Travel Trends

Demand up in Phuket

The main Thai hotel markets of Phuket and Bangkok have emerged as the star regional performers with good revenue growth during April.

But many other Asia Pacific hoteliers had a soft month with STR Global reporting that regional occupancy rates fell 0.5% decrease to 68.6%, average daily rate dropped 2.3% to US$127.20 and revenue per available room (REVpar) was down 2.8% US$87.22. More …

The weakness of the merchant payment model – where online travel agents take the client's money before reimbursing the hotel minus their booking commission – has been brutally exposed by yesterday's collapse of Check-in.com.au, which has cost many accommodation owners and operators thousands of dollars. More …

Popular Australian accommodation website Check-in.com.au – which claims to have taken one million bookings since it was founded in 2002 – was today placed in voluntary liquidation and is no longer processing new bookings.

An email sent to the industry said there'll be a creditor's meeting in June and told hoteliers that if they are holding "future bookings to please contact the guest to arrange direct booking and payment. More …

Online travel is becoming increasingly straight-laced and predictable. But not always. For here is the story of a company run out of Thailand with a CEO based in Australia that claims to own and operate the most popular airfare search site in Russia. Huh? JetRadar, which is now moving into hotel metasearch, is truly a one-off. More …

Webjet has appointed David Allen as its Australian CEO. Mr Allen has been working as a consultant for the past few years and prior to that held jobs with Zuji, Sabre Pacific and American Express.

Darrin Grafton

Corporate travel technology company Serko plans to raise NZ$20m and list 25% of the company on the New Zealand and Australian stock exchanges later this year.  Co-Founder Darrin Grafton claims the company's primary product, the Serko Online corporate travel booking engine, dominates its market sector in Asia-Pacific. He told Stuff.co.nz that Serko "can be profitable" now but isn't with excess cash invested back into the business. The money raised will be used for product and sales development. Full story.

Virgin Australia may have been winning the aviation PR war but the carrier itself has problems, which yesterday led to a profit downgrade. The big one is that it's carrying less passengers than it used to. Most of the damage is happening on its crucial domestic network.

In April it flew 5% less pax than the previous year while overall numbers are down 0.8% for the 10 months to April 31. Yet it has more seats to fill with extra aircraft and flights, so domestic loads for the financial year have fallen 4.6% to 75.7%. More …

Camping and caravan site Turu.com.au today launched its online booking engine, which about 150 of its 1800 listed sites have signed up to so far. The rest will still field queries via email. The booking engine was developed by Biko Technologies.

Travel search engine Wego today announced partnerships with eight European low-cost airlines:  Vueling Airlines, French XL Airways, British Monarch, Air Berlin, Brussels Airlines, Latvian airBaltic AS, Pegasus Airlines and WOW air. Meanwhile, hotel channel manager SiteMinder has connected Best Hotel Online, Hotusa, PegiPegi, ImpulseFlyer, Prestigia and Yuktravel to its Room Distribution Exchange (RDX).

Kimi Anderson

A great new site has just launched called Travelgiver.com which allows consumers  to simultaneously book accommodation through leading Online Travel Agents and suppliers and donate to "worthwhile projects" such as the Riverkids Foundation or Transitions.

The website has been founded by Kimi Anderson, previously GM Sales & Marketing at Best Western Australia, and already taken its first bookings. "It is amazing how many people are looking for more of a ‘transformational travel experience’," she said. More …

Are Asian hotels better than those in the United States or are people just looking for different things? That's a key question, with no clear answer, arising from an analysis of 2m reviews by Revinate which showed that Asian hotels have higher review ratings than US properties – 4.08 v 3.98. The survey also revealed hotels which respond to reviews get higher ratings and 4-6% more positive reviews than those that don't. More …

The boss of Priceline, Jeffrey Boyd, has described Asia Pacific as a "very very competitive market" for online travel agents.  He told analysts that "the absolute economics in terms of the pricing of hotels and the competition makes it potentially more expensive" than other key global markets. But the pay off is that Asia Pacific markets are growing fast, more than compensating for the high costs borne by its two major regional brands – Agoda and Booking.com. More …

Gary Berman has resigned from Graysescape.com, the company he founded as Ubid4rooms back in 2006 and sold last year to web retailer GraysOnline.

Mr Berman said the time had come to move on and try something different. "I just wanted to take time out," he said. "I have a few things up my sleeve but haven't decided what to do next."

Orbitz CEO Barney Harford said his company is seeing better results from HotelClub, its under-performing Asia Pacific accommodation website. "We're feeling great about the progress of the HotelClub turnaround and are seeing promising growth," he said.

But Mr Harford declined to back up his comments with figures. "We've made a decision – we're not going to break out room night growth rates on a brand by brand basis. More …

Consolidation: it’s a dirty word right now. The big boys (no girls) of online travel – virtually all of them US based multinationals – seem like they’re in a mad race for territory like the colonialists of old.

Leading the charge is TripAdvisor, which has bought seven or eight companies over the few months, followed by Expedia, Priceline and others, though their recent acquisitions have been much bigger (Kayak/Priceline, Expedia/Trivago). More …

Entrepreneur Ian Cumming has closed down his airfare sale search site GetFlight.com.au after two years. "We led the way for Australian flyers to see where they could go for how much using sale airfares from Jetstar, Qantas, Virgin Australia, and a host of other airlines," he said. But "there's a lot of competition for airfare search that has made it challenging to keep our business viable." More …

Webjet has once again recruited from Travelport, employing Hui Wan Chua as CEO, Singapore. Ms Chua, until now Travelport's Senior Regional Director – Asia, will be responsible for the Zuji and Webjet brands in Singapore. She'll report to Webjet Managing Director and ex-Travelport employee, John Guscic. Webjet's Chief Operating Officer, Shelley Beasley, is also from Travelport. No mention of who will manage Zuji's operations in Hong Kong and Australia.

Who would have thought… People are better at closing sales than technology, though the two work best together as the Mantra Group has found. It has just revealed that online booking conversion rates have increased 40% since the company introduced live chat 18 months ago across the Peppers, Mantra and Breakfree websites. More …

Defying a weak global economy, travel retail giant Flight Centre today forecast a record annual pre-tax profit of up to A$340 million for the 2012/13 financial year. Flight Centre MD Graham Turner said: "Year-to-date our 10 countries are profitable and several are on track for record contributions. This includes Australia and the United Kingdom, typically our largest profit generators." The news sent FLT shares above A$39. They were A$25 in Dec.

Holiday rental website HomeAway has continued its push into Asia-Pacific, announcing a partnership with Tripvillas which adds 2000 regional listings to its inventory. The TripVillas agreement follows distribution deals with AP websites Tujia.com, Wego.com and travelmob, all signed in the past five months. TripVillas is based in Singapore and was founded in 2009.