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In the English dictionary the word technology follows long after product. As so it was in the world of travel until very recently. But now that every company is a technology business, does this mean us travel professionals should all move to Silicon Valley?

In our sector one thing is for certain: even if we´re not uprooting ourselves to work near to Apple’s head offices, we´re definitely looking there for inspiration – and most importantly to recruit talent.

Already local companies such as Google and Tesla are intent on revolutionizing the transport experience, working on driverless cars (and even helicopters). Uber is based in the city too, along with countless other travel tech start-ups.

This week for sure San Francisco will qualify for global travel industry hub status: on Tuesday Skift is holding its first ever Skift Tech Forum in the Levi’s Stadium in Santa Clara. Given the line-up and turnout, almost certainly this will become a fixture in the calendar.

Speakers will include the President &amp; CEO of Sabre Corporation, Sean Menke, the Chief Technology Officer &amp; SVP of Expedia, Tony Donohoe, and the President &amp; CEO of Travelport, Gordon Wilson. They´ll all be on stage alongside senior technology, revenue management and digital leaders from Accor Hotels, Southwest Airlines, Hilton, Uber, Amadeus, Air Canada, United Airlines and Kayak.

We at Hotelbeds Group are proud to sponsor this event. If you are attending look out for the Hotelbeds Group area where you can charge your mobile phone or laptop. I´ll be there too and would be delighted to meet you all.

When Scott McKenzie sang his 1967 hit San Francisco (be sure to wear flowers in your hair) he sang “there's a whole generation / with a new explanation”: what started as talking about peace and love converted into the revolution of microchips and computer software.

Tuesday’s talks won´t convert the city into the premier travel industry hub overnight, but it seems that Silicon Valley is already an important destination on the travel industry map. Who knows what journey lays ahead?


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Silicon Valley as the new global hub for the travel industry? Tuesday marks the day

A road warrior without a final destination is simply lost, no matter how fast or far he or she travels. But what if that final destination were to find, rather ironically, a road map?

When I started in this role around one year ago, I set myself the objective of getting round all our major offices and meeting all our major clients. No small feat given our epic scale and geographic diversity.

Since then I have made&nbsp;almost 20 international long haul journeys, including crossing the Atlantic three times, two visits each to Australia, Dubai, Singapore, China and Japan, plus a host of other countries within both Europe and Asia Pacific.

Along the way I´ve been listening to our customers – who are made up solely of travel agents (contrary to the belief of some, we do not work with consumers in the direct channel and nor do we plan to!) – to find out more about their needs in this rapidly evolving market.

In response to this I have been reflecting – in my role as the Director of all the retail brands that Hotelbeds Group has: Bedsonline, GTA, TravelBound and TravelCube – on what kind of road map can best serve all of our travel agent customers globally.&nbsp;

The first decision related to our technology platform. It made sense for us to operate one technology platform only, not least as customers would benefit most. Due to the fact that Bedsonline had such a strong platform and that the feedback from travel agents was overwhelmingly positive, it seemed the obvious choice. Already we are gradually moving all our travel agent customers onto the platform, region by region.

The second decision stemed directly from the first and seemed an obvious choice. As a result of gradually shifting everyone onto the Bedsonline platform, region by region we are also moving to one brand identity only, that of Bedsonline.

The third decision also led from the first two and in many cases has already been implemented. As some of you may have recently noticed in the news, we have recently refreshed the Bedsonline brand. This includes an updated website and new imagery. We are currently hosting a series of events globally to update our travel agent customers on our new enhanced offering.

All three of these decisions are about enhancing the offering for our travel agency customers by taking it to the next level. In fact the word ´road´ doesn´t sufficiently describe the path needed, perhaps better to call it an ‘information superhighway’ map.

For example, for customers of TravelBound or TravelCube, this means that the number of hotels available to them has now increased from 55,000 up to 170,000. A significant increase, I´m sure you’d agree? Meanwhile we’ve cherry-picked the best technology functions from across the brands to create one super-charged platform. For example we’ve improved search parameters such as districts, hotel standards, ‘distance from’, points of interest, and so on; this allows for filtering functionality, integrating ancillaries and much, much more.

We’ve also put together a great leadership team for Bedsonline, combining the best talent from across Hotebelds Group, following Tourico Holidays and GTA joining the Group last year. These positions have now all been closed and you´ll be seeing more news soon in the media confirming more about who is covering each region.

For the coming months we´ll be busy supporting customers as they migrate onto the new Bedsonline platform; but after that we´ll be busier still helping them to sell more hotels, at higher margins, as well as cross-sell products such as tours and transfers.

And where does the road map lead after that? Look out for more exclusively negotiated prices and content not available elsewhere, more local hotels through partners, greater rewards to thank you for your loyalty, and a continually enhanced service.

Perhaps one of the best things about the travel industry is that the journey never ends – but for sure our journey will involve only and solely travel agents, who for us are the only destination worth visiting.


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What’s the best way to create a road map? Start with a road trip 

Ever found it hard to get a decent hotel room located near to a major travel trade show event? Most of you would be happy to find just one good room, at a fair price. But when I go to a travel trade show my objective is to find thousands of hotels rooms and then occupy them as often as I possibly can.

Who needs thousands of rooms? At Hotelbeds Group that’s our raison d'etre: we consolidate hotel accommodation and I´m in charge of contracting the right hotels, at the right rates across Asia Pacific.

If you want to find out more about how we go about doing that, this Thursday at ITB Asia I will be participating in a panel discussion called The future of travel distribution. The debate will be hosted by Duncan Horton, CEO of Travel Weekly Group – part of Jacobs Media Group – &nbsp;and participating will be industry colleagues from Booking.com, KAYAK, Skyscanner, and Triptease.

We’ll be discussing what it takes to succeed, and how to keep succeeding as the industry continues to move forward. What do you think will be the next big thing? Come along and join the debate, we´ll be taking questions from the audience; it kicks off at 10am in the Knowledge Theatre at Sands Expo Convention Center B2.

During the rest of the three day conference – starting Wednesday and finishing Friday – my colleagues and I will be busy meeting with our hotel partners, who now number over 170,000 globally since both Tourico Holidays and GTA joined our Group last year.

In particular, I´m going to be speaking with hotels about how we can help them boost incremental sales by reaching niche B2B buyers such as airlines or points redemption schemes. Additionally, I´ll be speaking with them about how to increase margins on those B2B sales by finding customers that cancel less, return more often, and spend more whilst in destination.

As always, this week we are also looking to negotiate more exclusive and unique deals with hotel partners, especially helping partners to stand out from the crowd. This is very important for the over 60,000 travel intermediary subscribers to our platform who crave differentiated content for their customers. What better way to attract special B2B buyers than by offering them something special for their customers? &nbsp;

For many hoteliers around the globe, but particularly those based in Asia Pacific, a significant part of their growth strategy going forward is focused on capturing Chinese travellers. For us at Hotelbeds Group we´ve been deeply involved in the Chinese market for many years and already it is our fourth biggest source market globally.

We´ve achieved success in the Chinese source market by embracing technology changes and working with our hotel supplier partners globally to help them adjust their offering accordingly.

For example, Chinese travellers require certain types of information about a hotel room – such as the room size or whether or not it has a kettle – that most hoteliers don’t display; Chinese travellers also book much more last minute than hoteliers are familiar with. It’s just as important to make sure that we have the right content on our platforms in the Chinese language.&nbsp; We achieve this by translating our hotel descriptions on our Bedsonline retail platform, as well as working through distribution partners.

As Chinese travellers increasingly travel less in groups and slowly become fully independent travellers, technology becomes more important still. At a moment when Chinese travellers are still having their first tentative experiences – ones they could repeat with the same destinations and brands – it will be technology that either makes or breaks hotels in capturing them. Is your technology up to the job? Only time will tell, but in the meantime meet up with us and we can share our experiences.

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Finding hotels at ITB Asia this week is about more than just a place to stay for some 

Any opportunistic entrepreneur from outside of Asia Pacific attending ITB Asia to search for ‘Crazy Rich Asian’ clients will be disappointed. But is there an important lesson for the travel industry to be learned from this film?&nbsp;

We in our industry know very well that a vast majority of travelers originating from the Asia Pacific region are not flying in private jets and staying in presidential suites. The budgets of most travelers from across the region are more modest and vary as much as their cultural needs and tastes.

Nonetheless the rather distorted perspective offered by the runaway success of the film does make one very important point: the world is finally waking up to the fact that collectively Asians as consumers have not only arrived, in many cases they have even overtaken Americans.

This could be nowhere truer than in China. Already Chinese travelers are the world’s number one segment by spend and absolute number. This shift is reflected in our business. For example, China has now become our fourth biggest source market globally. To place this in perspective, only five years ago it hardly made our top 20.

The travel corridor between the US and China is very significant. In our business we are now responsible for over 2% of all US inbound hotel bookings originating from China.

ITB Asia takes place in Singapore in the Marina Bay Sands from Wednesday to Friday next week. Myself and colleagues from my Wholesale Sales team for APAC will be busy meeting with our travel intermediary customers: tour operators, online travel agency, points redemption schemes, airlines, MICE operators, resellers, and more.

We´ll be speaking with our clients to learn more about what are the big challenges that concern them most for 2019. We´ll be telling them all about how our Group’s offering has evolved since Tourico Holidays and GTA joined us last year. This is important as we now have over 170,000 hotels available – many of them sourced with Asian travelers in mind – and with many of those contracted with exclusive rates and unique content.&nbsp;

What’s been our secret to establishing ourselves as a leader in the region? We were present here long before any film producers spotted a ‘niche’ audience amongst Asians. In fact, we opened our first offices here over 10 years ago.

Equally we’ve not got a distorted perspective that focuses only on luxury, nor do we talk down to people. We know that local people are not crazy and we don’t assume that everyone is rich. However, we do know that a region that is called home to over half the world’s population collectively is very rich, both economically and culturally.

Sadly a film called ‘Not crazy and just averagely middle class Asians looking for a beach holiday in Europe or America’ doesn’t have the same ring to it. All the same, it’s a multi-billion dollars blockbuster industry. And growing.


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What does the Crazy Rich Asians phenomenon mean for ITB Asia next week in Singapore?   

Who needs a decent excuse to visit Cancun for a few days?

No excuses needed this week if you work in travel, as Cancun Travel Mart Mexico Summit kicks off today at the Cancun International Convention Center and runs until Wednesday. A fixture on the tourism calendar for over 30 years, travel buyers and suppliers from all over Mexico and global markets far and wide come with the aim of promoting tourism in Mexico.

That’s why I´m here for my 6th time, looking forward to meeting with our valued hotel partners.

With 14 miles of beautiful sand made of crushed coral and turquoise blue waters, it’s no wonder the region is home to over 46,000 ‘destination wedding parties´ every year. Cancun region also houses the second largest coral reef in the world – the Great Mayan Barrier Reef, falling second only to Australia’s Great Barrier Reef.

The visitor numbers are epic, in fact, the airport is the busiest in all of Latin America in terms of international traffic. A real revenue-generating engine for the local and national economy. Not bad for a place that used to be a fishing village only 45 years ago?

Mexico holds a very special place in the heart of Hotelbeds Group, as it is one of our most important destinations in terms of hotel bookings worldwide.

For this reason, Cancun is a hub office for us, with a significant sized team specialized in contracting local hotels under exclusive terms for the benefit of our travel selling customers. We also operate our LATAM call centre hub from the offices in Cancun, meaning that in total we have an office of around 250 employees in the city.

I have recently been attending many travel trade shows, just in the last weeks I was at the ABAV show in Brazil and La FIT show in Argentina. Why all the travel trade air miles? This is because we are really excited about Hotelbeds Group’s offering following Tourico Holidays and GTA joining the Group last year. Together we now have over 170,000 hotels, a significant amount of which have been directly contracted under exclusive terms, connected to over 60,000 travel intermediaries globally.

Fun and sun is always a shore thing when you visit Cancun, but if you’re a travel professional then this week we’d really like to make some waves together with you. So if you are a tour operator, airline, points redemption scheme, MICE operator, reseller and, of course, an online travel agency that would like to meet in person this week and hear more about what we do, reach out to me on LinkedIn now.


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Making waves in LATAM travel? This week Cancun is the only shore thing 

The time has arrived for the last Grand Slam of the year! That’s right, the world acclaimed US Open Tennis tournament is just a week away and fans from all over the world are getting ready to travel to New York City for this special event.

As a Mallorca based company, naturally we are expecting our very own homegrown talent to win in the Men’s final: Rafael Nadal hails from our local town of Manacor!

But the real champion has long since been crowned. Year-in, year-out the local travel &amp; tourism is by far the real winner. Last year alone, the US Open drove over 700,000 tennis fans from across the globe and employed approximately 7,000 people: its economic impact across the New York Metropolitan area is estimated to be around $800 million, according to the New York Times.&nbsp;

For hoteliers this event accounts for close to 16% of all New York City hotel bookings during the two weeks of tennis play, according to AM New York. That’s 16% of bookings in a city with one of the highest amounts of hotel accommodation in all of America.

The chosen date for events such as the US Open are often influenced by tourism boards, who are keen to boost low- or shoulder-season tourist arrivals; in this case, August in New York is definitely the shoulder-season and helps to give a head start to one of New York City’s busiest travel seasons of the year.&nbsp;

For Hotelbeds Group, New York City is the second most booked destination through the Group’s platform and falling second only to Orlando, the home to Walt Disney World©, Universal Orlando Resort™ and SeaWorld® Orlando - and also the home to Hotelbeds Group’s regional offices, where we employ over 500 employees.

New York City is also home to some of our top products provided by our world class Ancillary Bank, whose leadership structure was recently confirmed. Big Bus Tours, Multiple Attraction City Passes (CityPASS, Explorer Pass, New York Pass), Broadway Shows, Statue of Liberty Tours, and the One World Observatory, are just a few of the numerous products available through our combined platform, as a result of the integration of the ancillary offerings coming from our Tourico Holidays, GTA, and Hotelbeds brands.

But the benefit to the travel &amp; tourism sector is not just about the fans, tennis professionals, or business executives using the event for corporate entertainment. This year the US Open Tennis is celebrating its 50th year and it is without a doubt one of the most watched tennis events worldwide.

That’s 50 years of promoting New York as a desirable destination. How many people has the tournament inspired to plan a visit? No doubt there is a spike in visitors from nations whose players lift a trophy.


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A world-class tennis tournament translates into millions for the travel space 

Mid-Atlantic at 30,000 feet and catastrophe strikes. Slowly the fuel supply counts down to zero. Only minutes are left for last minute messages to loved ones. Regret turns to grief and grief turns to blame.&nbsp;

Sounds like a film scenario? This is so much worse. Not only is it happening to you, it is happening right in the middle of your favourite Netflix drama. Yes, you´ve just become another battery failure statistic.

Despite setting off on their journey with a 100% charged battery, every day tens of thousands of travellers have this most frustrating of experiences. How can something so simple and so plentiful evaporate the minute you pack your suitcase?

This is a classic example of how the needs of consumers have adapted faster than the infrastructure of the travel &amp; tourism industry. Should the right to power-up whilst on the move be inalienable? Politicians might win a few votes if they proposed it.

But until then travel &amp; tourism industry operators can gain a considerable competitive edge by fulfilling this simple need for electricity. Charged-up smart phones also mean potential customers for in-flight and in-destination services sold via Wi-Fi.

Perhaps the difficulty of retrofitting airplanes and trains with plugs for every passenger partly explains why they are almost always power-supply deserts. Slowly this could change. But there is really little excuse for why airports and train stations don´t have plentiful charging points.

Resorts, theme parks and conference centers have also fallen behind too. The latter is often even more frustratingly, given you can spend all day or more at a conference. Hotel rooms of course come with a plug or two, but more plugs are needed (including dedicated USB ports) and they are needed in more useful positions: too often they are on the floor or far from the desk space.

Surely this is a business opportunity for travel tech entrepreneurs? A moving charging station is simple to set up in any public place and the station could be branded or sponsored – as well as used for up-selling travellers a coffee, in-destination experience or more.

All this is why at Hotelbeds Group we are sponsoring power-supply charging stations at the upcoming Skift Global Forum in New York City and the Phocuswright Conference in Los Angeles. We already power hotel distribution, so the opportunity to power the whole industry seemed a logical next step!&nbsp;

When John Lennon sang Power to the people back in 1971 he wanted nothing short of a revolution. All these years later could it become a protest song for frustrated travellers? Download the song now and next time your phone or laptop is on death row whilst in transit, go out with a very loud public statement. Or just write an angry letter. Either way, future generations will thank you.

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Power to the people! Should plugging-in whilst travelling be an inalienable right? 

If Benidorm were listed as a country, where might it stand on the world tourism stage?

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To place its pulling power into perspective, in 2015 more people visited the city than visited Egypt. Despite having much less than 100,000 permanent residents, according to Spain’s National Statistics Institute (INE) in 2015 over 11 million people visited Benidorm.

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In fact Benidorm is the fourth most popular destination in Spain – itself the third most visited country on the planet – with Barcelona and Madrid in the top two slots.

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Such vast numbers of tourists are met with around 40,000 beds available every night in its 150 or so hotels. According to the website Statista, by available rooms the city ranks in the nations leagues just behind Cyprus but above Slovakia, with more than double the accommodation of Malta (based on 2016 figures).

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With over 140 buildings more than 20 floors high, the area competes with Frankfurt or London for number of skyscrapers. Spain’s tallest residential building, called Intempo, comes in at almost 200m high.&nbsp; No surprise then that ‘Beniyork’ is how some locals call the area.

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The above are more than just grand claims for the records book. Every visitor brings money to spend and the skyscrapers reflect just what that money can do. By some estimates Benidorm makes up 1% of the nation’s GDP. That all means jobs, taxes for schools and hospitals, and more investment in the local economy.

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What can explain this phenomenon? Basically it is the original package holiday destination. In the 1960s the mayor of the city persuaded the government to give them permission to let tourists wear bikinis (something frowned upon by locals at the time). The rest is history.

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In 2015 the town even applied for UNESCO World Heritage status! Whilst that might seem comical to some, the bid attracted considerable media attention for the resort globally, all no doubt driving further tourism.

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Over the years the resort has taught the travel &amp; tourism industry globally a great deal. For better and worse, how to do things properly has often been learnt the hard way right there on those golden sands. Everything that worries and inspires destinations today – infrastructure developments, permits and regulation, local taxes and investment decisions, and coping with over-tourism – all this and more the city had survived before even 1980.&nbsp;

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Whatever you think about the city of Benidorm, if you work in the travel &amp; tourism industry you really must visit the city where it all started. There´s nothing like first-hand market research to know your customers better: 11 million visitors can´t be wrong.

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The Republic of Benidorm? The former fishing village outranks many nations 

Long before the World Wide Web was a twinkle in the eye of Sir Tim Berners-Lee, almost everybody accepted that ‘connections make the world go round’. But the digital revolution has given a whole new significance to this saying. Nowadays if you are selling sherry, software or sunglasses, ´connectivity’ is the talked-about term.

Despite being essentially a pre-internet, commodifiable thing – a hotel room remains a physical experience (or at least until Virtual Reality revolutionizes everything) – in the modern world accommodation ultimately gets converted into something digital for sales purposes. Leaving aside the remaining old-school hotels who still accept a traditional contracting of allotments and rates with the inky reservation ledger sat in the reception, the majority of the hoteliers nowadays look for electronic systems that allow them to be totally dynamic with their pricing and availability in order to maximize their results.

And this is where the world of hotels meets the world of connectivity. Like it or not, the hotel must connect dynamically with the outside world to sell the room: revenue management systems, payments, cancellation fees, amendments, loyalty schemes and more. This all requires very sophisticated processes – and far too often this is where the wires started to get crossed, both technically and commercially. In the beginning connectivities were still using physical bookings that were delivered with the help of technological partners such as channel managers. Today the connectivity is purely virtual, with bookings being a digital message between two connected systems.&nbsp;

In fact a successful connection today is less about the messages themselves and more about a company’s ability and willingness to match business practices and philosophies. More often the specifications match but the business rules are very different. In our case, where the role we play is as a distributor, the challenge is to convince our clients to adapt its way of working, its systems, and its way of distribution into fully digital connectivity bookings.

Recently, due to my new role working in the Suppliers Connectivity Partnerships team, I was delighted to have been chosen as Hotelbeds Group’s representative for HEDNA, the Hotel Electronic Network Association. HEDNA is the only global forum exclusively dedicated to the advancement of hospitality distribution through strategic collaboration and knowledge sharing.

HEDNA works to optimize the use of technologies while influencing the development of current and emerging distribution channels. My goal is to make Hotelbeds Group a very active member of HEDNA, since we have a lot to say in this debate.

Among the multiple forums they organize I recently attended HEDNA Lisbon, where many perspectives on the state of global distribution were featured across three days of keynotes and deep-dive panel discussions.

During many conversations hoteliers shared their thoughts on how hotels and vendors can work together better to emphasize the mutual benefits of a successful relationship and how together we could improve the distribution channel.

Whilst as connectivity evolves it brings a whole new set of issues and challenges, the end-consumer is always the primary beneficiary. We all benefit from an easy to review and wide online product offering, as well as from the cost savings and efficiencies generated through automation.

All these benefits certainly make it more worthwhile than ever before to take the trouble to connect. After all, what is the opposite of being connected? Isolation is not an answer in a world where even your fridge and lawnmower are now connected to each other.&nbsp;


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Crossed wires won´t solve the hotel sector’s connectivity challenge 


When it came to travel, the question of ´business or pleasure´ used to have a binary answer. Not anymore.&nbsp; Nowadays two out of three travelers whose&nbsp;primary&nbsp;purpose is business&nbsp;seek&nbsp;to find some space&nbsp;for a bit of&nbsp;pleasure,&nbsp;according to the&nbsp;UNWTO World Tourism Barometer.&nbsp;

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Those&nbsp;outraged by&nbsp;the&nbsp;marketing-influenced invention of new words should turn away now: this new trend is known as “bleisure”. Yes, that’s a Frankenstein version of&nbsp;business+leisure,&nbsp;almost certainly invented by (or for) a&nbsp;millennial.&nbsp;
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This trend can be partly explained by the steady increase in&nbsp;urban tourism,&nbsp;as we all want just more than&nbsp;the&nbsp;traditional&nbsp;sun and beach options.&nbsp;As cities become more desirable as destinations it´s only logical that those&nbsp;passing through on business might want to take advantage.&nbsp; The formula is&nbsp;as&nbsp;simple as it is attractive: work by day,&nbsp;then&nbsp;after work see a few sights and enjoy the local culture.&nbsp;&nbsp;
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Unsurprisingly, perhaps for this very reason&nbsp;New&nbsp;York, London, Toronto, Paris,&nbsp;Stockholm, San Francisco, Singapore, Hong Kong, Chicago and&nbsp;Tokyo&nbsp;are the preferred cities for&nbsp;business travelers according to&nbsp;the&nbsp;‘Cities of Opportunity’&nbsp;study&nbsp;carried out&nbsp;by Price Waterhouse Cooper.&nbsp;&nbsp;
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But&nbsp;has&nbsp;the travel industry&nbsp;been&nbsp;able to adapt its product portfolio&nbsp;to this new&nbsp;breed of&nbsp;traveler’s&nbsp;needs?&nbsp;Hotels seem&nbsp;to have&nbsp;quickly&nbsp;understood&nbsp;this new trend: urban hotels are now more focused on offering exclusive and tailor-made experiences, have adapted&nbsp;their&nbsp;menus to&nbsp;more&nbsp;sophisticated palates, and&nbsp;now&nbsp;include sports&nbsp;facilities.&nbsp;&nbsp;
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In this sense, ancillary&nbsp;product&nbsp;offerings&nbsp;play a key role.&nbsp;Our Group&nbsp;has also rapidly adapted its ancillary portfolio&nbsp;to help hoteliers to adapt their urban&nbsp;property offerings. The most recent&nbsp;example&nbsp;has been&nbsp;the City&nbsp;Expert&nbsp;partnership&nbsp;agreement,&nbsp;which will allow both companies to offer a specialized concierge service within hotels.&nbsp;
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This model for the distribution of tourist products and services comes in addition to those that the Group’s&nbsp;bedbank&nbsp;already offers to the hotel industry:&nbsp;Hotelextras&nbsp;B2B for hotel receptions, along with widgets and white label solutions for hotels&nbsp;working&nbsp;in the direct channel.&nbsp;&nbsp;
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The World Travel &amp; Tourism Council (WTTC)&nbsp;and Travelport&nbsp;estimate that&nbsp;business&nbsp;travel sector&nbsp;will grow by&nbsp;3.7% annually&nbsp;to&nbsp;2027&nbsp;as new tech fuels take-up&nbsp;rates.&nbsp;This means that&nbsp;the&nbsp;whole travel&nbsp;sector, both hoteliers and&nbsp;distributors but also intermediaries, must&nbsp;adapt its DNA&nbsp;–&nbsp;just&nbsp;as&nbsp;business+leisure&nbsp;travellers&nbsp;morphed into one&nbsp;creature – to respond to the needs of this new traveler segment.&nbsp;&nbsp;
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Those who don´t adapt their offering may well find themselves losing their place on the travel map. And if there is one industry in which being on the map (and in the guide!) is essential, it is travel &amp; tourism.&nbsp;&nbsp;



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What adjective best describes a business traveler on their afternoon off?  

Happy 242nd birthday to the United States! Tomorrow is a national holiday as America celebrates one of its most important days of the year, the Fourth of July (also known as Independence Day).

But whilst the focus for Americans of all ages across the States is to celebrate by hosting parades, holding barbeques, attending picnics or concerts, and of course &nbsp;enjoying fireworks, travel plays an integral part in achieving that – and for some travel is an objective in itself.

This year alone, 46.9 million Americans are expected to travel over 50 miles away from home in celebration of Independence Day. That’s 5% more than last year and the highest number recorded for over 18 years, according to the American Automobile Association. That appears to be simply because many are taking advantage of the holiday falling on a Wednesday, allowing people to extend this weekend passed all the way up to Thursday morning with just two days of annual vacation allowance.

As a matter of fact many Americans will be travelling much further than just 50 miles from home. According to travel expert Patrick Surry, 14 million seats are scheduled to depart from domestic airports for the four busiest travel days over the period, which are between Friday June 29 through to Monday July 2nd; each ticket bought averages at about $374 for a round-trip, meaning that roughly $5.2 billion will have been spent on flights alone as a result of the 4th of July. What a great time for the travel space!

At Hotelbeds Group, we have identified that the most frequented destination booked via our platform for this Fourth of July continues to be, at both a domestic and international level, Orlando, FL. Our beloved city of Orlando – where the Hotelbeds Group regional offices have over 500 staff – each year hosts some of the most beautiful firework shows from all over the States.

The Red Hot &amp; Boom, which is Orlando’s most popular fireworks show attracts over 100,000 people each year, and let’s not forget our Disney World Fireworks, the Magic Kingdom is very popular for hosting beautiful fireworks shows with music on both July 3rd and July 4th.

Plus, this year we have great news for our travelers coming to Orlando: Walt Disney World just this past weekend opened its newest attraction, Toy Story Land, at its Hollywood Studios park.

Orlando isn’t the only place where travelers who have booked using our Group’s platform are going. Las Vegas, Paris, Rome, and New York, in descending order, are also filling-up with American travelers during these dates.

Only when you start to look at the complete journey of a tourist experience – and realize that not every tourist experience involves a beach, or even a flight – do we begin to see how big the travel &amp; tourism industry really is.&nbsp; That firework bang or gasoline going into that car could explain why 10% of the world’s GDP and jobs comes directly from travel &amp; tourism – and why America makes up such a big part of that. What better way to celebrate this Fourth of July than doing your bit for the economy?


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Stars, Stripes, and Travel – many celebrations represent a journey this 4th July  

They´ll change. They just need to grow-up. That’s how many perceive the millennial generation, not least many hoteliers when it comes to explaining why many young people shun hotels. But is it millennials or the hotels that need to grow-up? If you believe the customer is always right, then perhaps you already know the answer.

It was a pleasure to attend the biggest travel forum in Spain recently. Madrid hosted the annual Hosteltur Forum, organized by the widely-read travel trade publication by the same name, and our Executive Chairman Joan Vilà was interviewed live on stage.

Joan spoke about the exciting times our company is going through and captured the audience’s attention with his views on hot travel industry topics.

One of the key topics on the table was how hoteliers should adapt to the growing group of individuals known as millennials. No longer penniless students, what does our sector need to do to gain access to their wallets?

Also known as generation me, generation Y, digital natives and echo boomers, millennials have been criticized as being impatient, disloyal, tight-fisted, selfish and overly dependent on their parents. However, they’ve also been praised as smart, perceptive, civic-minded, entrepreneurial, adventurous, tolerant and progressive.

This generation is not just a passing fad. Within a few years, millennials will represent more than 50% of working adults worldwide. Hoteliers now need to consider this demographic as employee material for both junior and senior roles, and increasingly more as business travellers and even travellers accompanied by children

Joan Vilà highlighted that millennial brand loyalty is almost non-existent, this segment is open to other products. Hoteliers should adapt to millennials’ requests and offer experiences and adapt to their demands. If they don’t do so there will be a full generation that has never set foot in hotels and will instead prefer to stay in apartments which offer more flexible services.

Vilà pointed out that more flexible services are key for this segment, if a hotel only allows to do the check-in from 12 onwards, they are prioritizing housekeeping over guests. Some minor changes should be made to adapt to the changing needs of consumers and place them at the top of a hotel’s priorities.

When it comes to hotel rooms for millennials it’s all about free WiFi and plenty of plugs to charge electronics, plus glass walls and large windows that are perfectly Instagrammable. Young guests want innovative technology that enables them to quickly and easily get the service or information they desire; in particular they crave features that are integral to their hotel experience, such as a simplified check-in and check-out process or keyless room access.

As with any big demographic shift, changes can be made gradually, but need to be made. Companies that don’t adapt will start to look very old, very quickly. We might all dream of staying in a grand old hotel – but it’s the building you want to be old fashioned, not the experience.


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Many millennials came of age years ago: has the hospitality industry taken note? 

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