How to market travel on social media
Who is using which social media - how is the traveler using social media, which social media site is best for travel marketing.
This blog/web page offers a simple explanation with easy to understand detail. Social media clients have been analyzed in depth. Patricia Brusha of hospitality.net talks about 5 types of social media users - what they like and what social sites they might frequent - she adds marketing implications and lots of good advice for the travel marketer.
The blog/page summaries this dialogue with a simple table chart. In addition it offers a table of the leading social media channels for travel - with a layman's explanation of what they are and how they can apply. The page is full of examples and links to useful tool and resources for hotels, tourism operators and destination marketers.
The page is a social media resource of AXSES.
AXSES is a travel marketing and applications developer; building tools for travel suppliers (hotels and tourism operators) to market and manage their travel business. AXSES recently launched a Bookings engine and tourism marketing & e-commerce application for Facebook.
Showing posts with label field management systems. Show all posts
Showing posts with label field management systems. Show all posts
Wednesday, 13 May 2009
Thursday, 7 May 2009
Travel Marketing
Travel Marketing Tools for Travel Suppliers
(hotels & tourism operators)
Marketing tools for travel marketing and management range from a simple booking engine to managing content on multinational sites and on numerous Internet travel portals and marketing channels. They also include property management systems relating to managing inventory and reservations.
To optimize an Internet marketing campaign, hotels and tourism operators need to deploy multiple strategies such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, Brand advertising (Impression), Direct e-mail marketing (such as iContact) and a spectrum of e-commerce and rates management across channels such as Global Distribution Systems(GDS), Internet Distribution Systems (IDS), Social Media Channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), Affiliate Programs, Travel Agents and Tour Operators.
Managing allocation in all channels has become a major problem for travel suppliers (hotels and tourism operators). It is so complex that many hotels and tourism operators opt out and prefer to contract their entire inventory with prime wholesalers and distributors.
The opt-out strategy is a quick fix, but it is not sustainable in the new order. All too often, these dependencies result in huge loss of market when things go wrong. A hotel I know lost its entire distribution when its sole contractor asked for conditions it could not meet. They took their business elsewhere and bookings of 100 rooms per night were gone. It is imperative that hotels and tourism operators build a balanced strategy and take more control of their own brand and marketing.
A wide array of tools, technology and marketing options exists for tourism operators. Channel management systems such as EZYield, rates management with RateGain, Global Distribution via many GDS integration companies and hundreds of Internet Distribution Systems (IDS) like Travelocity, as well a thousand Destination Travel Portals and Travel Guides.
At AXSES, we have developed a marketing suite for small and mid-sized hotels and tourism operators. This was built on our travel booking engine, arcRes Bookings-Expert.com. The Booking Engine has been vastly expanded to do much more, and it is now a Travel Marketing Suite; an e-commerce platform that works for Social Media and conventional travel channels. See http://www.arcres.com/ecommerce-and-travel-marketing suites
Many hotels have opted to jump on the GDS bandwagon and mistakenly concluded that they are now well represented on thousands of IDS channels, such as Travelocity. Wishful thinking! It was true, at one time, but IDS are opting for direct contracts with hotels – Expedia has signed up nearly 100,000 hotels to its Expedia Special Rates (ESP) program and GDS content is far down the line in priority. That is unfortunate for the hotels, as they must now manage Expedia, Travelocity and all the major distribution contracts that they choose.
Optimising distribution channels requires diligence. To be on the top of the IDS ‘by price’ list, you have to offer the best rate. But it is not always desirable to be at the very top! You need to be high on the list for hotels in your own class and offer a value added service rather that the best price. That way, your ROI and Brand is protected. There are e-commerce companies and consultants that specialize in running IDS campaigns. They arrange the contracts and manage them for you.
The travel industry is working to integrate the marketing channels and you can purchase channel management software. Generally, this software is not easy to use and is too expensive for a small hotel. An industry standard that would ease the management of channels is not imminent.
The GDS representative companies who have built Central Reservation Systems (CRS) that interface hotels to the GDS systems ( Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport and Pegasus) >, are also building systems to help hotels manage many IDS channels (Expedia, etc.) from the same CRS. For example, Genares has integrated their CRS with Expedia/TravelWeb (Expedia Quick Connect). This allows hotels to manage Expedia and TravelWeb rates and allocation using the Genares CRS and saves having to learn another online system. The cost is $4 US per booking. For Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline and others the fee is $4 plus the GDS fees. The IDS will generally require a minimum of 25% discount from your rack rate. Using the GDS as a channel manager thus will cost anywhere from $4 to $10 per booking in addition to the channel cost (25% minimum). It’s not a lot, if you consider the time it takes to learn all the different systems.
arcRes Travel Bookings for Facebook (arcResBookings) is the first-of-its-kind travel bookings application. It allows any hotel to load rates, property information, room descriptions, photos and rates directly from arcRes into Facebook and manage it from arcRes. It is a huge time saver and makes managing Facebook very easy. Both the booking engine and quotation system are embedded in Facebook, so that guests can easily book directly with the property or tourism operator, or get an immediate quote. See Facebook Travel Bookings (Live example)
ArcResBooking.com for Facebook is a part of the arcRes Marketing Suites, a comprehensive e-commerce platform for travel. It is currently the easiest GDS setup in the industry. Contracts are signed online, and the hotel's information, rates and seasons are all loaded directly from information already in arcRes.
As more and better tools for travel marketing become available, the role of the hotel marketer is becoming more technology-driven. Hotels need to invest in hiring the right people and training staff to understand and be comfortable with technology. It cannot be avoided! It is essential to success in the long term.
(hotels & tourism operators)
Marketing tools for travel marketing and management range from a simple booking engine to managing content on multinational sites and on numerous Internet travel portals and marketing channels. They also include property management systems relating to managing inventory and reservations.
To optimize an Internet marketing campaign, hotels and tourism operators need to deploy multiple strategies such as Search Engine Optimization (SEO), Pay Per Click (PPC) advertising, Brand advertising (Impression), Direct e-mail marketing (such as iContact) and a spectrum of e-commerce and rates management across channels such as Global Distribution Systems(GDS), Internet Distribution Systems (IDS), Social Media Channels (Facebook, Twitter, etc.), Affiliate Programs, Travel Agents and Tour Operators.
Managing allocation in all channels has become a major problem for travel suppliers (hotels and tourism operators). It is so complex that many hotels and tourism operators opt out and prefer to contract their entire inventory with prime wholesalers and distributors.
The opt-out strategy is a quick fix, but it is not sustainable in the new order. All too often, these dependencies result in huge loss of market when things go wrong. A hotel I know lost its entire distribution when its sole contractor asked for conditions it could not meet. They took their business elsewhere and bookings of 100 rooms per night were gone. It is imperative that hotels and tourism operators build a balanced strategy and take more control of their own brand and marketing.
A wide array of tools, technology and marketing options exists for tourism operators. Channel management systems such as EZYield, rates management with RateGain, Global Distribution via many GDS integration companies and hundreds of Internet Distribution Systems (IDS) like Travelocity, as well a thousand Destination Travel Portals and Travel Guides.
At AXSES, we have developed a marketing suite for small and mid-sized hotels and tourism operators. This was built on our travel booking engine, arcRes Bookings-Expert.com. The Booking Engine has been vastly expanded to do much more, and it is now a Travel Marketing Suite; an e-commerce platform that works for Social Media and conventional travel channels. See http://www.arcres.com/ecommerce-and-travel-marketing suites
Many hotels have opted to jump on the GDS bandwagon and mistakenly concluded that they are now well represented on thousands of IDS channels, such as Travelocity. Wishful thinking! It was true, at one time, but IDS are opting for direct contracts with hotels – Expedia has signed up nearly 100,000 hotels to its Expedia Special Rates (ESP) program and GDS content is far down the line in priority. That is unfortunate for the hotels, as they must now manage Expedia, Travelocity and all the major distribution contracts that they choose.
Optimising distribution channels requires diligence. To be on the top of the IDS ‘by price’ list, you have to offer the best rate. But it is not always desirable to be at the very top! You need to be high on the list for hotels in your own class and offer a value added service rather that the best price. That way, your ROI and Brand is protected. There are e-commerce companies and consultants that specialize in running IDS campaigns. They arrange the contracts and manage them for you.
The travel industry is working to integrate the marketing channels and you can purchase channel management software. Generally, this software is not easy to use and is too expensive for a small hotel. An industry standard that would ease the management of channels is not imminent.
The GDS representative companies who have built Central Reservation Systems (CRS) that interface hotels to the GDS systems ( Sabre, Amadeus, Travelport and Pegasus) >, are also building systems to help hotels manage many IDS channels (Expedia, etc.) from the same CRS. For example, Genares has integrated their CRS with Expedia/TravelWeb (Expedia Quick Connect). This allows hotels to manage Expedia and TravelWeb rates and allocation using the Genares CRS and saves having to learn another online system. The cost is $4 US per booking. For Orbitz, Travelocity, Priceline and others the fee is $4 plus the GDS fees. The IDS will generally require a minimum of 25% discount from your rack rate. Using the GDS as a channel manager thus will cost anywhere from $4 to $10 per booking in addition to the channel cost (25% minimum). It’s not a lot, if you consider the time it takes to learn all the different systems.
arcRes Travel Bookings for Facebook (arcResBookings) is the first-of-its-kind travel bookings application. It allows any hotel to load rates, property information, room descriptions, photos and rates directly from arcRes into Facebook and manage it from arcRes. It is a huge time saver and makes managing Facebook very easy. Both the booking engine and quotation system are embedded in Facebook, so that guests can easily book directly with the property or tourism operator, or get an immediate quote. See Facebook Travel Bookings (Live example)
ArcResBooking.com for Facebook is a part of the arcRes Marketing Suites, a comprehensive e-commerce platform for travel. It is currently the easiest GDS setup in the industry. Contracts are signed online, and the hotel's information, rates and seasons are all loaded directly from information already in arcRes.
As more and better tools for travel marketing become available, the role of the hotel marketer is becoming more technology-driven. Hotels need to invest in hiring the right people and training staff to understand and be comfortable with technology. It cannot be avoided! It is essential to success in the long term.
Monday, 30 June 2008
Marketing
Marketing at a Crossroads
No longer are the 4 P’s; Place, Price, Promotion and Product the main tenants of marketing. Marketing on the Internet is more about Relationships and Process.
Process is about technology, platform and intelligent, expert systems. Marshall McLuhan said a long time ago that the medium is the message. The Internet is a very sophisticated medium capable of delivering messages target to a single client, tuned to their precise interest at every point of purchase. It is automatic, re-engineering and personalizing the message for multiple users all in the same instance of time.
Your travel product, a travel experience, is as multidimensional as your clients. For example, you may cater to weddings and romance as well as lazy beach living, active holidays, gold vacations and gourmet dining. You can’t say it all at one time to one traveler. Information about your product must be engineered and differentiated; it must be made personal to each traveler.
Information must be malleable, configurable, searchable, accessible and delivered tailored to suite।
For example you may choose to advertise a golf holiday, you deliver content and images that are tailored to what you offer the golfer. You direct golfers to a special page dealing with that experience. You do this on your website, and on every channel you market on. – you cannot organize and deliver it manually. The process and platform configures and deliver the message dynamically. For this your information must be engineered with systems that are very smart, learning what motivates the clients and delivering the experience they are looking for. The difference is that the online message is a "Pull" message prompting an action, offline it is typically a "Push" message to gain awareness. With that the entire focus of marketing has changed. For more on this, see United Airlines Case Study by Double Click.
People are not talking to people at this stage, it’s a process, and the process understands people, gathering and analyzing information about them every step of the way. The smart systems (the Platform) tracks clients interaction, recognizing patterns, responding appropriately, managing and analyzing data in the process of building the digital relationship. See digital-relationships
But Process and Platform are not enough. In a complex integrated world, Partners are essential. Microsoft has said this clearly, telling its Value Added Resellers (VARS) to Partner or die!. Simply put you can do it all yourself, so you must rely on people with skills and passion that complements your own. The mechanics of Internet is very complex, we must cooperate to succeed; outsourcing is essential!
Finally, the Internet is driven by Passion. Thousands of ordinary people, professionals, workers, teachers and student donate time and resources freely, building content, services and applications that they feel passionate about. People are building relationships, offering comments, writing blogs, helping others, for free. This community has spawned the social network, which interacts and influences everything on the Internet.
Jason McNamara, CMO of Atlerian says that the new marketing is driven by passion, we need to be passionate about marketing and today, more that ever before, that means being passionate about understanding and measuring the digital footprint. ”Being able to apply sophisticated marketing analytics to every piece of information you collect about your customers is like bringing the customers themselves in-house to tell you not just what's working and what isn't, but why. You can use this passion to your advantage, helping generate ideas, proving their relevance, and justifying the money you spend” See Jason McNanara’s article on the new 5 P’s of marketing: People, Process, Platform, Passion and Partners (http://www.alterian.com/solutions/marketing.aspx)
###### Over 50% of leisure bookings are online in 2012. An estimated 89% of planners are researching event locations on the web.
Related Posts (at a crossroads series):
New Order of Commerce:
Destination Marketing
Distribution http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/10/distribution.html
Travel Marketing http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2009/05/travelmarketing.html
The Supplier http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/thesupplier.html
Marketing http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/marketing.html
Advertising http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/advertising.html
Search at a Crossroads http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/04/have-now-lost-their-opportunity-to-be.html Publishing at a Crossroads http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2009/03/atacrossroads.html
No longer are the 4 P’s; Place, Price, Promotion and Product the main tenants of marketing. Marketing on the Internet is more about Relationships and Process.
Process is about technology, platform and intelligent, expert systems. Marshall McLuhan said a long time ago that the medium is the message. The Internet is a very sophisticated medium capable of delivering messages target to a single client, tuned to their precise interest at every point of purchase. It is automatic, re-engineering and personalizing the message for multiple users all in the same instance of time.
Your travel product, a travel experience, is as multidimensional as your clients. For example, you may cater to weddings and romance as well as lazy beach living, active holidays, gold vacations and gourmet dining. You can’t say it all at one time to one traveler. Information about your product must be engineered and differentiated; it must be made personal to each traveler.
Information must be malleable, configurable, searchable, accessible and delivered tailored to suite।
For example you may choose to advertise a golf holiday, you deliver content and images that are tailored to what you offer the golfer. You direct golfers to a special page dealing with that experience. You do this on your website, and on every channel you market on. – you cannot organize and deliver it manually. The process and platform configures and deliver the message dynamically. For this your information must be engineered with systems that are very smart, learning what motivates the clients and delivering the experience they are looking for. The difference is that the online message is a "Pull" message prompting an action, offline it is typically a "Push" message to gain awareness. With that the entire focus of marketing has changed. For more on this, see United Airlines Case Study by Double Click.
People are not talking to people at this stage, it’s a process, and the process understands people, gathering and analyzing information about them every step of the way. The smart systems (the Platform) tracks clients interaction, recognizing patterns, responding appropriately, managing and analyzing data in the process of building the digital relationship. See digital-relationships
But Process and Platform are not enough. In a complex integrated world, Partners are essential. Microsoft has said this clearly, telling its Value Added Resellers (VARS) to Partner or die!. Simply put you can do it all yourself, so you must rely on people with skills and passion that complements your own. The mechanics of Internet is very complex, we must cooperate to succeed; outsourcing is essential!
Finally, the Internet is driven by Passion. Thousands of ordinary people, professionals, workers, teachers and student donate time and resources freely, building content, services and applications that they feel passionate about. People are building relationships, offering comments, writing blogs, helping others, for free. This community has spawned the social network, which interacts and influences everything on the Internet.
Jason McNamara, CMO of Atlerian says that the new marketing is driven by passion, we need to be passionate about marketing and today, more that ever before, that means being passionate about understanding and measuring the digital footprint. ”Being able to apply sophisticated marketing analytics to every piece of information you collect about your customers is like bringing the customers themselves in-house to tell you not just what's working and what isn't, but why. You can use this passion to your advantage, helping generate ideas, proving their relevance, and justifying the money you spend” See Jason McNanara’s article on the new 5 P’s of marketing: People, Process, Platform, Passion and Partners (http://www.alterian.com/solutions/marketing.aspx)
###### Over 50% of leisure bookings are online in 2012. An estimated 89% of planners are researching event locations on the web.
Related Posts (at a crossroads series):
New Order of Commerce:
Destination Marketing
Distribution http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/10/distribution.html
Travel Marketing http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2009/05/travelmarketing.html
The Supplier http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/thesupplier.html
Marketing http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/marketing.html
Advertising http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/06/advertising.html
Search at a Crossroads http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2008/04/have-now-lost-their-opportunity-to-be.html Publishing at a Crossroads http://axses-ianclayton.blogspot.com/2009/03/atacrossroads.html
Friday, 20 June 2008
TheSupplier
Who is the supplier of travel
It worries me that many of our small hotel customers, do not perceive themselves as suppliers. They often see themselves as a “product” “supplied” to the market by middlemen. Nothing is further from the truth. The hotel owner is the supplier of rooms and of an experience. Together these make up the core product of a holiday. The hotel owner should choose to be inventive and create total packages that fulfill the travelers dream”.
Ultimately travel marketing is about selling a dream, and each hotel is distinct, offering a unique experience. All of the tools the hotel needs to package an experience, even including airfare is available for direct bookings.
Believing that middlemen are suppliers erodes the hotel brand and places market leadership in the wrong hands. When consumers go to online channels to book reservations, they are influenced as much by the channel used to book the reservation as they are to the actual hotel they selected
It is time to take control.
Control of the channel is not about getting more sales out of middlemen – it is about offering a service that competes with middlemen, marketing your own brand and engaging customers directly; getting high margin sales at lowest costs, being in control of your market and your brand.
Max Starkov, Chief eBusiness Strategist, Hospitality eBusiness Strategies writes “The Internet is all about transparency, efficient distribution of information, and inexpensive e-commerce transactions. It is simply the best direct-to-consumer distribution channel ever created and it definitely favors supplier-buyer relationships”.
The trend is clear, the Internet is revolutionizing marketing with more and more travelers choosing to go to the suppliers website and book direct rather than with a middleman. Travelers say they feel they have more control working with the supplier directly, but they expect rates and services to be comparable.
There are now new tools and services for travel suppliers to help them provide the full set of interactive and social networking solutions expected। AXSES has been a pioneer, providing 'supplier centered tools' to manage and distribute travel products. These can be installed directly on the suppliers own website. They include:
All of these may be integrated with:
What the middlemen do well is offer comparison shopping and search capabilities. AXSES bookings and reservation portals like http://bookingsBarbados.com, http://BookingsStlucia.com and http://CaribRes.com provides this also, but with this twist - requests and bookings are made directly with the hotel. (see axses arcRes supplier travel suites).
Unlike middlemen systems the hotel is not hidden and travelers can go direct to the hotel website at any time. There are popups and standard views of the information which travelers like as supplier websites follow no standard and it is confusing to compare several. All information on the direct channel (including websites content, amenities and features) is under the control of the Hotel.
These new tools are different to middlemen solutions for suppliers and destinations। The supplier-centered tools are designed from the ground up for suppliers, ie hotels, apartments, villas, activities and all tourism operators. They are configured to any set of rules and rate options. The tools are a powerful set of integrated suites to help tourism suppliers compete with all middlemen, for more high profit DIRECT business.
But be wary, not all who claim to be direct are!. Some marketers are jumping on the bandwagon, without credentials. A direct channel will not hide your brand, infact direct is about marketing your brand. A direct channel will allow users to go to your website and will not require guest to prepay the booking, deposit it in their bank, and pay you the balance less commissions. A direct channel gives you control on payment options, terms, content, rules, branding, and customers.
In 2008* 60% of online travelers chose to BUY Direct from the supplier, bypassing the middleman. The trend to direct is expected to continue. Merrill lynch forecasts that it will exceed 65% in the next 2 years. Current the large chains receive over 80% of online business direct (see trends by Merrill lynch HeBs).
We need to gear-up now for this market and take control
* Merill Lynch report is dated 2007, the table says 2008 but it probable is 2007. This is to be verified!
It worries me that many of our small hotel customers, do not perceive themselves as suppliers. They often see themselves as a “product” “supplied” to the market by middlemen. Nothing is further from the truth. The hotel owner is the supplier of rooms and of an experience. Together these make up the core product of a holiday. The hotel owner should choose to be inventive and create total packages that fulfill the travelers dream”.
Ultimately travel marketing is about selling a dream, and each hotel is distinct, offering a unique experience. All of the tools the hotel needs to package an experience, even including airfare is available for direct bookings.
Believing that middlemen are suppliers erodes the hotel brand and places market leadership in the wrong hands. When consumers go to online channels to book reservations, they are influenced as much by the channel used to book the reservation as they are to the actual hotel they selected
It is time to take control.
Control of the channel is not about getting more sales out of middlemen – it is about offering a service that competes with middlemen, marketing your own brand and engaging customers directly; getting high margin sales at lowest costs, being in control of your market and your brand.
Max Starkov, Chief eBusiness Strategist, Hospitality eBusiness Strategies writes “The Internet is all about transparency, efficient distribution of information, and inexpensive e-commerce transactions. It is simply the best direct-to-consumer distribution channel ever created and it definitely favors supplier-buyer relationships”.
The trend is clear, the Internet is revolutionizing marketing with more and more travelers choosing to go to the suppliers website and book direct rather than with a middleman. Travelers say they feel they have more control working with the supplier directly, but they expect rates and services to be comparable.
There are now new tools and services for travel suppliers to help them provide the full set of interactive and social networking solutions expected। AXSES has been a pioneer, providing 'supplier centered tools' to manage and distribute travel products. These can be installed directly on the suppliers own website. They include:
- Airfare ‘search and book’ that can be put right on the hotel website
- Dynamic packaging that for hotel suppliers that adds activities that match travelers profiles
- RSS feeds, blogs, travelers’ comments and travelers ratings
- Website booking engine
- Rates management and
- A range of travel components that hotels can put on their sites
All of these may be integrated with:
- Hotel Property Management Systems
- Global Distribution Systems (GDS) and
- The Internet Distribution Companies like Expedia.
What the middlemen do well is offer comparison shopping and search capabilities. AXSES bookings and reservation portals like http://bookingsBarbados.com, http://BookingsStlucia.com and http://CaribRes.com provides this also, but with this twist - requests and bookings are made directly with the hotel. (see axses arcRes supplier travel suites).
Unlike middlemen systems the hotel is not hidden and travelers can go direct to the hotel website at any time. There are popups and standard views of the information which travelers like as supplier websites follow no standard and it is confusing to compare several. All information on the direct channel (including websites content, amenities and features) is under the control of the Hotel.
These new tools are different to middlemen solutions for suppliers and destinations। The supplier-centered tools are designed from the ground up for suppliers, ie hotels, apartments, villas, activities and all tourism operators. They are configured to any set of rules and rate options. The tools are a powerful set of integrated suites to help tourism suppliers compete with all middlemen, for more high profit DIRECT business.
But be wary, not all who claim to be direct are!. Some marketers are jumping on the bandwagon, without credentials. A direct channel will not hide your brand, infact direct is about marketing your brand. A direct channel will allow users to go to your website and will not require guest to prepay the booking, deposit it in their bank, and pay you the balance less commissions. A direct channel gives you control on payment options, terms, content, rules, branding, and customers.
In 2008* 60% of online travelers chose to BUY Direct from the supplier, bypassing the middleman. The trend to direct is expected to continue. Merrill lynch forecasts that it will exceed 65% in the next 2 years. Current the large chains receive over 80% of online business direct (see trends by Merrill lynch HeBs).
We need to gear-up now for this market and take control
* Merill Lynch report is dated 2007, the table says 2008 but it probable is 2007. This is to be verified!
Saturday, 17 February 2007
Strategy for Small Travel Solutions companies
This article was inspired by my visit to the travel Technology Show 2007.
See previous blog
At AXSES we believe that ultimate control of distribution rest with the travel operator. That means the hotel, activity and rental company supplier.
Hotels have encouraged distribution dominance by offering huge discounts to tour operators in exchange for guaranteed bookings. At the same time the distributors had marketing clout and could afford the technology that consumers demanded (on line booking, dynamic packaging etc). In a fragmented global market, distributors emerged as the place to shop.
The tour operators set their own rules and resell price. Prices in distribution were thus often much lower that the hotel published rates. As competing distributors try to match rates the pressure on hotel profitability is intense. Often a hotel that would not meet a requested price would be dropped. In this agressive distribution driven market, the hotel Brand was eroded and rates fragmented.
The large hotel chains have moved effectively to take back control with Best Rate Guarantees and by offering consumers the service (technology) they demand. (on-line costing, bookings, packaging). Thanks to technology, operators have increased and continue to increase their influence via direct bookings and by greater clout in managed distribution pricing and inventory.
At the same time “travel consumers are exchanging more information and exerting much greater influence over online content - from travel blogs to social networking, they are driving change” (source).
Travelers prefer to deal direct(1) and the core technology that is driving this trend is Field Management Systems and small travel application developers and integrators play a large part in delivering these solutions.
Consider AXSES portal clients like Intimate hotels of Barbados. The Intimate portal is managed by Portal-keeper.com and arcRes-CRS (central reservations Systems) these solutions are fully integrated with GDS and with the hotel bookings and (bookings-expert.com) and Property Management System http://axses-innkeeper.com.
In this senario the small hotels can manage the rates and inventory on the Intimate Hotels Barbados Portal as well as the GDS. The technology they use not only powers Intimate in Barbados but at least 10 other channels that are vital marketing forces for Barbados and the Caribbean. The next step is to add full channel management extending to sites like Expedia, Travelocity and all 40,000 IDS sites.
Notes
1. PhoCusWright 2005: "In fact, more than twice as many online travelers (36%) believe that the supplier-direct channel provides the best customer service compared to 15% who choose the online travel agency channel. Even offline agencies, which are coveted for their personal touch in a technology-driven world, did not fare as well, with 33% claiming they provide the best customer service". ....more
See previous blog
At AXSES we believe that ultimate control of distribution rest with the travel operator. That means the hotel, activity and rental company supplier.
Hotels have encouraged distribution dominance by offering huge discounts to tour operators in exchange for guaranteed bookings. At the same time the distributors had marketing clout and could afford the technology that consumers demanded (on line booking, dynamic packaging etc). In a fragmented global market, distributors emerged as the place to shop.
The tour operators set their own rules and resell price. Prices in distribution were thus often much lower that the hotel published rates. As competing distributors try to match rates the pressure on hotel profitability is intense. Often a hotel that would not meet a requested price would be dropped. In this agressive distribution driven market, the hotel Brand was eroded and rates fragmented.
The large hotel chains have moved effectively to take back control with Best Rate Guarantees and by offering consumers the service (technology) they demand. (on-line costing, bookings, packaging). Thanks to technology, operators have increased and continue to increase their influence via direct bookings and by greater clout in managed distribution pricing and inventory.
At the same time “travel consumers are exchanging more information and exerting much greater influence over online content - from travel blogs to social networking, they are driving change” (source).
Travelers prefer to deal direct(1) and the core technology that is driving this trend is Field Management Systems and small travel application developers and integrators play a large part in delivering these solutions.
Consider AXSES portal clients like Intimate hotels of Barbados. The Intimate portal is managed by Portal-keeper.com and arcRes-CRS (central reservations Systems) these solutions are fully integrated with GDS and with the hotel bookings and (bookings-expert.com) and Property Management System http://axses-innkeeper.com.
In this senario the small hotels can manage the rates and inventory on the Intimate Hotels Barbados Portal as well as the GDS. The technology they use not only powers Intimate in Barbados but at least 10 other channels that are vital marketing forces for Barbados and the Caribbean. The next step is to add full channel management extending to sites like Expedia, Travelocity and all 40,000 IDS sites.
Notes
1. PhoCusWright 2005: "In fact, more than twice as many online travelers (36%) believe that the supplier-direct channel provides the best customer service compared to 15% who choose the online travel agency channel. Even offline agencies, which are coveted for their personal touch in a technology-driven world, did not fare as well, with 33% claiming they provide the best customer service". ....more
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