The growth of OTAs has dramatically changed the way that people plan and book travel. Today’s travellers can use OTAs to streamline every aspect of their travel experience, from finding flights and accommodations to car rentals and sightseeing experiences. 

Other key players in the travel industry, particularly hotels can strategically incorporate OTAs into their marketing and distribution strategies to better reach potential guests and increase bookings.

Learn the differences between OTA and direct bookings, and how hotels can successfully leverage both types to optimise the customer experience and drive increased bookings.

An online poll was conducted of GBTA of it's members and non-members worldwide, including corporate travel managers and
travel suppliers in April 2024. Key findings included: 

• 83% of managers worldwide say their company’s business travel volume increased last year.  
• Companies are trying to reduce carbon emissions. Some have committed to specific emission reduction targets, however travel volumes increased last year. 72% of European companies said their  business travel volume increased significantly. 
• Seven in 10 travel buyers say their company’s business travel spend increased significantly or moderately last year.
• 59% expect their company will take more business trips this year.
• Hybrid work is common especially in Europe (74%) and Asia Pacific (71%) but less so in North America (57%) and Latin America (58%

This report looks at digital usage and online behaviours in Ireland. 

Findings include:

• Smartphone penetration is up 2% to 96% and a there has been a significant increase in Wearables up from 50% to 67%. 
• Apple and Samsung are now the joint most popular brand at 38% each, with Apple the most popular with the 18-34 year old group.
• The majority of adults (67%) wish they spent less time on devices, up significantly from 51% in the prior year's survey.
• Three quarter of respondents use their smartphone as soon as they wake up (up from 59% in the previous year). This is highest among 18-34 year olds (71%).  
• 65% of phone owners look at their phone within 15 minutes or less after waking up and 36% state that they look at their phone at least 50 times a day.

See more insights in this report. 

This report provides tips and tactics that hotels can utilise to target travellers and guests throughout their path to purchase journey, which have been broken down into five distinct stages:

1. The Inspiration Stage
2. The Planning Stage
3. The Booking Stage
4. The On-Site Experience Stage
5. The Post-Trip Stage

A combination of initiatives that promote a hotel’s offering and attracts guests, will ultimately increases bookings.

See more in the full report. 

Dragon Trail Research surveyed mainland Chinese outbound travel agencies to get an overview of this travel market now that outbound travel has resumed.   They found that: 

• The millennial market is dominating travel trade sales
• Independent travellers are considered the most popular product type at 42%, group tours (34%) and customized travel for private groups (24%). 
• Group sizes are small, with groups of 20 people or fewer the most popular.
• Family travel, and special experiences are the best sellers  
• Beach and island (37%) is the top type of trip followed by family travel (33%). 
• Travellers chose the quality of products and experiences in destination over low prices.
• The top barriers for outbound travel from China is difficulty in getting visas and high airfare prices. 

See more in the report.

As technology has become firmly embedded in the hospitality experience this research looks at consumers attitudes to using technology within hospitality.

• 16% consumers surveyed believe digital solutions enable and enhance the best visits
• (55%) think the best solution lies in a balance of tech and human interaction.

To see how venues might strike the right balance between digital solutions and personal interaction click on the image for more insights.  

Results based on a survey of 5,000 of British consumers in May 2023.

Accessible Tourism offers a means of unlocking potential of your business to grow, while future-proofing your business to be more inclusive for all.

In this guide you will:

• Understand who are our accessible tourism visitors & the importance of this market for tourism.

Booking.com  surveyed 2795 premium holiday rental and hotel bookers across the US, UK, France and Germany about what matters most to them when choosing where to stay.

For this research, high-quality bookers were defined as those who  mainly choose top-quality accommodation.  

See the insights in the article. 

Accessibility is a key aspect for the Scandic Hotels Brand.

They are the first hotel company in the world to have developed an accessibility standard of 159 points which follows the start of the consumer journey - the route guests take from the parking area into and throughout their hotels.

Of the 159 points, 105 are compulsory at all hotels and all 159 points must be applied when renovating or building new hotels.

Read more about this standard in the article.

This report paper investigates the growing importance of guest reviews and ratings for the hospitality industry.  It found that:  

• 97% of respondents say they read guest reviews at least some of the time, including more than one in three (38%) who do so every time they book a hotel or resort.
• Guest reviews are also a decision-making tool; many people use them to set the scope of their search; and a majority use them to help decide between shortlisted options.
• Almost six out of ten people (57%) write reviews
  themselves after at least half of their visits to hotels or
  resorts.

This report is based on a survey of 5,000 adults in France, Germany, Poland, Spain and the UK. All of them stayed at a hotel or resort at some point during the 12 months leading up to December 2023 and booked those trips
themselves.

In 2022, accessible suites at the Hotel Brooklyn Manchester  brought in an additional £132,000 over that 12-month period. This equates to £7,333 additional revenue per accessible room. 

Award winning and leading the way to being accessible to all guests, the hotel has 18 accessible guest rooms split into nine wheelchair accessible and nine ambulant accessible bedrooms. Two of the wheelchair accessible rooms have ceiling track hoists the first in Manchester. 

Reviewed by Emma, a wheel chair user. 

See more in this article. 

Many organisations & businesses are striving to become more “autism-friendly” by making adjustments to their existing services to make them more accessible to autistic people. 

AsIAm - Ireland's Autism charity has created an accreditation to help these businesses to achieve this. See more in the article above.   

This GWI report looks at Social Media channels and their influence on different generations, some insights: 

• Gen Z are the only generation who are most likely to discover new brands through social media advertising
• Millennials are most likely to think that influencers are knowledgeable about the products they recommend
• Baby Boomers are 2.5x more likely than the average consumer to say they don’t trust influencer recommendations at all.

See more in the infographic. 

Before the pandemic, the market share of Online Travel Agencies  in Europe continuously increased from 19.7% in 2013 to 29.2% in 2019 while direct bookings experienced a 10 % decrease for the same period. 

The travel industry has changed as a result of the pandemic with hotels and travellers developing new habits and there has also been a change in sales channels distribution. In 2021, the share of direct booking channels significantly increased. 

Read more about what this might mean for Hoteliers. 

Premium bookers are  those for whom quality is more important than price and account for about 20% of all hotel and holiday  rental bookings, according to research by data analytics company, Kantar. In the US this increases to around 34%.

See what matters the most to this group when booking accommodation in the article above. 

Key Findings: 

• 94% of internet users go online daily, and of these 39% use it all the time or nearly all the time.

• Internet users aged 16 to 29 years had gone online daily, and of these, 95% had used the internet at least several times a day.

• Older persons used the internet the least. 54% of persons aged 75 years and over had used the internet within the previous three months.

• Students were the most frequent users and had used the internet daily, of which almost all had gone online at least several times a day.

• The majority of households have internet access (94%), mainly fixed broadband (86%).

• Household internet connectivity was highest for the Dublin region (96%), compared with the Border and Midland regions (91%). Of the households in Dublin with internet access, more than nine in ten were via fixed broadband (91%), compared with 79% in the Border region.