It seems like everyone uses social networks now, but that doesn't mean they trust such platforms. According to industry sources, the majority of internet users are concerned about their privacy on social media, especially older consumers.
The main result of the implementation of Europe’s Digital Marketing Act (DMA) for hotels is that they have lost visibility in the markets affected by the DMA, thus losing direct sales capacity, reducing their profitability and increasing their dependence on OTAs.
Key takeaways
The EU is pushing gatekeepers to comply with DMA rules to create a fairer market. However, this hurts hotels by increasing intermediation costs, stifling direct sales, and limiting their profitability and independence; The user experience on Google's hotel search results page has become less clear and intuitive, requiring more clicks. This pushes users to buy through intermediaries rather than directly from producers, reducing clarity, ease, competitiveness and efficiency for all parties; OTAs like Booking.com, especially in Europe, are becoming more visible in Google search results with the introduction of DMA. It's hard to pin down exact numbers, but a significant portion, if not all, of the 30% drop in hotel clicks is likely going to intermediaries.
Artificial intelligence is revolutionizing not only traditional sectors but also reshaping the very essence of hospitality and service industries. The potential for transformation is vast, yet it’s imperative to advance cautiously, striking a delicate balance between technological advancement and preserving the human touch, which remains the cornerstone of the service sector. As we navigate this paradigm shift, let’s try to understand the boundaries and challenges of AI application and adhere to strategic investment guidelines. Doing so not only unlocks the boundless potential AI holds but also addresses the legitimate concerns facing many stakeholders in these industries.
Online travel agencies based in the United States maintained double-digit year-over-year gains in 2023, passing the $100 billion mark for the first time.
According to Phocuswright’s latest research on the segment U.S. Online Travel Agency Market Report 2023-2027, strong travel demand and high prices lifted all segments, especially hotel - OTAs' bread and butter.
It was also a year that the nation's largest OTA, Expedia, slightly decelerated as it established a new platform to consolidate all its brands. Still, demand was enough to enable Expedia, Booking and their other brands (Travelocity, Hotels.com, Priceline, etc.) to outperform the market and maintain their 21% share of U.S. travel gross bookings.
Google continue de développer Gemini. Le générateur de texte par IA, dont le modèle de langage est classé en 4e position ce mois-ci dans la Chatbot Arena, peut désormais se connecter aux applications de Google. Cette nouvelle capacité représente un atout majeur dans sa rivalité avec ChatGPT. On fait le point !
Les extensions débarquent sur Gemini Ce 30 avril, par le biais d’une note de blog, Google a annoncé l’arrivée d’extensions pour Gemini dans plusieurs pays, dont la France. Celles-ci permettront aux utilisateurs de connecter l’agent conversationnel aux outils Google tels que Gmail, Google Docs, Google Maps ou encore YouTube.
Google présente ainsi quelques exemples d’utilisation : Par exemple, si vous et vos amis planifiez un voyage, vous pouvez demander à Gemini de retrouver les dates dans Gmail qui conviennent à tout le monde, de rechercher des informations sur les vols et les hôtels en fonction de ces dates et de ce lieu, de trouver des vidéos YouTube sur ce qu’il faut emporter, et de résumer la liste de bagages mentionnée dans cette vidéo – le tout dans une seule conversation. » Les extensions sont d’ores et déjà disponibles en France.
Das Jungfraujoch im Berner Oberland ist weltberühmt. Aber: Auch eine Weltattraktion will vermarktet sein – in China anders als in Skandinavien, in den USA anders als in Korea. Keine einfache Ausgangslage für die Tourismusdestination.
Genau hier kommt das Programm des Berner Start-ups Hyll AG ins Spiel. Mittels künstlicher Intelligenz generiert dieses in Sekundenschnelle Texte für die Website und Instagram-Posts – in 180 Sprachen und angepasst auf die Bedürfnisse der jeweiligen Länder.
The report, based on data from nearly 5,000 independent hotels and small hotel groups in Europe and Asia, offers valuable insights for hoteliers adapting to the changing digital scene. It emphasizes the resurgence of international travel, particularly in Europe, where it comprised 69% of online booking revenue in 2023, contrasting with Asia's 18%.
Booking.com is broadening its experiences offerings through a strategic partnership with Hong Kong-based tours and activities platform Klook.
Travelers can now access Klook’s attractions directly on Booking.com. Currently, there are instantly bookable experiences from more than 175 cities across 30 markets live on the Amsterdam-based online travel agency. The majority are in Asia and Oceania.
The Klook deal follows the Booking Holdings-owned brand's previous endeavors to capture share of the tours and activities segment.
Generative artificial intelligence has been a hot topic in travel for more than a year now, but what of the industry's longer term relationship with AI?
Lufthansa Innovation Hub (LIH) has looked into the investment strategies of 60 corporations in travel to uncover whether investment in the technology is in line with the excitement about it from the technology industry more widely.
To assess the investment level, the innovation hub's research arm TNMT gathered investment data on 60 corporations in travel and mobility technology and filtered out investments into companies that were not based on a specific key technology.
The study, which cuts across hospitality, ground transportation, aviation and online travel, reveals that from 2018 to 2023 AI and machine learning represented 65% of investment.
“Optimising presence in metasearch engines” is the desire of all hotels, which in layman’s language translates into a twofold desire: to increase sales generated from metasearch targets and increase profitability by reducing costs… in other words, to make the channel more efficient.
In order to tackle this “meta search engine optimisation” you need:
Knowledge of the metasearch funnel. For many, the metasearch funnel is a black box that prevents them from identifying and implementing opportunities for improvement. Transparent access to data. The information available to hotels is often poor, and few hoteliers have a good understanding of their own campaign numbers beyond basic data, such as number of clicks, conversion rate, bookings or production generated.
Some travel companies have seen changes in search results following Google’s latest update, which addresses in part “low quality AI-generated content that’s designed to attract clicks.”
Steve Singh has been mulling the concept of the Perfect Trip in business travel for more than 10 years.
The co-founder and former CEO of Concur, which sold to SAP in 2014 for $8.3 billion, believes a trip where a traveler’s data is drawn from a single repository and can be shared across all travel suppliers to ensure a smooth and joined up journey is now more possible than ever.
The pieces of the puzzle are falling into place, Singh said, which is why he chose, alongside a group of investors, to acquire Direct Travel earlier this month.
Entre novembre 2022 et mai 2023, ChatGPT a connu une progression exponentielle. Le chatbot, qui a dépassé la barre des 100 millions d’utilisateurs à peine deux mois après son lancement, a atteint un pic de 1,81 milliard de visites en mai. Par la suite, la courbe de trafic a diminué avant de se stabiliser et de remonter progressivement.
Entre mars 2023 et mars 2024, le trafic de ChatGPT a augmenté de 13 %. Plus remarquable encore, il est presque revenu à son niveau de mai 2023, s’établissant à 1,77 milliard de visites au cours du mois dernier.
Following several months of adaptation, on the 19th of January Google began to roll out changes it made in order to comply with DMA (Digital Markets Act) requirements; a roll-out that finished on the 7th of March.
Just days after the first changes were implemented, we began to see how they influenced hotel campaigns in Google Hotel Ads. Three months on, results for hotels are still getting worse:
Just over three months following implementation, click-through data has shown a 30% decrease in traffic volume in EU markets affected by DMA implementation compared to those markets where DMA has not been implemented. The graph below shows the Google Hotel Ads click differential between regions affected by the DMA vs. those not affected, revealing a click volume drop of 30%.
The numbers were big. The prospects for an artificial intelligence-powered future looked bright. And over an hour-long call with financial analysts, Booking Holdings CEO Glen Fogel didn’t speak once about European regulators.
Count this as a good earnings report.
“I am pleased to report a strong start to 2024,” an upbeat Fogel said Thursday to open the call on first quarter earnings. “Our travelers booked nearly 300 million room nights across our platforms in the first quarter, which exceeded our expectations and grew 9% year over year.”
First quarter revenues of $4.4 billion represented a 17% increase over the same period last year. Adjusted EBITDA hit $898 million, an increase of 53%, and net income of $776 million was nearly three times higher than Q1 in 2023.
Question: qu’est-ce qui fonctionne en matière de cybersécurité en Suisse? Réponse: quasiment rien. Lundi matin, les autorités ont tiré un bilan alarmant de la situation. A peine plus de cent jours après sa création, l’Office fédéral de la cybersécurité (OFCS) a exposé toutes les carences helvétiques face aux hackers malveillants, des manquements qui touchent particulièrement le monde de l’économie. Les PME sont ainsi des cibles beaucoup trop faciles pour les cybercriminels qui les harcèlent.
This blog post is the second in a three-part series on digital twins. The first post explained how generative AI and digital twins make a powerful pairing. The third post in the series will explore an in-depth case study on how generative AI and digital twins could be used to enhance customer experience.
Quand il est question de marketing lié au tourisme, il existe plusieurs éléments à considérer et c’est encore plus vrai en 2024 alors que l’attention du consommateur se retrouve fractionnée sur une multitude de plateformes et outils, hors ligne et en ligne. Des contenus organiques à la publicité sur Google ou les médias sociaux en passant par l’envoi d’infolettres, la rédaction d’articles de blogues ou des collaborations avec des influenceurs, on voit ainsi une panoplie d’approches pour attirer le voyageur vers notre destination, vers notre prestation touristique.
Skift Research’s latest report analyzes the distribution channels bidding for hotel bookings on the largest and most comprehensive metasearch engine in travel: Google Hotels.
We web-scraped more than 20,000 hotel listings across the U.S., Europe, Asia Pacific and Middle East & Africa. And we collected more than 520,000 data points to see which online travel agencies (OTAs) and direct sites are bidding for bookings and at what prices.
We scraped data across both Google’s sponsored results (paid listings) and Google’s recently introduced organic auction (where any site can list for free with the aid of a tech partner).
Vous l'aurez peut-être remarqué, depuis le 18 avril 2024 on note la présence de deux nouvelles fonctionnalités importantes sur Facebook, Instagram, Messenger et Whatsapp, les applications phares de Meta. Je parle bien sûr de l'avènement de Llama 3, son tout
Google is launching new and expanded features in its Maps and Search functions to help travelers find more sustainable ways to get around — displaying walking routes alongside driving directions, offering cleaner rail alternatives to air travel and identifying the most convenient locations for electric vehicle charging stations.
Available in the coming weeks in walkable cities like Amsterdam, Barcelona, London, Paris and Rome are new features in Maps that will show public transit or walking options alongside the driving routes users request.
PhocusWire first produced this visualization of digital travel company quarterly revenues in November 2019.
Within months, of course, the COVID pandemic brought most of the world to a standstill, putting the brakes on what had been a steady uptick in revenue for many travel brands.
For about two years thereafter, the industry saw a series of fits and starts as variants of the virus spiked every few months, causing setbacks to a sustained recovery. Geo-political conflicts, primarily the Russian invasion of Ukraine and, last fall, the latest war between Israel and Hamas, have also had an impact.
But for the most part, 2023 seemed to be a year of good fortunes for digital travel’s publicly-traded companies.
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