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We all know that the direct Vs indirect debate will never have a fairy tale ending for either the hotels or the intermediaries. But nonetheless this plotline is continually evolving and always introducing new characters, both heroes and villains.&nbsp; Maybe this time we are about to witness a different ending?

One thing hasn´t changed though: watching the various interested parties debate this live makes for great entertainment.&nbsp; Delegates at last month´s Phocuswright got a taste of this when our own Joan Vilà took to the stage for the ´Accomodation Upended´ debate – hosted by Phocuswright´s Lorraine Sileo and accompanied by Patrick Bosworth from Duetto, Sam Shank from HotelTonight, and Tammy Peter from Wyndham. To watch the full video click here.

It seems certain that we are about to see the entrance of two new characters onto the stage. When the panelists were asked who poses more of a threat as a potential distribution channel in the future, Facebook or Amazon, the result was three to one in Amazon´s favour (or against, depending upon how you interpret that!).

Whichever poses the greater threat, the reality it would seem is that both have enormous potential to transform travel. Facebook is omnipresent and has huge ability to influence us all; and Amazon´s big data analytics enables them to understand and predict all our needs. What hotel chain doesn´t need both of these qualities as part of their storyline?

Remarkably one of the biggest new controversial stars of the travel industry, Airbnb, doesn´t seem to be eclipsing what many consider the biggest threat: Expedia.&nbsp; All four panelists felt that Expedia still poses a greater threat to hotels than Airbnb, despite all of the concerns (and endless column inches) about the revolutionary impact of the Airbnb threat to hotels.

Despite the push that hotels have made in the last few years to gain more sales in the direct channel, with campaigns such as Hilton´s ´Stop clicking around´, the average proportion of direct sales has remained for decades roughly stable at around 50%. Hotels have been unsuccessful in persuading travelers to download their apps compared to the online travel agencies (OTAs) – according to Joan with the latter outstripping the former by a rate of five to one.

This might be because perhaps the biggest actor to enter the direct Vs indirect plotline has gone unnoticed by many: the traveler. Modern audiences are used to multi-channel access for everything and want the same for their hotel content. If this were a fairy tale, convenience and the consumer would arguably be the King &amp; Queen and it is just possible that they might live happily ever after.&nbsp;


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It might not be a fairy tale, but are we about to see a new plotline in the Direct Vs indirect story?

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If you believed the rumours that Santa would deliver Christmas presents via blockchain this year, you´ll be disappointed. He doesn´t even have email yet. In fact, writing to Santa is more tricky than it looks. You´ve listed your good deeds done and described your ideal presents, but where do you post the letter to?


Finns believe he lives in Lapland, Americans in Alaska, and Russians (who believe in ´Ded Maroz´, a kind of communist Santa) in Vologoda. Besides, in our Group headquarters in Spain no one even writes to Santa, instead they write to the Three Kings (Los Reyes Magos) via a post box in our local department store.


Needless to say, in non-Christian countries Christmas is not celebrated: it´s just another working day in India, Indonesia and Israel. As a company with over 200 offices and 8,500 employees around the globe offering a 24-hour a day service, we embrace such cultural differences on a daily basis. So if you´re a customer of ours, rest assured that our call centre in destination support line will be open on Christmas Day.


But is there anything that we do all have in common at this time of year? As we count down to 31st December, even if we don´t jot them down in a letter to Santa, one way or another we´re all mentally reviewing the year´s highlights.


For us at Hotelbeds Group this year has brought some rather memorable moments: Tourico Holidays and GTA have joined our Group; our platform now has over 170,000 hotels and handles peaks of up to 1.5 billion searches a day; China became our fifth biggest source market globally; airline ancillary sales continued to grow strongly, as did car rentals; and we hosted not one by two MarketHubs, Cancun and Bangkok, for our top clients.

There´s something else too that many of us have in common at this time of year: it´s a time to think about giving something back. This holiday season for every corporate Christmas gift we´d have given away, instead we´ll make a donation to Le Passage Travel Foundation – Shaping Lives. Its ‘No Child in Trash’ program supports the children of waste pickers living in New Delhi. Each donation enables a child to receive one month’s informal learning and food.

There´s also something else we have in common: thinking about what the year ahead has in store for us, our families and our work. Whilst we are very proud of our achievements, the truth is we are even more excited about the many challenges that lay ahead: our campaign to contract directly 10,000 more hotels; figuring out how to make artificial intelligence, virtual reality, and blockchain work for our partners; widening our cross-selling initiatives as part of the Tourico Holidays and GTA integration into our Group; and keeping up with the pace of Asia Pacific´s phenomenal growth.

Once again we´d like to thank all our commercial partners across the globe for the faith they place in our business. Wherever you are, whether you celebrate the holidays or not, we hope that Santa, the Three Kings, Ded Maroz or whomever you cherish brings you everything you truly deserve in 2018.&nbsp;



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Newsflash: Santa will not use blockchain to deliver gifts this holiday season  

What would you give to remove 14 years and four months of hard slog from your current to-do list? That´s how long it would take a hotel sales manager to meet with 60,000 travel seller intermediaries.&nbsp; That is assuming they spent just 30 minutes with each person, worked 8 hours a day five days a week, and had no holidays, sick leave or even comfort breaks. Oh, and instantly transported themselves from meeting to meeting (or relied on Skype, a risky option).

At Hotelbeds Group we have reduced those 14 years and four months of work down to milliseconds by giving hotels access to a giant community of travel sellers globally. And since Tourico Holidays and GTA started their integration into Hotelbeds Group, the number of travel sellers using the platform has increased to over 60,000. Not only is this a big increase from the previous 35,000 customers, but additionally the range of source markets has widened – with greater presence in North America and Asia Pacific.

These 60,000 customers can access hotels via the platform every single second, all day every day. In total these customers make up to 1.5 billion searches a day. Aside from the fact that a hotel sales manager couldn´t really meet 60,000 people and have a 100% success rate, there are other factors that would make it almost impossible: for example they´d need to speak every language and have a super slick (and quick!) contracting process. And that´s assuming their hotel can handle payments in any currency, has a robust inventory platform in place, and so on.

Collectively the total amount of customers connecting to the Group´s bedbank via the wholesale channel – the online travel agencies (OTAs), tour operators, B2B re-sellers (who in turn sell onto other intermediaries), and airlines – now numbers around 7,000. The rest of the over 60,000 customers are made up of travel agents, ranging from one-man-bands right up to some leading chains such as Viajes El Corte Inglés in Spain.

Whilst Tourico Holidays and GTA currently remain independent businesses within Hotelbeds Group, already their integration is well underway. Most relevant from a hotel partner or travel intermediary perspective is that cross selling has already begun. Tourico Holidays and Hotelbeds started in the early autumn; and in December GTA´s hotels also started to become available to the rest of the Group´s brands. With more than 170,000 hotels available on the Group´s bedbank platform, many of them contacted directly, that represents a lot of cross-selling potential.

To read more of the latest news about our integration see yesterdya´s press release (here) about our plans to increase the number of directly contracted hotels by 10,000 over the coming years and how we´ll go about this by recruiting around 200 new professionals in our Yield and Contracting teams globally.&nbsp;

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How to access 14 years and four months of experience in milliseconds 


The collective noun for a group of birds is a flock and you call a group of elephants a herd. But what do you call a group of code gurus? Answers on a post card please.&nbsp;


There are a great many false stereotypes about IT programmers and software engineers. But perhaps the two most inaccurate are that they spend their whole lives behind a screen, and that they work alone.

To prove that this is not the case, a delegation of more than 40 people from the Hotelbeds Group IT department recently attended the Codemotion event celebrated this year in Madrid. Their goal? To share knowledge and network with other professionals from the fast-growing travel tech industry.


Codemotion is a multi-language and multiplatform event that brings together developers from the Java, Cloud, Mobile, Rails, Javascript, HTML5, and CSS3 communities. There are annual conferences in Rome, Milan, Madrid, Berlin and Tel Aviv, with Madrid’s event growing since its foundation to become a fixture in the technological events calendar – with leading sponsors such as Microsoft and Google.


Under the theme ´machine learning´, this year more than 250 code gurus gathered in Madrid in a relaxed atmosphere to discuss topics such as ´Continuous Integration &amp; Delivery´ (or how to deliver new software functionality faster and better) and ´Infrastructure as a code´ (or how to automate hardware operation and provisioning).

This is the second time Hotelbeds Group has attended codemotion and based on feedback we´ll be returning again next year. In fact, Roberto Calvo, IT Development Manager at Hotelbeds Group commented that “based on discussions with other professionals it was reassuring to know that we have a great team and we brought back a lot of inspiration and ideas that will add value to our partners over the coming years”.



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 What is the collective noun for a group of code gurus? 


Tourism defines Mallorca. It provides over one in five jobs and an even bigger share of the local GDP.

So what audience could be more interested in learning about the latest trends in tourism than a group of Mallorcan economists?


Last Friday the Mallorcan College of Economists held its annual awards evening and the keynote speech was given by Joan Vilà, Hotelbeds Group´s Executive Chairman.

Local dignitaries in attendance included the President of the Balearic Islands, Francina Armengol, along with local media outlets to cover the news. Joan was interviewed shortly before his speech by the local Balearics television broadcaster IB3 to speak about the role Hotelbeds Group plays as the employer of over 1,650 people locally (with over 8,300 globally).

Joan spoke for over 30 minutes on a variety of topics impacting the global travel and tourism industry currently. Topics included the potential effects of artificial intelligence on bookings, trends for mobile phone reservations, how hotels need to adapt to the needs of millennial travellers, and the significant economic benefits of tourism on destinations. He also highlighted many important facts and figures, for example that the sector provides 10% of the world´s jobs.

All this took place in perhaps the most emblematic of locations, the Gran Melia Victoria located by the marina in Palma de Mallorca. The beautiful venue is one of the flagship hotels for Melia, which is a locally founded business that is currently the 13th largest hotel chain globally with properties the world over.

Just like Hotelbeds Group, despite having grown into a truly global business, Melia remains headquartered on the island. Equally there are many other travel &amp; tourism companies based locally that have international reach.

Together they make Mallorca not just one of the biggest holiday destinations in Europe, but more importantly a global hub for the travel &amp; tourism industry itself.







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Global trends for a local audience – Mallorca as a travel & tourism hub, not just a destination  

Can growing amusing facial hair help prevent men from dying prematurely? Many employees at Hotelbeds Group think so.&nbsp;

Nothing joins together hundreds of employees around the world quite like a charity fundraiser and they make no exception for Movember, an annual campaign that takes places during November whereby men grow outrageous moustaches to increase awareness of men’s health issues.

This year a great number of colleagues have grown a moustache and, most importantly, together raised over €10,000 to donate to the Movember Foundation – who in turn invest in studies and campaigns that have one clear objective: to stop too many men dying younger than they should. &nbsp;

This is an issue close to our hearts as sadly we have amongst us some colleagues that have been through critical and frightening health problems before they were even 40 years old (but consider themselves lucky to have survived). This encouraged our team to help others to be aware of the early detection of prostate and testicular cancer, mental health issues, and other illnesses afflicting men.

Although Movember began in 2004, it was only in 2012 that a few employees started taking part. Since then the team has grown from just four people raising €700, to over 60 people this year raising over €10,000. Over the years the team has had many names, including Le Moustache, Tash-a-Lash-a-Ding-Dong and HBGrizly. But this year they settled on Rebel Tash and henceforth will use this moniker every year from now on.

Funds have been raised by a variety of ingenious methods, including a pin-the-tail-on-your boss competition, a 5km fun run (with a beer break in the middle!), cake sales and of course the old fashioned method of soliciting individual donations.

Thirteen years after its creation, Movember is still the only global charity focused solely on male illnesses, changing the face of men’s health by encouraging awareness, check-ups and healthier lifestyles to stop preventable deaths.

Next year the team is setting its sights even higher and aims to smash the €15,000 mark!

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Hotelbeds Group employees help stop men dying too young by growing silly moustaches and raising over €10,000 

Receiving any kind of award is always a matter for celebration and provides great motivation to all those who are recognized. But when your business receives nine awards in just one year, some of them for the 4th year running, the message is loud and clear: keep up the good work.

Bedsonline has often been recognized for its incredible offering and service through a variety of different awards (and even more nominations). But over the last year the recognitions have rained down.&nbsp; This makes us exceptionally proud of all the team´s hard work and achievements.&nbsp; But additionally it gives us enormous pride because many of these were ‘readers choice´ awards – thus reflecting just how close we are to our travel agencies.

At Bedsonline we focus solely on working with travel agencies. For us they are more than just clients, they are our partners in a long-term and win-win relationship developed over years of sharing mutual interests and expertise.

As we come close to the end of the year, we wanted to recap all of the awards received across all of the different markets in 2017. &nbsp;We want to recognize the dedication of our Bedsonline teams across the globe and thank all of our partners for their continued support.

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UK


	Globe Travel Awards for `Best Accommodation-Only Operator´
	Travel Bulletin Star Award for the `Accommodation-Only Provider´ for the 4th year running
	The Selling Travel Agents Choice Awards 2017
	Nomination for the Globe Travel Awards 2018


Ireland


	Irish Travel Industry Awards for the `Best Supplier Sales Representative´
	Trade Partner Representative of the Year at The Worldchoice Ireland Conference for the 2nd year in a row


Netherlands


	Trav Media Vakantie Awards 2017 for the `Best Up-Cross Selling Partner´


Portugal


	The RAVT Awards for the `Best Booking Platform´


Spain


	The Agenttravel Travelranking Award for the `Best Hotel Reservation Center´ in Spain
	The Group AVA award for the `Best Booking Platform 2016´ in the Balearic Islands


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An award winning year for Bedsonline

It has been a real pleasure this week to be here again at the Phocuswright Conference in Fort Lauderdale alongside several of my senior colleagues from Hotelbeds Group and our various brands. We´ve been hearing from virtually all of the industry´s leading figures from the airline, hotel, cruise and travel-technology sectors via speeches, debates and in some cases even face-to-face during the breaks.

Coming together like this as an industry is essential and this event more than any other sets the agenda for the coming year, leaving us all with a lot of food for thought.

Clearly the highlight for me has been seeing our Executive Chairman, Joan Vilà, participate in the Executive Roundtable ´Accommodation Upended´ that took place on Thursday – exploring how the distribution landscape is rapidly evolving for hotel providers. The talk was hosted by Lorraine Sileo from Phocuswright and the other panelists included Patrick Bosworth from Duetto, Tammy Peter from Wyndham Hotel Group, and Sam Shank from HotelTonight.

Another highlight was to hear the news that Phocuswright has officially launched its own publication, PhocusWire.&nbsp; With ex-Tnooz Editor Kevin May at the helm no doubt it will be a great success and I look forward to reading its articles and watching its videos. Visit its website to learn more: https://www.phocuswire.com/

Already I´m looking forward to the Phocuswright Europe event in Amsterdam in May next year, where again Joan will be a guest speaker. Watch this space for more information.


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A letter from Phocuswright 

Chaired by Sam Turner, our Sales Director for Hotelbeds Group, the topic up for discussion was “The future of hotel distribution technology” and Sam was joined by panelists Markus Keller, Senior Vice President at Accor Hotels, Jonny Marsh, Co-Founder and Chief Operating Officer at Loveholidays, and Bluecy Zhang,&nbsp;Vice President of Sourcing&nbsp;at Haoqia. Together they explored their views on the challenges and opportunities hotels are facing from disruptive technologies such as artificial intelligence and big data, along with the entrance into the field of new gatekeepers such as TripAdvisor and voice search tools such as Google Home. &nbsp;

To find out more about the impact of voice search tools on travel, during the panel we conducted a survey of the approximately 200 audience members. The results were very revealing: &nbsp;


	Around half of the audience had never booked accommodation or a flight via their mobile device.
	Only 10% of the audience owned a voice activated device like Google Home or Amazon Echo.
	None of those who owned such a home device had ever used it to search for a travel product.


Following the debate, Sam showed his surprise that in a room full of travel professionals no one had experimented with this exciting technology, reflecting that perhaps millennials are the ones currently more used to using mobile or home devices for voice search. Nevertheless, he felt that “whilst it is still in its infancy, this is definitely the way forward”.

To watch the audience survey and see Sam´s response, watch this video recording we made following the panel.

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Voice recognition and travel reservations: audience survey at World Travel Market

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