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Year to date, 2023 has seen a gamut of innovative solutions for hotels built upon generative artificial intelligence learning models, foremost among them being ChatGPT. The promise of these technologies is immense, ranging from back-of-house operational efficiencies to heightened service, new experiential offerings and precision guest segmentation.
Typically, the demand for tourism to a particular destination is a function of a myriad of factors, including general state of the economy in originating country and destination, levels of income of tourists, the cost of travel and time to travel from the tourists' homes to the destination, trends in price levels - increasing or decreasing, competition from other destinations, currency exchange rates, etc.
Recently, Hopper, an OTA based in Canada, started to ask customers to pay a "tip" to Hopper as part of the booking. The tip is included automatically in the final price on the final payment page before completing the booking. The customer has to switch the toggle to the off position in order to not pay a tip.
Undervalued and unloved, the brand websites of many hotel companies need more than a bit of care and attention. With travel finally taking off, what should hoteliers focus on to improve their direct websites in order to ensure they receive their fair share of online bookings?
Uber became the latest player to enter the OTA space in its pursuit of the "seamless journey" with plans, which they just announced, to add flights, trains and hotels to its app, for the time being in the United Kingdom. This latest attempt to create a travel "superapp", a full-blown OTA mobile app, comes in addition to similar incursions into OTA territory by Airbnb and Hopper, both of which have already added local experiences and contracted with channel managers like SiteMinder, RateGain and RateTiger to enable them to offer hotel bookings. Some hoteliers think that these new OTA-like sup...