Weekly Roundup #25: Travel, Tech and Social Media
Week 25/2017
Happy Friday, dear readers! Welcome back to our blog, for another Weekly Roundup! Let’s not waste any time before we head into the beautiful, summer weekend and go through a quick recap of this week’s news and stories. We hope you enjoy the read and, if you want a daily dose of news and stories, we recommend checking out our social media accounts: Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Google+ and Instagram!
See you next Friday, have an amazing weekend!
Industry News
Booking.com expected to resume activities in Turkey:
After being banned from Turkey at the end of March, with the intent of preventing unfair competition and thus protect member travel agencies, it seems that Booking.com is now expected to resume its operations in Turkey. Ministry of Culture and Tourism's Assistant General Manager of Promotions said that the judiciary requires some obligations from Booking.com for the resumption of operations.There are technical, financial and tax-specific arrangements to be made and Booking.com may continue to operate in Turkey after fulfilling these requirements.
Our partner Thomas Cook reports 113% increase in mobile bookings:
A 113% rise in people using mobiles on thomascook.com to search for holidays between May 2014 and April this year has been unveiled by the operator. Tablets and smartphones dominate searches whereas desktop and laptop are the preferred choice for actually making a booking. Thomas Cook’s newly published 2017 Holiday Report highlights the rise in people using their mobiles to search for holidays as a growing trend, On average, holidaymakers will visit thomascook.com 11 times before completing their booking.
TripAdvisor launches ‘Storyboard’ for hotel managers:
This week, it was announced that TripAdvisor has launched a new photo tool designed to help hotel managers better engage with potential guests by compiling their best property photos and top guest reviews. ‘Storyboard’ replaces the static photo on the property’s listing page and instead, offers a dynamic presentation comprising the best photos, review snippets and tags from an accommodation’s page, which is designed to capture more potential guests, said TripAdvisor.
Trends and Insights
Guest-Hotel Communication Research - our latest White Paper:
So this has been a very exciting and busy week for us, since we released a brand new White Paper - this time, it’s all about guest-hotel communication. Our study is focused around the guest preferences and expectations for direct hotel communication and it is targeted towards hoteliers, in order for them to get the insights into what their guests want and expect. Make sure to download the free report and learn exactly what works and what doesn’t, in order to enable the best possible communication with your guests! Also, we recommend reading this article published by Tnooz, in which they analyse one of our charts, that highlights the way in which hotels and OTAs are currently failing to inspire guests.
How to achieve organizational change through customer feedback:
We also published a new blog post this week and it refers to ways in which organizational change can be achieved, with the help of customer feedback. This article will take you through the entire process of asking for feedback, from start to finish. Customer feedback is the best way of getting to know more about what the customer desires and how to meet his needs. Plus, it can also help you reach organizational change and improve your business, so that it would be tailored for your exact audience and its expectations and needs.
New study reveals the states and cities with the best and worst vacation habits in America:
A new report by Project: Time Off provides a look at the vacation behavior in all 50 states and the 30-largest metro areas in the country. It was revealed that, despite improvement in the amount of vacation days Americans used last year, more than half (54%) of employees still left time on the table in 2016. The 662 million days left unused last year - and their implications for individual employees and workplaces alike - are not felt evenly across America. There are profound geographical differences in U.S. states and cities that influence employees' time off perceptions and behavior.
Technology
Hotels.com looks toward mobile future:
The travel industry is heading toward a mobile future, as more travelers are choosing to plan their trips on their smartphones, according to an executive at hotel booking site and partner of ours, Hotels.com. In particular, Korea has become an important market to watch in terms of mobile service development. Koreans not only access Hotels.com through their smartphones, but also extensively use sorting features. According to data from Hotels.com, Koreans use filter features 30 percent more than the rest of the world. Koreans’ mobile-savvy searches, combined with the rapidly rising number of travelers and unique travel trends, may also give the company new ideas for additional features for the app in the future.
Hotel Technology Next Generation changes its name and expands into verticals:
Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG) has changed its name to Hospitality Technology Next Generation to expand within the hospitality industry. HTNG’s founding mission states: “To foster, through collaboration and partnership, the development of next-generation solutions that will enable hoteliers and their technology vendors to do business globally in the 21st century.” Now, the organization aims to broaden that initiative to include other hospitality verticals as well. Restaurants, leisure and entertainment venues, active living facilities, gaming, cruise lines and healthcare share similar technologies and solution sets as hotels.
