The owners and general managers of some of the world's most exclusive hotels have revealed their predictions for the future of tourism.<\/p>\n
Worldhotels asked key representatives of its 500 plus member properties all over the globe to take part in a survey and to indicate their expectations on new trends in key areas such as business growth, environment, customer expectation, customers' booking behavior, Internet booking and customer relationship management. A total of 116 questionnaires were returned and the results show an upbeat mood amongst the hoteliers who expect revenue to continue to increase in the next few years.<\/p>\n
A total of 84% of the owners and managers of the Worldhotels portfolio surveyed believe that the current positive trading conditions will continue for at least the next three years. In addition, 88% expect their REVPAR to be higher in 2008, due to factors such as improved yield management, advanced revenue strategies or increased demand.<\/p>\n
Environmental concerns are currently dominating the media and the Worldhotels survey revealed that hoteliers see ecotourism as another way of increasing business. When asked, 92% anticipate the addressing of environmental factors to improve business, while 77% feel that this would raise profitability. Working with suppliers to establish a 'green' supply chain was picked out as the issue they believe customers felt the most strongly about.<\/p>\n
Looking to meet customers' expectations is a key factor in running a hotel; so the survey asked hoteliers what they felt were the most important considerations for business travellers. Offering the Best Available Rate topped the list for 82% of those questioned. Participants also rated free wireless Internet access (78%) and functionalities of the hotel website (74%) as very important.<\/p>\n
The importance of the Internet in helping hotels to generate revenue was again highlighted when looking at customer booking behavior. A total of 86% of Worldhotels hoteliers surveyed think that in the next three years consumers will use hotel websites in preference to online travel agents. At the same time, 57% believe that control over rates inventory will shift to the hotel industry during the next three years. This finding compares to 27% who feel it would shift towards distribution channels and 16% who do not expect any change.<\/p>\n
Before or after the stay of any guest, CRM is often seen as a crucial way of guaranteeing customers book repeat stays. This was confirmed in the survey with 86% of those asked agreeing that CRM will be of great importance for the hotel industry in the next three years.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
The owners and general managers of some of the world's most exclusive hotels have revealed their predictions for the future of tourism.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12723],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32845","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-english"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32845","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=32845"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32845\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=32845"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=32845"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.chinahospitalitynews.com\/cn\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=32845"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}