Tourism World

In the last 3 months, the airline industry has seen 4 players going into receivership and have ceased to operate.  After Oasis, Silverjet, Eos, Zoom Airlines has closed their doors on Thursday and all flights have been cancelled and their fleet condemned to stay on the ground. This airline was operating with 600 staff members. The increase of price in the oil and the current economic climate are the main reasons for this operations suspension, says their management team.

We wonder where all this is going to end. We are hearing that AirFrance/KLM is resuming negotiations with Iberia. Virgin Atlantic tries to protect itself from a possible merger between British Airways and American Airlines or Continental Airlines.

Does that also mean we are going to see more casualties in low cost airlines? Probably.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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I am currently planning my next holidays and I am so annoyed to see how many well known websites and hotel chains sites are quoting you hotel rates without  taxes on the availability display. You have to look for a little note saying 21% taxes need to be added to the room rate. So why don’t you add these taxes from the beginning. I don’t have much choice to pay these taxes anyway?

I believe several airlines were forced to change their display on their site to include everything on their fares, I think it’s time hotel chains and OTAs do the same. It’s unfair to give you the bad news when you are one click away from booking the hotel room.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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After TripUp, TripHub has to unfortunately shut its door. TripHub was one of those travel planning websites with some social community plugged to it.

In a difficult time that we are currently living, this company lacked of funding to grow bigger and has to leave the travel planning space to other people. Their blog gives their customers alternative choices. Quite a rather laudable and brave move from their CEO.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Mistake #5
Hoteliers book their hotel on sites like booking.com and
post a review thinking they won’t get caught

read this story

Mistake #4
Hoteliers indicate their email address but it is hard to
read (can you see it?)

Mistake #3
Hoteliers would love that you get in touch with them but
they forget to leave their email address on their website

Mistake #2
Hoteliers keep ignoring TripAdvisor, Vinivi or VibeAgent reviews and don’t respond to them

or any Britannia hotels really…

Mistake #1
Hoteliers forget to promote rate parity to their online
distribution channels and their own website

too many examples to quote…

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Boutique hotels are growing everywhere like mushrooms but
who knows today what is the definition of a boutique hotel.

“Boutique” means shop in French. When we say “nous allons
faire les boutiques”, you mean “ we are going shopping”. So what this got to do
with a hotel then? Is it a hotel where you buy things?

Trendy hotels…Hip hotels…Chic hotels…Avant Garde
hotels…Design hotels…are all synonymous of this much over hyped “Boutique” term
and I think it’s time we get rid of it. Would you agree?

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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The UK based bedbank Alpha Rooms - founded by Jason Fry, a talented entrepreneur -  is looking urgently to fill the position of Head of Purchasing Eastern Med. This is a position available for a 6 month
consultancy project, or a full time permanent role.

Ideally, AlphaRooms need someone who has Greece, Cyprus and Turkey experience in hotel contracting.

If interested send me an email at guillaume@hotel-blogs.com.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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I wrote about Vinivi on these pages before. The hotel review site based in beautiful Mauritius has started to add new features on their site and a major one is the eco-friendly stamp "Green Hotel" on more than 600 hotel properties in 55 countries.

The initiative is co-partnered with different certification bodies: The Green Key, The European EcoLabel or The GreenGlobe.

This is the first initiative of its kind in the online travel space. Having said that, I already start to see an issue about how many bodies that are or will be created to certify hotels. You can already see 3 bodies at this stage. Does a hotel needs to get certified with the 3 bodies to be fully 100% eco friendly? How do you choose between th 3? How much does it cost?

Another initiative I have been aware of is the creation of CarePar aiming to calculate the CO2 emissions in a hotel. The project is led by Peter Ducker, Executive Director of the Hotel Booking Agents Association.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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Without any particular order, these are some information I have found on the web…

HSMAI and PhocusWright Sustainable

Dubai Hotels double CO2 emisssions compared to Europe see article

The Carbon Neutral Company assumption on Co2 emission per night

The Greenest hotel of all on Times

Accor  Accor Group’s Earth Guest programme commits to Green Globe  conf

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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On one side, you have WAYN (Where Are You Now), a leading travel social networking site founded by 2 friends Peter Ward and Jérome Touze in Spring 2003.

In 2003, WAYN received a first financial backing from the business angel Stephen Pankhurst (founder of the UK school reunion site Friends Reunited).
In November 2006, WAYN founders secured a first round of financing of $11M from ECP (Esprit Capital Partners), Brent Hoberman (ex CEO and Founder of Lastminute.com
and now Managing Director of MyDeco) and other key UK entrepreneurs in online businesses (David Soskin and Hugo Burge of Cheapflights and HOWZAT media LLP;
Adrian Critchlow and Andy Phillips of Active Hotels (bought by Priceline in
2004 for £90M), and Constant Tedder ( ex CEO of Jagex, an online gaming company).

WAYN has attracted 12M registered users (45,000 members in 2005)

Different revenue models have been implemented on the site:

==> if you want to get rid of the ads, you can be a VIP and pay WAYN a monthly fee. Several options are available from £3.99/month with a 12 month minimum contract to £5.99/month with no restrictions when you want to stop your subcription renewal

==> Sponsored Ads managed by AdRevolver, part of BlueLithium (a company acquired by Yahoo in 2007) and/or DoubleClick (acquired by Google in 2007)

On the other side, you have TravBuddy, another online travel social networking site created by the two Bjorndahl brothers back in 2005. The company is privately owned and has attracted:

1.4M registered users
75,000 blogs
20,000 travel reviews
and almost 1M pictures loaded on the platform

The business model besides the social element of the website is driven by 3 revenue models:

==> TravBuddy has taken an API from the hotel meta search engine HotelsCombined.com (one of Hotel Blogs sponsors, please visit their site) where I believe TravBuddy has negotiated some PayPerClick shared revenue

==> Sponsored links managed by the site representation company TribalFusion who publish targeted ad placement with their customers. For example, the pictures tab reveals an ad from Westin.

==> Sponsored links from Google AdSense

These 2 ventures are not the only social networking sites in travel but they both have created some nice functionalities and some decent traffic instead of being a "me too" of Facebook in the travel space. My best guess would be that TripAdvisor galaxy is far from being complete and I am sure their management team with the support of Expedia Inc. is looking for other ventures to acquire like these two. My other guess would be TUI.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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After my horrible experience to book this hotel…

It’s been a while I have stayed in a Malmaison hotel. Oxford was a
quick destination of choice for going away from London during the
weekend. Malmaison again didn’t fail me with the quality of their
bedrooms, lounge, restaurant and originality. Even though I have
struggled to make an online booking on their website, I have managed to
get a god deal with a double room from the centre of the converted
prison priced at £109 per night and also a twin spacious room priced at
£139. Rooms are very well decorated with good taste and they kept some
features from the old  prison like the door of the room. You could spot
that our room was in fact 3 cells in the past. The shower room with
powerful shower was very nice coming up with fantastic amenities. Also
each room is with a lcd screen and a dvd player playing divx (if you
bored with tv channels). The restaurant is typical of other restaurants
I have tried from the Malmaison brand. A mix of French / Italian /
English food with good quality ingredients. I was a bit disappointed by
the breakfast buffet. I didn’t found it exceptional and was lacking of
croissants and pains au chocolat. £15 for a breakfast, you expect a
lot usually.  Finally don’t forget to pay a visit to the "Visitors
Room" in the evening. The room is gigantic all painted in black from
top to bottom.

Definitely a hotel to recommend for your next Oxford weekend breakaway with friends or with your partner.

Source: Guillaume Thevenot

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