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The Hotel Sunday #24 (All Seasons, BBC, Ryanair, EasyVoyages, Facebook, Trivago)

So what's happened this week...


Monday: The French hotel group Accor announces the expansion of the All Seasons brand in the UK with one hotel in Southwark opening  soon in London. All Seasons is the latest brand invention of Accor.

Tuesday: Ryanair CEO Michael O'Leary recently refused an interview with the BBC programme Panorama because he wanted the interview to be uncut and undedited. O'Leary meets the Panorama journalist by surprise face tot face on the same day of the programme due to be broadcasted. The unexpected encounter is very funny indeed and the BBC recorded it...unedited. Fantastic piece of advertising...

Wednesday: The Paris based online travel company EasyVoyages (not part of the EasyGroup) gets a wooping €31.6M fund injection through a LBO. EasyVoyages allows travellers to compare prices on Flights, Hotels, Car and Packages. Clearly a big competitor of TravelSupermarket in Europe.

Thursday: Experian Hitwise reveals that Facebook is now the clear leader ion the Web in terms of page views in the UK. But Google and all its sister companies still represent 5 sites out of top 10 sites. Across all social networking sites, Facebook represents almost 50% of the traffic. I also discover the website Tagged which is apparently the 3rd social networking site in the UK. Have you ever heard of them before?

Friday: According to Trivago recent survey, British travellers rely on travel guides, check out this article on HospitalityNet. The French are more attracted by catalogues and advertising. Surprising results from one country to another.

 

The Hotel Sunday #23 (Inoqo, Hotel32, W Hotels, BlueSky, TRI Hospitality)

So what's happened this week...


Monday: TRI Hospitality reveals in their latest survey in August that UK provincial cities have slashed dramatically their hotel rates in order to attract weekenders. The average room rate was around £64 / €70 last month. London is less affected but still saw in August an average room rate of £100 / €109 with 82% occupancy.

Tuesday: Ex employees from Pegasus Solutions launch Inoqo, a Twitter based application for last minute deals with hotels. More info on this coming up this week on Hotel Blogs

Wednesday: Innovation in the hospitality industry! A hotel in Las Vegas called Hotel32 gives to their VIP guest an iPod Touch in order to access different services such as room service, wake up calls, taxi bookings, spa treatment bookings and so on. Guest can also purchase the iPod Touch after their stay. Win Win Win for the hotel, Apple and the customer.

Thursday: The first W hotel in Western Europe opens its door in Barcelona. Already a lot of press covers the much anticipated opening. Starwood, when will I get my free weekend invitation at your hotel?

Friday: A UK technlogy provider BlueSky Travel Systems goes into administration after their main client Thomas Cook decides to discontinue their contract in the middle of development for a customized solution  aimed at the tour operator. Financial Times already speculates that Anite, another UK technology provider could benefit from this terrible news by picking up new customers left with no technology partner. Or maybe they could buy BlueSky as well.

The Hotel Sunday #22

So what's happened this week...


Monday: John Vanderslice replaces Ross Klein as Global Head of Luxury and Lifestyle brands at Hilton Worldwide. John Vanderslice used to work at the CEO of ClubMed Amercas. Ross Klein has been on administration leave since the lawsuit between Starwood, Hilton and Ross Klein accused of stealing confidential documents from Starwood in order to launch quickly the new brand Denizen once he joined Hilton. Since then, the Denizen project has been placed in the freezer.

Tuesday: The French hotel giant Accor sells his portfolio of 158 Formule1 hotels for €272M to different financial institutions in a 12 years sales and leaseback agreement. Formule1 is one the first hotel brands operating in the low cost segment long before Travelodge,  Premiere Classe or Premier Inn.

Wednesday: Hyatt Hotels, besides being probably one of the best hotel user of Twitter, has recently drawn a lot of attention regarding a massive layoff of 100 housekeepers in Boston. Check out their response on USA Today blog post.

Thursday: Utell Hotels, the representation company owned by Pegasus Solutions, claims to have added more than 1,000 properties since dropping their fee to join the marketing hotel group. Utell has also launched a travel agent portal to help them book the right property at competitive prices

Friday: Hilton Hotels Corporations becomes Hilton Worldwide with a brand new logo to make this dramatic change in the eyes of the consumer. Hilton CEO Chris Nasseta says "Our new identity is reflective of a refreshed company vision, mission, values and key strategic priorities, and in some ways signifies that this is a new beginning for our company". 

The Hotel Sunday #21

So what's happened this week...


Monday: Leading UK hotel chain Premier Inn will lease 4 different properties from the Arora Family Trust at UK Airports (Gatwick, Heathrow and Stansted). All hotels will be opened by 2011 and will add more than 1,500 rooms in Premier Inn portfolio.

Tuesday: Techcrunch 50 ends his second day with 50 startups companies pictching their idea in 6 minutes with 6 minutes of Q&A with the judges. The winner gets a check of $50K to fund further his winning venture. I wish we could have something of that caliber for the travel and hospitality industry. Fortunately, we have The Get Funded Show in November during the World Travel Market that can prove me wrong.

Wednesday: John Harding, Sales and Marketing director at Hotels4u/MedHotels (part of Thomas Cook) decides to retire after 50 years in the travel inudustry. Teresa Walsh will take over this month. Teresa was already the Commercial director at MedHotels after the merger between Hotels4U and MedHotels in February (after the sale of bedbank MedHotels by Lastminute to the giant Thomas Cook)

Thursday: Hotels.com (part of Expedia Inc.) will launch a 6 figures advertising campaign targetted at Londoners. The campaign will feature TV ads, Buses banners, Rail Sations posters. Funny to see that Hotels.com keep persisting in spending some stupid money offline where its direct competitor Booking.com is focusing succesfully on PPC only. And guess who is selling the most rooms?

Friday: The Daily Telegraph announced he could be cheaper to book hotel rooms from a 3* hotel than a 1* hotel. The study on conjunction with a hotels.com survey shows that travellers need to be careful with dynamic pricing and they should double check whether upgrading coudn't be a better option with only a few pounds more.

The Hotel Sunday #20 (is back after one silent year!)

So what's happened this week...


Monday: Whitbread, owner of the leading UK hotel chain Premier Inn, announced some positive results for their year to date results claiming out performance compared to rivals. This is due to corporate travelers staying in economy hotels to decrease their travel expenses compared to previous years. The share price sees an increase of 18% after the announcement

Tuesday: The new hotel comparison site hotelly.com gets their UK management team in order with the appointment of Matt Cheevers (ex Teletext Holidays managing director) and Steve Endacott (founder and CEO of The On Holiday Group). Both will take a non executive role at the company. The press release doesn't say if there will be a proper UK team managing the site from a local point of view. Hotelly.com is owned and founded by Bhanu Chopra, CEO of RateGain.

Wednesday: The Asian hotel online specialist AsiaRooms.com changes its business model by dealing directly with hotel properties or hotel chains (it used to get content from a 3rd party). AsiaRooms will surely takes some guidelines from their sister company LateRooms in the UK who is managed by the same director Chris Morris.

Thursday: Day 1 at the HBAA Forum 09 at the Barcelo Hinckley Island in Leicestershire. Lot of people there. About 300 attendees willing to cease the "Time to Shine" (theme of the conference). The HBAA dinner is very much applauded success with singing and dancing until midnight. Workshops were also interesting and there is still a very much divided audience whether we should continue the RFP process as it stands today

Friday: Day 2 at the HBAA Forum 09. Lot of little eyes in the morning. Didn't get much sleep. Thankfully, we have the hangover cure and we go straight to the 3rd workshop to improve our public speaking skills. Then back to general sessions with the View from Top with executives from Barcelo, Helms Briscoe, etc Venues and Banks Saddlers.

The Hotel Sunday #19

Monday: no blogging for me, went to see the fantastic Dali exhibition at the Tate Modern in London

Tuesday: VibeAgent has added the "My Maps" functionality where you can spot on a map the location and hotels you've stayed and reviewed on the site. This is another mashup with Google Maps.

By the way, have you heard about the guy Craig Ulliott who has sold the Facebook application "Where I have been" to TripAdvisor for $3M? This is crasy, isn't it? The application has about 2,300,000 users. I am one of them. It means each user is worth $1.3.

Apparently, the deal hasn't materialized yet, the discussion is still on...

Wednesday: Travelocity takes hotel guest reviews to the next level with a new tool which allows their customers to only select reviews from the same kind of travelers (mature couple, family, solo women, disabled...). I am sure other OTAs will follow and surely TripAdvisor Version 2 will have this functionality as well (they already collect this information once you submit your review).

Thursday: Is it the start of the consolidation of bed banks in the UK? Youtravel.com has been rumoured to be in talks with Hotels4u for an acquisition deal. Hotels4u employs about 100 people and will generate a turnover in excess of £100M this year with a 7% margin. I wonder how much money YouTravel is ready to put on the table. I have said it before, there are far too many bed banks in the UK market (I have listed about 20 different companies who are selling their stock of rooms to travel agents) and the content differentiator is sometimes not clear between them.

Friday: Booking.com has sealed a distribution deal with Hotel.dk to offer their hotel inventory. I guess the other guys that Hotel.dk have looked at were Hotels.com. But in the end Booking won the deal. Maybe they have better content. Hotel.dk is part of VisitDenmark Booking, a subsidiary of VisitDenmark. The hotel booking engine attracts more than 70,000 users per month.

 

Saturday: Went to see the Prince concert (for the second time in two weeks) at the 20,000 people capacity venue O2 (in Greenwich London). Another very good concert but the acoustics of the venue is terrible.

Sunday: Rain, Rain, Rain. I can't wait to be on holidays in September. I miss the heat, the sun and picnics in the park.

Technorati Tags: dali, tate modern, vibeagent, facebook, tripadvisor, travelocity, guest reviews, hotel reviews, hotels4u, youtravel, booking, booking.com, prince, 02

The Hotel Sunday #18

Monday: IHG has decided to engage into the virtual world of Second Life.Crowne Plaza's The Place to Meet Island in Second Life will enable organizations to experiment with hosting meetings in the virtual world without having to commit a significant amount of their own resources. This is the second time a hotel chain enters this virtual word. Starwood with their new brand Aloft is also experimenting Second Life here.

Tuesday: Since Tuesday 3rd July when Blackstone decided to acquire Hilton for $26B, the Hilton's share price (HLT) has stabilised trading around $45. Before the announcement, Hilton was trading at $33. On Friday, the giant hotel group  could see their market capitalisation reached $17.63B.

Courtesy of Yahoo! Finance

Wednesday: The hotel group Park Plaza Hotels & Resorts is looking at introducing their company on the London' s junior market AIM. The money raised at the introduction would help to develop the brand in Europe and in the Middle East.

Thursday: Moneysupermarket.com - the price comparison website behind Travelsupermarket.com - will float on the London Stock Exchange later this month. With shares priced between 170p and 210p, the value of the company could reach up to  £1billion. This company was only founded in 1999 by Simon Nixon and Duncan Cameron.

Friday: HRS has conducted a survey among UK independent hotels. A brief on the results is available on Travelmole here. 26% of the hoteliers who have responded to the survey said that they have seen a drop on their bookings since the opening of a hotel chain property nearby their property. 92% of respondents feel that customers get better service with independent hotels than hotel chains.

Technorati Tags: ihg, second life, travelsupermarket, moneysupermarket, hrs, park plaza, hilton, blackstone international

The Hotel Sunday #17

Monday:  TripAdvisor unveils their new product "Traveler Network" which could be used by more than 6M TripAdvisor members like me. This web 2.0 feature is directly competing with the social travel networking website WAYN. Personnaly, I haven't test the platform yet. You? Also, TripAdvisor claims more than 10M reviews on their websites with more than 20M monthly visits on their .com website. Last year at the same period, the site was recording 5M reviews. Quite an impressive growth.

Tuesday: Travelocity (part of Sabre) and IHG (Holiday Inn, Express by Holiday Inn, Intercontinental...) have renewed their partnership. Travelocity customers will continue to have access to more than 3,700 properties across the world. The press release also announces that both companies are working on implementing a "state-of-the-art next generation connectivity between systems". In parallel, IHG properties are still not available on Expedia and Hotels.com since August 2004.

 

Wednesday: Iliho.com - a new entrant in the online travel community area - releases its beta website to consumers. The website is a mix of travelers tips, reviews, travelers forums. The homepage lists articles (published outside Iliho) rated by their visitors. The rating is very similar to "Digg it" functionality. At this stage, this website aggregates news from different sources (MSN, Forbes, Travelpod, Travel & Leisure). I
don't see much added value there.

Thursday: The leading UK hotel chain Premier Travel Inn announces that they will rebrand all their hotels under the new name Premier Inn in order to differentiate themselves from their competitor Travelodge. The cost of this rebranding exercise is evaluated at around £ 22M or € 32.6M. I have  also attended the 1st Great Britain & Ireland HotelClub awards 2007 at Vinopolis in London where Hilton claims the "Best Hotel Chain" award. A full video summary of the Awards ceremony will be available on Hotel Blogs this Monday.

   

Friday: Fastbooking - the French online hotel booking engine company - has launched a  website Only Recommended Hotels which lists the best rated hotels. Out of 400 hotels in Paris available on Fastbooking, only 100 made the shortlist with at least an 80% recommendation rate from their customers. In my opinion, this site will have a hard time to promote itself just because of its long and not easy to remember URL. The website doesn't feature on the 1st page of results when you search "only recommended hotels" on Google.

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Technorati Tags: premier travel inn, travel inn, ihg, travelocity, tripadvisor, hilton, hotelclub, fastbooking, travelodge, iliho, iliho.com

The Hotel Sunday #16...a bit late this time!

Because I was away on a long weekend in the Loire Valley and Paris, I couldn't post my Hotel Sunday #16. So here it is.

Monday:Jurys Inn has been snapped by the Irish property tycoon Derek Quinlan. Jurys Doyle Hotel Group will now focus on the 4 and 5 star hotels
market only.

Tuesday: I have tried the new Travel 2.0 company VibeAgent by posting a couple of hotel reviews. Will share you with you later on this week my thought on the functionalities I have discovered. But so far, I am  very impressed with this new venture.

Wednesday: I receive an invitation to attend the Best Hotels in Great Britain and Ireland Hotel Awards 2007 brought by HotelClub which will take place this Thursday in South East of London. I am really looking forward to this.

Thursday: Hilton Hotels Corporation announced that the company has signed a letter of understanding for a major development alliance with the experienced hotel franchise owner and operator, Somerston Hotels UK Limited - with the intention to introduce an additional 25 new hotels comprising 3000 rooms across the UK in the next five years. The agreement is expected to result in the addition of at least 25 Hampton by Hilton properties - Hilton's "new kind of economy hotel" brand that focuses on consistency and comfort for business and leisure travellers alike.

Friday: Patrick Imbardelli - IHG Asia Pacific Managing Director - is fired after the board checked his qualifications submitted on his CV in 2000 when he applied for his first job with the hotel group. Unfortunately the board found out that he lied about obtaining these degrees. Even though Mr Imbardelly was definitely fit for being appointed to the board, the latter decided not to pursue the process because of lack of trust.

Technorati Tags: the hotel sunday, hotel blog, hotel blogs, ihg, jurys inn, vibeagent, hotelclub awards, vibe agent, hotel awards 2007, hotelclub 

economy hotels
 

Hotel Sunday #15

Monday: The European HEDNA conference is held in Dublin this year. About 300 attendees were present to the event. The evening party was organized in the Guinness Storehouse on the top of the building where you could enjoy a breathtaking view of the city.

Tuesday: On the last presentation by Daniel Levine at the HEDNA conference, I discover a new functionality available on Google Maps where you can leave your phone number to a hotel you want to talk to. And the hotel is calling you back minutes after. Incredible isn't it? See example below.

Wednesday: 4 new hotels and 8 new hotel members have signed with Design Hotels to be part of this innovative representation hotel company. Among them are the Chedi Milan, the Haymarket Hotel in London (which will open its door this month) and this apartment hotel called La Réserve in Paris.

Thursday: The 2007 Travelmole Awards have announced the winners. MacDonalds hotels have won the Hotels category. Lastminute.com claimed the Online Travel Agent award. And the Internet Video Company has received the Technology award (it gives some good hope for Trivop.com...). All the winners can be discovered here.

Friday: The virtual tour company 360TravelGuide has added Hotel tours on its catalogue of city and resorts guides. Managing Director Conrad Freethy said the company had built up a library of 1,500 hotels and was hoping to add a further 2,000 this year.

Technorati Tags: hedna, 360travelguide, travelmole, design hotels, google maps, trivop.com, virtual hotel tour,  hotel sunday, hotel blogs, hotel blog, hotels, hotel