Never enough amenities...


http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/061128_hotel_amenities_that_stick/

This text is about the importance of the amenities inside the hotel room or about the services offer in an hotel.

This is in fact the result of the competition. Hotels have to be always the first and need to be innovative in the services offer.
Where this thing will stop? What do we have to offer to make the customer happy and to satisfied this one in order for him to forget the price.
So, the question is until which room price we can offer all this kind of amenities ? It's important to fix a marge because all those kind of amenities are very expensive and we also need to be sure to not fall in this game of the best service (amenities) for the cheaper price.

Tecknology on the March, by Larry Mundy.

Link:

http://www.wiredhotelier.com/news/154000469/4029502.html

This text from Mr Mundy is about the excess of tecknology all around the world and so, inside the hotel also.

We can find today in the hotel, handphone, internet, wireless, TV with 300 channels, digital recognition and hotel employees can know a lot about you thanks to the networking...

This writer said that he is fed up with all this. He just wants to take some rest in an hotel and that's it.

Can we think today to a new kind of hotel, like a come back 60 years before to a simple hotel where you'll not be disturd by anything or anyone, find some different TV channels, or no TV at all... This is a funny aspect because if we come back a couple of years before, the old way of life can become a new and innovative concept. I think now there is a niche on this idea. So many people need to take a real vacation and not to stay in the middle of a computer.

For my part, if I can find an hotel like that to go and spend a week-end there, I'll do it for sure.

Importance of the package in the hotel.

http://www.wiredhotelier.com/news/154000469/4029355.html

This is an important point because we arrive now on a completly different way to travel. People doesn't want to lost time in taking time to plan the vacation.

It's some time a good way for the customer in a sense of the price. In fact, very often, the holidays are cheaper if you take a package with everything included.

But the question is why people prefer to plan everything, get the plane, the hotel, the meal package and the visit in a same package.

I think the guest don't have anymore freedom in the way to visit a city or a country.

That's mean that for the most case, if you don't want to take one of these package, you'll pay more than without this one. So?

In the hotel industry point of view, it's can be the really good thing in order to increase the revenue. People has to stay in the hotel and to consume a maximum inside the hotel. but I still think that we need to improve in the quality of the package. We actually find always the same kind of visit or sometime a massage... It's time to think "innovation" in order to be better than competitors.

Europe: E-Commerce drives advertising growth
November 09, 2006

According to the “European Online Advertising Forecast, 2006 to 2011,” released by JupiterResearch, search engine marketing expenditures in Europe are rising, and for the best of all possible reasons - Europeans are buying more online.
Internet Retailer estimates that as the Internet becomes mainstream in Europe over the next several years, by 2011 European marketers will spend Eur83 billion on online advertising, representing 8.3% of all European advertising spending.
Search engine marketing (SEM) will account for the largest part of that growth, increasing from 41% of total online ad spending in 2005 to a projected 49% in 2011.
In fact, already last year, in order to reach the increasing number of European online shoppers, 65% of the search marketers Jupiter surveyed said they had upped their paid search spending.
In addition, new advertisers are coming online — following the consumers. As Jupiter analysts wrote, “Internet penetration grew from 46% in 2004 to 49% in 2005, and will reach 58% in 2011.”

My opinion:

I think this article is really relevant with the hospitality industry. In fact the e-commerce will change the entire organization of the marketing and sales department in the hotel. This fact is known since few years but apparently hotel companies had difficulties to stay connect with this evolution. Today, the using of advertising for hotel on internet is still very slow in Europe and especially in France.
Company has to change all the method of sales. It’s not anymore a face to face relation with the customer. Now they have to sell differently.
If the using of internet is increasing, companies need to attract the customer online. They need to promote the hotel, to improve the company website front page.
It’s mean also that employees need to get new training on the IT system.

The other relevant point is the Tour Operator, today more and more of hotel rooms are bought on internet and directly on TO website like Opodo or Voyages SNCF. Customers are using this link to book the hotel in same time with the train or airplane. If this way allows hotels to sell more room, it’s also a sell at a cheaper price.

• 
  What will happen if every customer buy the room night by those TO and not anymore with the hotel directly?
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  How hotel will fix new sell price for the room?