The Hospitality sector has benefited from major advances in information technology in recent years. At the same time the consumer becomes increasingly demanding and discerning in the choice of destinations, travel products and services, requiring more specialization and standard of service.
Since 2008, several websites were already reliant on dialogues of thousands of consumers and interactive discussions, evaluations, travel tips and exchange of relevant information in real time.
The Internet offers compelling strategic advantages:
- 1) The extent of the company, reaching global markets,
- 2) Cost savings (compared to traditional channels)
- 3) Improving customer service, offering more and better information and access to the media
According to studies from HeBS '(Hospitality eBusiness Strategies) in 2011, 54.8% of the total volume of reservations of the 30 largest hotel brands in the world were booked through the Internet. Of these, 70.1% were from the brand's own website, and 29.9% of the Third Party / OTAs (Online Travel Agencies). Completing the total distribution, 22.7% come from reservations and GDS, 22.5% of central departments or hotel bookings. Facing this scenario the changing in the channels "offline" to "online" is permanent and irreversible.
The OTAs are increasingly gaining market power and experts in the sector are questioning how to reverse this trend. It is important to highlight that the first step when entering in the virtual world is necessarily the intermediation to start gaining position in the virtual world; in a second phase, when you already have a strong online presence, you are ready to the disintermediation, through investing in your online presence and make your social network grow.
Please note as well that the following years will be of the consolidation of services focused on strategies applied to mobile devices, CRM (Customer Relationship Management) and websites targeted exclusively for this audience.
And your hotel? Are you ready technologically? Do you have a consistent and structured plan for the efficient management of distribution channels in the coming years?
