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On behalf of the global Hotelbeds team, I would like to extend a warm New Year’s welcome to our clients, partners and friends around the world.

2022 was a year unlike any other for our industry: from a considerable rebound in the first half of the year to the economic uncertainty currently impacting the daily lives of would-be travellers, navigating the past 12 months has required a great deal of tenacity. However, I am pleased to report that 2022 was indeed a fantastic year for Hotelbeds.

Of course, this success – and, by association, the support that we are committed to delivering to you – would not be possible without our dedicated teams located in every corner of the globe. Their passion and expertise, combined with our rich data and technology solutions, remain the driving force behind all that we do, and we thank them for their unceasing efforts.

Additionally, we recognise that it is the responsibility of everyone in our industry to become a force for good. Thank you to those who have committed to joining us on this journey, including the partners making a pledge to go plastic free, and the clients who champion sustainable stays. I’m also grateful once more to our amazing teams who dedicated much of their time to volunteering; similarly, the recent introduction of our tree planting project with Tree Nation has been met with much enthusiasm from our people and partners, and we look forward to seeing these reforestation efforts coming to fruition.

With aspiration, dedication and positivity, I am without doubt that 2023 will be a tremendous year for all those who are a part of the Hotelbeds family. Thank you for your partnership.

I wish you a wonderful 2023.

Nicolas


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New Year Message From Hotelbeds CEO, Nicolas Huss

In the modern world the many paths of travel all ultimately converge on one very important point: technology.

At Hotelbeds we are committed to continually pushing forward the boundaries of travel technology and recently we have adopted a new technique for achieving this: Nexus Agile Framework.

What does that involve? To understand the Nexus framework, you must first understand something called ‘Agile’. This is a framework for iterative and incremental value delivery that bases its way of working on frequent feedback and collaborative decision making. This differs from traditional methods by getting teams to work in ‘sprints’ (you can learn more in this YouTube video).

The Nexus Agile Framework takes this one step further, working across multiple teams to help them come together to deliver services or features to multiple stakeholders.

Already we have finished our third Nexus four week ‘sprint’, with the first one taking place only a few months ago.

We aimed to improve collaboration between platform groups within our Technology department – which is made up of seven different teams covering Operations, IT Architecture and IT Technology Delivery – to establish common priorities and focus on the end destination in our journey to become Agile.

Thanks to the efforts of all those involved our teams are now better aligned and delivering enhanced value to the business – for example optimizing cloud services and also reducing cloud costs. Just as importantly, stakeholders are interacted with via a single contact point and we are improving transparency on value delivery.&nbsp;

An additional huge benefit is the fact that transparency, alignment and focus help teams become more engaged and committed. This is a really big deal: the more an employee is driven by purpose and passion, the more positive the impact will be for the organization’s results.

So it is clear what Nexus does for us, but what does that mean for our supplier and customer network? The framework enables us to deliver more products and services faster, with greater surety and predictability.

This means we can keep suppliers and clients at the leading edge of product definition, give them a faster ‘MTTM’ (mean time to market) and an experience that is both significantly more consistent and reliable. Given the current environment, this is more important than ever before.

I´d just like to say to all my colleagues involved how enormously proud I am of our success in delivering Nexus Agile Framework. That´s because there are hardly any cases of pure technology teams implementing scrum in platform teams. We really have had to draw our own roadmap and that makes the achievement both remarkable and rewarding.

Keen to find out more about how you could use Nexus Agile Framework in your work environment? Whilst clearly this is not a Hotelbeds service, we´d still be pleased to offer advice on how your business could benefit from this approach to project management. Drop me an email today on smatthews@hotelbeds.com and let´s compare notes on where our respective journeys converge.


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Our journey to find travel’s nexus  

When was cloud computing invented? This is a hotly disputed subject amongst my fellow geeks, with the answers brokered spanning from 1963 through to 1993 – and across those three decades the years that have the strongest backing are 1983 and 1989 (I´m a 1983 guy).

As we charge through the 21st century the discussion has moved on to become ´who has genuinely deployed a practical cost conscious cloud strategy? ´, accompanied by similarly high levels of debate.

Like so many other businesses our cloud journey at Hotelbeds has been made up of an initial technical push with a single cloud provider tightly coupled – and deliberately&nbsp;so – with our legacy on-premise infrastructure.

Unfortunately this is not economical in the long-term. &nbsp;In the short term it works, but then the costs grow and the single partner route takes a big bite out of the advantages of a distributed architecture.

The credible cloud provider landscape has really matured in recent years and the challenge for us now is not which providers to go with, but instead how we effectively deploy our services amongst those providers.

We have accelerated our outcomes through our partnership with Rancher, the software stack that enables businesses to deliver Kubernetes-as-a-service.

I can proudly confirm that this summer we started running Kubernetes clusters in our production environments on GCP (Google Cloud Platform) and AWS (Amazon Web Services), using Rancher to deploy and distribute our work loads.

So what does this mean for our 180,000 hotel and 60,000 B2B travel buyer partners? The greater flexibility we now have means we can offer a more reliable, more robust, and more performant availability service. These are core components in our customer experience and in transaction terms this heaviest platform element.

Meanwhile an added bonus for us is the time reduction of 90% in cloud migration and 80% in deployment. This allows us to scale and deploy our workloads in minutes – literally – that in turn delivers a substantial operating efficiency and the all-important greater surety of service.

Whilst multi-cloud is far from a new strategy for us or our sector, I´d like to make clear that this is not just some theoretical exercise: we have fully deployed a multi-cluster, multi-cloud, hybrid cloud/on premise architecture to give us complete flexibility. It is an enormous achievement.

This outstanding work reflects the professionalism and commitment to innovation of our colleagues, who did all this work long before I arrived – &nbsp;while I bask in the glory of their hard work!

I am already working with the teams on the next phase of our cloud journey with additional core components in our platform, and also leaning&nbsp;on some amazing new business service technology that will enable seamless real-time performance optimization…more on that soon.

If you would like to know more about our cloud journey or the Hotelbeds product and technology community please reach out to us.

Want to find out more about how our Rancher partnership can benefit your business? Read the full case study on Rancher’s website here.


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Finally…a real hybrid multi-cloud success story

During the first quarter of this year we have learned that the future is not quite what it used to be. In fact, right now that future we all predicted – of a continued growth year – couldn´t be further away.

Relative to Europe and North America, here in China we are now in the position of essentially already living in the future of travel.&nbsp;

Even in the Hubei province – where COVID-19 was first identified – travel restrictions have now been lifted and tourist sites across the nation are opening. This has been accompanied by a modest but encouraging return in hotel bookings at a domestic level here in China.

So what are the lessons for all of you in travel industry?&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

Firstly, domestic will recover first before international and in the next few months leisure travelers will choose destinations away from dense crowded spaces. Fresh air, green mountains and rivers, blue sky and the sea will be preferred by many people. &nbsp;Business travelers will prefer chain brand hotels at the mid-price level because of concern for both safety and budget.&nbsp;&nbsp;

And note that it is very likely that Chinese travellers will be the first to venture abroad for holidays once international restrictions are lifted. In fact just this week a survey by the China Tourism Academy and Trip.com showed that from around the end of May and June onwards it is likely that Chinese outbound travel will gradually pick up once the pandemic is controlled, border controls are lifted, and destinations open again. &nbsp;This most likely will start with neighbouring countries such Thailand, Japan and South East Asian countries generally, depending on the travel policy of each destination. Travel demand will gradually resume but clearly the destinations will be changed post COVID-19.

Given that Chinese travellers were already the biggest international travel segment before COVID-19 struck, when travel restrictions are eased and the recovery comes outbound Chinese tourists will present a significant opportunity to hoteliers around the globe keen to lift occupancy rates. Will your hotel be ready for that?

Secondly, we are seeing that concerns about safety are a focus for many travelers. Travelers will tend to be more cautious in selecting their travel agent, travel destination, airline or hotel. And those who responded professionally during the COVID-19 outbreak and who how have a compelling safety process in place will be strongly positioned. Will that feature in your sales, marketing and operations processes?

This is not just about the end traveller too, but about support for your partners right across the whole travel distribution chain. For example, our clients were eager to get&nbsp; up-to-date information and assistance during this unprecedented time, so we developed a dedicated COVID-19 website.

Many small travel agents, travel operators and B2B resellers operating a low profit model will disappear or be change substantially after this crisis.&nbsp; That is because bigger players who have more stable finances and solid performance in the past can attract more capital to survive during this crisis. &nbsp;Will this change your choice and decision of partners afterwards?

Thirdly we expect that online travel, in the future may see a boost given that most people over the last few months have now learned how to purchase anything and everything online. This ‘purchase online’ behavior will gradually turn into a permanent habit, so we believe that it will further accelerate the digitalization of the industry overall for the long term.&nbsp;

If you didn’t have time to think about transformation your business model previously, now is a good time to focus on it! Especially for those ‘Bricks-and-Mortar’ travel agencies, who need to restructure their business practices to meet the changing demands and transaction into a ‘Clicks-and-Mortar’ business.

Last but not least, we are anticipating a significant increase in the number of travellers looking to take out comprehensive insurance before travelling. For travel agents and other intermediaries searching for extra ways to boost revenues, this could prove a rewarding cross-selling opportunity that your consumer customers will be truly grateful for.

In the film Back to the Future Part II, Marty ‘returns’ to the year 2015. Whilst 2015 may well be in the past for us, the reality is that many would welcome a return to the sales performance of that year. My view from China suggests that we may gradually return to–but that the travel landscape will look quite different.


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Back to the future: lessons for the travel sector from China

Next week we welcome a new year and, more importantly, a new decade. Chris Branagan, our Director of Technology, gives us some insights about how the year has been for the industry from a technology perspective and explains what to expect for 2020 in hospitality and tourism.

Are there any non-travel industry technology companies that will have a big impact on the travel industry during 2020?

Out of all the tech giants Salesforce is now the fastest growing and we saw this in 2019. For example this year they bought Tableau and they´ve been very busy taking over many other companies. They are working their way towards offering a full service solution, including both customer acquisition, marketing, analytics and CRM.

Already they are now present in many parts of the travel technology eco-system and this looks set to increase. In 2020 I see more and more travel businesses turning to them to be their technology partner. Watch this space.

As more people book travel online, how is search demand evolving and how many searches does your business now handle daily?

The travel industry ‘look-to-book-ratio’ – the ratio of how many travel offers a consumer sees Vs making a purchase – has been exponentially growing for a long time now. I´d say that it has more or less doubled every nine months or so consistently for several years.

As a result we are seeing from clients more and more demand for search capacity and now that we are in the cloud we are able to support any level of demand – and now see regularly peaks of up to 4 billion searches a day.

What currently is driving the exponential increase in ‘look-to-book-ratios’ and demand for search power?

Historically this has been driven simply by the growth in online purchases of travel. But in recent years this has been driven more specifically by the growth in ‘hyper-connectivity’: everyone is connected to everyone.

Is there a better way to manage the insatiable demand for search data from travel sellers?

As technology improves the cost per search falls, of course, but currently the demand for increased search results means that the travel industry is not benefiting from this cost saving – in fact overall the cost per booking is probably increasing.

At Hotelbeds we are trialing methods of using machine learning to reduce the number of search results required for each request. How does this work? Right now the industry has a ‘one-size-fits-all-approach’: a search can returns all potential booking options, even though the vast majority of those results are not needed. Our aim is instead to give our clients a ‘curated feed’ based on their needs, using machine learning tools that look at their prior booking patterns and so on.

We hope to be able to announce more details about this next year and are very excited about this. Not only will this make us more competitive, clients will benefit significantly because processing search results costs them time, money and resources. In other words clients will see a reduction in costs, quicker search results, and content more relevant too for their end-consumer customers.

How is technology revolutionizing the retail travel agent selling experience?

I think that the Thomas Cook collapse really drove home to many both inside and outside of the travel industry that the high-street retailer still has an important and big part to play in selling holidays – but that there is a very clear dividing line between those doing it well, such as TUI, and those that have failed, with Thomas Cook being the most high-profile example.

What are the successful travel agents and tour operators doing? Embracing technology explains a signifi­cant part of their success. In many respects on the surface there is nothing radical about what they are do­ing. In fact they´re really just using modern techniques for selling, such as using large and multiple screens to help people visualize the experience. It’s been a radical change for many though, when you consider that only a few years back many still had the ‘green-and-black-terminals’ behind the desk (that they wouldn´t let you look at!).

More interestingly though from a technology perspective is what has happened behind the scenes here. The consumer can´t see this, but the technology innovations that have occurred to make sure that the trav­el agent is able to find the right content at the right price, easily and quickly, have been considerable.

I´m talking about search and filtering options, group booking/payment functions, issuing vouchers, refunds and cancellations, itinerary print-offs, multiple payments, digital after sales service, customer data bases, upselling ancillary services like a transfer, and much more. It’s not as glamourous as ‘instant bookings via Instagram’ or talking about using Alexa as your customer service solution, but these kind of iterative chang­es will continue to help high-street travel agents differentiate themselves from the big OTAs in 2020.

A few years ago ‘cloud’ was the buzz word in travel technology circles. Is there much more to say about cloud nowadays?

Many companies perhaps touted their ‘cloud’ capabilities long before they were really actually in the cloud, so it is still only very recently that many companies really switched to the cloud – and many still have that ahead of them, particularly in the travel sector where many relied on legacy data centre solutions.

This year there has been one big change worth noting though. More and more competitors have matured and this is driving down prices. Cloud costs for travel technology companies can take up a significant part of the IT budget, or even the overall budget, and so reduced costs are good news for everyone – not least for smaller travel technology companies, travel start-ups and, ultimately, for the end-traveller.

And finally, did blockchain realise its full potential for the travel sector during 2019?

Blockchain has once again disappointed in 2019 by failing to gain any kind of significant traction in the trav­el sector. Why? The simple answer is that whilst its potential uses are clear, no one is finding a cost-effective was to employ those uses yet.

Nonetheless we shouldn´t write it off yet. For decades we laughed at the failure of video phones to become widespread, but look how quickly they have become the choice for so many of us communicating over long-distances.

For example, there could be a very strong case for hotels to use blockchain to be able to confidently man­age the distribution of their rates and avoid OTAs using their opaque rates intended for offline channels. At this stage it is not a cost effective solution, but who knows maybe one day it will be?

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End-of-year industry outlook

The closure of Amoma last month generated a lot of news. Within that you may have seen debate about what role bedbanks play in providing B2C sellers such as Amoma with discounted rates, originally meant for offline channels such as retail travel agents or tour operators?

Therefore we at Hotelbeds want to set the record straight on this issue. As we are the biggest bedbank in the world and sell over 50 million room nights a year, I would like to update you on how our place in the travel distribution eco-system has evolved over the last few years.

As we integrated both Tourico Holidays and GTA into our business over the last two years, we have been busy listening to our hotel partners to greater understand their needs. Two particular areas of feedback stood out and we have responded to those.

Firstly the need for hoteliers to be able to more efficiently and accurately segment their distribution across various channels.

And secondly, the need to access incremental bookings from high-value guests, in particular long-haul travellers.

This is why over the last two years we have been evolving our business to offer our hotel partners access to reservations from hard-to-reach channels such as retail travel agents, tour operators, points redemption schemes and airlines. These channels provide travellers who book further in advance, cancel less, stay for longer, pay more per night, spend more in-destination, and come back more often.

As a direct result of this, we had been steadily reducing our sales via Amoma over the last few years and at the time of its collapse it represented less than 1% (and falling) of our sales.

Equally we have been reducing sales with other similar players and in the last year alone have forfeited approximately 250 million euros worth of similar business – as we did not see these bookings as in the interest of our hotel partners.

Additionally we have increased our investment and resources focused on this area to create enlarged teams and improved technology solutions that help identify any issues quickly for our hotel partners.

And for those B2C buyers that are not adhering to our clear distribution management rules, we have also introduced a ‘three strikes and you are out’ policy. Any online travel agent that distributes content intended for offline in an online B2C sales channel, just three times, will find themselves cut-off from distributing that hotel via Hotelbeds.

As a result of these efforts we are now seeing our hotel partners report close to zero percent of instances of problems – from a room night production basis – and this figure keeps falling.&nbsp;&nbsp;

Currently around 75% of the sales we gain for our hotel partners are either from non-domestic source markets – in particular China, which is now our fourth biggest source market globally – or from off-line channels such as tour operators, airlines (via their booking process and call centres), retail travel agents or points redemption and loyalty schemes.

Retail travel agents in particular provide hoteliers with hard-to-reach and very high-value guests. That’s why over the next three years we plan to increase by 14,000 the number of retail travel agents we work with, taking our total travel agency portfolio to 64,000 – all served and managed by our Bedsonline brand.

Perhaps you now begin to see why our business with Amoma had steadily reduced? This is why in the coming months and years we anticipate that the Amomas of the world will become more and more insignificant. Not only does their business model impact negatively on all of our hotel partners, whether independent or chain, but in the long term it is not sustainable for the industry. &nbsp;

To learn more about the issue of rate integrity – and bedbanks in general - read our White Paper published last week,&nbsp;Reach, Growth and Occupancy:&nbsp;The real value of the bedbank distribution model&nbsp;https://www.phocuswire.com/Hotelbeds-value-of-bedbanks-report

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Amomas closure creates an important question for hoteliers: how to stop OTAs abusing discounted rates?

Visitors to the United States are responsible for nearly 1.2 million U.S jobs that represent $33 billion in overall wages, according to the U.S Travel Association.

With travel spending increasing exponentially every year, is it any surprise that these tourists welcome big business for hoteliers?

To put this into perspective, on average, international travelers spend $4,200 when visiting the U.S. and stay an average of 18 nights! The difference between that and a domestic traveler is enormous.

But not all ‘international travelers’ are equal. While ‘long-haul arrivals’ – international travelers flying 7+ hours to the U.S. – represent only close to half of all non-domestic arrivals, they are nonetheless responsible for 84% of all international travel spending made inside the U.S.

A great example of such travelers would be Chinese visitors, who not only visit the U.S. in robust numbers, but are spending an average of $6,700 during their stays.

What’s more, all of this travel spending by international visitors generates nearly $170 billion in federal, state and local taxes.

International travelers, and particularly long-haul travelers, not only pay a higher per night rate than other international visitors, typically these customers also cancel less, make bookings further in advance, stay longer, spend more in the destination, give more generous tips and are keen to return more often.&nbsp;

At Hotelbeds, on average, 60% of the bookings we provide to our US hotel partners come from non-domestic travelers We gain these via our high quality distribution channels that target over 60,000 B2B travel buyers (tour operators, travel agents, airlines, loyalty and point plans) based in over 140 source markets around the world that drive bookings that are fully complimentary and incremental to a hotels own direct distribution strategy.

If you would like to find out more about how to fill your hotel with high-value overseas reservations – and spend more time creating a memorable experience for guests – then contact us today.&nbsp;

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Why foreign is best for US hoteliers looking for high-value guests

The philosophy of hotel revenue management is to sell the right product to the right customer at the right time and at the right price, with the ultimate goal of maximizing the hotel’s bottom line.

Normally, a hotel evaluates revenue management performance based on ADRs, RevPARs, and occupancy rates. So where do lead-times fit into this? Often this important KPI can be easily overlooked or undervalued.

Should a short lead-time be a point of concern? Today hotels accept that the market is very dynamic and has a high level of complexity: uncertainty is the new normal. So short-lead times are not automatically assumed to be bad – after all, last minute bookings can often be very profitable.

Nonetheless, in general longer lead-times are more desirable for a hotel as they provide many benefits. Few finance directors will turn down the cash-flow benefits or the ability to anticipate staffing schedules more cost effectively. But from a revenue management perspective this allows the hotel more time to shift inventory to direct channels, reduce discounts in opaque channels and reconsider other deals, all in order to maximize the yield.&nbsp;

There is, of course, one very important benefit for hotels when it comes to longer lead-times, and this one is not so easy to measure over the short-term. Longer lead-times allow you to spend more time understanding the profiles of your customers and focusing on preparing to provide them with a memorable experience upon arrival – thus earning more loyal guests.

Earlier this year, distribution technology provider D-Edge analyzed the online distribution performance of more than 200 different channels for 680 properties in Europe between 2014 and 2018. One of the key findings is that Hotelbeds has the highest average lead time, at 60 days, and almost twice as high as Booking Holdings (with only 35). The average lead time across all channels is 39 days and only the hotel’s own website comes closest to Hotelbeds, at 41 days.

The lead-times vary from market to market. We at Hotelbeds have found that long lead-times often occur during the high-demand season or as a result of long-distance travel. According to booking data from the Hotelbeds platform in the year-to-date, 45% of United States travelers book APAC accommodation at least one month in advance.

But the one-month advance booking rate of the United Kingdom and Australian markets are even higher, with 63% and 72% respectively. By contrast, the one-month advance booking rate of Asian travelers is only about 39%.

To gain further insight into lead-time trends across different distribution channels and source markets don´t hesitate to contact us to find out more. And don’t forget to include lead-times as a key performance indicator when you next do your planning and forecasting for your hotel!


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Could lead-time be the most undervalued KPI by hotel revenue managers? 

Last weekend was the 100th anniversary of the first scheduled international air service. On August 25th, 1919 a plane took off from Hounslow Heath, London, and landed around two hours later in Paris. The plane transported – according to British Airways – a journalist, newspapers, several brace of grouse, some jars of Devonshire cream and a consignment of leather.

However, that plane also delivered something much more important, a gift that the hotel industry would benefit from: a revolution in travel that would slowly but surely create unprecedented demand for more hotels in more places. International travel had truly begun!

Fast forward 100 years and only during July this year there were more than 6.5 million flights globally, and the record for the most amount of flights in 24 hours was broken, reaching 230,409.

Such massive amounts of flights create a massive amount of need for accommodation. This year, in some coastal cities in Spain hotels have reached 90% occupancy, with tourists coming from all around the world to enjoy the Spanish beaches – a great many of them on planes. To give you an idea of the scale, employment associated with tourism in Spain almost reached 3 million in June.

Looking back over the last 100 years of international tourism, perhaps one of the most significant changes recently is that nowadays many airlines don’t just fly you to your destination, they also often act as travel agents or even tour operators to sell you a complete holiday package: flight, accommodation, transfer and more.

From the 700 or so commercial airlines existing in the world today, we estimate that around 120 are already offering accommodation sales – and this market is worth around 2 billion dollars in bookings annually for hotels.

Here at Hotelbeds we are currently providing accommodation for more than 40 airlines worldwide like easyJet, Ryanair, British Airways, Virgin, Finnair and Jet2&nbsp;in Europe, Spirit, Air Canada, LATAM, Volaris and Azul in the Americas. &nbsp;More recently in Asia, we launched a partnership with Singapore Airlines to use our dynamic packaging platform for Singapore Airline holidays in around 20 of its key source markets.

With so much world to discover and places to visit, and more flights now than ever before, there’s no doubt that hospitality industry will continue to grow as a result of this.&nbsp; Can you imagine what travelling will look like 100 years from now? Whatever the experience, one thing is for sure: you´ll need a room.


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Travelling by air began 100 years ago this week 

We all know that nowadays many hotels are looking to become retail platforms and lifestyle brands, selling their guests anything and everything – but few are even close to achieving this dream.

An obvious area for increasing sales that hotels have been doing for years is selling guests ancillary services such as a transfer or entrance ticket. An easy sale with high-margins.

However, many hotels are now looking to do this before the guest even arrives in destination. How realistic an objective is this? And have many hotels perfected the technique?

Many other areas of travel are already very successful at doing this. Take for example the success of the airline industry, which in 2018 registered 100 billion dollars in revenues from ancillary sales. Take note, this includes selling transfers, car hire and hotel bookings! Or Airbnb’s recent expanded focus in the tours and activities business, under the label ‘Airbnb Experiences – discover local things to do’.&nbsp;

Taking examples such as these their inspiration, hoteliers need to make their ancillary offering more relevant to travellers via more advanced digital techniques.

First up would be personalizing the offering to predict the needs of a guest according to their profiles. By catering for the likely needs of the guest a hotel is much more likely to succeed in cross-selling them a service, and by extension gaining their loyalty.

And next up would be the opportunity to attract hotel bookings via an ancillary purchase. Hold on, is that right? Very much so! The ancillary portfolio could act as the principal sales point for some customers, who then go on to be cross-sold the accommodation.

Additionally, one important opportunity that many hoteliers are missing out on, particularly those with ambitions to become a bigger ‘retail platform’, is the possibility to sell ancillaries via points redemption. How does that work? Basically the hotel’s loyalty scheme could include ancillaries as one of the options when redeeming points.

Yes, that could mean that someone who does not even have a current booking for a hotel could nonetheless be buying from them. This has the added benefit that the hotel doesn´t have to limit its ancillary portfolio to products near to the destinations they have hotels in: they could literally sell products for the world over!

At Hotelbeds we have been working with our hotel partners for many years to help them cross-sell ancillaries to their guests pre-arrival via offering solutions such as white-labels, widgets, plug-ins and email campaigns.

We offer a very wide ancillary offering – via our Beyond the Bed portfolio – such as transfers, tours, activities, theme parks and car hire. In fact we have the largest B2B portfolio available anywhere in the world.&nbsp;&nbsp;&nbsp;

If you would like find out how your hotel can become more profitable by becoming a dynamic travel retailing platform we’d be pleased to share our insights with you today.&nbsp;&nbsp;


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Can hoteliers cross-sell guests ancillary services before they even arrive?

Did you know that there were around four billion passengers carried on airplanes last year? But with profit margins so low many airlines are trying to increase margins by cross-selling their customers hotel accommodation – and this represents a huge opportunity for hoteliers.

Ancillary revenues for airlines – extra leg-room, baggage, in-flight sales and more – were around 100 billion US dollars last year according to Idea Works Company, a leading consultancy in this area.

But how much of that was accommodation spend? Whilst many of those flying already had plans for where to stay when booking their flight, many did not – and they bought their hotel via the airline.&nbsp;

The same study values the hotel, car, and insurance elements of ancillary revenues to be around 3 billion dollars in total, and at Hotelbeds we estimate the hotel part to be worth around two billion dollars and growing fast! This shows that the B2B airline sales channel is a huge opportunity for hoteliers worldwide to maximize their distribution reach and increase RevPAR.

Now, not all airlines have the right customer profile to be relevant in this space : from the 700 or so commercial airlines existing in the world today, we estimate that only about 120 are offering accommodation sales. But that still represents a sizeable opportunity.

But why should hoteliers distribute their rooms via the B2B airlines sales channel? Customers booking a flight will often look to reserve accommodation right after they book a flight, or in the case of packaging at the same time they book a flight. When better to be present than right at the moment when the intent to purchase is highest?

Ultimately airlines are able to attract high-value bookings that are hard to get via another channel, including the hotel’s own dot com (no matter the price or uniqueness of the offer).

What is more, typically airline customers are high-value guests with low cancellation rates, that return more often, spend more in destination, pay more per night, book further in advance and additionally are more likely to be from international source markets. All in all, airlines are able to help a hotel increase RevPAR.

As a result, more and more, airlines are acting as a retailer rather than just only selling airline tickets via their websites. This also means that airlines don´t just sell accommodation to clients who purchase a flight, but also through loyalty programs, their call centre and even via employee benefits programmes. The result? An airline can sell accommodation not just to destinations it services, but anywhere in the world.

At Hotelbeds we are currently working with more than 40 airlines worldwide such as easyJet, Ryanair, British Airways, Virgin, Finnair and Jet2&nbsp;in Europe, Spirit, Air Canada, LATAM, Volaris and Azul in the Americas. &nbsp;More recently in Asia, we launched a partnership with Singapore Airlines to use our dynamic packaging platform for Singapore Airline holidays in around 20 of its key source markets.

Hotelbeds currently works with the majority of the world´s largest airline carriers, providing full access to our hotel portfolio, and we have more customers due to go live this year. This is one of our fastest growing customer segments, so we would like to feel that we represent the best opportunity for hoteliers to maximize their reach via this route.

In the airline sector the sky is quite literally the limit and we feel that accommodation sales opportunities are only just taking off! Get on board the journey today.


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The two-billion dollar airline opportunity for hoteliers 

Saying goodbye to disposable items is not news in the hospitality industry. As a Chinese person travelling to the United States and many European countries, I have long since noticed that there are very few hotels providing toothbrushes or slippers anymore. Travelers have become used to bringing their own toiletries.

But in my native China the use of disposable toiletries is still standard practice in hotels everywhere. And when many of us travel abroad we are surprised to not find these available in our rooms – and mildly inconvenienced as we hadn´t packed many of these items in our bag.

Given that China now has more outbound tourists than any other country – and the number of nights abroad and the average spend per trip are increasing rapidly too&nbsp; – the Chinese traveller’s preference for disposable toiletries poses a serious challenge for hoteliers. And for the environment too!

The good news is that change is happening.

As of July 1, new trash management regulations came into effect in Shanghai that are very progressive. This regulation also bans hotels from automatically offering in the room six disposable necessities such as toothbrushes, combs, razors, bath scrubs, emery boards, and one-time use shoe polish.

A small measure? Not really, small actions make big differences. According to Meadin Tourism Institute, this new regulation would impact more than 13,000 hotels in Shanghai that together host millions of guests per year.

But understandably Hoteliers in China do have some concerns about the inconvenience that this is bringing to travelers and increasing operational costs for hotels. Firstly, because the front desk needs to explain this new regulation to customers – many of whom come from regions of China unaffected by the new law – to make sure customers understand there won’t be these six disposable necessities in their room.

Meanwhile, the hotel then has to respect the needs of guests and provide these necessities on request – which they are allowed to do, provided the guest requests them at the reception. This has increased labor costs.

How should Western hotel chains react to this challenge? They could take some lessons from the Shanghai hotels going through this problem for the first time: communication is key – and guests need to be told in advance, possibly even within the booking flow.

At Hotelbeds have been working with our hotel partners around the world for many years to help them make their products ‘China ready’. Doing so is about so much more than just food or language, as this issue around disposables demonstrate.

We at Hotelbeds take environmental protection issues very seriously and encourage our colleagues in offices all around the world to do so too. In China last year we joined a local beach cleanup program organized by HandsOn Shanghai, a non-profit organization.

Together we picked up 137.6 kilos of trash at beach, a great deal of which turned out sadly to be disposable items.

This has made us more determined than ever to resolve this issue and we feel that as a distributor we can influence this by helping our partners to understand and set expectations in the booking process. Whilst we recognize that different markets evolve at different speeds, we are convinced that together we can bin disposables!


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Many travellers don't yet want to give up disposable toiletries: how should hoteliers react?

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