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HeBS digital Blog Archive for the ‘Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)’ Category The OTA Billboard Effect or the Lazy Man’s Approach to Hotel DistributionMonday, August 1st, 2011 The following article is Max Starkov’s latest contribution to the “Successful eMarketing” blog on HOTELS magazine’s website The existence of the so-called billboard effect is not a new marketing phenomenon. It has existed long before the online channel became a reality. As confirmed by many studies, any marketing exposure by a hotel produces a billboard effect:  when you launch a banner advertising campaign; when you purchase a full-page ad in the New York Times travel section; when you launch a paid search campaign on Google, etc. The OTA Billboard Effect Lately Expedia reps have been aggressively using a new Cornell Hospitality Report, namely “Search, OTAs and Online Booking: An Expanded Analysis of the Billboard Effect” to convince hoteliers that they should use Expedia in order to generate more bookings from the hotel’s own website due to the so-called “Billboard Effect.” The Cornell Report, based on data from Expedia and InterContinental Hotel Group (IHG) from 2008-2010, is a continuation of a previous report on the subject, heavily supported by Expedia. The report’s analysis determined that when an IHG property was listed on the first results page of Expedia, this created an increase of between 7.5% and 14.1% in bookings for the same property on IHG’s own brand website. In other words, this is a confirmation for Expedia’s billboard effect, which hoteliers should take into consideration when griping against the 25% plus merchant OTA commission. When these “billboard effect bookings” are taken into consideration, Expedia’s commission “would effectively be reduced to single digits,” states the Cornell Report. Hoteliers, rejoice! We have found the perfect recipe for success: we do nothing as far as marketing the property website is concerned. Instead, we plaster Expedia with our sales promotions and wait for the travel consumers to come to our own website and book. As discussed, the billboard effect is not strictly an OTA territory. In my view, the Cornell Hospitality Report is a one-sided research project, very proactively supported by Expedia, similar to the first report on the billboard effect published in 2009. Cornell, the finest hospitality institution in the U.S., should know better than to come up with this half-baked “scientific” research, which does not account for the complexities of hotel distribution as well as the “digital information cloud” we all live in and the resulting marketing and distribution channel convergence which directly affects the purchasing habits of today’s hyper-interactive travel consumers. This report makes conclusions that do not take into account, among many other things, the following: Complex Travel Planning Patterns in Hospitality Many surveys show that people are shopping around on a number of hotel and travel websites before narrowing down their search. Typically in hospitality, these sites include a hotel search on a search engine e.g. Google (65% market share), an OTA website, TripAdvisor, the hotel’s own website, etc. Therefore jumping from an OTA website to a hotel branded website and vice versa is at least partially due to particular travel research patterns unique to the users and not due to the so-called billboard effect: Step 1: “I always search on Google first where I identify a property I like” Step 2: “I go to Expedia and see what the rate for this property is” Step 3: “I visit TripAdvisor to read my peer reviews for this hotel” Step 4: “I visit the hotel website and book if I like the location, rate and what I have read and seen about this hotel”

Uber and Foursquare Co-Founders Lead $15M Investment in Dining App Reserve

Expa, the startup accelerator founded by Uber co-founder Garrett Camp and Foursquare co-founder Naveen Selvadurai, has led a $15 million venture investment in Reserve, a startup that wants to combine reservations and payment into a seamless end-to-end dining experience.

The company, which currently operates in New York, Boston, Los Angeles and San Francisco, equips merchants with an iPad pre-loaded with the company’s application. Restaurants use the application to accept or decline reservations, and then process the check when a diner who made a reservation with Reserve finishes a meal.

. Webcam-Enabled MonitoringPairing advanced algorithms with high-quality cameras, Vision Enabled Training from Elmwood Park, N.J.-based Sealed Air records employees in food preparation areas and other workplace settings to detect any noncompliance with health regulations and safety codes.

4. LED Alert SystemsKitchens can be loud and hectic and often staffed by people who speak different languages. Kansas City, Mo.-based Power Soak's Silent Alert System shines a light on kitchen confusion with a colored, LED alert system that's obvious, yet unobtrusive.

3. Automatic Biodiesel ConvertersBefore petroleum-based fuels, cars ran on biodiesel. But Chico, Calif.-based Springboard Biodiesel has reinvented the way the fuel is produced.

Skip forward just a year though, and the AR and VR business is booming, especially within the events industry

The Macallan event adds to the growing number of alcohol marketing efforts that combine bottle labels with AR to evoke an ambiance or tell a story.

Audiences are craving new and exciting ways to be entertained and marketed to, and AR and VR have been successful in these efforts

When the organizers of Intuit’s QuickBooks Connect conference initially decided to use near-field communication (N.F.C.) technology on attendee badges for this year’s event, which was held October 22 to 26 at the San Jose McEnery Convention Center in California, they had several goals in mind.First, they wanted to automate the process of tracking continuing education credits for the attendees; second, they wanted to make it easy for vendors to track leads at their booths; and third, they wanted a way for attendees to gather information from vendors and sessions electronically, rather than in paper form.

And then they came up with an additional function: Due to the event’s growth, Intuit had to spread the 112 exhibitors across two halls for the first time this year. N.F.C. created a fun way to ensure the more than 5,000 small business owners, accountants, and developers in attendance would spend time in both halls.

By using the N.F.C. technology in this game-like way, O’Brien said it helped attendees become comfortable with the new technology. “We wanted to teach that the value was beyond the exhibit hall,” she said. “We wanted there to be ‘delight’ reasons to scan, so there was the kiosk or to get pictures.” The N.F.C. was integrated into the event app, which O’Brien said had a 91 percent adoption rate this year, much higher than at the 2015 event.

"We are entering the golden age of hotel software where hoteliers have an opportunity to differentiate their offerings by assembling and integrating unique sets of applications," said Jos Schaap, CEO and Founder of mobile technology and PMS company, StayNTouch. "We are proud to partner with SnapShot, who is a foundational leader in this endeavor."

Today, with more than 3000 hotels on its platform, Berlin-based SnapShot has five commercial centers across the United States, Europe and Asia Pacific. In May 2017, SnapShot launched the SnapShot Marketplace, a fully-integrated ecosystem where hotels have access to applications designed specifically for the hospitality industry. Among these is SnapShot's flagship app, SnapShot Analytics, which provides an overview of PMS and performance data, Google Analytics, social media, OTA reviews and more on a single dashboard.

By Les Shu — April 24, 2015 7:00 PM 1 94 Subscribe Share Don't Fall Behind Stay current with a recap of today's Tech News from Digital Trends

Where technology is concerned, most hotels are behind the times. Sure, they offer amenities like Wi-Fi, flat-screen TVs, USB ports, and perhaps some extras like iPhone docks, but most hotel rooms don’t impress.

the Yobot, a robotic luggage handler that stores guests’ bags (Yotel rooms, called cabins, are small, so Yobot is useful for putting away giant suitcases). The robotic arm automatically lifts a bag to one of its available storage compartments. Yobot can even send your luggage off to the airport after you check out (via a delivery service).

Faced with the possibility of such intrusions, hotels are now turning to outside companies to protect their customers’ data

Hilton in 2017 had to pay $700,000 to New York and Vermont to resolve two data breaches that resulted in more than 363,000 credit card numbers being compromised.

California law that is intended to protect consumers from having their data sold without their consent or knowledge. The law was passed in 2018 after Cambridge Analytica got access to private information from Facebook. The California Consumer Privacy Act goes into effect Jan. 1.

“Most cruise lines now offer downloadable apps which really allow cruisers to tailor the cruise experience to them.”

Guests on the Edge can upload a selfie to the app, and the company’s facial recognition software will automatically check them into the cruise, allowing them to bypass long check-in lines. Cruisers can see their itinerary, and link their reservations with other guests’ to make plans together onboard. The app also allows passengers to see entertainment and dining options, and information about activities on the ship.

On Royal Caribbean’s Oasis of the Seas, which just underwent a $165 million upgrade, guests can use an in-app remote for their TVs and use the app to unlock their stateroom doors.

The major search sites routinely leave out flights (lots of them) and even entire airlines. A lot of the flights they do show are ones you don’t want, starting with “basic economy” fares that hit you with tons of restrictions and fees, so the price you see isn’t the one you end up paying, along with connections way too short or way too long, ones that no responsible travel agent would let you book.

The reality is that while it was widely predicted that the internet was going to kill off travel agents when digital tools were placed at every traveler’s disposal, that just hasn’t happened, for several good reasons.

“They can find crazy deals”; “They will be your advocate”; “They’ll take care of the little things”; “They’re true experts” and “They don’t usually cost extra.”

Old models are falling away and technology is giving both planners and event participants an opportunity to grow and revisit the underlying ideas about how event spaces work.

Old models are falling away and technology is giving both planners and event participants an opportunity to grow and revisit the underlying ideas about how event spaces work.

planners can use the tech-augmented action to direct traffic to spots and programming that they want to emphasize.

Recently the Roosevelt Hotel sought a more efficient solution for running their business center. They wanted one-stop for both their solution and customer service. After careful evaluation of the solutions and service offerings of their existing provider and TTI Technologies International, the Roosevelt Hotel selected TTI Techn

ologies business center solutions that included both PC and MAC systems.

TTI Technologies offers both free to guest and paid by guest Business Center services. Consulting with each individual property allows the TTI team the opportunity to evaluate the true needs of the propert

financial close software leader BlackLine Systems to bring industry-leading software and professional services to Fortune 1000 companies to help automate and optimize traditionally manual, spreadsheet-driven financial close processes.

BlackLine provides quick-to-implement, scalable and easy-to-use applications that automate the entire financial close process to help improve financial controls for companies of all sizes.

Another new POS vendor, eTab, debuted its table-side ordering and payment solution this past May at the National Restaurant Association Show in Chicago. The solution allows restaurant and bar patrons to order and pay for meals at their table through a digital menu interface on a portable touch-screen computer, wirelessly connecting each table to the restaurant’s wait staff and existing POS system. 

Earlier this year at the International Restaurants & Foodservice Show of New York, Squirrel Systems announced the launch of the latest addition to the Squirrel Mobility suite of products, Squirrel Professional for Apple mobile devices. Squirrel Professional allows restaurants, bars, and hotels to manage their food and beverage operations from stationary terminals as well as mobile tablets and handhelds like the iPad, iPhone, and iPod touch.

Lawrence Cohen, Executive Consultant and Hospitality Group Leader at Ne

w York-area accounting and consulting firm Marks Paneth & Shron LLP, has published a commentary examining the conflicts of interest and dangers hotel owners face when hiring a third-party management company.

hotel ownership requires strategic and operational decisions to be made in real time. As such, critical day-to-day decisions that can make or break a hotel's success are often not in the hands of ownership but rather within the purview of the third party management company.