A few weeks back, I spoke at a conference organized by Travelclick and IDeaS in Mumbai, primarily about how social media and online reviews are changing the landscape of hotel revenue management.
The audience at the event were mostly folks from a number of hotel revenue, marketing, sales, and corporate strategy departments.
After the talk (presentation embedded below), I spoke with a number of people in the audience on the topic and collated a few of the themes coming up in the discussions:
1. There are still hotels in India that perform revenue management in an Excel spreadsheet. But, they do realize the potential and need of a revenue management tool/application. When they grow in terms of number of hotels, they are planning to adopt a revenue management software.
2. Majority of the revenue managers are new to the concept of linking social media and revenue management.
3. Online reputation management firms like Revinate, ReviewPro, and TrustYou have a wide opportunity in the Indian hospitality sector, with a number of major global hotel brands opening properties (or expanding operations).
4. New social media channels such as Twitter's Vine and Quora are on the radar of social media operatives.
5. An interesting question asked from one of the attendees: The #1 reason why people leave a hotel website is to check the hotel's review in other channels/websites. This can be solved by bringing the hotel's review (from other channels) into the host website. But, by doing this, aren't hoteliers increasing the probability of the consumer to read a negative review about the hotel? What is your answer to this?
6. Brand poaching is still commonplace among Indian hoteliers in search. When searching for a hotel name, OTAs show up in the sponsored ad space followed by the hotel's website as the first search item in result. Google travel industry head, Siddarth Dabhade, says such activity can be curtailed if the hotel's brand name is trademarked.