no such thing as the “general public.” It is unrealistic to think that you can attract everyone.

Defining your target market helps you decide where to commit resources and what kinds of promotional methods and messages to use. Define your target market(s) specifically in terms of:


• Demographics: age, income, marital status, employment status.

• Psychographics: attends sporting or cultural events, dines out once a month,

• Residence: where does your market live?

• Social group: affluent couples without children, affluent families with one or more kids, young families with one or more children, singles.

• Activities: what do they want to do, includes vacation versus business travelers, visiting friends and family versus strictly vacation travel, as well as specific activities such as visiting cultural sites, resort visits, and golf

• Motives or benefits: what are people trying to get out during their stay in your hotel, what are they looking for?

• Past experience: have the people in your market visited your hotel before (i.e., repeat visitors) or are they first time visitors?

• planning frame: how far in advance do people in your market plan their trips; one week, one month, several months, or are they spontaneous?

Strategies

Strategies are simply action plans that detail how the marketing variables of product, price, place and promotion are used to attain the marketing plan’s annual objectives and overall strategies.

Your marketing plan is the outcome of the manner in which you put your marketing strategy into practice. It’s worth highlighting the main points of your strategy in your marketing plan.

To understand the market well, you will need to break it down into different segments – groups of similar customers or travelers. For example, you can break the your market down into segments according to the reason for traveling, reason for eating out and so on.

Marketing tactics

Once you have defined your marketing objectives, and your strategy for meeting them, you need to plan how you will make the strategy a reality.

This section should incorporate your target markets, especially those that are primary.


• Product: specifically define what you are offering your visitors, and how it is different from what is offered by others.

• Price: the price for your product and a justification of your pricing decision.

• Place (distribution): the way in which you will get your product to your market(s); directly offered to visitors or via travel agents and/or tour operators

• Promotion: the way you plan to promote your product. This section includes your advertising, publicity, sales promotion and public relations strategies.

Tracking

This section of your plan should include plans and procedures for tracking each type of marketing activity you are using. Tracking helps monitor the effectiveness of each marketing activity and is especially helpful with your overall program evaluation.

Evaluation

The final section addresses the manner in which you will measure your success and in what ways your objectives have been met. Although often overlooked, this section is vitally important as it helps determine the success of your marketing efforts. It also assists in reporting Return on Investment (ROI) to members, constituents, etc. Methods for evaluation of marketing efforts are different for each type of marketing project. Your methods of tracking will help in your evaluation.

Summary

 
This is the part where conclusions are drawn.
I will produce as soon as I can the master marketing plan - 600 bedded-rooms beach resort - for your to download in a pdf file which will also include the 5 articles I wrote, these will serve as a guideline.

Resort Master Marketing Plan Development #Series04
Resort Master Marketing Plan Development #Series03
Resort Master Marketing Plan Development #Series02
Resort Master Marketing Plan Development #Series01

Categories: Marketing Planning

Controlling Distribution Costs in Hospitality

It’s been few years now that social media has been ''rocking'' the Internet. Headlines talked about the one billion Facebook deal, many columns wrote about Twitter as a revenue generator for hotels and encouraged to sell rooms on Twitter. But let’s be honest! Social media has never been and will never be a distribution channel; it is more like a customer engagement channel.

The new report released by HeBS Hospitality eBusiness Strategies entitled ‘’Controlling Distribution Costs in Hospitality’’ suggests that the main focus for any hotelier should be to sell as much inventory via the most cost-effective distribution channels that can potentially generate the most bookings, while preserving rate parity and price erosion.

More than a decade ago famous hotel chains like Marriott International, Hilton and Intercontinental understood that the most cost-efficient bookings are those made directly on the hotel's website. Today, top hotel brand's CRS made directly bookings is 62.5% (Q3 2010) - Source 2010 eTRAK. 

For the other hotels however, in 2010 alone, revenue leaked to OTAs in the form of abnormally high merchant commissions reached US$5,4 Billion (HeBS research). There is no reason anymore that hoteliers do not sell their rooms themselfs. Besides the fact that relying on your OTAs only to sell your hotel rooms is the ''lazy-man'' approach to distribution, selling rooms through OTAs is 15 times more expensive than the direct online channel. Moreover, some hoteliers do not understand that Internet marketing is not an expense, but an investment with immediate returns at every high ROIs.

While in the states 40% of hotel bookings are made online. The eTRAK quarterly benchmarketing report, which summarizes booking data from the top 30 chains worldwide, illustrates well the significant shift from traditional to online channels - In Q3 2010 internet bookings reached 56.9%. This is a major share increase compared to 37.6% level back in 2006. 

Hoteliers must find a way to dominate the digital information cloud with their own marketing message and customer interactions, or the OTAs and the competition will control the conversation

Download the full report in pdf format at www.hospitalityebusiness.com

Categories: Distribution Channels Management, Marketing Planning

Attracting hotel guests to book directly in new ways

A New-York Times article on the trend among hotels to offer direct bookings through Facebook and smartphone apps, hoping that the convenience and direct contact will lure back travelers who have been turning to online travel agencies.

“We want to be there when someone transforms the recommendations of their friends into booking a reservation,” said David Godsman, vice president for global Web services for Starwood Hotels. “If they press the ‘Like’ button, we want to start a conversation.” He said he viewed his company’s 

Facebook pages as a way to extend Starwood’s relationship with its customers “from the 10 days they stay with us, to all year long.” Starwood has Facebook pages for 1,000 hotel properties across its nine brands.

Hotels need to make sure that their booking engines can be found wherever the customer is, rather than asking the customer to search them out, said Glenn Withiam, a spokesman for Cornell’s School of Hotel Administration, which recently held a hotel industry conference that examined social media.

Offering reservations directly helps to keep the conversation between the hotel and its guests, Mr. Withiam said. He added that using social media to communicate took the relationship beyond the booking transaction. The hotel can find out what pillow guests prefer, the drinks they want in the minibar or the type of room they need. Personalized service can keep a guest coming back, he said, and that, in turn, helps hotels hold the line on room prices.

Get the full story at The New York Times

 

Categories: Hospitality News, Marketing Planning

Middle East/North Africa Economic Recovery put on hold

A brand new special report was released yesterday by the pegasus solutions. It encompasses an analysis of hotel booking trends in places such as North Africa, the middle East, New Zealand and Japan.

2011 began with the uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East. Then, in the midst of that chaos, disaster struck in Asia Pacific. First, New Zealand suffered a 6.3 magnitude earthquake in February. Then in March, a 9.0 magnitude earthquake crippled Japan as destruction turned to a state of devastation and emergency at the hands of the tsunami and the nuclear power plant crisis which followed.

For sure the uprising events that took place in Tunisia then spread to several countries such as Egypt, Yemen, and Libya had a huge impact on Leisure and business travel. Both bookings and ADR have significantly dropped followed by a dramatic wave of booking cancellation as a result of continual fear and hesitation to travel to such destinations.

Tunisia
Tunisia’s revolution was the most cited catalyst for what became a wildfire of protests across Arab nations in the Middle East and North Africa.

Tunisia’s bookings began to fall off in mid December 2010. Bookings dropped from an average increase over prior year of +25% in October and November to a decrease of -19.6% by February 2011. ADR performance was already in a state of flux for Tunisia, and, with the added events, ADR looks to remain at or below last year’s levels.

Looking ahead, the relatively quick return to order of Tunisia’s political and social climate, though, will likewise assist with a relatively quick travel market return.

Egypt
In Egypt, bookings growth over prior year dived as protests quickly turned to a revolution in January 2011. Reservations growth fell by more than 100 percentage points—from an average increase over prior year of approximately +30% before the revolution, to a decrease in bookings of -85.7% during the tense struggles in February.

Bookings made as of February for stays through August have yet to show improvement. However, as tourists feel confident a safe and stable environment has been restored, arrivals will likely return to prior levels soon.

Israel
As there were no reported protest activity in Israel, The tourism sector seems to be doing well. Bookings even have increased over prior year during this tumultuous first quarter 2011.

ADRs have not decreased and have in fact reflected incremental adjustments upward to match either the influx from areas nearby and/or capitalize on the less price-elastic nature of bookings that are still being made.

Japan
A magnitude 9.0 earthquake shook Japan on March 11, delivering in its wake a catastrophic tsunami causing massive destruction and grave concern over nuclear power plant operations and radiation leakage.

net bookings simply plummeted. Net reservation volume fell from an increase of +26.1% the day prior, to percentage decreases over last year consistently in triple digits throughout the following week. Cancellations soared, causing net bookings to hit bottom by almost -300% against last year and only improving to -100% decreases a week out.

Key Findings

The Middle East/North Africa

-  The degree to which bookings declined in the first quarter was in direct relation to the degree and intensity of uprisings in the countries affected.

- Future bookings were heavily impacted for all, whether due to existing protests or fear of protest activity spreading.

- Fortunate for some key travel destinations is that unrest seems to have subsided and a more stable environment.

Japan

- A country still reeling from epic disaster, bookings vanished. Previous double-digit booking increases over prior year were sent into triple-digit net decreases by rapid cancellation volumes.

- Bookings don¡¦t show any improvement in the immediate future, yet hopes are that key cities outside the devastated areas, such as Tokyo and Osaka, will see their markets begin to come back.

- Tsunami impact on either Hawaii or California was nowhere near as great with regard to scope and damage; both markets should see a relatively quick return to previous levels of booking volumes.

Get the full report at www.pegs.com

Categories: Hospitality News, Marketing Planning, Pegasus reports

Tunisia tourism recovery

Last Update 09/04/2011 21:28

While on Tripadvisor the 700 hotels in Tunisia are tagged with a red exclamation mark, governments, such as France, Germany, Australia, the USA and Russia are updating regularly their travel advice to ensure it accurately reflects the situations in the country, a practice that was welcomed by the world tourism organization UNWTO secretary-general Taleb Rifai. 

Almost 5.000.000 Tunisian depend directly and indirectly on tourism, the tourism sector for itself covers 60% of the annual budget deficit, its trade balance represents 6.5% of the GDP 

A well appreciated move was made by Antoine Cachin the president of the french tour-operator ''fram'' to promote the destination and urged tourists to return without any fear as the country is now secure.

The head of the UNWTO declared in a press conference that a quick recovery is expected the few coming months as the security and peace have been re-installed.

Tunisia's tourist industry should quickly recover from political unrest wracking the country

he added: 

We have every indication and every reason to believe that Tunisia will be very quickly -- actually much quicker that people expect -- able to go back on track

It is also worth mentioning here that almost every hotel in the country has significantly dropped down its prices to increase bookings. Interior tourism helped to keep hotels open during the months of February and March,

Due to the actions taken by the temporary government headed by the new prime minister Beji Caid-Essebsi, It's been a few weeks now that the country is finally experiencing a safe and peaceful situation. The coastal regions are absolutely safe to visit; regions such as Mahdia is expecting an unprecedented tourism rebound this coming season.

Categories: Hospitality News, Marketing Planning

The brave new world of online hotel distribution

The relationship between the hotel industry and online travel agents continues to develop and deepen, as customers increasingly use electronic distribution channels to search out and purchase hotel rooms. The now published proceedings of last years Cornell Hospitality Research Summit takes a closer at the current trends.

While OTAs have substantial sales, it turns out that a major use of search engines, online travel agents, and other internet sites is to gather information regarding a room purchase. Quite frequently, that purchase is made on the hotel chain’s own site.

Consequently, hotels need to think strategically in terms of rate setting and market differentiation.

The OTAs have numerous tools and policies that enable hotels to distribute rooms at various prices while also maintaining rate integrity and improving revenue. Perhaps most important is for hotels to use their relationship with an OTA as an ongoing business alliance, which helps sell rooms in both high times and low periods.

Opaque sites in particular allow hotels to sell rooms at various prices without connecting the price directly to the brand. Understanding how the opaque sites operate allows hotels to set their rate and distribution strategy.

Being listed on OTAs also creates a billboard effect, whereby sales at the supplier’s website pick up when a hotel is listed on the OTA.

Most critically, a hotel needs a strategic revenue management function that includes effective forecasting and an understanding of how varioius business segments respond to price promotions.

Download the full report at Cornell University

Categories: Hospitality News, Marketing Planning, The Center for Hospitality Research

The new Chinese tourist

“More and more Chinese tourists see outbound travel as a chance to broaden horizons, and experience foreign cultures,” noted the Tourism Express. “Therefore, they have higher demand for the content and patterns of travel. Seen from the sales of tour operators, half of the outbound tourism market has now been taken over by FIT tours.”

This shows that tourists are increasingly pursuing personalised tour experiences and are looking for authentic experiences and not for arranged shopping tours, yet still rely on the convenience of travel agents to arrange flights, hotels, and visas.

The way many Chinese consumers are finding out about new destinations and travel services, such as hotel or cruise brands, is via the Internet. 

With over 450 million Internet users in China, more than in any other country, of which 92% engage in social media channels not including blocked sites such as Facebook, Twitter, Youtube, and Foursquare, more than 80% of Chinese travelers research and educate themselves about destinations and brands online. 

"Essential China Travel Trends Book - Tiger Edition"

 

The first edition of the guide to “Essential China Travel Trends”, published in the year of the Tiger, by ChinaTravelTrends.com, and produced in collaboration between Dragon Trail and VariArts Travel Group, with support from GreenEarth.travel is an attempt to reveal some of the critical trends, and pitfalls when trying to enter this market, and offers insights from practitioners in the industry, including 

It includes topics such as Internet and Social Media, Distribution, Sustainability, Outbound and Domestic Tourism, MICE, as well as Hotel Development. The book features introductions by Taleb Rifai, Secretary General of the World Tourism Organization (UNWTO), Jean-Claude Baumgarten, CEO of the World Travel Tourism Council (WTTC), and Hiran Cooray, Chairman of the Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA).

The Tiger Edition of the Guide to “Essential Travel Trends” supports the “Save China’s Tiger Initiative” and offers insights from industry practitioners active in the Chinese travel market, and is available at select industry conferences. Interested conferences and organizations may contact us to discuss partnership opportunities.

Categories: Hospitality News, Marketing Planning

Do Nontransactional Sites Impact Bookings?

Nontransactional sites are a necessary stop for many online travel shoppers, influencing not only what travelers buy, but also where they buy it. Travelers who visit planning and reviews, metasearch or other types of nontransactional websites have a higher conversion rate than other visitors – but the trend only applies for suppliers, according to PhoCusWright's Online Traffic and Conversion Report, Second Edition.

Nontransactional sites are a necessary stop for many online travel shoppers, influencing not only what travelers buy, but also where they buy it. Travelers who visit planning and reviews, metasearch or other types of nontransactional websites have a higher conversion rate than other visitors – but the trend only applies for suppliers, according to PhoCusWright's Online Traffic and Conversion Report, Second Edition.

Air shoppers who visit both a nontransactional site and an airline supplier site convert at a much higher rate than other visitors. For example, airline website shoppers who also visit metasearch engines convert at 16%, while others convert at less than 10%. Those who visit nontransactional websites do not show any notable difference in conversion among OTA air shoppers.

The difference in conversion rates is less dramatic with hotel products, yet the trend still holds. Supplier websites still have higher conversion rates among nontransactional site visitors whereas OTAs generally do not. In fact, nontransactional site visitors often convert at a lower level on OTAs than other visitors.

The benefit of advertising on nontransactional websites may be stronger for suppliers than for OTAs, but value still exists for OTAs due to the substantial audience visiting these informational categories. Nearly a quarter of air shoppers interact with a lead generator, while more than a quarter of hotel shoppers visit a planning and reviews site.

PhoCusWright and Compete, Inc. partnered to measure and track the increasingly complex flow of Web traffic and bookings. PhoCusWright's Online Traffic and Conversion Report, Second Edition studies two critical online consumer-behavior metrics: traffic (monthly unique visitors) and conversion (the percentage of monthly unique visitors who complete a transaction). Using these core metrics, the report analyzes major categories within the travel vertical, including both transactional and nontransactional sites. 

Individual products, such as air, hotel and car rental, are tracked to explore the dynamic between supplier sites and OTAs, as well as how nontransactional sites, such as deal publishers and review sites, affect conversion.

Categories: Hospitality News, Marketing Planning

Reinventing the Hospitality Experience

Control the hospitality experience from within the privacy of your own room

Categories: Marketing Planning