A new product from Starcite shows some promise in this area:
The StarCite Group Rate Advisor equips meeting planners and meeting suppliers with forward-looking hotel rate forecasts using meeting planning data from RFPs flowing through its meetings platform.
Using data collected from StarCite’s marketplace, StarCite can produce reports for any city or geographical region, that will provide sleeping room rate ranges and trends as far as twelve months in advance. The StarCite tool will also provide in-depth benchmarking information derived from years’ worth of historical booking data from the StarCite marketplace.
More at Starcite
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Now the all pervasive google goes into virtual reality ala Secondlife - according to a hotelmarketing.com report the google application is meant to be much more interactive than Secondlife.
Just like the real estate concept in Second Life started a scramble for space there, is Google Lively the next virtual world? Or the better one? Check it out at http://www.lively.com/html/landing.html. Your computer does require Windows XP or Vista for it to work.
And will hotel groups start getting into the act? I seem to remember that Starwood had set up one of its brands in Second Life ( I have not actually checked out the presence of Starwood on Second Life - so can’t vouch for it)
As with most Google applications, this one is worth watching.
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With a new stylish look and feel, Expedia Corporate Travel has been recently re-christened Egencia. And they will be doing everything they can to shake the dominance of Carlson Wagon Lit (CWT) and American Express (Amex) in this sector.
In a report in the Financial times, their chief executive Mr Khosrowshahi says that, now is as good a time to launch a revamped product as any inspite of the economic gloom worldwide. He believes that the the downturn plays into the hands of travel companies such as Expedia - “In times of transition, consumers look for more information and research more,” said. “They are going to look harder for bargains,” he added. More on that report from the Financial times
Egencia offers a number of tools including some popular products which have recently entered the Expedia fold including
- SeatGuru – A color-coded interactive airplane seating charts that outline the pros and cons of different seats for over 275 airplanes and more than 40 airlines. Provided by a community of frequent business travelers, the integrated intelligence tool takes convenience and comfort factors – such as legroom and ability to recline – into account. This informative SeatGuru content is integrated within the seat selection process for travelers and their bookers to help make more informed decisions for flights.
- TripAdvisor City Guides – Gives Egencia business travelers access to destination information that links to the traveler’s itinerary and provides pertinent destination information.
Some of these products bring some unique new benefits to corporate travellers and offer Expedia a fair chance to catch up with CWT and Amex in this highly lucrative segment. Click here to go to the Egencia website.
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To provide more energy, drive and ideas into predictably routine conferences, events & meetings, Crowne Plaza hotels (part of the Intercontinental group) is working with leading creative thinkers to do something different in their meeting rooms.
And the first of these comes from an inventor Roger von Oech - selected Crowne Plaza meeting rooms now come equipped with an exclusive Roger von Oech designed Crowne Plaza Think Box. The Think Box is an assortment of inspirational tools and exercises invented by him that allow participants to plan and participate in activities that will bring life into meetings.
More at their dedicated website - http://en-gb.crowneplazathinktank.com/Default.aspx
It is heartening to see big hotel companies moving from talking innovation to actually innovating - can they sustain it and what are the measurable changes from such innovation in customer satisfaction and revenues? We’ll have to wait and watch.
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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.
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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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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J.W. “Bill” Marriott, Jr., chairman and CEO of Marriott International at the World Travel and Tourism Council Summit in Dubai (20-22 April)in his key note address.
He made this particular remark in connection with Marriotts ambitious new project to help protect the planet partnering with the Brazilian State of Amazonas to preserve and protect 1.4 million acres of the Amazon Rainforest.
His other major theme was Travel mobility and trade. “Every time an international visitor visits Palm Island (Dubai), or shops on New York’s Fifth Avenue or Tokyo’s Ginza, it’s the same as exporting a Caterpillar tractor, an Airbus jet, a Sony Playstation or… oil.
Asking governments to encourage and facilitate travel, he pointed out that the US share of overseas international travel has fallen 8% since 2000 while rising 28% in the rest of the world and said that it was a huge lost opportunity for America.
Hyatt seems to have taken the first steps in this direction with its year long contract with Hospitality Graduate Recruitment. The Swiss based recruitment consultancy will support over 110 Hyatt hotels with their recruitment strategies.
So what is the arrangement exactly?
According to HGR, ” For the next twelve months, HR departments across Hyatt International hotels in Europe, Middle East, Asia, Africa and South America will have unlimited access to HGR’s comprehensive on-line database. The database will help Hyatt’s HR staff source and recruit suitable hospitality graduates and undergraduates for a variety of entry level, trainee, supervisory and junior management positions. There is also a facility by which job opportunities can be posted.”
With more and more companies expanding rapidly, finding the right talent is certainly the biggest challenge facing the industry. Innovation and out of the box thinking will be critical for the industry in this area in the coming decade.
A comment from Professor Walter Jamieson of the University of Hawaii speaking at the PATA Annual Meeting session “Human Capital Challenge - It’s Time to Invest, caught my interest - He says “In travel and tourism we’re good at product and market development, but HRD is rarely central to industry growth strategies, and good workforce development strategies are hard to find.”
And it is high time the industry adapted quickly and made it a central theme…..
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