Booking.com launched app for last-minute hotel bookings

if you miss you train or meet a airline strike, do not worry. Nowadays, Hotel Reservations giant, a subsidiary of Priceline, launched a new application called Booking Tonight, which is let travelers find a last-minutes hotel and it can deals anywhere in the world with single click. This application is the first global last-minutes app at special saving up 50% than regular price. It can guarantee the lowest price. The travelers can download the app for free from iTunes store because it is designed for iphone and ipod touch.
This application is really easy to use. The user just enter their name, phone number, and email address, a few details about travel preferences as well, including price range, and preferred amenities, and the appserves up a map of nearby hotels. The app will ranked depends on their preference and come complete with Booking.com's extensive library of reviews.

The inspiration of the Booking Tonight is from Uber, because the CEO Darren Huston of the Priceline founded that “People expect more things from their phones.” Moreover is that he thought the company needs to follow the trends of using IT products, only in this way the company can compete the competitors, like HotelTonight.

The limit of this app is that only travelers who have an apple device can use this app while Android users cannot get an access to this service. However, we are not sure if this limit will have a big influence or not. The raison is: from the news, we do not know if the company has found their users are more apple fans than android, and the new app may be a strategy to focus on apple users who may spend more or book more frequency on booking.com.

Regarding the role of technology in this case, there is no doubt that the technology helps the company define when where and what the percentage of the transaction is realized. The finding of the data recording and analysis supported by the technology lead to new solution to narrow down the segmentation and provide the more valued service by app.
On the way to follow the app trend, the inventory advantage of the international company is obvious. Even though the idea may first created by small or medium size company, the big company may easily generate value and get the market share from the smaller one in a short time.

The result of the intense competition may hard to predicted, but one thing is sure that the traveler experience will get better and better.

Yi DONG &Zhen JIA

Source
http://news.booking.com/booking-com-launches-first-global-last-minute-hotel-app
http://www.wired.com/2015/01/booking-now/
http://www.travelweekly.com/Travel-News/Hotel-News/Priceline-division-launches-app-for-last-minute-hotel-bookings?ct=tech
Picture source：http://www.wired.com/2015/01/booking-now/

Hospitality strategies for facing Online Travel Agencies predominance and power

After a continuous evolution during the past fifty years, the tourism field keeps changing through internet and the web 2.0. According to an analyse from PhosCusWright,

Source: http://www.freedigitalphotos.net

the market of the e-tourism increased around 8% each year in the world since 2013. Customers are more connected and they use more and more smartphones and tablets to shop. E-commerce is still exploding and has created opportunities for Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) such as Booking.com, Expedia, Hotels.com and many others that have become “gigantic cornerstones” in Tourism.

For example, in Europe, Booking.com was in 2013 the leader of the market online with 49% of the market share, followed by Expedia (23%) and Odigeo (17%). Thus, hospitality groups and independent hotels from all over the world try to establish tools and strategies to face this tendency and decrease the growing power of their competitors.

First of all, we can take the example of the French hotel Accor group, which is implementing one of its strongest IT strategies since 2014. In fact, Accor group launched in 2014 its “leading digital hospitality” plan, a €225 million investment plan over the five next years to reinforce and develop its informatics structure and services.

The Online Travel Agencies threaten hotels since they prevent from establishing last minute promotions, and they decrease on the long run the profitability of Hotel groups. This is why Accor group decided to invest in order to have more control over its distribution canals. The French group created a fidelity card through customers’ email addresses so as to have a direct link with them, and developed effective application and website. The main goal of this strategy is to influence customers to book through their own website and application, and then avoid as much as possible the impact of OTAs on their revenue.

On another hand, we can clearly notice that all the hotels cannot implement this strategy which needs such a huge investment. Independent hotels also suffer from this constant growing influence of OTAs. Commissions can reach 30% of the price, which weaken tourism institutions on the long run. Some of them also decided to cope with the increasing power of OTAs by collaborating to offer an alternative to traditional booking engines: “Fair Booking”. This originally 18 French hotel group rapidly grew up to get thousands of members which joined the association in order to limit intermediaries such as Online Travel Agencies.

Sources:

S.J. (2013, December 17), Voyages en ligne : le mobile pèse 8% des ventes en France, http://www.tourhebdo.com/, Retrieved from : http://www.tourhebdo.com/actualites/detail/72045/voyages-en-ligne-le-mobile-pese-8-des-ventes-en-france.html

 

Jérôme Marin, (2014, Decembre 7th), Booking vs Expedia, la bataille du voyage 2.0, http://www.lemonde.fr/, Retrieved from : http://www.lemonde.fr/economie/article/2014/12/07/booking-vs-expedia-la-bataille-du-voyage-2-0_4536168_3234.html?xtmc=accor_numerique&xtcr=5

 

(2014, October 30^th) Accor fait sa révolution numérique pour mieux affronter les centrales de réservation, www.latribune.fr, Retrieved from: http://www.latribune.fr/entreprises-finance/services/tourisme-loisirs/20141030tribfcb5393a0/accor-se-renforce-dans-le-numerique-pour-mieux-affronter-la-concurrence.html

Laurent Guena, (2013, July 2^nd), Comment les hoteliers sortiront du piège des agencies en ligne, www.latribune.fr Retrieved from: http://www.latribune.fr/opinions/tribunes/20130702trib000773582/comment-les-hoteliers-sortiront-du-piege-des-agences-en-ligne.html

Emma Eversham (2013, October 22^nd) Hotels start fighting back against OTAs, www.bighospitality.co.uk Retrieved from : http://www.bighospitality.co.uk/Business/Hotels-start-fighting-back-against-OTAs