TRAVEL TECHNOLOGY
Expedia Group | July 01, 2022
On June 30, Expedia Group, the leading travel technology platform, announced the launch of the new Bilt Travel Portal in collaboration with Bilt Rewards. It will be available exclusively to Bilt Rewards members. Members of Bilt Rewards can use their Bilt points to cover all or a portion of the cost of their next vacation and can book every aspect of their trip directly through the Bilt Rewards app, from flights to hotels and even theme park or Broadway show tickets.
Bilt members can access more than 700,000 properties, 500 airlines, 120 car rental companies, and thousands of activities worldwide, thanks to Expedia Group's White Label Template technology. 1 White Label Template includes all of the functionality of the Expedia.com site, as well as tools and customer support to assist Bilt members with questions or bookings. Expedia Group's expert knowledge of the travel industry is combined with a nearly $2 billion annual investment in new technology innovation to meet the changing needs and demands of both partners and travelers.
Travel is among the most important experiences to our members, who don’t want to be limited when it comes to using their hard-earned loyalty points, said Bilt Rewards Founder and CEO Ankur Jain. Partnering with Expedia Group enables us to give members a one-stop-shop with access to endless travel options, along with the easy integration to create a seamless booking experience.
“We’re excited to power the Bilt Travel Portal, and to help the Bilt Rewards members build the vacation of their dreams simply by paying rent,Our innovative solutions provide Bilt Rewards with technology they need to build a wonderful experience and offer an unparalleled amount of travel options to their members.”
-Christian Gerron, senior vice president, Media & Brand Partnerships, Expedia Group.
Bilt Rewards members can access the Bilt Travel Portal powered by Expedia Group by logging into the Bilt Rewards app or visiting travel.biltrewards.com and entering their Bilt Rewards login credentials to view available travel supply and booking options.
When booking in real-time, members will be able to see the value of their Bilt points, with 10,000 Bilt points equaling $125 in travel credits. Members will also earn 2x points for bookings made through the Bilt Travel Portal with their Bilt Mastercard, and 1x point for bookings made with another form of payment.
Bilt Rewards, which will be available in June 2021, is the first-ever loyalty program and co-brand credit card for renters, allowing 109 million renters in the United States to earn points on their largest monthly expense with no fees. Renters can access the free Bilt Rewards loyalty program by living within the Bilt Rewards Alliance, a network of over 2 million rental units in the United States, or by using the Bilt Mastercard, the first credit card that can be used to pay rent with no transaction fees at any rental unit in the United States.
In addition, Bilt members have access to one of the most valuable rewards programs available, with the ability to redeem points for travel, boutique fitness classes, limited-edition art, and home décor, as well as rent credits and even a down payment on a future home. Members now have access to thousands of new options for redeeming their points thanks to the addition of the Bilt Travel Portal powered by Expedia Group, further increasing the value of Bilt's
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COMMERCIAL TRAVEL,HOSPITALITY TRENDS
Hilton | July 27, 2022
Hilton is shaking up hotel marketing and advertising with the announcement of its first global brand platform that identifies what has been missing from hotel marketing – the hotel stay.“Hilton. For the Stay” places the hotel front and center, elevating the role and importance of the stay at a time when lodging advertising is a sea of sameness, featuring overused destinations, cliché walks on the beach and generic descriptions of travel.
Hilton is debuting “It Matters Where You Stay,” a new advertising campaign to introduce the platform, using humor to push against some of the common but unspoken pitfalls of travel, boldly poking fun at what can go wrong when booking or on a trip. The campaign also features the multi-faceted businesswoman and philanthropist Paris Hilton, who grew up living in and staying in numerous Hilton hotels across the world, which gave her a unique exposure to the hotel business early on. Her role in the campaign is inspired in part by the legacy of her family, whose belief in the power of travel and the hotel stay to connect people and cultures continues to motivate Hilton Team Members around the world today.
In addition to Paris, renowned actor Catherine O’Hara lends her voice to the campaign, with TV commercials first airing in the U.S. on July 25 and audio rolling out shortly thereafter.
“Today, as we make company history with Hilton’s first brand platform, we’re reminding guests that at the heart of a great trip is a great stay and that it’s just different when that stay is with Hilton, As we enter this next era of travel, it has never been more important to consider where you stay – and Hilton is uniquely committed to making sure your stay is everything you need it to be.”
-Mark Weinstein, Chief Marketing Officer, Hilton.
Hilton and TBWA\Chiat\Day New York, Hilton’s agency since 2017, used TBWA’s Disruption methodology to architect the bold new vision, born from the insight the hospitality industry has become almost entirely focused on the destination, not the stay itself. Consumer research uncovered “the Stay,” and being cared for, are the crucial elements that can make or break any trip. So, Hilton is doubling down on its new brand platform to prove to its guests that truly, “it matters where you stay.” The platform will permeate nearly every consumer touchpoint, from broad-reaching consumer advertising through the travel planning process and the guests’ stay with Hilton, as well as post-stay.
With ‘Hilton. For the Stay,’ we are more fully connecting our external customer marketing to our purpose – staking our rightful claim that Hilton owns the Stay,” said Weinstein. “The idea of the Stay was incredibly natural to Hilton, and yet no one else was talking about it. As others tout the generic virtues of travel, minimize the role of the hotel and the hotel team members, and romanticize the destination, through our platform and the campaign it inspires, we’re reminding travelers that ‘It Matters Where You Stay’ and boldly affirming ‘Hilton. For the Stay.’
“IT MATTERS WHERE YOU STAY” CAMPAIGN
The advertising creative has a fun, relatable tone in which Hilton breaks from the formulaic approach seen across the industry, highlighting the benefits Hilton offers to make guests feel cared for – from amazing service and pet-friendly travel to the choices available in the Hilton Honors app to skip the front desk and personalize your stay, to Confirmed Connecting Rooms by Hilton and more.
In one of the featured TV spots, “Haunted,” the brand pokes fun at what can go wrong when booking a vacation rental – depicting a family showing up to a hilariously creepy property that wasn’t exactly as advertised.
“Confirmed Together” zeroes in on a unique Hilton feature that addresses a very real pain point of family travel, the importance of securing connected rooms at the time of booking.
And in “Extra Storage,” Paris Hilton has an innovative solution for her extra luggage.
The campaign includes television, audio, social media, print, out of home, spanning 13 commercials and bespoke social executions. It will launch first in the U.S. followed closely by the U.K. and select Asia-Pacific and Middle East markets. Hilton tapped a world-class creative team to bring this global campaign to life, including A-list commercial director Matt Aselton of Arts & Sciences.
To extend the brand platform, Hilton will lean into social media, experiential and influencers. Across Facebook, Instagram, TikTok and Twitter, Hilton will engage in an already robust conversation around travel and trip disasters by helping travelers have a better stay – whether planning for a future trip or helping rescue a trip that has gone off the rails. Hilton has also partnered with familiar voices on social media to bring “Hilton. For the Stay” to life.
“In developing the campaign, we were inspired by showing the realness of travel; the tensions, the hardships, the too-high expectations. It goes against convention in the hospitality category and it’s an exciting space for the brand to own,”
-Amy Ferguson, Chief Creative Officer, TBWA\Chiat\Day New York.
For more than 100 years, Hilton has been a pioneer in the hospitality industry, and that has never been more evident than the past two years. “Hilton. For the Stay” encompasses the brand’s world-class hospitality; from innovations such as Digital Key Share, Confirmed Connecting Rooms, early confirmation of upgraded rooms for Hilton Honors members and through thoughtful service, proving out that it matters where you stay.
More information on “Hilton. For the Stay” and “It Matters Where You Stay” is available at Stories.Hilton.com/ForTheStay. To start planning for future stays and earn exclusive perks, visit Hilton.com and sign up for Hilton Honors – it’s free and easy to join.
About Hilton
Hilton (NYSE: HLT) is a leading global hospitality company with a portfolio of 18 world-class brands comprising nearly 6,900 properties and nearly 1.1 million rooms, in 122 countries and territories. Dedicated to fulfilling its founding vision to fill the earth with the light and warmth of hospitality, Hilton has welcomed more than 3 billion guests in its more than 100-year history, earned a top spot on Fortune's 100 Best Companies to Work For list and been recognized as a global leader on the Dow Jones Sustainability Indices for five consecutive years. Hilton has introduced several industry-leading technology enhancements to improve the guest experience, including Digital Key Share, automated complimentary room upgrades and the ability to book confirmed connecting rooms. Through the award-winning guest loyalty program Hilton Honors, the nearly 133 million members who book directly with Hilton can earn Points for hotel stays and experiences money can't buy. With the free Hilton Honors app, guests can book their stay, select their room, check in, unlock their door with a Digital Key and check out, all from their smartphone. Visit stories.hilton.com for more information, and connect with Hilton on Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and YouTube.
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COMMERCIAL TRAVEL,HOSPITALITY TRENDS
ROOMDEX | September 20, 2022
ROOMDEX, a pioneer in automated hotel upselling solutions, announces that Pandox, a leading hotel company that has ownership in 156 hotels across the globe, activated ROOMDEX’s Upgrade Optimizer software in two hotels, including:“We've always worked with a tool for upselling, but they all required some amount of human labor. So, we were looking for something else, something that was better,” said Jens Egemalm, Distribution Director for Pandox Operations Hotel, “One of my colleagues at the revenue center was doing research on upsell tools in the MEWS marketplace and found ROOMDEX. It was one of the few that was a fully automated system. We liked the simplicity of it, and that led to the first call.”
ROOMDEX Upsell Automation is a set-it-and-forget-it solution that delivers the lowest cost revenue a hotel can generate. ROOMDEX’s Upgrade Optimize combines 2-way integration with a proprietary algorithm to generate True Availability, forecasting inventory usage so there are no operational conflicts. With ROOMDEX, hotel can effortlessly sell and guarantee pre-arrival offers for Room Upgrades, Early Check-in, Late Departure and Guest Services (Breakfast, Parking, etc.).
“In terms of performance, we had high expectations because it was sold to us that it would perform well. And it did. We didn't have to wait one or two weeks before it started performing – it started performing directly. Within just a few days of one of the properties going live, we had more than €5000 worth of upsells. And it’s been consistent – we haven't gone any day without any upsells. Plus, our ROI is higher than what was promised or expected. We are very happy with that.”
ROOMDEX pilot hotels have reported an average of $75 of additional room product up-sell revenue per up-sold stay since using the hotel upsell tool. Upgrade OptimizerTM room revenue is improving RevPar and boosting ADR when hotels need it most.
“We have been very happy with our partnership with MEWS and their app marketplace,Hotel groups like Pandox, who are very experienced in both cloud technology and the upselling space, have found it very easy to run a free trial of ROOMDEX through MEWS. ”
-Jos Schaap, CEO and Co-Founder of ROOMDEX,
About ROOMDEX
ROOMDEX’s hotel upsell software, “Upgrade Optimizer,” automates, monetizes and ultimately simplifies the hotel room upgrade process by putting the power of choice in the hotel guest’s hands. Automation is the cornerstone of our pioneering hotel optimization platform. ROOMDEX uses hotel reservation, guest data and its proprietary persona and price algorithms to deliver personalized digital offers, greatly enhancing the guest experience. The hotel upsell tool relieves hoteliers of the labor time required by other upselling solutions while delivering high margin revenue and a substantial ROI. The company was founded by Jos Schaap, Pierre Boettner and Denis Bajet, three industry veterans (Ex. MICROS-OPERA (now Oracle Hospitality), StayNTouch, Shiji and Nor1). ROOMDEX leverages that 90 years of hotel software innovation experience in PMS, integrations, revenue management, BI, mobile, self-service and upgrade optimization software. Since founding in spring of 2020, ROOMDEX has signed on more than 100 hotels with 9,000 rooms across the U.S., U.K. and Europe.
About Pandox
Pandox is a leading owner of hotel properties in Northern Europe with a focus on sizeable hotels in key leisure and corporate destinations. Pandox’s hotel property portfolio currently comprises 156 hotels with approximately 35,500 hotel rooms in 15 countries. Pandox’s business is organised into Property management, which comprises hotel properties leased on a long-term basis to market leading regional hotel operators and leading international hotel operators, and Operator activities, which comprises hotel operations executed by Pandox in its owner-occupied hotel properties. Pandox was founded in 1995 and the company’s B shares are listed on Nasdaq Stockholm. http://www.pandox.se
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