Hotel News Now’s Tech Impact Report each month features a news roundup from the hotel technology sector. Subscribe to the free monthly report here.
Davis steps down from Room Key
Steve Sickel, most recently senior VP of distribution and relationship marketing at InterContinental Hotels Group, has been named interim CEO of brand metasearch site Room Key. He succeeds John Davis, who led the company since its inception and decided to step down from the post at the end of September.
Sickel will focus on advancing Room Key’s efforts to expand its core business-to-consumer metasearch offering while also planning and developing a broad business-to-business distribution product offering. He also will lead marketing, product and technology efforts in addition to overseeing Room Key’s finance, legal and human resources operations.
Lots of room for last-minute growth
Some 30% of searches on online travel agency mobile websites and nearly one in four on hotel mobile sites are for same-day or next-day check-
in, according to new research from PhoCusWright.
In “Parsing shop and book: How airlines, hotels and OTAs compete on the desktop and mobile Web,” PhoCusWright partnered with Adara, which collects data feeds from hotels, airlines, OTAs and other websites to power its advertising platform. The results show overall mobile search and booking volume is growing at a torrid pace.
Gross travel bookings via mobile (phones and tablets) will account for 27% of the U.S. online travel market by 2015, up from just 5% in 2012. A big piece of that—two-thirds or more—is comprised of hotels. There is clearly significant demand for last-minute hotels as seen through search data, and a clear trend toward last-minute mobile booking on OTAs.
Five rate positioning strategies
Bill Carroll of PhoCusWright recently outlined the following five strategies to position rates or prices more appropriately:
Skim: This strategy clearly positions your company above the rest; it tells consumers something is special (i.e., worth paying more for) about your products.
Match: This strategy puts your pricing on par with the competition, but not necessarily for all rates. To match, set one rate comparable to your competition and another slightly higher.
Surround: This strategy positions your first room type as the cheapest in the market, but offers your rooms with better options at a price that’s close to your competitors’ first available rates.
Undercut: By undercutting your competitors’ rates in some categories, you can potentially attract more customers.
Penetrate: Being the low-priced option in your market has benefits and drawbacks. The strategy is primarily designed to get people in the door.
More HomeAway properties will be listed on Expedia
HomeAway and Expedia have expanded their previously reported partnership, and now more than 115,000 vacation rental listings will be available on the U.S. version of Expedia.com.
Vacation rental property managers and owners using HomeAway’s pay-per-booking (commission-based) listing model may now also choose to advertise their properties on Expedia.com. HomeAway plans to extend distribution in the future to include subscription-based listings.
HAMA on social media strategies
During a roundtable moderated by Hotel News Now at the James Royal Palm in Miami, members of the Hospitality Asset Managers Association discussed how to best use social media.
Attendees said TripAdvisor in particular is a powerful tool that hoteliers need to leverage. Social media can spark conversations with hotel management teams about what market position their hotel is in, the group concluded.
“Just forcing them to be talking about ROIs and return on social media is forcing them to think about what they’re doing,” said Michael Doyle, an executive VP with Capital Hotel Management. “We may not all know what the ROI is or what the right spend is as this thing continues to evolve, but have management teams thinking, ‘Am I getting a return for doing this? Am I making the right decision?’”
Hoteliers learning from sharing economy
Hoteliers are opening their eyes to the appeal sharing-economy accommodations companies such as Airbnb have for consumers, according to an HNN report from the International Society of Hospitality Consultants annual conference.
“We have a lot to do in our industry to compete with this,” said Niki Leondakis, CEO of Commune Hotels + Resorts. “The opportunities lie within how we can do better. … Make sure the things they get at hotels aren’t available at a home stay.”
Eric Danziger, president and CEO of New York-based Hampshire Hotels Management, echoed Leondakis’ thoughts. “What feels like a conflict is the experience,” he said. “People should have an experience when they travel that makes them feel that they aren’t in their home. It’s strange to me that they’re so successful. You’re trading your home for another home.”
Expedia’s innovative new app
Expedia has released a new app for tablets with search tools that enable consumers to shop for both hotels and flights on one screen by entering or selecting a destination.
Through internal user testing and ethnographic studies on tablets, Expedia concluded that travelers using tablet devices were frustrated with website designs that forced users to pick a flight or hotel separately. To address those needs, the new Expedia tablet app is specifically optimized for mobile exploration and browsing and introduces a handful of unique features. When a traveler enters a city name, landmark or airport code, the app will surface hotels and flights relevant to that query—no dates or specific details are required at the start.
Also, when a traveler is signed into an Expedia app, trips researched on a tablet device will appear on the desktop or mobile Scratchpad. This allows travelers to begin their travel planning from where they left off, on any device.
Compiled by Jason Q. Freed.