Best of 2016 in Hotel Marketing, the brands and topics that took our attention

Jan 02, 2017

Hello ,

Wishing you a really really happy 2017 (because 2016 deserved to end). I took a look at all the hotel marketing headlines of 2016 and what took most of our attention and tried to analyse the year as best as I could. Some interesting changes in trends and topics that I thought you'd like to read about.

- Martin

what we read most.

We want better solutions

Topping the list in 2016 was new solutions being offered to hotel marketers, new revenue management solutions, communications platforms, chatbots and new distribution channels came out on top. The only issue with that is that most of those solutions were being offered by existing big brands such as Expedia and Booking.com and I believe they skewed the results. Still it does show interest for innovation which is great. My only wish is that we'd see more of the smaller companies and startups who are trying to push the envelope.

Direct Bookings are hot

A full quarter of the top 60 list was about increasing direct revenue which shows that we've not yet found the a comfortable mix on hotel distribution. Hoteliers are still trying to find better solutions. Several articles still talk about a "war between hotels and OTAs" which in my opinion is pushing it a little too far. But suffice it to say, there seems to be a need to solve that problem. In addition to the mentions of direct booking one of the topics that caught hoteliers was everything related to OTA conflicts and controversy which proves the point.

SEE THE ARTICLE

OTAs innovated and we were curious

Interestingly in third place was everything related to how to improve one's distribution on on OTAs and how OTAs are changing their search algorithms and data. So on the one hand we want to get more out of OTAs and on the other we want more direct. While we could say hotel marketers want to eat their cake and still have it, I think it is more about finding a balanced and less dependent distribution mix.

AND SEE THE CHART

Airbnb had us worried

Airbnb is increasingly seen as a threat by hoteliers. There is no doubt they are disrupting the market, this year was a little more agressive than last year with Airbnb being seen as a more direct threat. The reality is they are taking, albeit a small, share of hotel revenue and hotel marketers need to get better at improving product and marketing not to loose too much revenue.

What happened to Metasearch?

The interest for metasearch seems to have waned dramatically, despite the changes in the industry it seems it wasn't the hottest topic. Not sure if that means there's a consolidation phase starting (seems like it already started) or that, like reviews, it has become part of the daily routine and isn't innovating.

GET THE WHOLE STORY

And the winning brands are...

I recommend you check out the entire article on my blog, watch the charts and see the whole story. I've also linked to all the articles on HotelMarketing so you can catch up on anything you may have missed. As to the brands, 66% of the top articles were branded! The winners were:
Booking.com 32%
Expedia 20%
Google 17%
Airbnb 12%

AND MORE

other good stuff.