Simone Puorto's Blog, page 41

Google’s trademark policy revision kickstarts “brandjacking” debate

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Last week, you may have received a message from trademark-policy-revision@google.com, informing you about an ads trademarks policy update. Even though this may look like the usual policy update that you quickly gloss over, it is, in fact, bad news for hotels. Bad, bad news. In the email, it’s stated that: “Advertisers may use a trademark term in ad text if they are a reseller of, offer compatible components or parts for, or provide information about the goods and services related to the trademarked term.” Translating from legalese, this appears to suggest that OTAs and metasearch engines will be soon able to freely “brandjack” (or, if we want to stick with a more acceptable term, “affiliate brand bid”) hotels on Google’s search network. Meeting the policy criteria appears extremely simple. As long as “the product or services” is “clearly available for purchase from the ad’s landing page” resellers will be able to use trademark terms (meaning: your hotel name) freely. Similarly, informational sites, such as review platforms or blogs, will also qualify “when the primary purpose of the ad’s landing page is to provide informative details about goods or services corresponding to the trademarked term.” Travel is, according to MarkMonitor, a “complex online ecosystem that relies on multiple third parties to extend a brand’s web visibility and, ultimately, to drive traffic”and that “potential conflict occurs when third parties begin to compete with brands for the same traffic”. According to MarkMonitor, the economic damage of brandjacking in our industry is estimated to be more than $2 billion a year.

COSTS
Even though keyword-level protection has not been possible for almost 10 years now, hotels could submit infringement complaints with Google, preventing resellers, at least, from using the hotel brand in the ad titles and text in the EU and EFTA regions. The policy revision seems to deny hotels this option. Protecting your hotel brands at ad-level was not as effective as blocking OTAs from using your trademark terms completely. But ad-level brand protection played an important role in the average CPC hotels had to invest in order to overbid resellers. By preventing the use of your hotel name in Booking.com’s ads, for example, you were affecting the quality of the OTA’s ads, forcing it to increase its bid to maintain its SERP ranking. For the hotels, this meant lower CPCs, higher quality scores and better SERP visibility. Well, up until last week. Now, as long as an OTA’s landing pages for your property keep being “primarily dedicated to selling” your rooms (and why shouldn’t they?) and “display commercial information about them, such as rates or prices”, they’re back in the brandjacking game. This will make a lot of unscrupulous advertising agencies happy, as hotels will very likely have to increase dramatically their investments to keep up with resellers, especially in EU/EFTA regions, where the ad-level protection applied. As Expedia CEO Mark Okerstrom said earlier this year at a Goldman Sachs conference, “it’s everyone bidding against everyone”. According to Google, these new policies will be applied “over the next several months” and, on their trademark policy page, I can still read that “for ad campaigns targeting the European Union and European Free Trade Association regions, the policy for trademarks in ad text and keywords applies. “ Bottom line is: take a look at your ads’ average CPC for branded campaigns because it’s going to get way higher. And no trademark will save you.

NOTE: We asked Google for a response. It replied:
“The Google Ads Trademark reseller and informational site policy has been in effect in the UK since 2010. We’re now implementing it in other markets, streamlining the policy for advertisers and trademark holders worldwide.”

(Article in italian) TAKE FIVE: 5 HOSPITALITY NEWS IN 5 MINUTI #5

Leggi la storia originale QUI

Se qualcuno, negli anni ‘90, mi avesse chiesto chi fosse la donna più bella del mondo, non avrei avuto dubbi: Sinead O’ Connor. Semi sconosciuta ai più giovani se non per i suoi (devastanti) video nei quali parla del suo disturbo bipolare (a proposito: sai che puoi donare lo 0.5% dei tuoi acquisti Amazon in beneficenza? Supporta La O’ Connor qui), nel Marzo del 1990 uscì con un album intitolato I Do Not Want What I Haven't Got, famoso soprattutto per una straziante versione di Nothing Compares 2 U, accompagnata da un video con la bella Irlandese in lacrime. Quello che pochi sanno, tuttavia, è che il più grande successo della O’ Connor è stato in verità scritto dal genio di Minneapolis, l’artista un tempo noto come Prince. La versione originale, infatti, risale al 1985, pubblicata sotto lo pseudonimo The Family. Da sempre un fan di Prince, quando la settimana scorsa è uscita la sua raccolta (postuma) di demo Piano & a microphone 1983, ho iniziato ad ascoltare a ripetizione il “folletto (il geniale album Sign o' the Times gira mentre scrivo) ma, per quanto ami Prince, per me Nothing Compares 2 U rimarrà sempre sinonimo di due grandi occhi tristi e una dolcissima testa rasata. Per questo Take Five, quindi, ecco una toccante live version. E che la vita ti sia lieve, Sinead.

Take one: HOTELTONIGHT PUNTA SUL DESKTOP
L’app specializzata in stay last second si apre anche alla navigazione da desktop. Dalla sua creazione (2010), HotelTonight è stata appannaggio esclusivo di mobile e tablet, ma le cose stanno cambiando e i primi test, stando all’azienda, “hanno superato le più rosee aspettative”. Il più evidente limite di una piattaforma mobile-only è quello di non poter accedere all’advertising sulle versioni desktop dei metamotori e su GHA e, in questo momento storico della ricerca travel, questa mancanza è un lusso che pochi player possono permettersi.

Take two: UBER VUOLE FARTI PEDALARE
Dara Khosrowshahi, ex CEO di Expedia e ormai in carica per Uber, rivela un piano aziendale che potrebbe rivoluzionare completamente il core business dell’app di car sharing. Secondo Khosrowshahi, infatti, l’auto non sarebbe il mezzo ideale per muoversi in città, ecco perchè ha investito in diversi bike firm nell’ultimo anno. Non solo bici, tuttavia, ma anche scooter elettrici, come dimostra la partnership con Lime. Apparentemente, tuttavia, il profitto derivante dal bike sharing è minore rispetto a quello generato dalle automobili, ma la strategia dell’Americo-Iraniano è di aumentare la frequenza degli spostamenti, anche per viaggi più corti. Ma con una perdita di quasi 5 Miliardi l’anno scorso, la mossa è (tuttavia) quantomeno non convenzionale.

Take three: MAKING INSPIRATION ACTIONABLE: TRIPADVISOR DIVENTA SOCIAL
Dopo la condanna per fake review dello scorso Take Five, questa volta TripAdvisor entra (di diritto) nelle news per il suo shift verso una user experience che ricalca quella dei più conosciuti social network. Gli utenti del gufo possono ora connettersi con altri viaggiatori e con i brand. La mossa è stata criticata ma, a mio avviso, questo è il primo vero segno di ripresa dell’azienda. Creare una comunità è sempre stato l’obiettivo di TripAdvisor, obiettivo che si è un pò perso nel mare di integrazioni Instant Booking e sponsored listing. Personalmente ho sempre ritenuto TripAdvisor come una piattaforma da top funnel, ovvero all’inizio del processo di prenotazione degli utenti. Gli sforzi per entrare alla fine del funnel (leggi: modello metasearch) non mi hanno mai convinto, né in termini di ROI per gli hotel che dal punto di vista della User Experience per gli ospiti. La nuova versione è, tuttavia, ancora in beta ma sarà rilasciata prima della fine dell’anno. Il look sarà simile a Facebook, con un feed (“il primo travel feed”, stando all’azienda) personalizzato e raccomandazioni da amici, brand, influencer e travel directory e la possibilità di salvare luoghi preferiti e creare una guida di viaggio personalizzata (Trips). “Quando un membro si loggherà al sito o alla app di TripAdvisor, la sua homepage sarà trasformata in un feed personalizzato di informazioni”, si legge sul comunicato ufficiale del 17 Settembre. Sarà interessante analizzare i primi dati in termini di lead generation per gli hotel, mentre l’Industria continua le speculazioni su chi (tra Facebook e Amazon) acquisterà per primo il famoso sito di recensioni. Forse più tardi di quanto pensiamo/speriamo.

Take four: LA RICERCA VOCALE AL CENTRO DELL’ECOSISTEMA GOOGLE
"Il riconoscimento vocale e la comprensione della lingua sono cruciali per il futuro della ricerca”, ha dichiarato Ben Gomes, Head of Search per Big G. “Ma ci sono molti problemi difficili”, continua, “come capire a cosa si riferisce LUI, LEI o ESSO, in una frase”. Con un assistente vocale nel cuore di miliardi di smartphone nel mondo, questo “problema difficile” necessita di una soluzione veloce. Il mio Google Home, ad esempio, si attiva una volta su dieci quando lo chiamo io, mentre lo fa dieci su dieci quando ci interagisce mia moglie. Forse sarà perché io lo chiamo sempre Cucù invece che Google, in omaggio alla nonna di Ben Actis (se non sai di cosa parlo guarda qui). ♫ ♬ ♪ “Addio dei giorni passati…”♫♬ ♪

Take five: AMP: SI O NO?
Ti confesso un segreto: io amo le pagine accelerate di Google. Certo, c’è il rischio reale di un monopolio, ma caricare istantaneamente una pagina da Google (e, recentemente, anche da Bing) è una manna dal cielo, quando la tua vita è scandita da lunghi viaggi in metropolitane Parigine con ricezione quasi nulla. Quel simboletto a forma di lampo nelle SERP è sempre rassicurante per me. Ma cosa significa questo per gli hotel? Ultimamente ho analizzato un 5 stelle di Roma con un caricamento mobile da 3G di 21 (ventuno!) secondi, un rimbalzo da mobile di oltre il 90% e una conversione dello 0%. Se sacrificherei il loro design elaborato per un caricamento istantaneo? Assolutamente si. E tu?

(Article in italian) Il MIO REGNO PER UN CAVALLO? Lo stato corrente dei gestionali alberghieri (PMS) nel travel

Leggi la storia originale QUI , QUI e QUI

REVENGE PLAY
Disarcionato in battaglia e alla mercé dei suoi nemici, Riccardo III urlò la celebre frase “Un cavallo! Un cavallo! Il mio Regno per un cavallo!“. Se sei appassionato di Shakespeare o del genere revenge play, probabilmente avrai già sentito questa espressione almeno una volta. Secondo Urban Dictionary, la frase esprime “un forte desiderio o bisogno di qualcosa di relativamente semplice o poco costoso” (un cavallo) ma, in alcune circostanze , di valore “inestimabile” (la vita). A fronte della nascita di channel Manager, CRM e Yield Management System sempre più sofisticati, la domanda nel nostro settore è quantomeno legittima: i PMS sono il regno o, piuttosto, il cavallo?

I PMS SONO MORTI, LUNGA VITA AI PMS
Tra tutte le decisioni che un albergatore deve prendere, scegliere il PMS corretto uò rivelarsi tra le più stressanti ma altrettanto importanti. Se lo hai fatto almeno una volta, conosci la quantità di sforzo che questa scelta comporta: perdita di dati, (re)training del personale, integrazioni, ecc. Ma cos’è esattamente un PMS? Sappiamo tutti che è l’acronimo di Property Management System, uno strumento che rende possibile la gestione del tuo hotel, aggregando i dati e automatizzando i processi provenienti da tutti i dipartimenti. Ma cos’è un PMS nell’industria di oggi? Essenzialmente, è un hub: ciò che sa fare al meglio, infatti, è rendere possibile ad altri strumenti tecnologici di integrarsi tra loro in modo armonioso, senza la necessità di ulteriori interventi umani. “Ciò che sta cambiando nel settore è che alcune funzionalità vengono esternalizzate a sistemi di terze parti, piuttosto che essere sviluppate internamente dagli stessi PMS”, afferma Jan Hejný, CEO di una azienda travel tech Inglese. “Ma”, continua, “gli hotel hanno ancora la necessità di registrare e processare le prenotazioni, emettere fatture, integrare diversi sistemi interni quali telefono, TV, sistemi di chiavi elettroniche, ecc. Quindi no, i PMS sono tutt’altro che morti“. Detto questo, però, il ruolo dei PMS è cambiato drasticamente nel corso degli anni. Oggi, il PMS non è semplicemente il sistema con cui gli alberghi gestiscono l’inventario, le prenotazioni e le fatture. Il PMS, de facto, è “il sistema nervoso di qualsiasi hotel“, come afferma Ruben Westmeijer, direttore delle vendite di una famosa travel tech company. Secondo Westmeijer, la corretta gestione delle informazioni operata dai PMS è fondamentale, in modo che “gli albergatori possano lavorare su un singolo sistema e avere tutto ciò di cui hanno bisogno a portata di mano, in un’unica extranet”. D’altra parte è anche vero che la linea di separazione tra PMS, channel manager, booking engine e CRM sta diventando di giorno in giorno sempre più sottile e di conseguenza le strutture più piccole potrebbero legittimamente decidere di evitare di utilizzare un PMS tout-court, magari optando per un CRM di livello avanzato. Tuttavia, è improbabile che questo trend prenda piede negli hotel più strutturati. Ben Stephenson, CEO e fondatore di un hub di connettività API, la pensa diversamente: “PMS e CRM sono sistemi fondamentalmente diversi, e se si dovesse parlare di sconfinamenti delle reciproche funzionalità, direi che sono i PMS che stanno diventando più CRM-izzati, non il contrario”. Secondo Westmeijer, “ci sono molti strumenti intelligenti là fuori, di gran lunga superiori ai PMS nel loro campo specifico ma che, in assenza di una integrazione a un PMS, lavorano individualmente e non danno contributi al successo dell’hotel nel suo complesso”. “In questo momento il PMS ha due funzioni”, afferma Stephenson, “un repository di dati dell’hotel e una front-desk application. Questo potrà cambiare in futuro, e potremmo vedere una separazione di queste due funzioni ma, almeno in alcune proprietà, il PMS continuerà a svolgere il ruolo di repository di dati “. “il PMS ha un ruolo fondamentale: aiutare gli albergatori a prendere le migliori decisioni strategiche ed operative al fine di raggiungere il risultato finale, ovvero il profitto”, afferma Marco Massai, Presidente di un’azienda travel tech Italiana e autore di un interessante libro sull’hotel marketing, “e nessun software che non sia un PMS riuscirà mai ad assumere il ruolo di sistema nervoso dell’hotel”. “E’ finita l’epoca in cui l’imprenditore poteva gestire l’azienda affidandosi al proprio istinto. Chi lo fa oggi si sta esponendo ad un rischio elevatissimo”, mi confida Alberto Albrigi, CEO di un conosciuto PMS Italiano. “Questa necessità non risparmiano nemmeno le piccolissime strutture che avendo poche risorse rischiano di morire sotto il peso delle carte.” “Il PMS è la cabina di regia di un hotel”, dice Edoardo Ridolfi, Director of Marketing di un PMS Italiano, “per questa ragione un PMS moderno deve mettere a disposizione anche altri strumenti, oltre a quelli che per antonomasia appartengono ad un gestionale. Mi riferisco a strumenti come quelli di marketing e di revenue, ossia applicazioni e funzionalità progettate per massimizzare i guadagni di una struttura ricettiva in modo automatico e configurabile”.

L’ELEFANTE IN SALOTTO: LE INTEGRAZIONI API
In un articolo che ho scritto recentemente riguardo lo stato delle integrazioni API nel travel, ho fatto riferimento all’argomento come uno dei più grandi tabù del settore. “Da un lato”, ho scritto, “si trovano aziende di travel tech frustrate, che lottano per un mercato più trasparente, mentre dall’altra ci sono PMS riluttanti ad aprire i loro “giardini recintati”. L’articolo ha scatenato decine di flame comment sia da parte di società consolidate che da start-up. E dopo aver parlato con altri vendor, la mia opinione in merito non è cambiata affatto. Credo possiamo concordare sul fatto che la forza di un PMS sia proporzionale al numero di software di terze parti a cui si collega. Se il tuo PMS non gestisce al meglio i dati che derivano dal booking engine, per esempio, gli addetti al front office si troveranno costretti ad inserire manualmente ogni prenotazione, aumentando sia la probabilità di errore umano, sia i costi di manodopera coinvolti nell’attività. Sapere in anticipo quali software possono e non possono essere integrati è un fattore importante nella scelta di un PMS, in quanto esso, alla fine, deve essere in grado di connettersi praticamente a tutti i software che l’hotel sta utilizzando. Il problema è che le connessioni API possono essere un, per usare un inglesismo, “pain in the butt”, sia dal punto di vista tecnologico che finanziario.

API CONNECTOR E INTEGRAZIONI DIRETTE
Aziende come SnapShot, Impala e Appnostix stanno cercando di risolvere questo problema, creando un connettore dati tra PMS e software di terze parti, rendendo le integrazioni più veloci, più scalabili e più convenienti per ogni fornitore. I connettori API però possono risolvere solo una parte del problema: da un lato ci sono troppi PMS e dall’altro troppe start-up in attesa delle API, rendendo impossibile l’integrazione su base one-to-one. Inoltre, è improbabile che questi connettori sostituiscano completamente la necessità di un’integrazione diretta, specialmente in determinate circostanze (velocità di comunicazione, necessità di integrazione a due vie in tempo reale, tecnologia push, set di dati diversi richiesti da diversi sviluppatori di app, ecc). Tutti questi requisiti possono rivelarsi difficili per i connettori. Un’industria travel con API completamente open sarebbe la soluzione migliore, ovviamente, ma sembra ancora un miraggio. “È possibile paragonare i PMS agli smartphone”, ha affermato Westmeijer. “Il telefono è uguale per tutti, ma le app scaricate lo fanno diventare un dispositivo personale. Il segreto è l’integrazione perfetta di queste app con il telefono e le API aperte consentono alle integrazioni di funzionare perfettamente con il PMS”. Ma la cattiva notizia c’è, e è che c’è ancora un lungo percorso da fare, soprattutto quando si tratta di aziende con posizioni storicamente dominante sul mercato, non disposte ad aprire le loro API. Ho parlato con alcune di loro (che hanno preferito rimanere anonime) e le risposte che ho ricevuto sono state tutte coerenti, ma sconfortanti. “Fino a un certo punto”, mi ha detto (tra i denti) un portavoce di quello che è probabilmente lo standard mondiale per i PMS, “Posso capire perché le start-up si lamentino del prezzo di integrazione, ma dovrebbero considerare il problema da una prospettiva diversa”. “Prima di tutto”, continua, “le startup hanno la tendenza a pensare che tutto dovrebbe essere gratuito, tranne quello che vendono loro. In secondo luogo, le barriere ci sono per garantire elevati standard qualitativi. Basti pensare al numero di app presenti su Android Store e paragonarle a quelle su Apple Store. Devi avere una certificazione per pubblicare un’app su Apple Store, mentre puoi farlo liberamente su Android Store. Apple è un sistema chiuso? Diavolo, sì, lo è, ma è per un motivo! Anche noi abbiamo barriere. E queste barriere ci sono per fornire integrazioni di alta qualità”. Martin Soler, consulente travel tech, afferma: “API ben documentate e aperte a tutti per un prezzo equo dovrebbero essere la norma. Certo, ci vuole tempo per costruire un’API solida e stabile con una documentazione chiara e facile da capire. Ma l’investimento vale la pena di essere fatto. Ovviamente ci saranno processi di validazione per garantire che tutto funzioni e sia sicuro, ma con una buona documentazione questo diventa possibile. Il pricing model con una tariffa di attivazione win/win e un costo basato sui carichi del server lo renderebbero un affare equo e remunerativo per tutti. Non può essere totalmente gratuito poiché il lavoro è coinvolto e la manutenzione dei server ha un costo. Ma addebitare ingenti somme agli hotel e sviluppatori di app per aprire l’accesso a un’API già documentata diventerà un motivo di annullamento di contratti man mano che le norme cambieranno". Dello stesso avviso sembra essere Massai: “se il PMS dispone di API, e le ha anche il software esterno da collegare, credo convenga indirizzarsi verso una connessione diretta sia per ridurre i potenziali problemi nonché i costi”. “Snapshot e Impala sono già nostri partner ed altri lo saranno nei prossimi mesi”, ribatte Albrigi, “la filosofia del ti fornisco tutto io crea grossi stress all’albergatore e rappresenta un retaggio legato alla tecnologia legacy. Per queste aziende è sicuramente più complesso scambiare dati con sistemi esterni che peraltro utilizzano standard comunicativi moderni”.

DATA: BIG OR SMART?
Uno dei principali paradossi del nostro settore è che i PMS elaborano e immagazzinano terabyte di dati ogni giorno, anche se gli albergatori non sempre sanno come gestire tutte queste informazioni, e quindi si vanno a perdere nel rumore di sottofondo dell’information overload. “Big Data” non significa necessariamente “Good Data” e, se da una parte è sempre consigliabile catturare quante più informazioni possibili sugli ospiti, dall’altra devono poi essere trasformate in “dati intelligenti” per poter essere utilizzate. Pertanto, creare un hub unificato di informazioni di facile accesso è fondamentale. Questi dati, tuttavia, provengono da dozzine di fonti diverse (CRM, Revenue Management Systems, Reputation Management Systems ecc.). Per questo, ancora una volta, il ruolo di un buon PMS è quello di standardizzare le informazioni e renderle consultabili e comprensibili. “I dati non mentono”, afferma Westmeijer. “Consentono di prendere decisioni e decidere strategie basate su fatti concreti e reali. Poiché il PMS è il sistema principale che raccoglie tutti questi dati, vogliamo essere sicuri che questi dati possano essere facilmente trasformati in eleganti dashboard grafiche, le quali possano aiutare gli albergatori a fare previsioni basate su dati passati e forecast”. “All’albergatore”, ribatte Massai, “non interessa accedere in maniera diretta ai Big Data, ma disporre di strumenti che li trasformino in Smart Data”. “L’estremo dinamismo del mercato” continua, “obbliga l’albergatore ad analizzare i dati che inserisce quotidianamente all’interno del PMS in maniera non sempre canonica. Fino ad oggi i PMS hanno messo a disposizione delle reportistiche rigide e precostituite, oppure delle esportazioni su fogli di excel, mentre oggi un PMS dovrebbe essere progettato intorno ad una BI nativa, che è l’unico strumento che può rendere fruibili i dati in modo semplice ed in tempo reale e permette di dialogare con dati esterni quali quelli provenienti da un sistema ERP o da un sistema di benchmark territoriale.” Oggi come oggi, praticamente qualsiasi software offre un certo livello di automazione S & M. La sfida, ancora una volta, è connettere tutti questi sistemi ad un hub (il PMS), al fine di centralizzare e ottimizzare il livello di automazione. Il PMS in realtà non aiuta l’automazione S&M in sé, ma funziona come connettore. Anche qui, il peggior peccato che un gestionale possa commettere è di essere pigro con integrazioni di terze parti. Pensa a quanti software diversi un hotel medio utilizza in un giorno qualsiasi: Booking Engine, Channel Manager, Business Intelligence, Email Marketing, Reputation Management, Metasearch Management, Revenue Management, CRM, Guest Experience Management, Mice Event Management, POS e così via. E anche se, singolarmente, questi strumenti forniscono un certo livello di S & M automation, il reale obiettivo del PMS è quello di farli lavorare armoniosamente insieme. Inoltre, a causa delle nuove barriere imposte dal GDPR, il tempo delle campagne di mass marketing è finito per sempre e, di conseguenza un’S&M atomation reattiva e su misura è fondamentale per il successo di qualsiasi hotel. Secondo Massai, “il PMS non può prescindere dalla S&M Automation, sia durante il pre-stay (con la creazione e gestione automatizzata di preventivi emozionali personalizzati), lo stay (con proposte di upselling e vendita di servizi ancillari), e nel post-stay (lavorando sulla fidelizzazione dei clienti attraverso campagne marketing automatiche)”.

S&M AUTOMATION: UNA NUOVA SFIDA PER I PMS?
Oggi come oggi, praticamente qualsiasi software offre un certo livello di automazione S & M. La sfida, ancora una volta, è connettere tutti questi sistemi ad un hub (il PMS), al fine di centralizzare e ottimizzare il livello di automazione. Il PMS in realtà non aiuta l’automazione S&M in sé, ma funziona come connettore. Anche qui, il peggior peccato che un gestionale possa commettere è di essere pigro con integrazioni di terze parti. Pensa a quanti software diversi un hotel medio utilizza in un giorno qualsiasi: Booking Engine, Channel Manager, Business Intelligence, Email Marketing, Reputation Management, Metasearch Management, Revenue Management, CRM, Guest Experience Management, Mice Event Management, POS e così via. E anche se, singolarmente, questi strumenti forniscono un certo livello di S & M automation, il reale obiettivo del PMS è quello di farli lavorare armoniosamente insieme. Inoltre, a causa delle nuove barriere imposte dal GDPR, il tempo delle campagne di mass marketing è finito per sempre e, di conseguenza un’S&M atomation reattiva e su misura è fondamentale per il successo di qualsiasi hotel. Secondo Massai, “il PMS non può prescindere dalla S&M Automation, sia durante il pre-stay (con la creazione e gestione automatizzata di preventivi emozionali personalizzati), lo stay (con proposte di upselling e vendita di servizi ancillari), e nel post-stay (lavorando sulla fidelizzazione dei clienti attraverso campagne marketing automatiche)”.

CON LA TESTA TRA LE NUVOLE
Per prima cosa: qual’è la differenza tra un PMS cloud e uno on-premise? I PMS on-premise sono installati fisicamente su tutti i computer del tuo hotel e i loro dati sono memorizzati su un server di tua proprietà. Questo è stato lo standard per anni, ma a causa degli ingenti costi dell’hardware della loro difficile gestione, i sistemi on premise sono diventati obsoleti. Al contrario, i software in cloud sono distribuiti sul web e, di conseguenza, facilmente accessibili a qualsiasi dispositivo senza la necessità di un apposito hardware, di licenze o di installazioni. “Nel mondo moderno, dove è disponibile una connessione Internet di qualità, non ci sono davvero motivi per optare per un sistema on-premise“. Con questa affermazione perentoria, Jan Hejný introduce l’argomento nella nostra conversazione. I sistemi in cloud, infatti, esternalizzano in modo efficace la parte IT del problema, garantendo ingenti vantaggi al cliente finale: una maggiore sicurezza dei dati, nessun costo nascosto (i sistemi in cloud richiedono di solito un abbonamento, mentre la necessità di sostituire o riparare il server può sopraggiungere inaspettatamente in qualsiasi momento), integrazioni più semplici con altri sistemi in cloud, aggiornamenti PMS regolari senza la necessità di manutenzione sui server locali e assistenza clienti più semplice. Westmeijer condivide la stessa opinione: “Scegliere sempre una soluzione cloud. I moderni albergatori non solo vogliono, ma devono poter accedere al loro PMS in qualsiasi momento e da qualsiasi luogo”. “Vedremo tutto in cloud in un futuro molto prossimo. Non credo che sia un’opinione particolarmente controversa”, aggiunge Stephenson, confermando l’opinione condivisa del settore sul futuro (NO FUTURE) della tecnologia on-premise. In ogni caso, è importante sottolineare che esiste una differenza importante tra i software che vengono convertiti in cloud e quelli che sono sviluppati per il cloud. Nel processo di scelta di un PMS, gli hotel dovrebbero sempre assicurarsi di scegliere la seconda opzione. Può sembrare una diatriba semplicemente semantica (e alcune scuole di pensiero non si trovano d’accordo, affermando che non c’è alcuna differenza qualitativa intrinseca) ma, per evitare di optare per un PMS in cloud con le stesse limitazioni di un on-premise, vale la pena dedicare un’attenzione particolare a questo dettaglio nel processo di scelta. “Sei a conoscenza dell’esistenza di qualche azienda che negli ultimi cinque anni abbia sviluppato un software che preveda una architettura differente da quella web? Io no…”, afferma Albrigi. “Del resto negli istituti tecnici o all’università si insegna solo il web e sarebbe difficile trovare un programmatore under 30 per sviluppare qualcosa di differente”. “Un software cloud nasce già per essere fruito in maniera decentralizzata, distribuita, senza necessità di hardware dedicato per ogni singolo fruitore. La prima conseguenza di tutto ciò è un costo di gestione ridotto rispetto ad un software on-premise. Un software cloud, se adeguatamente supportato, viene aggiornato continuamente senza necessità di interventi manuali dell’utente o dell’operatore, come succede spesso invece per installazioni on-premise. Questo permette di avere sempre in esecuzione l’ultima versione disponibile e quindi di beneficiare di risoluzione di problemi e nuove funzionalità in maniera gratuita e senza interruzione di servizio”, ribatte Ridolfi.

ROI E PMS
Raramente gli albergatori pensano ai PMS in termini di ROI, come fanno, ad esempio, con i motori di prenotazione. Tutto questo può essere sensato in quanto, letteralmente parlando, un PMS è un semplice strumento, non un generatore di revenue aggiuntivo. Tuttavia, la capacità del PMS di connettersi ai channel manager o ai revenue manager tramite integrazioni a due vie, per esempio, impatta direttamente sulla capacità degli hotel di gestire l’inventario in tempo reale e aumentare le entrate. Inoltre, moduli aggiuntivi come i sistemi e-POS di F&B oi moduli SPA hanno un impatto diretto (e misurabile) sia sulle vendite che sull’abbattimento del costo del lavoro, automatizzando i processi e limitando l’intervento umano. Per non parlare dei vantaggi del modello di pricing SaaS dei PMS in cloud: non è richiesto nessun investimento iniziale, né sono presenti costi accessori per aggiornamenti e sviluppo. Il collegamento tra PMS e ROI può essere meno evidente, ma esiste sebbene, stando alle parole di Massai, esso non sia “strettamente dipendente dal software: il ritorno sull’investimento derivante dall’acquisto di un PMS è correlato ad altri elementi, come la capacità del personale, formazione, volontà nel gestire in modo informatico i processi aziendali”.

LE 10 KEY FEATURE DI UN BUON PMS SECONDO GLI INTERVISTATI
1. Tecnologia Cloud nativa
2. Gestione Centralizzata e Customizzabile della Reportistica in Real-Time
3. Analytics Integrato
4. Integrazione POS e Payment Gateway
5. Comunicazione intra-dipartimenti centralizzata
6. Gestione RFP & Gruppi
7. BI Nativa
8. Gestione Loyalty Program
9. S&M Automation
10. Moduli SPA, MICE e F&B

CONCLUSIONI
Quindi, per rispondere allo Shakespeariano quesito posto in apertura, “i PMS sono il regno o, piuttosto, il cavallo?”, tutte le prove indicano che i PMS sono il regno. E chi siamo noi per dubitare di Shakespeare?

Of Guitars and Hotel Management Software: How to choose the right tools for your hotel

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GRETSCH VS. TELE
I’ve always loved guitars. I remember strumming my dad’s old classical Eko for hours when I was a child, running my parents and neighbors mad. When I turned seven my father bought me a black Korean Stratocaster knockoff and it was love at first sight. Over time some guitars became so iconic that even non-musicians could easily recognize them. If you cannot stay still when the first four chords of “Smells Like Teen Spirit” play on the radio, that’s the dirty magic of a Fender Mustang; Slash is synonymous with Gibson Les Paul; Metallica with ESP Explorers and so on. As I got into my teens I was doing all sort of summer jobs just to make some extra money to buy new and better guitars, but it took me thirty years to find THE one. Not that I was picky, but back in the days you had to buy instruments based on friend’s suggestions or magazine reviews solely. Sure, you could go to a guitar store and annoy every single customer by playing the “Smoke on the Water” intro on twenty different guitars, but it is difficult to make a decision with the store owner scowling at you all the time. On top of that the choice in a store is always limited, so often you had to settle for a pretty decent guitar, but certainly not the one of your dreams. Today, on the other hand, you can go online, search for “Gretsch vs Tele” on your iPhone and you get hours of videos reviewing and comparing every single pro and con of each instrument. Having YouTube back then would have literally saved me thousands of euro and a lot of disappointment.

WOM AND THE PARADOX OF CHOICE
What does this have to do with hotels, you may ask? A lot. Exactly like guitars, in fact, when you have to choose a tool for your property you can only count on friends and colleague’s suggestions (or, even worse, on the words of unscrupulous salesmen). You cannot go online and compare two booking engines, for example. Sure, you can open a thread on LinkedIn or on a Facebook group, but it is time-consuming and these platforms are full of companies trying to sell their own products, so it is hard to maintain objectivity and neutrality. Tourism trade shows and conventions can help you discover new tools as well, but it can be too expensive for smaller properties to travel around Europe, the US or other parts of the world just to get updated on the latest technologies. Moreover, the number of providers increased dramatically over the years, creating what Barry Schwartz calls the “Paradox of choice”. On his famous book, Why More Is Less, the American psychologist stated that “eliminating consumer choices can greatly reduce anxiety for shoppers”. Try googling booking engine and you get over 400,000 results. Channel manager? Over 2 million. And all these companies claim to be the best choice for you. How can you make a decision in this maelstrom of information?

THERE IS NO SUCH THING AS THE BEST SOFTWARE
Hotel software is a relatively young technology. The first PMS only appeared in the 80’s, not to mention booking engines, channel managers, revenue management tools, CRS, CRM, etc. This means that there is a dangerous lack of quality standards in the Industry and some of these tools are only a step above beta test versions. There is no space for absolutism in hotel tech. There is no such thing as the best Reputation Management tool as there is no way to measure what “best” means. Ease of use? UX? Third-party software integration? Reporting? What may be the best choice for your competitor is not necessarily the best choice for you. Add the lack of neutral information, standard metrics and verified reviews to the mix and you understand why, more often than not, hotels have to compare apples and oranges.

“BUY LOCAL”: DOES IT STILL PAY OFF?-
With no industry standards and way too many choices out there, making the right decision can be challenging. It is not rare for hoteliers to spend months choosing a company to find themselves regretting it just after a few months. Let’s face it: hotel tech can be quite complex, integration with other tools is usually a long process, retraining your staff is a stressful experience and sometimes you prefer to stick with that old, buggy PMS just because it is provided by a local company that you can easily reach in case of need. But a hotel is not a farm and it does not always pay to buy local, not even on an ethical level. The web reshaped the geography of the World and it is now easier to reach a 24/7 customer service in India or in the Philippines than your IT manager living two blocks from you. Keep it in mind next time your servers crash in the middle of the night. I personally manage several clients that I have never even met if not on Skype and, as long as one delivers what was promised, the quality of work always compensates for the miles that divide you from your provider. Hotels seem to have trust issues towards the global market, but these issues are based on a bias: a Nielsen report, in fact, shows that customers are more likely to trust a product review written by another customer than they are to trust an official product description. Reviews organically build a bond of trust between the hotel and the vendor, making its proximity less relevant.

THE SEARCH GOES VERTICAL: THE RISE OF MARKETPLACES
As a consultant, there are questions that I got asked over and over again: “Can you suggest a good booking engine?”, “Do I need a revenue management tool?”, “Why can’t I export data from my PMS” are just some of them. I spend a good part of my working days looking for the right providers for my customers. Every hotel has, in fact, different needs, so the one-size-fits-all approach is out of the question. But finding the right provider can be challenging for a consultant as well: the tools evolve, change, make U-turns, companies got bought, merged or bankrupt almost overnight these days. This is where the real potential of vertical search is still unexploited. Tooly.tips fills this gap in the market by introducing a neutral marketplace focused exclusively on hospitality. Massimo Caria and Alessandro Fenzl, the two founders, are no newbies in the industry: Massimo has been in the industry for over ten years as Country Manager and Business Developer and Alessandro has been working 25+ years in MICE, S&M and smart hotel tech consultancy. You can really feel their hospitality, software/tech and consultancy backgrounds in tooly.tips: technology created by people who really talked the talk and walked the walk. Tooly.tips is created by hoteliers for hoteliers: you can search for a specific company or a tool category and you are redirected to a page with software overview, verified reviews, alternative choices, screenshots and (when available) videos. By clicking here, for example, you get a list of different booking engines and you can apply multiple filters (by rating, accommodation type, department, etc.). The “compare” feature is the one I like the most: pick two software tools and analyze them one next to the other, like this hotel software comparison. You can save software choices to your personal wish list, get more details about the tools, write a review and get in touch with the vendor without ever leaving the tooly.tips search page. Software products are listed by departments as well: Marketing, IT, Reservations, Revenue, Accounting, MICE, Front Office, Restaurants & Bars & Guest Service, so you don’t have to know all the terminology to find the best solution for your area.

CONCLUSION
Entrepreneurs, owners and GMs should be able to make a decision based on facts, not passively relying on the pitches of commission-based-sales people. This is exactly the way tooly.tips approaches technology: easy, different, fresh, visual and quickly accessible to everyone. It is easy to overcomplicate when it comes to tech, especially for niche markets like ours, that is why the purpose of tooly.tips is to provide a user-friendly search experience saving you from the headache of finding the right tools. I wish I had a marketplace like this when I was a Hotel General Manager. As I wish I had guitar video demos when I was a teen. And, in case you are curious, I eventually found my dream guitar: a black‘72 Fender Telecaster with an alder body and maple neck, a humbucker on the neck and a single-coil pickup on the bridge. But I learned it the hard and expensive way. You don’t have to.

Just search on tooly.tips.

The direct debate: Debunking hype for independents

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In a world overflowing with distribution options and emphasizing direct booking, four industry leaders discuss their strategies. In Part 3 of HOTELS’ deeper dive, consultant and former hotelier Simone Puorto cuts through the noise for independent hoteliers. Stay tuned for Part 4 on Monday, and catch up on Part 1 (a Q&A with Marriott International Senior Vice President of Distribution Drew Pinto) and Part 2 (RLH Corporation’s Bill Linehan on that company’s unconventional partnership with Expedia).

As a former hotelier, Simone Puorto, now CEO and founder of Simone Puorto Consulting, Nogent-sur-Marne, Val-de-Marne, France, never felt at war with any distribution channel. But at some point, “Why should I give 20% to an OTA when I can sell my rooms directly?” became the new “Let’s sign with booking.com and increase our business to guests we won’t be able to reach otherwise.” Puorto writes about the hype and how independents can overcome it to yield the best rate. What if all this direct booking hype was not really the consequence of a rigid and scientific distribution cost analysis, but rather a smart marketing move by all those web agencies advertising themselves as the redeemer of the oppressed hotels fighting the anti-commission crusade?

Every reservation has a cost: Sometimes it is clearly defined (commission, markup), and sometimes more hidden (creation of website, hosting, adword investments, meta-search ads, booking engine transaction fees, branding activities, etc.). The cost per acquisition (CPA) for a direct booking is not always lower than the average OTA commission, but sometimes it’s higher. A hotelier in Paris was complaining all the time about the high distribution costs and tried anything to get some more traction on his direct channels. He bought a price-checker, offered discounted rates on the website, gave free breakfast, launched a messenger chatbot and invested a ton of money on advertising. Sure, direct bookings started pouring in – but with a CPA of 42% over an average OTA commission of 21%. A “direct” client might be yours forever, but a lot of hotels have very low returning guest percentages (if any), so customer lifetime value is just another word that means nothing out of proper context. I created a small focus group of clients and friends to substantiate (or to deny) my thesis. I grouped 50 independent and branded hotels around Europe, from 5 to 500 rooms, with different star ratings, and asked them:

• How would you describe your relationship with OTAs?

• What are the needed and necessary gives and takes for a better collaboration?

• What do you think the future of distribution will be?

• Is your direct booking CPA lower, equal or higher than that of OTAs?

Unsurprisingly, over 90% described their relationships with OTAs as a reciprocal collaboration. This answer came mainly from revenue managers and owners who tend to be more focused on profit and numbers. Fully 70% of hoteliers said they would like to get more transparency from OTAs, especially when it comes to guest email sharing. All hotels interviewed described mirror marketing (mirror sites, misleading ads, reseller lower rates, etc.) as one of the main obstacles to a better collaboration. The main discrepancy of opinion was on where distribution is going: Half the group voted for a future with more direct bookings and the remaining half for a landscape dominated by OTAs and metasearch/hybrids. Oddly, over 20% did not know exactly the CPA per direct booking or even how to calculate it. Around 10% admitted that their CPA is lower for OTA reservations, while the remaining 70% agreed that (no matter what) a direct reservation is always cheaper.

Branded hotels tend to have lower CPA (just like hotels with higher ADR and bigger room inventory), while CPA for smaller independent hotels is not very different from the average OTA commission. Having a lot of direct bookings does not necessarily mean higher profit; and understanding the hidden costs of any reservation is crucial to achieve and maintain a healthy and profitable mix. OTAs are just tools; use them accordingly. “Stop Clicking Around” is a great opportunity to cut distribution cost for Hilton, but not necessarily for smaller hotels, especially if with fewer rooms to sell at below average prices. For smaller hotels, stick to basic high return advertising campaigns and prefer commission model over CPC with metasearch ads to minimize the risk without being completely out of the meta game.

Social Media for Hotels: How it Drove 6% of Direct Bookings

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Social media for hotels, does it work? Does it convert? Is it a waste of time? Is there any ROI? Should one have a Facebook page? An Instagram one? As always, there are no totally right or wrong answers and one size does not fit all. First of all let’s start analyzing the three typical hotel approaches when it comes to social media, to further emphasize the lack of a unique and standardized methodology:

1. THE ÜBER-SOCIAL HOTELS
It’s the minority of hotels that makes of their social DNA their selling point: they train their staff, hire social media managers, allocate budget for social ads, work on niche social networks, etc.

2. THE LET’S TRY IT HOTEL
Hotels that approach social networks with fewer resources, limiting their actions to the most known players (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc.) and working without a proper method and strategy. This group includes the majority of the hotels.

3. THE I DON’T CARE HOTEL
In this group are those hotels that have no interest in being present on social networks, relying mainly on established advertising channels.

Which of the three is the right method? While I have personally sometimes discouraged hotels to go all-out on social media, I have also managed and led many very successful campaigns for some clients.

ROI or ROE?
The main problem with social media for hotels is understanding and measuring the results. As Douglas Quinby from PhoCusWright once said: ”hotels are reluctant to disclose the numbers associated with the conversions of the hotel on Facebook because the data is irrelevant.” Supporting this thesis is a recent study by the University of Applied Sciences and Arts of Lucerne, which states that social networks are “much less important than previously believed”. The study was conducted on 1,000 online bookers of three critical markets: UK, Germany and United States. For English and German travellers, a good website is (still) the decision-making element priority. Americans give the Palme d’Or to hotel reputation and notoriety of the brand and only a minority of (less than 20%) think that social networks are important.

FRIENDS, NOT CLIENTS
So, are social networks completely useless for hotels? Of course not, but to understand if it is worth to use social marketing you have to understand what social networks are all about n the first place: sharing. And what users share? Stories. If the stay was pleasant guests will more likely write a review than share or interact with a hotel social page. They will post photos from the city, or funny things they saw or did during the trip, but rarely anything related to the hotel. Why? Because if the hotel does not offer a story to tell then that story, obviously, won’t be told. On the other hand, if a hotel has something special and unique or it offers a non standard hotel experience, that’s where social networks become useful. According to Jana Zvolánková, former IT marketing and social media manager for a famous hotel in Prague I used to work with “guests are like friends and you do not send advertising to your friends. They give us good ideas and we give them interesting facts and links in return. Facebook should not be the commercial backup of your official hotel website: it is a social media platform designed for friends to communicate with friends, so that is what you have to focus on. Once they actually arrive in the hotel, they have the feeling that they are already part of the family. The hotel is created with the uniqueness in mind and with the urge to be different then the rest of the pack. In this increasingly difficult hotel market, you need to find a way to stick your neck out. We opted to change the complete interaction with the guests and we strive hard to give the guests a completely different experience, that is great to share over social media. Combine this with the kind of guests that we attract with the concept of the hotel and you have a clear view of why social media works well here, with 6% of direct reservations coming from Facebook only.”

IN CONCLUSION
While many hoteliers and marketers still look at social media as an ROI tool, it should be looked at primarily as a communication platform to engage with guests and potential guests. Hotels that are built with social elements in their DNA may receive more reservations through social media but that is a positive side-effect that one should consider as a bonus and not the main goal. As to who should have a social media presence? most any hotel can and should but if they’re ready to manage it for real, that means answer questions, post regularly, make it interesting and not just an advertising outlet. If the hotel isn’t ready to handle the traffic I recommend not to take this path, as there’s nothing worse than an old page not kept alive.

Five hospitality trends to keep an eye on in 2018

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December is almost gone and, as usual, we found ourselves in that inspiring state of mind in which it is all about New Year’s resolutions. Sure, in 2018 we all will walk 10,000 steps a day, lose those final extra five pounds and start meditating. But for people like me and you (working in the hospitality industry), this is not only the time of the year when we openly lie to ourselves but the one when we all play the Guess Who? game. And the question is always the same: what will the Next Big Thing be this year? Here are five trends that are worth keeping an eye on.

SMART ROOMS
Almost 5,000 rooms at Wynn Las Vegas are already voice-activated via Amazon Echo. Meanwhile, Hilton is beta testing its first mobile-centric hotel room, where guests can control temperature, lightning, blinds, thermostat and TVs with just a tap on their phones. Similarly, Marriott is about to soft-launch its “Internet of Things room”, offering services like mirrors with on-demand yoga tutorials and digital frames to upload friends and family photos during one’s stay. The trend is pretty clear: in 2018 AI, domotic and IoT will bring the concept of personalization to a level that was unthinkable just five years ago. Guests can now resume their favorite Netflix series right where they left off or play their favourite Spotify playlist as soon as they check in. Bed sensors will know when they are awake or asleep and optimize the room temperature and lightning accordingly. We may be tempted to think that this all sounds like the plot from a cheap sci-fi novel from the 50’s, but by the time you finished reading this paragraph, 200 doors were unlocked by a digital key at Hilton.

OPERATION MANAGEMENT SOFTWARES
Improving the quality of staff interaction in hotels has never been as important as it is today. Ping-pong communication between departments is, sadly, more the norm than the exception and, in order to stay competitive, hotels will have to review their workflows. The good news is that advancements in technology, cloud computing and more scalable third-party API integrations with PMS and CRM made operation management software relatively affordable, so smaller independent hotels will be finally able to benefit from solutions such as Roomchecking, Quore and Properly. Implementing real-time tools to improve guest satisfaction and facilitate team communication is not an option any longer, not even for “laggards”.

BIG DATA AND CRMS
Remember when all a reservation office had to do was answering to phone calls and emails? Well, those days are long gone. Today’s guests interact through a ridiculously high number of contact points: review sites, social media, real-time messaging apps and OTAs, so it’s getting harder for hoteliers to be reactive on all channels 24/7. That is why customer relationship management systems will have to reshape themselves in 2018, by shifting from overcomplicated tools in the hands of S&M departments exclusively to easy-to-interpret centralized hubs accessible to every department. A good CRM system will have to process data from all sources and present a clear and readable recap of each guest needs, tastes and shopping habits. “Experiential marketing”, “tailor-made service” and “personalization” are nothing but overused buzzwords if hotels fail to correctly aggregate and exploit data. Companies such as Cendyn, Data Vision Tech and Experience Hotel, just to name a few, are shifting more and more to this centralized approach.

MOBILE AND PREDICTIVE APPS
“There will come a time when it isn’t ‘They’re spying on me through my phone’ anymore. Eventually, it will be ‘My phone is spying on me’” predicted Philip K. Dick. And he was right. Mobile devices are virtually present in any micro-moment of the booking journey: from research to planning, from booking to post-stay experience sharing, guests depend almost entirely on their phones. They expect to find multiple electrical outlets and USB charging points in their rooms and they want to be able to do more with their mobile devices than just calling an Uber. On top of that, travellers are more and more relying on their phones to get suggestions as well. Trips, Google’s Travel Assistant, is the perfect example: travellers simply have to connect the app to their email account and Trips will pull all the information about past and future hotels, restaurants, flights and taxi reservations automatically, suggesting things to do in the area, where to eat or drink and creating itineraries based on historical data from other users of the app. According to Google, Trips will implement more proactive suggestions (à-la-Google Now) in the future, with other companies like Mezi adopting the same predictive approach. And if it is true that the EU General Data Protection Regulation lurks in the shadows like the character of a Lovecraft story, on the other side I doubt that travellers will easily give up to this kind of personalization in favour of more privacy.

BOTS AND CONVERSATIONAL MARKETING
That being said, it is easy to understand why 2018 will be the year of bots. With more than 100,000 active ones on Facebook Messenger only, the technology behind chatbots will become more and more scalable and affordable even for smaller companies. In fact, today a chatbot is an efficient yet inexpensive way for hoteliers to interact with their guests (and potential ones) during each step of the booking journey. AI conversational marketing is probably the best way to connect with your customers, as it provides them highly targeted and pertinent messages in real-time. This means staffing cost saving for the hotels and better UX for the customers. Tell The Hotel, for example, is a chatbot that can be easily integrated with virtually any CRS, helping potential customers to get immediate answers, book a room or manage their existing reservation without the need to talk to a human being.

CONCLUSIONS
I am not magician, nor a fortune teller, so it’s hard to state without a doubt that these will actually be the hot topics of 2018, but of one thing I am certain: I will walk 10,000 steps a day, lose those final extra five pounds and start meditating.

Won’t you?

There’s nothing cheap about loyalty: Are hotel reward programs still relevant in 2018?

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“There’s nothing cheap about loyalty”, poetically asserts Ryan Bingham, the main character of the Walter Kirn novel Up in the Air during a dissertation about the perks and perils of Hilton and Maplewood respective loyalty programs. For those unfamiliar with the book (or with the movie by the same name), the story revolves around a cynical HR consulting firm employee whose main goal is to accumulate membership points and become the youngest person to earn ten million frequent flyer miles with American Airlines. Even though exaggerated and caricaturistic, the Bingham character is nothing but a fictional representation of the primordial inner need for rewards that is intrinsic to all humans.

THE CHEMISTRY OF LOYALTY
When we compulsively accumulate miles and points, in fact, we are mainly lead by our own body chemistry. When we get a reward our bodies release dopamine, a substance that plays an important role in human behavior. According to Dr. Robert Sapolsky, Professor of Neurological Sciences at Stanford University, dopamine can go as far as motivating behavior for an entire lifetime. Rewarding one’s more loyal guests by offering them free nights, complimentary upgrades and other perks could, therefore, possibly be the best way to improve customers lifetime value and direct revenue. A recent PhocusWright report demonstrated that loyalty programs account for up to 3/4 of all brand.com hotel bookings last year, but was it always the case?

1983: BIRTH OF THE REWARDS PROGRAMS
US 1978 famous airline deregulation inaugurated the new era of the free market in the commercial flight industry by removing federal control over fares and routes. Airlines were finally able to market their services more competitively and loyal programs started to pop up like mushrooms. AAdvantage has been the first real frequent flyer program, launched by American Airlines in 1981 (even though TIA already introduced a basic mileage-based loyalty program two years earlier). The program is still alive and well today and it counts around 70 million members. When it comes to hotels, it is a little harder to determine which brand introduced the idea of loyalty programs, with Holiday Inn and Marriott battling for the podium. And if it’s true that Holiday Inn launched its program a few months before Marriott did (respectively February and November of 1983), it is also true that Holiday Inn stopped the program for a year in 1986, making Marriott’s the loyalty program that ran uninterruptedly for the longest period of time in the history of hospitality. Revisionism aside, since the mid 80’s virtually every hotel chain created and developed its own membership program, plausibly with the sole exception of Four Seasons, that historically eluded the loyalty program scheme in favor of highly personalized guest service in order to retain customers. Over the years these programs evolved, changed and made countless U-turns, but a constant has surprisingly survived unscarred over the course of three decades: points.

POINTS, POINTS AND MORE POINTS
Today Marriott offers four different levels of loyalty programs: depending on their status, members can access discounted rates, complimentary upgrades, free wi-fi and late check-outs. And, obviously, they earn points. A lot of them. And not only by staying in one of Marriott properties, but by shopping with co-branded credit cards or renting cars through partner providers, just to name a few. Hilton Honors members, together with digital check-in, free wifi and the usual complimentary upgrades, earn ten points per every dollar they spend and, just like Marriott members, extra points by traveling with partner airline, rail and car rental companies or by purchasing with co-branded Amex cards. Preferred Hotels & Resorts rewards its elite members with fifteen points for every dollar spent, while Hyatt is a little stingier, with “only” five. If you’re a member of Kimpton Hotels, then, you get a free night after twenty stays, while Leading Hotels of the World’s loyal guests are even luckier, with one free night every five stays. And if you’re a golfer, you can use TaylorMade clubs for free, provided that you are Fairmont member, obviously. I could go on and on by listing all the perks and bonus each brand offers to its more loyal guests, but the bottom line is that, when it comes to loyalty programs, the pattern is pretty much always the same: members earn points, they redeem them and then they start over. But will the mattress-run-model be still efficient in 2018?

IT’S EASY TO OVERCOMPLICATE: THE WYNDHAM CASE
According to a recent Ideaworks study, Wyndham has the best hotel rewarding loyalty program, with nearly twice the ROI of Marriott. What makes its loyalty program so good? In one word: simplicity. Let’s face it: keeping score of points is hard: they expire, got lost or devaluated, partner providers got bankrupted and their frequent travelers’ programs vanish with them. In a nutshell, keeping the score can easily become a mathematical maze. A J.D. Power study demonstrated that guests who fully understand how to redeem their points have overall higher satisfaction. The bad news is that, according to the same study, only half of the members understand how the process actually works. More often than not, that coveted free night looks like a mirage in the desert. Wyndham loyal guests, on the other hand, do not have to deal with any of that: they get a free night every 15, 000 points, end of story. And, to make it even easier, Wyndham guarantees that its members earn a minimum of 1,000 points with every stay, making the reward realistic, relatively easy to obtain and, most importantly, reachable. According to a Software Advice poll, frustrating sign-up systems and hard-to-earn rewards are among the main reasons that only 86%percent of Gen Y (50% of buying power by 2020) are not yet participating in any hotel loyalty programs. This means that brands that will not shift from the overcomplicated point based system soon, will very likely regret it in a few years from now. Having that in mind, it comes to no surprise than revamping its mobile app has been one of the first post-Starwood-acquisition priorities for Marriott. Being now the largest hotel chain in the world, it is also the one owning the largest hotel loyalty program and the development of an easier way for guests to join and redeem point obviously plays a very crucial part of its long-term strategy.

THE GOAL GRADIENT HYPOTHESIS
A few years ago Columbia University published a fascinating study about loyalty programs and found out that the closer the members were to the reward, the more frequently they purchased in order to reach it. In psychology, this phenomenon is known as the Goal Gradient Hypothesis and it has been studied since the 1930’s. So giving members realistic goals and a transparent way to monitor their progress will make them buy more and more often. Back to Wyndham: since it revamped its loyalty program, over one million of previously inactive members started to use it again. This is something online travel agencies know very well and that is the reason why some of the best loyalty programs are OTA’s. Hotels.com Rewards has probably the most straightforward approach: book 10 nights at any eligible hotels and get one free. Bottom line is: reward your guests and reward them often and not only by offering them free nights. It’s no news that newer generations of travelers are less loyal to brands and even less interested in obsolete long-term-points-redeeming-systems. They are, on the other hand, way more keen to spend their points in drinks at the bar or in SPA treatments during their stay than to invest them in hypothetical future stays.

RETHINKING LOYALTY: WHERE DO WE GO NOW?
This trend is confirmed by the above mentioned J.D. Power study as well: members satisfaction is higher when they can use their points to shop, buy tickets for events, go out for dinner, etc. instead of just using them to book other room nights. According to the study, member satisfaction is 31 times higher when points can be redeemed to buy special events instead of hotel stays. Rick Garlick, Travel and Hospitality Practice Lead at J.D. Power, states: “The key to success for hotel loyalty programs is the variety of reward offerings and the flexibility in how to redeem points”. That is why partnerships with non-hotel providers are crucial in order to provide better loyalty programs. This is exactly the shift we are experiencing now: recently Meliá Hotels International launched MeliáRewards Shopping, an online eStore for members to earn points while buying from almost 2.000 retailers, including brands like John Lewis and Fnac so, if you get homesick for all the traveling, you can always use your points to go Christmas gifting online. Hilton played it even bigger by being the first-ever hotel loyalty program to participate to Amazon Shop with Points, meaning that Hilton members can now buy virtually anything they want on Amazon with their Honors Points. Mark Weinstein, Senior Vice President & Global Head of Customer Engagement, Loyalty and Partnerships, explained that Hilton Honors is now “more flexible, more valuable and more personal, providing a reason for less frequent travelers to be more engaged”. Result? Hilton Honors boosted membership by 15%. Another important shift in loyalty programs is the drop of the one-size-fits-all-approach in favor of reward personalization: business travelers prefer to accumulate points to redeem them during their vacations, while tourists prefer immediate gratifications and on-site recognition, such as complimentary upgrades, welcome drinks or gift cards. Moving away from traditional models and offering a good mix of instant gratifications and long-term rewards based on the guest type is crucial to creating sustainable and scalable programs. And if it is unlikely that the industry will ever entirely move away from the points-for-stay model, most hotel brands are already integrating guest experience, recognition and service personalization as part of their loyalty programs, realizing that the in-house financial value of their guests is as important as their stay frequency.

CONCLUSIONS
Over the last decade, disruption has probably been the most (over)used term in the Industry. We have literally seen hundreds of next-big-thing-start-ups appearing and disappearing overnight, but we are still discussing loyalty programs almost 35 years after the first members-only reservation was ever made. So the answer is yes, loyalty programs are here to stay, even though they will evolve into something different to what we are used to know today. And, in case you’re asking, “Hilton offers equal value and better food but the Maplewood gives out warm cookies at check-in”.

Just saying.

Blockchain unchained: A deep dive into the buzzword for 2018

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Last month I spent a couple of days in Naples to meet a client. To keep the Italian-living-abroad-stereotype alive, every time I go back to the “BelPaese” I try to get as much good food as I can. I’ve been in Naples several times before, but I’ve never been able to eat at Gino Sorbillo’s Pizzeria. Now, unless you are from Naples or a true pizza enthusiast, the name will probably not ring any bell, but Sorbillo’s is one of the oldest pizza-making families in Naples. The queue to eat there is always incredibly long, but my client happens to be friend with the Sorbillo’s and booked me a table. To be honest, the place per se is nothing fancy, but the moment I put the first slice in my mouth I had an epiphany. I felt like Anton Ego after eating the cooked-by-rodents-Ratatouille in the Pixar’s movie by the same name: childhood memories of my grandmother’s cooking came back to me vividly. It was, without a doubt, the best pizza of my life.

THE BIG JOHN’S 50-MILLION-PIZZA
Now, what is a fair price for a culinary experience like this? $1o? $15? What about $100 million? Believe it or not, this is exactly how much Laszlo Hanyecz paid for two Big John’s pizzas in 2010: 10,000 bitcoins. As I write this article, a bitcoin is worth more than over $10,000, making that pizza the most expensive in the history of Mankind. Even though this is usually referred as the first bitcoin transaction in the “real” world, the story is a little different from the myth and it involves two geeks, an online message board, unhealthy food and a standard credit card.

A BIT (NO PUN INTENDED!) OF HISTORY
Bitcoin, also known as BTC or XBT, is a digital (“bit”) currency (“coin”) or “cryptocurrency” invented by a mysterious character named Satoshi Nakamoto almost a decade ago. A lot of speculation was made around the real identity of Nakamoto: an Irish cryptography student, a sociologist, a collaborative group and even an over-60-year-old-Californian-engineer by the same name. Released as an open-source software, bitcoins are not issued by governments, but by “miners”. In the cryptocurrency world, miners are the people and the companies participating in the bitcoin network: they keep records of new transactions, verify them and collect them into groups known as “blocks”. On average every ten minutes, a new block is added and it becomes part of a shared database know as “blockchain”. A blockchain is, to put it simply, just a database that is distributed among multiple networks: each one stores an identical and immutable copy of the chain, making hacking attacks and alterations virtually impossible. Miners are also responsible for the issuing of new bitcoins: by solving complex math puzzles, in fact, miners discover new blocks and get a reward in BTC. To keep it challenging, whenever a coin is created, the complexity of the math equations increases so, if the computing power needed to solve the first puzzles was relatively affordable (even a decent desktop computer could do it), the creation of a single coin today requires as much energy as your apartment in a week.

BITCOINS AND REGULATION
Because of its intrinsic decentralized nature, the legal status of bitcoins is not the same worldwide. Some Countries like Brazil, Indonesia, China, Vietnam, Israel, Morocco, Bolivia, Algeria, Ecuador, Kyrgyz Republic, Bangladesh and Nepal already banned bitcoins (at least to some extent). Governments are not enthusiast with bitcoins for several reasons: first of all, bitcoin transactions are (similarly to cash transactions) quasi-anonymous. BTC are stored in digital wallets (in the cloud or on a hard drive) and, even though each transaction is recorded on a public log, only the wallet ID is recorded during the transaction, not the names of the people involved in it. This property of bitcoins made it the perfect currency for illegal activities like drug dealing or black market transactions. One of the first dark markets on the web, Silk Road, accepted exclusively bitcoin payments with the sole purpose of ensuring customers’ identities to remain anonymous.

CRYPTOBUBBLE AND PHYSICAL INCONSISTENCY
From its creation up until 2010, the value of one bitcoin was basically zero. During the first half of 2011, one bitcoin was worth $1, then spiked to $31.00 in July to drop again to $2 in December. By the end of 2012, its value was $13. It wasn’t until 2013 that bitcoin value started to grow dramatically and by the beginning of ’14 one coin was worth between $750,00 and $1,000. The next couple of years never reached the same level of 2014, but in 2017 bitcoins exploded, starting in January at around $800 – $1,000 and closing in December at almost $14,000. Over the span of seven years, bitcoin value increased by 1,400%. As I am writing this article, one bitcoin is worth $6,200, but by the time you are reading this, things will have probably changed again. Robert Shiller, Professor of Economics at Yale states: “The Bitcoin phenomenon seems to fit the basic definition of a speculative bubble, publicized and amplified by the news”. There is another intrinsic risk in bitcoins: their physical inconsistency. Discussions about physical cryptocurrency issuing have been going on since 2010 and startups such as Casascius, Alitin Mint, Titan, Cryptmint and Antana are experimenting with the concept, but when we refer to bitcoins, we usually have lines of codes in mind instead of banknotes. On a recent Big Bang Theory episode, a USB key filled with coins got lost, showing how mainstream the phenomenon has become. You may remember the infamous Mt. Gox case: back in ’14, the Japanese company handled more than two-out-of-three of all bitcoin transactions, but got bankrupted after more than 800,000 coins were stolen. Or, more recently, the hacker attack on Coincheck, when around 58 billion yen ($532 million) worth of NEM (a cryptocurrency similar to Bitcoin) were stolen. Today’s value would have been over $80 billion. So, if bitcoin fits the basic definition of a speculative bubble, the whole idea of a post-government world economy fits the definition of a Fight-Club-ish utopia as well and, even though bitcoins could help create a cheaper, faster and frictionless money transaction system, the value of the cryptocurrency has fluctuated so wildly over the years, that it is hard to make any prediction. Ironically, bitcoins were conceived as a limited currency (only 21 million of them can be discovered) in order to prevent inflation. If anything, Nakamoto made a huge miscalculation here.

BLOCKCHAIN AND BITCOIN
The word blockchain is often mistakenly used as synonymous with bitcoins or with cryptocurrencies in general, but it is -de facto- the technology behind it, not the currency itself. And, even though when reading about blockchain we immediately think about bitcoins, it is very likely that the real disruptor of our industry (if any) will not be the cryptocurrency, but the technology that fuels it. Blockchain is, at its core, just a way of exchanging and storing data by bypassing centralized intermediaries and relying on multiple cryptographed nodes across a network. It is a big, fast, cheap, secure and decentralized database where information can move without the need for middlemen. So, which came first, the chicken or the egg? In this case probably the egg, but we should be more interested in the chicken.

BLOCKCHAIN IN HOSPITALITY
Hotels dependence on intermediaries is no big news and that is why there is all this buzz around blockchain in the accommodation industry. From advanced loyalty programs to disintermediation strategies, regaining control over room inventory and guest data is one of the main priorities of hotels, both branded and independent. The same need is shared by travel tech startups struggling to enter a rigid market such as the hospitality distribution one. Blockchain technology could theoretically guarantee an open door to travel distribution, solving the problem of inventory access at its root: no more minimum volumes required by big players in order to open their APIs and no more exorbitant integration costs. This means faster integration and a fairer marketplace. It also means close-to-zero cost per guest acquisition for hotels: a P2P market is the holy grail for hotels and blockchain could create a less OTA-dependent landscape. As blocks cannot be altered, the blockchain-based technology could even end the problem of wholesalers selling B2B2C rates once and for all. An unalterable rate distribution system could create a less chaotic landscape, where prices cannot be modified by resellers. Blockchain technology could help creating more advanced revenue management software, or trustworthy review travel sites with immutable verified traveler database or more scalable loyalty programs. Hotels could prefer bitcoin payments over credit cards because of lower transactions fees and to prevent fake credit-card fraudulent reservations or last minute cancellations. Think about any problem to solve when it comes to data exchange in travel and, very likely, there is a possible solution just a “block” away.

EARLY ADOPTERS
Today, the main problem with technology is that it moves faster than our ability to predict its ramifications, so it is illogical to state that blockchain will surely disrupt our industry. The wild value swings of bitcoins should be a memento not to get our hopes too high and look at blockchain with prudence. Analysts are divided and I personally still see too many parallelisms with the 2000-2002 dot-com bubble to have full confidence in blockchain, especially when it comes to cryptocurrencies. Some say that blockchain will revolutionize the way we do business today and that companies that did not see it coming will be out of the market. Some others say that companies should integrate some kind of blockchain technology solely to maintain their market relevance. Others take a step back and try to look at the bigger picture like you do in front of a Seurat painting. Of course, nobody wants to lose the momentum, even though the technology is, at its best, at its infancy stage. Expedia, for example, was the first major travel company to accept payments in bitcoin back in ’14 and TUI is currently migrating part of its infrastructure to a private blockchain. SITA Lab is experimenting with blockchains to find a frictionless way to identify flight passengers by storing their biometric and personal information, IATA has its own cryptocurrency and so on. Dozens of travel tech startups made the news recently because of their visionary applications (some may call it foresight, only time will tell) of blockchain technology in travel. I may be getting old, but this reminds me of the ’97-01 speculations as well, when tech firms simply added the .com suffix to their names and enjoyed their shares going up. Far fetched? Not really. On-line Plc is a tech investment company and it’s been around since ’96. Last October it changed its name to On-line Blockchain Plc and its shares increased by 400% in a matter of days. Riot Blockchain (former Bioptix Inc) used a similar strategy: +17% share value increase. This does not mean that companies investing in blockchain are doing it to boost their share value, of course. In fact, there are several exciting ideas out there worth keeping an eye on. Here are some of them.

ACCOMMODATION IS IN A BAD NEED OF TRANSPARENCY: LOCKCHAIN
Lockchain presents itself as “The first hotel booking & vacation rental marketplace with 0% commissions”. I had a chat with its founder, Nikola Alexandrov, and his words touched the Achilles heel of current hotel distribution: “Booking.com and Airbnb charge on average 20% from each booking and most travelers are not really aware of that.” Lockchain plan is clear and uncompromising: utilizing advanced blockchain technology to cut out any form of commission. “It is the right of the hosts to receive the full amount of the money for the investments that they make, and it is certainly the right of the travelers to be able to pay directly to hosts for their travel experience.” Listening to Alexandrov, my mind came back to the early days of Napster, when the music industry status quo was shaken by P2P file-sharing software. Exactly like record companies, established travel distributors “do not add any value to the actual experience”. When asked about a possible blockchain bubble, he says: “What will likely happen is that only actual value-driven projects will survive and will outgrow the current levels”. And with a marketplace already live with 100,000 hotels going live next month, I am pretty confident that Lockchain will be one of those projects.

“AND HERE’S YOUR MIDDLEMAN AGAIN”: FLYUS.COM
Mathias Friess is the CEO at Flyus.com, a specialist in international air travel. When I asked him about blockchain technology he agreed with Alexandrov. “We need to provide our customers with payment options that suit their needs and distributed blockchain systems offer consumers yet another payment option”. Referring to Expedia, I asked if he thought that accepting bitcoins could have given the American travel company an early-adopter market advantage and he said that, in theory, cryptocurrency could “eliminate bank and credit card as middlemen and help OTAs in fraud prevention”, even though “OTAs still need to pay the airlines settling through ARC and that involves real money. The new currency still needs to get converted to USD so Airlines get paid and there is your middleman again… So unless airlines settle in crypto, OTAs will carry the cost of crypto conversion”.

NO BUBBLES, BUT CORRECTIONS: TRIPPKI
So what could be the main applications of blockchain in travel? I discussed it with Edward Cunningham, CEO at Trippki, that gave me some illuminating point of views. “There are many. For us, it is about creating a fairer booking system for both the hotel and the guest: a cooperative booking platform, where consumers and suppliers trade at the least possible costs”. I then asked his opinion about TUI decision to migrate part of its database into blockchain: “Further down the line hospitality businesses could place their inventory onto the blockchain and allow AI and data to all sync together providing the ultimate booking experience, but it may be too early to completely transition the whole hospitality ecosystem”. We concluded our talk discussing the possible risks of a new dot-com bubble and he pointed out that back when the dot.com bubble exploded “there was only one technology as such: the Internet”, while “today we have several technologies growing at the same pace: data, AI, robotics and blockchain”. A whole ecosystem of technologies moving in the same direction. He then highlighted the fact that for the past years the cryptocurrency space has been carved and invested by individuals, while “only now institutions and funds are beginning to take notice so, rather than bubbles, we will have corrections, where the prices grow through hype then dips and grows again”.

SECURITY AND SPEED: CELLPOINT MOBILE
Jonatan Evald Buus and Kristian Gjerding are, respectively, CTO and CEO at CellPoint Mobile, provider of solutions for both the sell side and the pay side of travel transactions and founders of the “Travel Innovation Hub“: a space for travel operators and merchants to collaborate and develop practical, blockchain-driven products that can make travel easier, seamless, more secure, and less vulnerable to fraud. They say: “Blockchain technology could have a major impact on how hotel inventory is distributed to consumers”, posing a “direct challenge to the GDS companies and the entire model of one distributor controlling inventory.” According to Buus and Gjerding, anyway, even though “blockchain technology is recognized as potentially as important an invention as the Internet”, it is still “a work in progress” and there are still “numerous challenges such as how to make a blockchain fast enough (and still secure) for billions of travel transactions every day”. “Blockchain technology has tremendous potential for airport security and eliminating the need for passengers to carry around sensitive travel documents. But one security breach would be a major incident”. They seemed very cautious about cryptocurrencies as well: “They still aren’t mainstream. Before mainstream adoption there are still a number of unanswered questions. Which legislation governs the use of cryptocurrencies? How is tax for income in cryptocurrencies reported?”. I tend to share the same reservations about bitcoins but, like Buus and Gjerding say: “Cryptocurrencies are only one application of blockchain technology, and their success or failure does not reflect on the underlying blockchain technology itself. Cryptocurrencies have been great business cases that will help us understand blockchain technology and how to improve it.”

CONCLUSIONS
It looks like every day there is a new company dealing with blockchain technology in travel: Pocketinns describes itself as “Airbnb on crypto-steroids” and, with around 50 thousand vacation rentals already listed, it may not be an overstatement. Winding Tree is a no-commission marketplace (only miners fees are due), Loyyal a reward platform with user-friendly-blockchain-based-model loyalty schemes. There there’s OwlNest, BedSwap, HotelP2P, etc. The list can go on and on, but the bottom line is that the technology is getting more mainstream every day. We may not be able to visualize all of its possible applications, but that never stopped technology to move forward. Blockchain technology could completely change the way we think about distribution. Or not. But it surely has the potential to do it. And, back to the Sorbillo’s pizza, that was only 7,50 €, but it was definitely worth 10,000 bitcoins!

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