Executive Summary: This study explores the effects of competitor pricing levels on relative revenue on a sample of over 4,000 hotels in Europe over a ten-year period (2004–2013). Hotels  in this European sample, which included both independent and chain-affiliated properties, achieved higher revenue per available room (RevPAR) than direct competitors when they positioned their hotels with comparatively higher prices. These data revealed that: Regardless of the economic situation of the time period, hotels that positioned with…

More strategic moves by Expedia Inc as it invests $270 million in South American online travel agencies Decolar and Despegar.  

So there I was – I

Source: webintravel.com

Said Huston, “Our employees are workhorses, not show ponies and you have to keep milking the cow. If you stop, they stop giving milk. You have to work the system like a farm,” …” What we want to do is get them out of technology into the hotel business.”

In other words, to use his farming analogy, hoteliers should farm out their technology to people who…

In today’s Whiteboard Friday, Rand explores a future marked by machine learning, where Google’s ranking algorithm updates itself based on potentially countless inputs.

Source: moz.com

The idea is that in the future even the factors of the search engines’ algorithm aren’t given by human beings. The machine is getting to figure this stuff out itself, deciding which factors to consider for shaping this ever changing algorithm. Weird things that we never thought of…

Source: www.travelclick.com

Interesting findings of a new study “the Tripadvisor effect”. I do not agree on some conclusions but it’s worth reading:”…Stars are Important: There is a relationship between the number of stars a hotel has and the revenue it will receive per transaction. A five Star hotel on TripAdvisor will make more per transaction per room than a three Star hotel.The Amount of Reviews Matter: The more reviews a hotel has…

Being trustworthy and accurate could help a web page rise up Google rankings if the search engine giant starts to measure quality by facts, not just links

Source: www.newscientist.com

A Google research team is adapting that model to measure the trustworthiness of a page, rather than its reputation across the web. Instead of counting incoming links, the system – which is not yet live – counts the number of incorrect facts within a…

Buyers know a lot more about the market than they did ten years ago. It’s time for sales pitches to reflect that.

Source: www.inc.com

People no longer want to be sold. They want to be educated on how a product or service will benefit them. 

Mediative’s Gord Hotchkiss and Matt Agtarap share results from their company’s 2014 Google SERP eye-tracking study at Search Marketing Expo (SMX) West 2015.

Source: www.bruceclay.com

Users scan the whole SERP quickly — trying to identify the “chunk” of results that is most relevant to their query.There is less horizontal scanning then there used to be.Average duration on a SERP in 2005 was 14 to 15 seconds. In 2014, it took 8 to 9…

Ryanair is promising “a big investment in digital and a big investment in data” as it enters the second year of its “Always Getting Better” approach.

Source: www.tnooz.com

A number of initiatives were mentioned, including but not limited to, and will be held by the end of 2015:

A native app for IoS and Android, by the end of MarchA hold-my-fare-for-24-hours feature, by JuneA fare-comparison feature integrated into the search results which come up…