NoMo SoHo is the latest to claim an NFT first with its launch of a token with hotel stays attached.

The property, and its owner Sapir Corp, believe it's the first hotel in the United States to enable guests to book stays via blockchain technology.

The initiative uses SolidBlock’s platform and technology to offer guests NFTs, or non-fungible tokens, with three to six-night stays.

Hoteliers are obsessed with “bringing as many users as possible to my website.” Attracting quality traffic and not just any users is an essential part of a good direct sales strategy. To this end, most hotels develop more or less ambitious online marketing plans. Investments are often substantial, but the results tend to disappoint.

Not all users who visit your site end up booking a room. Many didn’t even come to make a booking but to look for a phone number or address, check out photos or clarify doubts about the facilities. Many others, however, didn’t manage to book despite trying to do so. Have you ever wondered how many visitors of each type you have? It’s hard to know, really. And it doesn’t help that website platforms or booking engines provide almost no information about what is known as the “booking funnel” or “conversion funnel”. One might say you’re essentially in the dark when it comes to this matter. As a result, the vast majority of hotels wrongly assume that users who don’t book on their website, simply aren’t willing or ready to do so.

Third-party cookies are going away. Unless marketers prepare, this move will disrupt the entire travel industry. While Apple stopped supporting cookies in its Safari browser back in 2017; Google will no longer support third-party cookies starting in 2023.

Given the fact that 64% of global web users use Chrome, Google’s shift away from third-party cookies will have a more profound impact on travel ad targeting. Now, 62% (according to a Phocuswright report) of companies are making it a top priority to have adapted ad strategies ready for a cookieless world.

ast year, Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky said that the single-biggest challenge for the company was thinking like a startup, despite Airbnb’s tremendous growth over the last decade. The pandemic, he said, spurred the need to simplify and focus to survive. Since, Airbnb has put out hundreds of new features.

Today, that continues with Airbnb’s latest feature updates. The biggest changes include a new search based on category, the ability to book two listings in one flow for stays over a week and AirCover for guests, which is basically Airbnb-provided travel insurance.

In what has become a familiar cadence of biannual comprehensive updates, Airbnb is releasing the newest version of its platform, described as “the biggest change to Airbnb in a decade.”

In 2021, Airbnb also released widespread revisions in May and again in November. 

One of the most interesting updates in the “Airbnb 2022 Summer Release” is a feature to split bookings for stays of at least one week and up to six months between two properties – creating a solution to address the growing demand for longer stays.

In a call with financial analysts last week to review the company’s Q1 2022 earnings report, co-founder and CEO Brian Chesky said: “Stays of a month or longer continue to be our fastest-growing category by tripling compared to 2019. And nearly half of our nights booked in Q1 were for stays of a week or longer and one in five nights booked were for stays of a month or longer.”

Consumers are increasingly interested in making purchases of virtual goods and experiences, according to a study.

Accenture surveyed more than 11,000 consumers across 16 countries to reveal that 64% have already purchased a virtual product or enjoyed a virtual experience in the past year.

The research reveals that the figure is expected to rise with 83% of consumers interested in making purchases via the metaverse.

It adds that 42% of consumers have visited a retailer in the virtual world to seek advice, make a purchase or explore products and 56% say they plan to.

Now a new paper from the University of Waterloo in Ontario suggests that AI models should also be able to do this—a process the researchers call “less than one”-shot, or LO-shot, learning. In other words, an AI model should be able to accurately recognize more objects than the number of examples it was trained on. That could be a big deal for a field that has grown increasingly expensive and inaccessible as the data sets used become ever larger.

Der Button zum Abschluss der Buchungsstrecke von Booking.com ist uns schon länger ein Dorn im Auge. Der nach eigenen Angaben weltweite Marktführer für Online-Reisen hält entgegen dem Wortlaut des § 312j BGB den lapidaren Hinweis „Buchung abschließen“ für rechtsverbindlich und die Verbraucher für hinreichend geschützt. Das ist aus unserer Sicht rechtsfehlerhaft und damit auch wettbewerblich unlauter. Mit meinem Blogpost „Vorknöpfen“ habe ich mich bereits am 29. Oktober 2018 klar positioniert

Uber is moving even closer to capturing the end-to-end travel journey by adding trains and car rentals and soon flights and hotels to the Uber app in the United Kingdom.

Starting this summer, Uber users in the U.K. will be able to book intercity rail and coach tickets via the app. The ride-share company is also rolling out access to rental cars.

Later this year, Uber will introduce flights to the app, followed by hotels, effectively covering each step of door-to-door travel.

HomeToGo acquired e-domizil for $45 million to accelerate a strategy shift that may end up working for holiday homes, but has failed elsewhere.

“For the past decade, hoteliers have been on the receiving end of unacceptable behavior by dominant OTAs on a ‘take it or leave it’ basis. Today’s agreement on the DMA gives a clear signal to digital giants: behave like partners, and not gatekeepers, towards consumers and business users,” said the Chairman of HOTREC Working Group on Distribution, Markus Luthe.

According to HOTREC, the three main players in the OTA market are Booking Holding, Expedia Group and to a lesser extent HRS Group, with an aggregated market share of 92 percent. Booking.com holds a share of 68.4 percent in the OTA market and its dominance has been rising over the last six years by more than 8 percent.

En tant qu’acteur cloud suisse et indépendant et lanceur d’alerte dans l’affaire du « Public Clouds Confederation », nous faisons fréquemment face à des préoccupations liées à la confidentialité, la sécurité et la souveraineté des données. Afin d’y répondre de manière objective, nous sommes allés à la rencontre de Solange Ghernaouti, Prof. Dr. et experte internationale en cybersécurité à l’Université de Lausanne, Directrice du Swiss cybersécurity Advisory & Research Group, Présidente de la Fondation SGH – Institut de recherche Cybermonde et Membre de l’Académie suisse des sciences techniques, pour lui poser les questions que nous recevons  régulièrement via notre support et nos réseaux sociaux.

Le Conseil fédéral veut transformer le Centre national pour la cybersécurité en office fédéral, avec un accroissement des ressources prévu. Les spécialistes saluent cette annonce, mais formulent en parallèle plusieurs exigences précises

Google Maps has unveiled an update enabling users to experience an immersive view of locations.

The update will begin rolling out later this year in Los Angeles, London, New York, San Francisco and Tokyo with further cities to come.

The company says the artificial intelligence-driven functionality helps users explore and get a feel for neighborhoods, landmarks and other sites and attractions without having to be there.

You might not need to hop on a plane to travel in the near future. 5G can power a new kind of tourism, one that allows virtual travel to Venice, Seoul or even the Pompeii of the past.

The requests received through your booking engine provide you with a lot of valuable information.

Metaverse travel is the next big thing to hit the travel industry, even if we aren’t there yet. Like space tourism, if you build the idea, the fans will follow. However, unlike taking travelers to some distant space ship for an overnight bunking amid the stars, the metaverse is already here. It just needs refining to become a hit with a passionate traveling public.

To that end, citizenM, a chic brand in luxury hospitality is acquiring a spot in “The Sandbox,” a popular decentralized gaming virtual world where users will eventually be able to explore a virtual hotel and interact with other users for such things as NFTs, that can be purchased in the digital space.

Hotel guest behavior will never be the same from COVID-19 and, while 2022 is a recovery year, hotels must start to prioritize certain technologies as these transitions take hold. As we will demonstrate, many of the influences on changing guest behavior are now being driven by short-term rentals and alternative providers, and not just leading hotel brands. That means it’s just as much defense as it is offense. For the next two business quarters, flexibility is necessary in accommodating guests who prefer new methods of interacting with a hotel versus those that still want more traditional service. 

CitizenM plans to build a hotel in the metaverse via the Sandbox, an online space where people simulate activities.

The online travel market is expected to grow 18% in 2022 to $76.7 billion, a figure just shy of 2019 gross bookings, new research from Phocuswright reveals.

According to the U.S. Online Travel Agency Market Report 2021-2025, OTA gross bookings are on track to surpass pre-pandemic levels in 2023, though international travel will continue to recover slower than domestic.

According to a report from Apptopia, Hopper grew 494% in 2021, overtaking Airbnb as the leader in market share by monthly active users.

Google has added new visibility to its free hotel booking links feature. Take advantage of these free links on Search and Google Maps.

OTAs showed welcome recovery in 2021, buoyed by continued strength in domestic travel. After ending 2020 down 58%, U.S. OTA bookings nearly doubled despite the ups and downs of another pandemic year. According to Phocuswright’s latest travel research report on the segment U.S. Online Travel Agency Market Report 2021-2025, OTAs delivered $65.2 billion in gross bookings in 2021, reaching 82% of pre-pandemic levels (2019).