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The successful upgrade of our Customer Call Centre began late last year and involved migrating all existing services onto a new cloud-based Salesforce contact centre solution platform, managed by Vonage (previously known as New Voice Media).

As a result of this, our Contact Centre – which provides customer support for the Hotelbeds and Bedsonline brands, plus the Beyond the Bed portfolio – will now operate on a single unified platform and will offer you:

&nbsp;


	Greater call stability
	Improved audio quality
	Almost complete elimination of dropped calls
	Full integration with Hotelbeds’ CRM system, meaning that we &nbsp;will automatically access your details on receiving a call
	Improved call answer times and increased call answer rates
	Cost savings for you via offering local rate telephone numbers.&nbsp;
	&nbsp;



Commenting on the successful migration, our Global Operations Director, Marc Albert said: “Whilst this had been scheduled for some time, clearly it couldn’t have come at a more important moment due to the unexpected challenges of COVID-19.


“Therefore I’m very proud to confirm that the improved response times, CRM integration and overall greater call quality introduced by this upgrade has meant that we have been able to maintain our high-standard of customer service, despite seeing very significant spikes in volumes of calls during recent months.”

“On behalf of all my senior colleagues I would like to congratulate all those involved in this successful migration and thank them for their hard work.&nbsp;
This is yet another great example to our partners of how we support them!”


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Upgrading our Customer Call Centre


	New redesigned API portal makes APItude even easier to use and more powerful for clients such as tour operators, airlines and points redemption schemes.
	APItude can now handle up to 14 billion searches a day during peak periods.
	New functionalities include a real-time dashboard, automated documentation, and faster integration with the Hotelbeds APIs via a simple four-step onboarding process.
	
	&nbsp;


APItude is Hotelbeds’ API that allows travel trade buyers such as tour operators, airlines and points redemption schemes to directly integrate Hotelbeds’ 180,000 hotel properties and ancillary services into their platform.&nbsp;

The new portal has been through beta testing with selected clients for the last two months and now is ready for launch, featuring a completely renewed design and new functionality.


As a result, APItude is now even easier for clients to use, due to features such as:


	Real-time dashboard: clients will have full control and visibility over their current API status and usage in real time. There is also a new stats dashboard, providing near real-time insights of API usage, powered directly by Hotelbeds’ Business Intelligence data warehouse.
	Automated documentation: &nbsp;Hotelbeds has built modern, automated OpenAPI generated documentation to ensure the documentation always remains updated for our clients.
	Faster integration with the APIs: new integrations will go from testing to production in just a few days, with a simple, new four-step process. This turnaround time to execution makes APItude far more appealing.



The audience for this new API Portal will no longer be just developers, but also members of the sourcing, product and sales management teams of Hotelbeds’ clients that are aiming to boost their commercial performance via APItude. In order to achieve the above, and in &nbsp;addition to today’s launch, by the end of 2020, the API Portal will feature an optimization centre providing tailored hotel recommendations based on current market data, &nbsp;which will enable the Hotelbeds’ clients to receive a competitive edge and to provide better product to the end customers.

León Herce, Global Sales Director at Hotelbeds, said: “With the first signs of recovery in the market beginning to emerge it is even more essential to provide our clients with the best available tools &nbsp;by enhancing the developer experience and making the whole process even faster and more intuitive. We believe that this latest version of APItude does just that and I´d like to thank all the team for their hard work and commitment in delivering this on time to meet the very urgent needs of the market.”

APItude is the fastest and lightest hotel distribution API in the market. It enhances the developer experience by making the integration process easier, faster, and more intuitive – allowing partners to develop their own travel website or mobile app using Hotelbeds’ product portfolio more easily than ever before.

Forming part of Hotelbeds’ commitment to innovation, APItude was launched by Hotelbeds at World Travel Market (WTM) in 2015.

To learn more about the new developer portal please visit https://developer.hotelbeds.com/


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Innovative API portal launch for APItude 


	Free monthly webinar series hosted by Hotelbeds will offer insights into how to respond to the challenges of COVID-19.
	Each Travel Talk webinar will feature a panel of leading travel industry experts.
	First edition on June 18th to explore ‘What does the journey to recovery look like?’.
	&nbsp;


The free monthly webinar series will provide insights into the COVID-19 challenges currently faced by the whole travel industry, as well as recommendations for both identifying and capturing opportunities for recovery.

Each month Travel Talk will be hosted by Hotelbeds and will feature panellist of leading experts from across the industry such as hoteliers and lobby groups, plus travel buyers such as tour operators, airlines and point redemption schemes.

Travel Talk’s first edition will take place on June the 18th at 5pm CET/11am ET and the topic will be ‘What does the journey to recovery look like?‘.

This first panel will address key issues such as how to look out for the signs of recovery, how travel companies should adapt their business for when the recovery begins, and a debate around the biggest challenges the industry faces, both now and in the future.&nbsp;

Paul Anthony, Commercial Excellence and Global Partnerships Sourcing Director at Hotelbeds will moderate the panel and will be accompanied by the following speakers:


	Maribel Rodríguez, Senior Vice President at World Travel &amp; Tourism Council (WTTC)
	Michael Savage, Director at American Airlines Vacations
	Cheryl Williams, Regional Vice President at Alohilani Resort Waikiki Beach and HIGHGATE Hawaii.
	&nbsp;


Gareth Matthews, Director of Marketing &amp; Communications at Hotelbeds commented: “For some time we´ve been working hard behind-the-scenes to help our partners respond to the challenges of COVID-19. But we felt that the combination of our strong industry knowledge and global portfolio of leading industry partners places us in a unique position to produce significant insights and advice for the industry as a whole – and one of the most appropriate ways to present this is via a programme of free webinars that everyone in the industry is welcome to join. We have some impressive guests planned for both this first edition and the future webinars that will form part of the programme. Watch this space.”&nbsp;

The webinar is open to anyone in the industry to attend via the following registration page: https://joinus.hotelbeds.com/traveltalk1-the-journey-to-recovery/


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Hotelbeds launches Travel Talk webinar series to help industry recover from the challenges of COVID-19

Safe2Stay is a distribution filter category that consolidates and displays in the booking process the different COVID-19 health and safety protocols and certifications that travel industry companies, tourism boards and lobby groups have recently created.

The Safe2Stay category covers both accommodation and providers of services such as transfers, activities, theme parks and car rental. All products with a listing in the category will feature a Safe2Stay badge in the booking engine along with details of what this means outlined in a glossary compiling all protocols in one reference point.

All partners working with Hotelbeds that have created their own COVID-19 health and safety protocols are eligible to include their information in the filter category and hotels partners can do so directly via MaxiRoom, Hotelbeds’ partner extranet. &nbsp;

Global health and safety certifications from hotel chain partners such as Accor, Radisson, Hyatt and RIU Hotels and Resorts, as well as organizations such as the American Hotel &amp; Lodging Association and Turismo de Portugal, will be displayed in the Safe2Stay filter category alongside those of many other companies and institutions.

This category will be visible as a filter on the Hotelbeds and Bedsonline booking engines and the same information will be made available to all of Hotelbeds’ API clients to configure into their own systems.

Tobias Thibaut, Risk, Compliance, Internal Audit &amp; Sustainability Director at Hotelbeds, said: “Today more than ever, we need to focus on the safety and wellbeing of guests during the COVID-19 pandemic. When it becomes available in a few weeks our ‘Safe2Stay’ filter category will be very valuable for our clients when reserving a hotel for their customers or other ancillary products by giving them greater confidence and thus helping the tourism sector recover more quickly.

“As there are already many different standards and certification processes out there, it is important to bring them together under one category and for the information to be easily displayed in the booking process. We encourage all our supplier partners out there who have introduced their own standards or who are adhering to third party standards to input the details in MaxiRoom right away to gain the Safe2Stay badge”

This news follows the recent announcement that Hotelbeds has backed the World Travel &amp; Tourism Council’s ‘Safe Travels’ initiative and is working towards making this available in Hotelbeds’ distribution process. Safe Travels creates global recovery protocols – including for hotels – for the COVID-19 pandemic, with the help of industry associations, health experts and governments.


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Hotelbeds to launch ‘Safe2Stay’ to support industry recovery

Hotelbeds has developed an automated WhatsApp and a Facebook Messenger service to enable partners to receive the latest updates on operational issues related to COVID-19.

Examples of information available via the WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger services include:


	Details of the global force majeure that Hotelbeds has put in place for all bookings worldwide (with some exceptions) until April 30.
	Lists of destinations that have been closed by local governments, along with details of how pre-existing bookings for those markets are being proactively cancelled.
	Information on how to cancel and modify bookings via the Hotelbeds website.
	Reference copies of official update emails sent to partners over the last few weeks.
	Plus Q&amp;As to answer the most common questions asked by partners




By subscribing to the services Hotelbeds partners can ask questions via an interactive menu with automated responses, request responses from the operations teams, and subscribe for further updates.

The information available in both the WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger service complements the comprehensive information available from the dedicated COVID-19 operational website created by Hotelbeds in mid-March and updated daily since.


Gareth Matthews, Marketing &amp; Communications Director of Hotelbeds, comments: “Up-to-the-minute operational updates on COVID-19 are essential to both our clients and hotel partners during these challenging times.

“We quickly developed our COVID-19 dedicated website resource for partners but were keen to go further by allowing people to also access information via convenient channels like WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger – I´d like to thank the team for developing this in record time.

“To all our clients and hotel partners out there I´d just like to say that we recognise that these are very tough times. But we want you to know that we will be with you all the way, right now and then when you and your customers and guests are ready to go again.

“Over the coming weeks and months we´ll be announcing further actions that we´ll be taking to fulfill this promise.”

Clients looking for the full weblinks to register for the services can find them here.


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Hotelbeds launches innovative COVID-19 updates via WhatsApp and Facebook Messenger

Bringing guests from abroad can be challenging for every hotel, but these clients are arguably the most profitable ones, and therefore attractive to target. By analyzing data you can have a better understanding of the different source markets and which of them can bring the most valuable guests to your door.

The opportunities and challenges of targeting international guests

As we wrote about in our article about the value of international guests for hotels, there are several good reasons why your hotel should focus on this segment:


	They have a bigger budget and stay longer&nbsp;
	International trips are not as frequent as domestic ones, but as a result an international traveler’s average budget per day is often much higher.
	Longer lead time and lower cancellation rate
	Due to the effort and budget behind an international trip, the guest is less likely to cancel, and more likely to book in further in advance. This gives you the safety of having a good base of occupancy so that you can be creative with your rate strategy for bookings with shorter lead times.
	They are likely to spend more on-site
	Long haul travelers are more likely to want maximum comfort during their stay, which makes them a much better target for upselling and cross-selling strategies.
	A wider audience will give you more opportunities to recover from difficult situations
	In the case of unpredictable situations, being able to reach out to a global and wider audience can be a decisive advantage. Every hotel’s survival chances to navigate through adversities are much higher when their potential customer base is global, and not just local.


However, targeting international audiences does present some challenges:


	Language barrier
	Determining the best language to communicate with your target can be tricky. Even if English can often work as lingua franca, customized ads, marketing materials, and multilingual staff members for target languages can put you on the front foot!
	Communication channels
	The internet has made it much easier to reach out to people on the other side of the globe, but that doesn’t mean everyone is using the same channels to gather information and engage with each other. Take the time to research where travelers from your target markets are hanging out online.
	Different habits
	Another key challenge of welcoming international guests is the diversity of habits and behaviors of each culture. Making sure that you're ready to host and make every guest feel comfortable can be difficult if you have limited information about your audience.




Through Hotelbeds’s network of travel agents, you can widen your global reach, and communicate directly to new potential customers everywhere in the world, with a partner that speaks the local language and knows the market. Check our article about the benefits of selling your rooms via travel agents.

&nbsp;

The importance of geographical segmentation for your hotel

In light of these opportunities, and overcoming the challenges, segmenting your audience and defining your targets, is key to your hotel’s success.

By using data to analyse the best performing markets for your hotel, correct segmentation can have a positive effect on your hotel’s yield.

More effective tailor-made marketing strategies

Knowing where your audience is coming from can be a great advantage! It allows you to know which language they speak, and to create advertising campaigns for specific markets. This allows you to deliver a message that is more engaging and resonates better.

Improves the return on your marketing investments and boosts your revenues

Investing in campaigns and in communication for a tighter audience is cheaper, and if you target the right segment correctly, your investment will have a much higher return.&nbsp;

Data-driven market analysis can provide your hotel with insightful information about what’s the ideal target audience for your hotel.&nbsp;

With more information on your audience, you can improve their experience

Knowing what’s the origin country of your guest can give you valuable information to make their experience comfortable and personalised from the very first moment.&nbsp;

&nbsp;

Find out more

To deep dive on how different channel distribution strategies can improve your hotel’s performance, check out the Hotelbeds guide to hotel distribution in 2020.&nbsp;


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Finding international source markets for your hotel

Imagine if you could organize your customers into unique segments, each clearly defined by their specific characteristics and their individual buying behaviors.

What is generation segmentation?

In this article, we’ll show you how to target guests more effectively by splitting them into generational groups, each of whom have different buying habits, unique spending patterns and personal preferences. We’ll also show you how you can identify the most profitable generation for your hotel.&nbsp;

Understanding generation segmentation properly is a great way to help you to identify the most effective triggers to attract profitable customers to your hotel.&nbsp;

What makes each generation different?

There are five main generational segments recognized by marketers. You’ve probably heard of some of them already, but just to make it easy, we’ve summarized their main characteristics below:











Which are the most profitable generation segments for hotels?

Generation X (who often spend more in destination) and millennials (who travel more regularly throughout the year) tend to be the hotel industry’s most profitable generational segments. In fact, according to Boston Consulting Group, millennials will account for almost 50% of travel spend by 2020. Generation X also tends to have strong purchasing power and spend as much as 25% of their total budget on hotels. They are more family-oriented, value work/life balance and generally take around three trips per year, often around the school holidays.

TOP TIP:
Generation X is very brand loyal so consider selling your rooms via loyalty plans or points redemption programs.&nbsp;

Millennials tend to:


	Combine business travel with pleasure travel (the birth of “bleisure”)
	Search for experiences, not just accommodation.
	Be more interested in exploring the local culture than staying by the pool
	Prefer email communication to face-to-face contact
	Love reading good reviews&nbsp;


If you’re looking to cross-sell leisure opportunities, millennials are worth targeting.

Key tips for attracting millennials to your hotel

Now that we know which are the most lucrative guests for the hotel market, let's dive more deeply into some common ways to attract them. Here are a few ideas:

Last-minute offers: 
millennials are a spontaneous bunch. In a recent survey by MMGY, 49% of them reported taking a last-minute vacation in the last 12 months. They also love flash deals, so drive that business with flash sales and watch your profits rise.

Partnering with a B2B distributor: 
millennials are loyal, which is good for business. B2B distributors or Bedbanks, such as Hotelbeds, offer easy access to a plethora of points redemption schemes. These distributors can also negotiate the best deal on your behalf, leaving you free to concentrate on giving your guests the best experience possible.

Limited-frills properties: 
make sure that millennials who want to spend their money on external experiences know that your budget-friendly hotel makes an excellent basecamp for their excursions. Millennials prioritize travel experience and location over luxury.

TOP TIP:
Consider working with a business-to-business distribution partner such as Hotelbeds, who can help you to access the best travel points redemption, loyalty and employee benefits schemes from the thousands that are available across the globe.

Key tips for attracting Generation X to your hotel

Try to differentiate between being a family-friendly hotel and distributing your rooms to tour operators that offer family travel packages.
Some ways of attracting Gen X guests to your hotel could include:


	Appealing to family groups: Generation X loves family travel, so building a proper environment which includes activities for family groups is a great idea.
	Promoting family-friendly amenities and services such as pools, complimentary breakfasts and laundry facilities to make your property more attractive.
	Using activities like “kids clubs” and babysitting facilities to create memorable experiences.&nbsp;
	Offering your rooms on a family travel package: family life tends to shape the way Generation X travels.&nbsp;
	Making sure that your travel distributor is including your rooms on a travel bundle addressed to families.&nbsp;
	Promoting family-friendly packages around school calendars, since that is when many Generation X guests prefer to travel.


TOP TIP
Try working with a B2B distributor such as Hotelbeds who will connect you with an extensive network of tour operators and give you access to all their itineraries and bespoke packages
&nbsp;


	Generation X still values its travel agents: the American Society of Travel Agents says that 22% of travelers have worked with an advisor to book a trip in the past year. As more and more people rediscover their travel agents, that number is expected to grow. They understand how to pull together all the individual pieces of an international trip to make sure it is both convenient and efficient.


TOP TIP
Working with Hotelbeds you will get access to more than 100,000 unique retail travel agents around the world. You’ll never have to close individual deals with travel agencies again.

Find out more

To deep dive on how different channel distribution strategies can improve your hotel’s performance, check out the Hotelbeds guide to hotel distribution in 2020.&nbsp;

&nbsp;


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Generation X and millennials: targeting the most profitable segments for your hotel

Applying sound revenue management practices and having a clear idea of exactly which consumer groups drive the most value is vital to positively impact your bottom line.

But to optimize your hotel marketing effectively, you’ll need to cater for different needs and different budgets, while continually monitoring your efficiency and cost-effectiveness.

Every one of your defined market segments will contain several unique business sources and each of these will carry different costs. However, this article focuses on bedbanks, OTAs and direct channel.

&nbsp;

Weigh up the pros and cons of each channel

Hoteliers should not only know which market segments they should use to target their guests, but they should have a clear understanding of the advantages and shortcomings of each different distribution channel.&nbsp;
And knowing precisely where their guests originate gives them maximum flexibility when it comes to analyzing and managing their business.
For example, what if you could skew your audience so that:


	40% of all your bookings stay for at least six days in leisure destinations
	Your guests spend twice as much money on site
	You get bookings 55 days ahead




This is the typical profile of international bedbank customers sourced through the Hotelbeds network. And this is an audience that you can access more effectively with proper segmentation.
The better defined your market segments are and the clearer your insight into your distribution channels, the easier it will be for you to apply individual pricing per segment for successful revenue management.&nbsp;
So let’s take a look at how this all works.

What is hotel market segmentation and why is it important?

In simple terms, segmentation is the process of defining and subdividing a large homogenous market into clearly identifiable segments with similar needs, wants or demand characteristics.
&nbsp;


&nbsp;

Once done, this process allows you to offer a unique price for each segment to reflect your different customers and their specific needs. It also means you can start to define and bundle specific sales and marketing efforts in a more targeted way according to the insight you get from a thorough analysis of each segment.

Done well, this allows you to create a specific strategy, relevant to the needs of your market, leading to increased bookings, higher revenue and improved guest satisfaction.&nbsp;
Effective hotel market segmentation helps you to:

Understand who is using your property


	Where are the highest number of bookings coming from?
	Why are your guests coming to your area?
	Why are they choosing your property?


Know who your most profitable customers are


	How much does each customer pay per booking?
	How much do they spend while at the hotel?
	How long does the guest stay?


Identify business trends


	Should you focus on rebuilding lost business or refocus on a different kind of customer?
	Which distribution channels usually serve the highest-value guests?&nbsp;
	How has customer behaviour changed over the past months or years?


Target market segments

Identifying the relevant market segments for your hotel gives you a solid base for an effective pricing strategy. Effective segmentation considers different approaches to booking behaviours and how sensitive to price your customers are.&nbsp;
You can segment customers in several ways, including:


	By booking channel (retail travel agency, tour operator, airline etc.)
	By rate type (double bedroom on half-board basis etc.)
	By reason for visit (leisure or business)


Ultimately, this will help you optimize your distribution mix and manage your distribution costs efficiently while enabling you to monitor inter-channel movements from one channel at a much more precise level.

Effective channel segmentation can also help you to reduce acquisition costs through an optimized strategy designed to deliver maximum profit.

Tip
Effective channel segmentation can help you reduce acquisition costs through an optimized strategy designed to deliver maximum profit. When you work with Hotelbeds, you can rely on a dedicated team of experts to help you tailor your offers to the most valuable customers.

Take a good look at these source channels:


	Your website, direct channel
	Online Travel Agents (OTAs)
	Bedbanks


Focus on understanding your acquisition cost per customer, average booking value and ancillary spend.

Track essential metrics:


	What is the lifetime value of customers?
	Are they loyal returning guests?
	How often do they come back to the hotel, if ever?
	What is the booking lead time?
	What is the average cancellation rate?
	What is the geographic location?
	What is the average length of stay?
	Are bookings midweek or weekend?


Segmentation in practice

So what are the real-world benefits of segmentation for you?

For example, if you’d like to access higher spending international travellers, you could start by finding out which channel your preferred source market uses most often.&nbsp;

At Hotelbeds, more than 60% of our bookings originate from non-domestic source markets.

Bedbanks drive incremental high-value bookings from B2B travel trade sources such as tour operators, travel agencies, airlines and point redemption schemes. Bedbanks also offer easy access to hard to reach travel buyers from source markets that would otherwise be difficult or too costly for a hotel to access directly. See how Mandar Vaidya, CEO South East Asia &amp; Middle East from OYO Rooms, explains it.



&nbsp;

Improved understanding of guests is your key asset

If you’re looking for more control over your business, then defining your hotel market segmentation is an essential first move. Try to establish which customers are already staying and what their buying patterns are like. &nbsp;It also pays to understand their maximum budget and how they made their booking.&nbsp;

The more you know about your guests, the easier it will be to decide on the best approach for your specific business mix. It will also help you to take the most appropriate and targeted actions for your particular business mix, leading you to greater efficiency and more profits.&nbsp;

Tip
Bedbanks like Hotelbeds offer more than just a powerful hotel extranet. You get bespoke assistance from a hotel revenue expert who helps you segment and optimise your revenue strategy and maximize your yield.

Finally, if you're interested in getting access to our portfolio with over 71,000 travel distributors, register your property today for free!&nbsp;


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Hotel market segmentation: how to target your most profitable guests

In a fragmented marketplace, one of the major challenges facing hoteliers is ensuring distributors sell their rates according to the contracted conditions.&nbsp;
As a response to this issue, Hotelbeds has introduced a range of initiatives to safeguard rate integrity in our sector.
&nbsp;



Why is rate integrity important?

Rate integrity ensures a culture of trust in the marketplace. To guarantee competitive positioning and operational profitability, hoteliers have to ensure that the distributor is fully aligned to its rate strategy, while travel sellers need to honour contracted rates.

Rate integrity:


	Protects the trust essential to maintaining a successful marketplace
	Ensures an equal playing field for all participants
	Secures operational profitability for all parties


Misusing rates affects the whole market

A major issue for the industry is that the same room can sell at a wholesale net rate or a retail gross rate. So, trust between parties is essential to avoid channel conflicts and transactional partners attempting to gain an unfair advantage by discounting prices below the contracted best available rate (BAR).

Hotelbeds is leading the way in preventing sellers from promoting discounted prices in unapproved channels. That even goes as far as terminating relationships with repeat offenders.

“Amoma is one key example of us making sure that we’ve been significantly reducing our business with clients that hoteliers consider not to be generating value,”
Carlos Muñoz, Hotelbeds

How bedbanks promote rate integrity

Investments in technology

Through the development of new rules-based technologies, Hotelbeds is taking a leading role in identifying malpractice before it has a chance to impact the marketplace.&nbsp;
By dedicating whole teams to tracking compliance metrics and imposing stricter policies, bedbanks can prevent the proliferation of bad behaviour.

Responsible relationship management with partners

If sacrificing revenue is what it takes to rid the sector of duplicitous practice, then Hotelbeds is prepared to do that. In fact, Hotelbeds recently stopped working with companies misusing rates, which resulted in a reduction in annual sales volume of around 300 Million Euros.

&nbsp;



Strict rate integrity policies

Increasingly, bedbanks are stipulating contractual terms that prohibit their partners misusing rates. While legitimate hotel revenue management errors do occasionally occur, Hotelbeds has introduced a strict ‘three-strike’ policy for channels that consistently violate distribution rules. We proactively exclude travel buyers from our network that repeatedly violate the terms of their contract.&nbsp;

“Any online travel agent that distributes content intended for offline in an online B2C sales channel, just three times, will find themselves cut-off from distributing that hotel via Hotelbeds.”
Carlos Muñoz, Hotelbeds

What hoteliers can do to maintain rate integrity

Communicate contractual responsibility

Rate discrepancies can arise during the onward distribution of group, unbundled or region-specific rates if conditions are not stipulated early on.

That’s why defining opaque pricing agreements is crucial to avoid any misinterpretations of a contract, which could ultimately affect trust in the marketplace for all participating providers and suppliers.

Practice and monitor pricing compliance

To foster confidence in the marketplace, hotels also need to take responsibility for auditing pricing compliance. And while it’s important to assume good intent, if hoteliers do suspect rate misuse, it’s crucial to verify and identify the bad actors.

It’s worth noting that these types of violations are generally not isolated to just one property, so others are likely. And again, the knock-on effect is the erosion of trust in our industry.


The Hotelbeds commitment to detecting and deterring rates misuse

Thanks to the development of market-leading automated technologies unavailable elsewhere, Hotelbeds is able to segment and accurately monitor how contracted products are distributed. These investments in technology, infrastructure and resources form part of our wider pledge to rid the marketplace of bad practice.
&nbsp;



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Rate integrity: how bedbanks and hoteliers can maintain trust in the marketplace

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Gruppo UNA Hotels Case Study

A tour operator puts together holiday itineraries and creates bespoke packages by bundling the individual services which make up those itineraries. Often, these services include accommodation, local guides and transport. The tour operator then markets and sells these directly to the traveller.&nbsp;Efficient distribution partnerships with tour operators are now a vital part of any viable hotel revenue strategy, especially for those with a focus on the leisure segment. That’s why it’s sensible to review your options and to diversify your distribution strategy to include tour operators. And since each tour operator focuses on a different segment, it’s worth spending some time upfront to find the best way of working with them to get the most for your business.So, what exactly are the advantages and disadvantages of working with tour operators to distribute your rooms?&nbsp;The prosAccess to new marketsWorking with tour operators can provide you with access to markets that you can’t currently reach, including high-value guests who often book ahead, cancel less and return more often.Better forecastingIn the past, annual demand patterns for tour operators were relatively consistent. Working with tour operators can be a great way to help to improve your forecasting, allowing you to predict occupancy rates more actively and manage your revenue more effectively.High volumes of guestsTour operators can provide significant numbers of guests at one time, allowing you to sell rooms through at high volume.Zero impact on direct channelsTour operators allow you to distribute opaque rates that do not directly impact the price perception of your brand and which have no impact on your direct channel activities.&nbsp;The consAll that glitters is not always gold, so while this is a valuable channel, it’s important that you are aware of some of the potential challenges that come with distributing your rooms via tour operators:Time-consuming and unproductiveDeals must be negotiated, renewed and closed one by one. This is complex, inefficient and hard to sustain. Negotiating multiple contacts individually can be time consuming and unproductive. Bedbanks like Hotelbeds release you from this inefficiency as they act as a hub, taking care of the negotiations and giving you access to more than 4500 tour operators via one unique contact point. Working with a bedbank, you'll never have to close individual deals with tour operators again.Less control of ratesLosing control of your rates is a threat you need to be aware of when working with tour operators. May occur that tour operators don't respect your agreed conditions, unbundle your opaque rates and sell them publicly. A discount that was meant to be only for B2B opaque channels is now competing with your brand.com rates. Hotelbeds is implementing a range of initiatives to ensure our tour operators respect your rates and sell them under the contracted conditionsAll your eggs in one basketGetting the right distribution mix for your brand is vital. Giving too much volume to one individual tour operator may be a risky strategy; you might have become over-dependent over a third-party company, and you might lose control of your revenue. Hotelbeds helps to avoid this and help hoteliers to diversify your distribution pie through their extensive network of tour operators.According to Diego Fernández, corporate revenue director at Palladium Hotel Group: “One of the keys to success in the hospitality industry is to have everything in balance. If one day the basket breaks, all your eggs are out. We are trying to do the same with our distribution strategy; if one market is suffering, we know we can replace this market with another one.”&nbsp;Find out moreGet access to over 66,000 travel distributors, including 60,000+ travel agencies, 4500+ tour operators and more partners, and start boosting your occupancy! Register your property today and benefit from a wide array of services designed for hoteliers like you.&nbsp;If you’d like to learn more about effective distribution strategies, which distribution channels are best and how to get the right mix of channels in place for your business, check out the Hotelbeds guide to hotel distribution in 2020.

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Pros and cons of working with a tour operator

Getting your distribution mix right is vital. Large OTAs can help you to increase your occupancy rates but in the process, they may erode your margins. So, how can you increase your direct hotel bookings and maintain your revenue per available room (RevPAR)?

Full occupancy is the holy grail of the hotel industry. But achieving it is never easy. There is a constant struggle between direct booking channels (your website) and online travel agents (OTAs). OTAs can offer you greater visibility and reach than you could ever achieve on your own. But beware of cannibalization. Your website is a strong branding channel and the only online distribution channel that generates direct sales with no third-party commission. However, when considering your website as your primary channel for bookings, it is important that you bear in mind the marketing costs linked to generating relevant traffic to your website.

There is a valuable third option, Bedbanks or wholesalers, who can help you to extend your reach and target international market segments that are hard to access via the other channels.

Turning your OTA bookings into direct bookings

OTAs charge considerable commissions, often between 14% and 20%. This can dent your profit margin, which is why it is important not to rely too heavily on OTAs if you can avoid it.

Direct bookings will save you the high cost of commissions and will also mean that you have full access to all your guest data. The higher the proportion of direct bookings for a property, the higher the profit margin. But, getting direct bookings via your website may not be as cost-effective as it first seems. To secure bookings through your direct channel requires major investment in traffic generating techniques to compete with the large OTAs advertising power.

However, B2B distribution channels such as Hotelbeds are compatible with your direct strategy, since they are targeting a different set of guests, who will have no effect on your direct channel.

Here are some ideas to boost your occupancy by reducing the dependency on OTAs.

1. Integrate booking engines to increase direct hotel bookings

It goes without saying that the best place for guests to book is your own shop window, otherwise known as your website. Some cloud property management systems allow website booking engine integration from within. This means that web visitors have real-time information on availability, room rates and so on. It’s an easy way to increase direct bookings. However, with third-party booking engines, the hotel often needs to integrate a booking widget, which carries a fee. Beware of these hidden costs, which occur not just in the form of commissions but in added staff costs and contract requirements. These can include agreeing to room availability and rate integrity clauses, a loss of direct relationships with your clients and building their own brand at your expense.

2. Work with bedbanks to access hard to reach customers

Bedbanks are often a great way to reach international travellers, who are often hard to find through other channels. &nbsp;In fact, 60% of bookings coming from the Hotelbeds network are non-domestic, with the booking originating from another source market. Bedbanks drive incremental high-value bookings from B2B travel trade sources such as tour operators, travel agencies, airlines and point redemption programmes.

&nbsp;3. Be seasonal

Remember your peaks and troughs and don’t use the same approach with OTAs all year round. You might want to try a more seasonal approach to OTAs. Getting a healthy base of early bookings can be a great way for your hotel to optimize its pricing strategy for its regular booking window. You might want to consider giving specific inventory to those distribution channels with longer lead times. Hotelbeds guests generally book earlier than guests coming from large OTAs and generally offer longer lead times than other channels. So, one approach could be to go seasonal. If you have peaks and troughs in your bookings calendar, consider changing your approach. If you know your higher value units will be sold out during peak months, don’t promote them on the OTAs. Instead, use them to get visibility with your lowest price inventory and then draw potential customers into your own website, where they can see other room types.


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4. Remember your reputation is on the line

An excellent guest experience is always a top priority for a good hotel. The better your online reputation, the better chance you have of getting direct bookings. One of the best ways of communicating your reputation is by partnering with trusted review sites such as TripAdvisor.

Every time a guest leaves a positive review on your website, it will also appear on your TripAdvisor page (and the same in reverse)
That’s why you should always respond to reviews, whether they are positive or negative. This sense of responsibility encourages trust in your business
Accept responsibility if you get it wrong. And give customers an incentive to come back so that you can get them back on side. Guests love it--and so do people who read those reviews

Key fact: 98% of travellers read hotel reviews and for 80% of travellers reviews are extremely important in making a reservation.&nbsp;

All that glitters is not gold

While at first glance it may appear that direct channels are the obvious choice, beware that everything is not always what it seems. In many cases, the hotel will need to integrate a third-party booking widget and these have fees attached, which can be a disadvantage. Additionally, it is important that you bear in mind the marketing costs linked to generating relevant traffic to your website.

It requires specific expertise and experience to get the direct channel right. If done properly, it can be a very efficient route to revenue. But it is difficult to scale and, if done wrong, it can be a very inefficient way of spending your marketing budget.

Find out more

To find out more about how different channel distribution strategies can improve your hotel’s performance, check out the Hotelbeds guide to hotel distribution in 2020.
