B2B accommodation provider WebBeds has launched the WebBeds Destination Index (WBDI), a tool that tracks hotel booking trends weekly to provide an overview of the market and offer basis for future projections.
The launch of the WBDI, said WebBeds, is a show of solidarity for Hong Kong’s struggling travel and hospitality industry, coming at a critical time when travel and accommodation providers need reliable data to work with.
WebBeds’ CCO Sun Kok Sheng said: “This insightful and intuitive new tool will allow the city’s hoteliers and tourism operators to cut through the confusion and gain a clear picture of the situation.”
WBDI delivers this by measuring a wide range of key performance indicators, including the number of bookings, total transaction value, room nights, and average daily rate; and benchmarking them against a 52-week average. It divides Hong Kong into four distinct areas – Kowloon, Hong Kong Island, Lantau Island and Others – and categorises hotels by their star rating, so each hotel can understand exactly how their sector is faring.
Through aggregating these data, WBDI creates an overall Market Index that will benefit the entire travel trade. WebBeds’ in-house data and analytics team have also crafted a series of future projections based on these trends and curated various strategies for execution.
After Hong Kong, the WBDI will be rolled out progressively across selected destinations in Asia-Pacific.
WebBeds’ CEO Daryl Lee commented: “We have been in conversation with a lot of our hotel partners in different parts of the world and will be launching WBDI across Asia in coming months. The gist is to give them better insights into what’s out there, who’s looking at their destination, their location and their hotel. Moreover, the index offers great access to broad data and analytics on what’s working and what’s not.”
Looking ahead, WebBeds is expected to play a more active role in destination marketing, according to Lee. Already, the B2B accommodation supplier has worked with Tourism Switzerland to stage roadshows in Singapore, Malaysia, Thailand and Indonesia to drive summer traffic, as well as sealing an MoU with Sichuan Tourism Investment JinJiang Hotel (STIJH) and partnering with Macau Government Tourism Office to attract arrivals from Indonesia.
Lee added: “In fact, a lot of NTOs do B2C marketing, but the activation is incomplete unless every single player like agents and airlines (also come into) the landscape… We have a couple more projects in the pipeline, so watch this space.”
– Additional reporting from Prudence Lui
