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The biggest contributor to Expedia missing its quarterly projections was its decision to ramp up spending as it plans for the future. Expedia will be spending $170 million alone on improving its cloud-based operations, technology and content. This investment will result in improvements to all of Expedia's online business, but it also represents a significant ramp-up in spend for HomeAway as the home-sharing brand becomes a frontrunner for the OTA.

What he did concede, however, was that Expedia’s customers were searching for more independent hotels, citing pricing competitiveness, name brands appearing lower in Expedia’s sort order and the OTA’s brand-agnostic audience as contributing factors.

These extras include the opportunity for guests to choose their own room when booking, access to free Wi-Fi and other perks. Overall, this makes it more difficult for OTAs to create a seamless experience for travelers, and gates the optimal travel experience behind a direct booking.  With this strategy, hotels may have found a method to retain power over the hotel experience through online bookings

In today’s mobile age, power lies more and more in the hands of the customer and the value of delivering a great guest experience has never been more prominent.

86% of consumers are willing to pay more to receive a better customer experience, and only 1% of customers feel their expectations are being met consistently.

59% of Americans would try a new brand or company for a better service experience.

Travel agents using the new lodging solution will be able to access content from the three companies under the new agreement.

Having aggregator content integrated with traditional GDS hotel content makes travel agents and corporate booking tool providers more efficient, effective and confident in the increased depth and breadth of lodging offerings they are able to bring to their travelers,"

The new lodging solution will allow a more seamless shopping experience that will display the new content at the room and rate level, side-by-side, for more efficient comparison

The human resources department within any organization is considered to be highly critical for the entire organization.

Its many functions serve as a supportive background for the company by providing everything from skilled and talented labor to management training services, employee enrichment opportunities and more. Since labor is the single largest expense for most organizations, human resources helps companies derive the greatest value from this important asset.

Expedition of recurring tasks through automation

In consideration of how investment in hospitality technology can support business growth, rather than being an added cost, or unnecessary financial burden, to a hotel – it is important to look at what operational efficiencies the technology can bring, including any improvements in staff activities and morale that can be delivered and how the technology will ultimately benefit the hotels revenue performance.

There are many technologies that tick all of the above boxes, including: Energy Management Systems Revenue Management Systems Property Management Systems In-Room Technology Sophisticated Telco System

Equally as important, when considering whether to invest in new technology within the hospitality sector, is the need to recognize that technology is constantly changing and improving. Decision time frames are shortening. International hoteliers that have a good view on the future, realize that the technology decision they make today will only be relevant for the next 3-5 years at the most and are already planning next generation migrations. There is an onus on the vendors to also re-invent themselves and re-invent their technologies. The concept in 2009 – 2010 of having something ‘future proof’ is both outdated and naïve.

A property management system can help you maximize revenue by making your hotel’s operations more efficient. Here are just a few of the pain points that an up-to-date hotel PMS can alleviate: The expense of legacy systems and multiple technology partners: Many of the technology platforms that promise to solve one or another of these problems come with a host of fees for setup and ongoing operations. Very quickly, these individual solutions can add up to large costs, especially when upgrades and continued support are considered. Expensive on-site IT hardware and staff: The opposite end of the spectrum from relying on many partners is to try supporting all of your operations on-site. In addition to hiring and retaining the staff who know these systems, there’s always a danger of a system failure, resulting in lost data or downtime that can cost your hotel a large amount of money. But even when the hardware is running perfectly, there’s another danger that your IT department can’t anticipate… Loss of connectivity leading to lost data – and lost bookings: If your hotel’s internet connection goes down, will you lose reservations or other data? A PMS that cannot operate in a disconnected state is a problem waiting to happen. Time and money spent on training: With high churn rates among guest-facing staff, the amount of time and resources spent on training front desk personnel on your systems can add up quickly. A quality PMS will make training simple, not only by being intuitive and easy to use but by including self-help resources and guidance so that new employee onboarding is as painless as possible.

A hotel PMS should not only integrate well when it comes to reservation delivery, it should help hoteliers streamline their operations throughout the guest’s journey – from booking to check-out. Without this seamless integration, hoteliers can find themselves lacking both the time to deliver on the promise of excellent guest service and the revenue to keep those operations running.

Technology integration will allow the seamless flow of transactional data between PMS and RMS to support ideal pricing at the room type level

"Today's integration with Springer-Miller will allow those with a high mix of room types, like resorts, the ability to price based on guest demand for individual room types in order to move away from traditional static offsets for room types that do not account for demand.

an innovator of technology systems for the world's most exclusive hotels, resorts and spas. The SMS|Host® Property Management System offers a complete set of fully-integrated modules enabling complex resorts to provide highly personalized guest service from front office to food & beverage to spa to the golf course and more.

Expedia has clearly defined ambitions to build the world’s first all-property solution for hotels.

The company’s reach gives it plenty of opportunities to challenge the solutions’ business of the legacy players, something that the company is eager to do

Expedia has always wanted to be seen as a technology company and often promotes its heavy investments in improving its products. But the ambition is greater than ever before, with the company building solutions for its ecosystem at a rapid pace.

After a quick search I found and booked the same ticket through an online travel agency for a bit more than the price on the airline website, but less when you included the €8 fee. Unfortunately this small change in booking method would have cost the airline a substantial amount of money. Here’s why…

Selling costs generally represent around 4% to 8% of overall airline expenses

Many airlines sell a large proportion or the majority of their tickets through indirect channels.

If the hoteliers do not catch up with the current trend in technology such as using reservation software to practice paperless, social media, or online platform to promote and inform customers about their properties, the chances for Millennials to choose them are very low compared to their rivals who are aware and ready to act to the current technology trend, thus, it is also not good for their business as well.

For example, more and more hotels nowadays implementing radio frequency identification (RFID) key card on the rooms’ doors and the key card must be inserted into the key card holder to power on electricity inside the room. This method helps hotels to decrease electricity budget. Seamless connectivity across platforms and devices is growing more important.

For hoteliers, SaaS is the new norm or trend that the owners should not be thinking twice to implement in their properties. SaaS is a mainstream technology topic in cloud computing, but it is a newer concept within the hotel sector. SaaS providers such as Cloudbeds have been working on improving the system from time to time as the demand is increasing following the world trend in which, 85% of the queries come from hotels and hospitality companies (Gonzalo, 2016). Besides that, hotels are able to cut down operating costs as the upfront investment in SaaS is cheaper as there are no initial hardware costs or no need for hiring full time IT staff to maintain the system.

Booking Holdings Buys Activities Distribution Startup FareHarbor – Skift

Booking Holdings said Thursday that it will acquire U.S.-based, experiences booking-software provider FareHarbor.

The FareHarbor acquisition will help provide content to expand Booking.com‘s upselling of consumers on tours after the consumers have already bought another product from the online travel giant.

Sabre Corporation (NASDAQ: SABR) and Alaska Airlines have successfully migrated Virgin America to Alaska's passenger services system (PSS), hosted by Sabre. The recently completed migration will allow Alaska and Virgin America to move forward using Sabre systems as one unified airline while offering a seamless, end-to-end guest experience.

"Since initiating the merger with Virgin America, Alaska's primary focus has been on the 44 million guests that collectively choose our airlines each year – and expanding our technology platform to best serve every one of them," said Shane Tackett, Alaska Airlines' senior vice president of revenue management and e-commerce. 

Now that the integration is complete, Alaska will expand its use of Sabre's customer management technology across the enterprise to fulfill its brand promise, enhance retailing capabilities and offer guests the best options in an ultra-competitive environment.

Technological advancement should be aligned with guest expectations to stand out from your competitors.

Technological advancement should be aligned with guest expectations to stand out from your competitors.

Swipe cards have been replaced with smartphones and apps to ease check-ins and reduce loss of key.

Over the past few months, Google has started to work with a handful of software providers in order to provide a more seamless search and reservation experience for customers wishing to book a vacation rental for their next trip.

The vacation rental market has been eagerly waiting for Google’s foray into the industry, which has traditionally been dominated by the Big 5: Booking.com, Expedia, Airbnb, HomeAway and TripAdvisor.

Now Google has successfully integrated vacation rentals into the Hotel Search function,

Current technology trends are on the rise, influencing several industrial sectors, among which is the travel and hospitality industry, where enhancing the guest experience of the utmost concern

Integration between hotel systems, such as connecting a property management system (PMS) to another smart tool, will allow hoteliers to create a detailed customer profile.

The vast majority of hotel systems and software are cloud-based and can enable multiple operations, which allow proficiency in reducing time consumption

The current dynamics of the Hospitality Industry indicate the need for a more tech-savvy approach towards enhanced customer experience. Resorting to complex spreadsheets and documentation is definitely not a favorable idea in this case. The implementation of a highly effective Hospitality Software can help elevate the business standards of the hotel and tourism industry. The use of this software will definitely provide an immense boost to the performance levels and financial profits in any Hotel.

The Hospitality Software provides seamless integration of various processes related to the hotel business. The modules and the support system in the software enable excellent productivity levels in a hotel organization, thereby establishing the best business standards. This software is a highly recommended solution for revolutionizing the hospitality industry with streamlined business processes, excellent efficacy levels and greater financial rewards!

It’s been over 40 years since direct deposit was introduced, arguably the last major development in the payroll world. It’s amazing to think that, with the speed of technological innovation these days, you have to go so far back to find the most recent payroll innovation that had such a significant impact on both employees and employers.

technology has infiltrated the payroll landscape in recent years, innovating time reporting and flexibility in pay. Payroll is also being forced to adapt to a workforce comprised heavily of two types of employees: those who require immediate income, and millennials and Generation Z workers.

Paycards According to a 2017 FDIC national survey, 25.2% of U.S. households are “unbanked” or “underbanked.” Those who are “unbanked” do not have any traditional banking relationship (i.e., a checking or savings account), while those who are “underbanked” have a financial institution account but also obtain services from providers outside the banking system.