Hotel technology specialist Triptease will organise its inaugural Direct Booking Summit: Asia-Pacific at The Fullerton Hotel Singapore from February 27-28, 2019.
The event will bring together hoteliers from across the region to discuss practical strategies to increase the number of bookings that come directly through the hotel website (as opposed to through OTAs).
The first Asia-Pacific edition of the summit, which has been running in Europe and the Americas for three years, will seek to address regional challenges, including the problem of rogue wholesale rates, mobile UX challenges and the struggle to maintain rate parity in a fragmented OTA market.
Triptease has also announced the first confirmed speakers for the event. Joining hosts Charlie Osmond and Alexandra Zubko so far will be:
– Sunish Sadasivan, vice president, e-commerce & revenue management, Chroma Hospitality
– Blessy Townes, group director, digital marketing, Discovery Hotels and Resorts
– Chetan Patel, vice president, strategic marketing and e-commerce, Onyx Hospitality Group
– Michael Belanger, vice president, revenue and distribution, GCP Hospitality (Gaw Capital Group)
– Marc Bichet, chief marketing officer, GCP Hospitality (Gaw Capital Group)
– Laura-Marie Arens, team lead, hotel ads, Asia-Pacific, Google
– Grant Colquhoun, senior director of account management Asia-Pacific, TripAdvisor
– Jeff Baars, group director of marketing & digital, Quest Apartment Hotels
– Thomas Wenger, managing director, Enderun Hospitality Management
– Aida Merdovic, director of online, Hamilton Island
Sunish Sadasivan will present on ‘The wholesaler challenge’, referring to the common occurrence of wholesale rates appearing on OTAs and breaking rate parity with hotels.
Google’s Laura-Marie Arens and TripAdvisor’s Grant Colquhoun will appear on a panel focused on ‘Driving more direct through metasearch’, where speakers will discuss how hotels can take advantage of the advertising channel.
The Summit’s 20 sessions will cover a diverse range of topics, from conversion analytics to advice on personalisation.
Hoteliers and vendors can register for tickets now at www.directbookingsummit.com/register. Hoteliers can save US$200 on a full-price ticket until November 30.
Ctrip, which says it sees 40 per cent of traffic opening its app in non-homebase destinations, is on a drive to make the “super app” the only one that users will use when they travel overseas.
In a video interview on the sidelines of ITB Asia last week, Victor Tseng, Ctrip’s vice president corporate affairs, told TTG Asia: “We’ve been seeing a tremendous diversification in how users are using Ctrip. Now they’re using Ctrip throughout their whole itinerary. That’s been an important initiative for us to continue to push, particularly when users are travelling overseas.”
Ctrip is expanding its capabilities for users overseas, so they don’t have to open another app to seek the right information, user reviews or booking tools.
Issues such as a slowdown in China’s economy, foreign currency fluctuations and Sino-US trade tiff are creating “a macro overhang”, Tseng admitted, but pointed to the recent Golden Week which delivered around nine per cent growth as a reason to be optimistic.
“When you look at nine per cent relative to other parts of the world in terms of travel spend, that’s still very, very good growth,” he said.
Meanwhile, Ctrip’s ambitions to expand and tap global market sources through Trip.com are “making very good inroads”, Tseng said. Currently, the key markets Trip.com is focusing on include South Korea, Hong Kong, Japan, Singapore, Australia and Russia.
Localisation is one of the ways Trip.com is taking to attract users to the site. In Singapore, for instance, the team works with local hotels to target staycations, which Singaporeans love.
Watch the full video to hear the full initiatives Ctrip is taking to stay ahead in the global industry here.