Views from a Corner Suite

Who Will Win the Merchant Hotel Room Occupancy Tax Battle?

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:08-05:00March 19th, 2010|Polls, Views from a Corner Suite|

The American Hotel & Lodging Association (AH&LA) held its annual Legislative Action Summit following receipt of an open letter drafted by five major travel associations requesting support of proposed legislation that would eliminate room occupancy tax assessments on merchant model hotel room transactions processed by online travel companies. With millions of dollars at stake, the question for this week's RockCheetah Weekend Poll is "Who Will Win the Merchant Hotel Room Occupancy Tax Battle?"

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High Points from PhoCusWright@ITB 2010

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:08-05:00March 13th, 2010|Technology, Views from a Corner Suite|

The PhoCusWright@ITB 2010 conference just concluded and, as always, provided a number of interesting points to consider within the travel industry marketing, distribution and technology landscape. My recap of the sub-conference within the massive ITB Berlin exhibition has been published as a guest post on Josiah Mackenzie’s Hotel Marketing Strategies Blog.

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What a Skull Fracture Can Teach Us About Social Media

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:09-05:00March 6th, 2010|Social Media, Views from a Corner Suite|

The travel industry can create intensely personal and life changing experiences, but travel companies are still working to communicate with travelers in a more personalized and relevant manner. Social networking literally changes the rules of engagement. During times of crisis, social networks gain importance to support for personal relationships while brand relationships may be disregarded. Social media and social networking are constants - engagement is now variable. Travel organizations must now consider the value of a consumer's social network and level of engagement into their lifetime customer value. With increased interactivity, brand relationships are becoming more like personal relationships. Emotional connections may take time to develop, require significant resources to maintain and turn ugly if mutual trust is violated.

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2009 Unsuspecting Travel Hero and Travel Zero Awards

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:09-05:00January 3rd, 2010|Awards, Views from a Corner Suite|

Four Seasons' Santa Barbara Resort, The Biltmore received the 2009 Unsuspecting Travel Hero Award for proactively responding to a guest who had an issue with the music playing on the radio after the hotel's turn down service made up the room. A relatively small issue that was cleverly identified and elegantly addressed in a highly personalized manner. Recognized for its multi-faceted, yet consistently customer hostile advance seat assignment policy, AirTran Airways received the 2009 Unsuspecting Travel Zero Award. The AirTran policies fundamentally insult a traveler's intelligence while simultaneously wasting their time - truly a remarkable accomplishment.

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Hotel Room Occupancy Taxes Are a Quagmire

Bathing in the Hotel Merchant Tax Quagmire

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:10-05:00December 22nd, 2009|Hotel, Views from a Corner Suite|

The hotel merchant tax issue is creating havoc for online travel agencies. At the present time, more than 200 municipalities, counties and states have lawsuits pending in an attempt to claim additional tax revenues based on the markups applied by Online Travel Agencies (OTAs.) In some cases, the suits are groundless as the current hotel occupancy tax laws are based on the revenue received by the hotel. However, some cities are changing their tax laws to base the taxes on the retail price paid by traveler. Unfortunately, there is widespread confusion - this article attempts to provide clarity on the key issues and a recommendation for resolving the hotel merchant tax problem.

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Best TV / Video Ads of the “Noughties” (2000 – 2009)

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:10-05:00December 18th, 2009|Advertising, Views from a Corner Suite|

While reviewing the best travel TV and online video advertising of the past decade, it was decided that there was a considerable gap between the best of the travel industry and the best of other industries. As a result, it was decided to select the best single advertising spot and campaign and to provide them as examples for the travel industry to consider. Both ads are marketing what can best be described as commodity products, but they are both marketed creatively and intelligently. If this can be accomplished for generic consumer products, it should be a comparatively easier task for travel. The best television / video ads of the decade were the Stratos Soccer Kid (individual spot) and the Dove Campaign for Real Beauty (campaign.)

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Travel Industry Site Traffic Rebound – Not a Hotel Slam Dunk

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:10-05:00December 15th, 2009|Hotel, Views from a Corner Suite|

Compete produced an analysis that indicates traffic to hotel brand and Online Travel Agency hotel specific web pages have increased faster than airline and car rental sectors, indicating a faster path to recovery. Unfortunately, the increase in site traffic has not translated to improved hotel performance as hotels continue to deeply discounting their product to shift market share from competitors. As the hotels fight to support occupancy and average rate, share of leisure travel bookings is shifting away from hotel brand sites to the OTAs. With the steepest drop in US hotel net operating income on record and non-performing Commercial Backed Mortgage Securities hotel loans hovering close to 15%, the US hotel industry appears to be preparing for a difficult stretch that will continue to provide travelers with excellent hotel values, but test the patience and wallets of hotel owners.

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Smarter Travel Agents and Travel Agencies Rise from the Ashes

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:11-05:00November 21st, 2009|Travel Agency, Views from a Corner Suite|

The travel agency community has sustained significant losses due to consolidation and the economic downturn. A new breed of smarter and more innovative travel agencies have emerged that understand customer needs, provide specialized travel product knowledge, and creating travel plans best fit those needs. These are the traditional traits of quality travel agencies. The difference is that these new agents have embraced technology and used it to expand their reach, engage their customers and grow their revenues.

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US Hotel Performance – Time for a Baseline Reset?

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:12-05:00November 12th, 2009|Hotel, Views from a Corner Suite|

US hotel industry performance has not yet shown signs of recovery. Declines in all key industry metrics - occupancy percentage, average daily rate (ADR) and revenue per available room (RevPAR) continue to decline in 2009 when compared to comparable periods in 2008. Smith Travel Research (STR), PriceWaterhouseCoopers(PWC) and PKF International (PKF) all forecast that ADR and RevPAR will continue to decline in 2010. Reviewing peak period weekly performance statistics, it appears that the US hotel industry needs to prepare for "A New Normal" with lower corporate and group business and value oriented leisure travelers when supply and demand reach equilibrium.

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How Google Can Help Simplify Online Travel Planning

By Robert Cole|2019-01-05T19:20:12-05:00November 5th, 2009|Innovation, Views from a Corner Suite|

The planning phase of the seven-step travel process is a hot area for travel startups that are developing innovative solutions to address a complex problem. Google, with 70+% share of US search traffic and many existing travel planning tools is perfectly positioned to improve and simplify the travel planning process. In the future, end-to-end planning of complex travel arrangements will result from enhanced profiles supporting trip-centric traveler personas and geo-aware itinerary sequencing tools. The introduction of hard and soft filtering will provide support for emerging Web 3.0 technologies capable of providing more relevant travel product recommendations.

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