One of the recent trends spotted by Springwise comes from a company which can literally produce a hotel on demand!
Abilmo a french company offers temporary hotel rooms 12 square meters in size with wood flooring, wood furniture and private bathrooms including toilet, shower and hot water. The units also offer thermal and acoustic insulation along with individual heating and air-conditioning.
So how does it work and how does the company expect its customers to use it?
Abilmo can create a pop-up hotel for use inside or outside at such events as festivals, seminars and sports events lasting anywhere from a few days to a few weeks. Very compact when folded, they require no cranes and Abilmo’s staff can set up as many as 25 per day. And apparently , interiors and exteriors can be customized to reflect any corporate image.
In my mind the dependency on the company team to build these temporary hotels is a critical factor and as far as the costs v’s revenue possibilities, it needs some looking into.
So will the idea catch on? What do you think?
This shift in purchasing and distribution patterns has been showing more and more clearly over the years - and according to the most recent comScore report, excerpts of which were published by www.hotelmarketing.com, the first quarter of 2008 has seen a 3% plus rise in hotel website bookings (the majors like Hilton, Marriott, Best western etc) and a proportionate decrease from online travel agency websites - OTA’s (majors like expedia, orbitz, travelocity etc).
Marriott and Best Western have achieved the best increases over the period with Hilton, Hyatt and Starwood losing some. Orbitz saw the most decrease among the OTA’s.
This percentage change seems to be the quickest ever and it will be really interesting to watch whether it speeds up further or stops at a plateau. My thoughts - it still has a fair distance to go before it hits that plateau….
So does this mean that the fight for independent hotels gets hotter with the major chains grabbing bigger and bigger slices of the OTA pie? Are there going to be more SMD companies (see a previous blog post) in the running? Definitely a trend worth watching for all hoteliers large or small!
For more on the hotelmarketing.com article click here
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If you are really particular about how you travel and where you stay - not just which airline and/or class or which hotel brand, but to exactly pick out where you want to sit and where you want to sleep, check out these websites.
Seatguru launched in 2001 by frequent flyer Matthew Daimler - He started with a single color-coded interactive airplane seating chart. Having experienced firsthand the vast differences between airline seats, he was determined to collect this useful information and share it with other travelers. Now seatguru.com covers more than 300 airplane seatmaps from more than 45 different airlines and was purchased by Trip Advisor in 2007.
Seat 61 is not strictly comparable but a unique site dedicated to train travel around the world - if you want to know something about trains in Inner Mongolia to the palace on wheels in India, this is your ultimate resource.
Tripkick - and now tripkick.com promises to do for the hotel industry what seatguru.com has done for airlines - early days yet with the site covering some US regions, but it has every chance of taking off.
At the top end though, travellers usually had ample choice and could choose from the best luxury hotel brands. And whilst these hotels never came cheap, one usually got what one paid for.
But now, things look set to improve - with the fast growth in the tourism and hospitality sector, there are signs of rapid change and new hope for the budget traveller.
The Indian middle class has started travelling more - with more leisure time, a higher disposable income and globalisation all contributing. And they are no longer satisfied by generations of run down lodges and hotels which were hardly ever renovated, the unfortunate hallmark of Indian budget travel over the last many years.
The larger hotel companies were the first to recognise this requirement - Ginger, a TATA enterprise, has twelve hotels already with another 6 hotels coming up. They offer good value rooms with the latest technology including self check-in options. Some of the other new brands in this sector include Lemon Tree, Hometel & Premier Travel Inn.
Another company which introduced a unique new concept to India six months ago is HOME-LIKE HOTELS. The company which was launched in November 2007 works on identifying unique, independent, boutique properties which offer great value across the length and breadth of the country. Once identified and approved based on their criteria, the company then makes the selected hotels available as part of the HOME-LIKE collection.
This offers a clear win for the traveller as they avoid the uncertainty of booking through travel portals like yatra.com or travelguru.com which list every hotel without qualifying them under set criteria.
Currently the HOME-LIKE HOTELS collection features over forty carefully selected boutique hotels in over 25 destinations. They aim to have over 100 hotels available for travellers to book from, by the end of the year. More information on their hotels and destinations is available at http://www.homelikehotels.com/
The key difference between HOME-LIKE HOTELS and the traditional model is the unique character of the individual hotels. They avoid some of the bland standard features that all chain hotels invariably have.
Welcome news indeed for the budget traveller - with the price range for most of these hotels ranging between 2000 and 5000 INR (approximately £25 to £60) a night, the choice for travellers looking for an authentic Indian experience has just gone up.
So is this all achieved by compromising service and what gives to make these all so reasonable priced? Not service apparently - similar hotels usually maintain an employee per room ratio of about 0.5. In India it could be as high as 1.5 in most hotels.
The future certainly should hold a whole new India experience!
Google’s new travel policy puts no specific mandate and employees travel when and how they wish but there is a capped fare list for every destination. If travellers went over the list price, the overspend would come out of their next trip. If they went under it, they could use the surplus sum on any future trip.
Sounds too good to be true? Some procurement managers must be really rolling their eyes - but as far as empowering employees in terms of their travel but keeping control, it could be a happy medium.
According to Google Travel Management, 60% of the bookings still went through its agent Carlson Wagonlit Travel, especiallyfor complex trips. And they believe that the policy encouraged and rewarded smart buying behaviour and helped control spending.
Main Source: Business Travel Europe
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They aren’t hotels really - but following on from Yotel’s pod-like rooms which can booked by number of hours in busy transit areas like airports, Nemorelax pods can be reserved for as little as 30 minutes.
Each pod features a Stressless recliner chair from Norwegian furniture maker Ekornes encircled by a cocoon of sound-isolating materials. In addition to sleeping or making private phone calls, travellers can watch a movie on the pod’s touchscreen monitor, listen to music on the sound-on-demand system or get some work done on the fold-away work table.
Each Nemorelaxer offers free wifi connectivity, and loaner laptops are available at no extra charge. Nemorelaxers will be set up in suites of 6 or more in central airport locations with an on-site, staffed desk. Wake-up services will also be available.
Netherlands-based Nemorelax is currently talking with international airport and transit authorities, and its first Nemorelax Suite in Europe will open soon.
The question is, can things get any smaller or accomodation (of sorts) get any smaller? We’ll have to wait and see.
Source: www.nemorelax.com and www.springwise.com
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Travel Management reports on a study by PWC which shows that 38 new hotel brands have been introduced over the last three years - with most of them targeting younger travelers for whom technology is indispensable.
For the complete article which includes a list of the new brands click here.
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The Intercontinental Hotel Group is taking their corporate responsibility to a new level and using the power of Web 2.0 to design the most environmentally friendly hotel.
Visitors to the website can review a hotel design, check the new environmentally friendly features and contribute new ideas to improve them - the interactive site allows users to wander through the hotel reception, go to a meeting room or lets you into a bedroom and points out what is new. And this is where you get involved - one gets to rate on a scale of one to five as to how good an innovation it is and add further comments.
The key areas in focus are
- Energy conservation
- Recycling
- Water Conservation
- Destination conservation
Definitely worth a visit to check out a great collaborative approach as well as to get some very good ideas in the above areas.
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A tour around the Independence of the Seas, the largest cruise liner ever to sail from the UK. From the BBC
According to a Travolution report, British Airways has joined forces with Microsoft to develop a media rich research and booking tool for its website.
The project is based on Microsoft Silverlight rich media technology and aims to move away from traditional web selling by trying to inspire customers with detailed tourist information, pictures, video and other graphics.
The ‘Inspire Me’ tool tries to get behind people’s emotions when they come to the site looking for a holiday by breaking it down into what they want to do in destination, what their perfect night out is, what they like to eat and what style of place they want to stay in.
So will BA give the Online Travel Agencies a run for their money? We’ll have to wait and see……..
