Big-city hoteliers will be happier sooner than their small-time counterparts. It looks like demand for rooms in smaller cities is going to take longer to come back, with rate increases unlikely, it seems until next summer. The New York market has already shown a solid recovery, thanks to the corporate cards that keep road warriors away from home. For the little guys, though, the future isn’t as bright … at least, it won’t be until almost a year from now.
According to a study by Smith Travel Research, here are five interesting (and important) facts about the U.S. hotel market:
1. Flat occupancy: Small-town and highway hotels stayed basically flat for the first half of 2010, at 49 percent. Meanwhile, metro markets – like New York, Chicago and Washington, DC – pushed from 61 percent for the first half of 2009 to 65 percent for the same period in 2010. Read the rest of this entry »
During a recent budget meeting at a mid-sized hotel company, Max Starkov of Hospitality eBusiness Strategies was called upon by a desperate IT director who was trying to push through a mobile platform line item.
The company’s CEO wasn’t convinced he should spend precious resources creating a custom Web site that users would access through their mobile devices—that is until Starkov asked the CEO to pull out his own BlackBerry.
 |
| Max Starkov of Hospitality eBusiness Strategies discussed the importance of mobile platforms during EHTEC. |
|
“Go to your current Web site and try Read the rest of this entry »
According to the latest city review by Christie + Co, using data provided by STR Global, Berlin hotels recorded a 9.3% decrease in RevPAR during 2009 compared to 2008. Despite being the city’s best ever year for tourism with 8.3 million arrivals (up 4.5% compared to the previous year) and overnight stays with 18.9million (up 6.2% compared to the previous year), room occupancy across hotels in Berlin declined by 1.2 percentage points, while average room rate (ARR) dropped by 7.6% as a result of additional supply and the global economic downturn.
20 years after the reunification of Germany, Berlin has developed into an important economic centre with many national and international companies having headquarters or representations in the city. Berlin is also home of the German government as well as many other political institutions and was listed among the top five conference and congress destinations in the world according to the ICCA city ranking. In recent years, Berlin has developed into a major city break destination, attracting a large number of national and international leisure travellers. Despite this, Berlin is still dominated by domestic trade, which generated c.60% of all overnight stays in 2009. Events, such as the athletics world championship and the celebrations for the 20th anniversary of German reunification, also contributed to an increase in overnight stays generated by international guests, which increased by 5.9% in 2009 compared to the previous year. Major foreign source markets include United Kingdom, Italy and the Netherlands.
Trends in Hotel Market Performance
In 2009, the occupancy rate showed a moderate decline of 1.2 percentage points compared to the previous year. However, the average room rate decreased by 7.6%, resulting in an overall annual RevPAR drop of 9.3%. Read the rest of this entry »
Megan Harrod is the director of marketing for Mosaic House. I’ve been watching them develop a new website for their soon-to-be-opened property for a while now. When they added Facebook Connect to the homepage, I knew we had to talk…
Josiah: What were some of your goals when redeveloping the website?
Megan: We wanted to focus on the things that makes Mosaic House, Mosaic House. For us, the biggest thing is the atmosphere created by all the communal areas in the building. For the website, we really wanted to show this element. We’re still building out the full website – it’s in progress right now.
Design is also important to us. We wanted that to come through in the imagery.
You mentioned one of the key selling points of your brand is the social aspect. How do you communicate this through design?
The biggest thing for us is the addition of the Facebook Connect feature. What I was talking to the designer in the planning stage, we decided to add this because it’s all about engagement. We haven’t even opened yet, but have nearly 800 fans on Facebook. Read the rest of this entry »
If you know a little bit about who is following you on Twitter, you’ll have a better idea of what topics will interest them. TwitterSheep, a cool tool I came across today, creates a tag cloud that illustrates this nicely.
Here’s the top keywords for people who follow me on Twitter @HMarketingHelp -
Last week, I was introduced to Jody Merl, and her company, Innovative Travel Marketing. I found her business model intriguing – something that could benefit a lot of people right now.
Josiah: Can you explain your barter concept a bit – what does Innovative Travel Marketing do?
Jody: Innovative Travel Marketing uses barter as the financial tool to bring added value to your marketing buy. As a strategic media buying and planning company, we barter with the media and hotels.Whether it’s radio, television, outdoor companies, trade magazines or consumer magazines, ITM trades with them, and that’s a benefit for the media. It’s very hard for one hotel to go to XYZ publication and say “I want free full page ads” because that publication may have no need for that hotel.
Our company acts as a fulfillment house to Read the rest of this entry »
Read More Articles:
