Travel Trends

The deal debate continues in Asia with a Singaporean hotelier revealing at Web In Travel that virtually no-one who bought an ultra cheap "daily deal" package at his property came back. "I have to admit a very, very small percentage of repeat business from these customers," said Mohamed Yusof, Director of Business Strategies, Royal Plaza on Scotts. More …

Hong Kong and Singapore will be the world's best-performing hotel markets through to the end of 2012, STR Global has predicted. "The gains will be led mainly through increases in rate rather than occupancy." STR is forecasting revenue per available room (RevPAR) growth for Hong Kong of 24.7% for the rest 2011, while it believes Singapore will lead the pack through 2012 with an increase in RevPAR of 9.6%. More …

Mobile will be the key driver of online regional travel transactions, according to the Abacus Asia Travel Insights Survey 2011. "Asian mobile internet penetration is expected to rise to 42.1% of mobile users in the region by 2015, and for many of these users mobile is the first screen for Internet access," the report says. More …

HotelClub.com has relaunched with a slew of new features following the completion of its long-heralded migration to the Orbitz Worldwide global technology platform. President Jeremy Bellinghausen today revealed new site features and functionality including improved search results, map view, virtual tours, and a streamlined booking process. More …

Curious. New Tourism Research Australia study claims that a greater proportion of international visitors use the web to book Australian travel than domestic travellers – 42% (2.3m) compared with 27% (18.3m). Flights were the biggest purchase by international visitors with 79% of overseas web surfers booking their inbound flights online. "For domestic travellers, the most common online booking was accommodation (65%), while around half (48%) booked flights online." More …

Mantra Group says leisure travel is rebounding in Queensland with a 3.9% boost in bookings over the past 12 months. CEO Bob East says Sunshine State RevPAR grew 3.74%  while total revenue increased 9.06% – a lift he partly attributed to the new marketing campaign headed by former tennis star Pat Rafter. Mantra Group has more than 50 Peppers, Mantra and BreakFree resorts and apartments in Queensland.

TRAVEL used to be a simple business. You’d visit your travel agent, look through a few brochures and, after the usual procrastination, book a trip. At that time, toward the end of the 1990s, the airlines often led the transaction, determining where you could go, with hotels a secondary consideration. More …

No surprise here but worth noting all the same. Traditional wholesale is under pressure and packages through travel agents are losing market share, according to a report in TravelToday which quotes Jetset Travelworld's national industry sales manager Karen Dalton, who says the challenge is to develop a dynamic online wholesale platform to complement static distribution.

Richard Noon, Webjet

Former CEO and current Director of Finance and Technology, Richard Noon, may not have become the Managing Director at Webjet, a job which went to John Guscic, but the company he has been part of for many years is making him rich.

This week Noon exercised a further 80,000 options at a cost of $94,360, which means he now holds 2,342,000 shares in Webjet valued at around $4.6m on the current share price of $1.97.

Meanwhile, the company said turnover for the September quarter increased 23% over the same period last year.

Would You Buy A Holiday From This Man? Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson

Tourism has become a very serious business. I know this because older men in dark suits now tell me it is so.

Instead of a smiling Lara Bingle asking “where the bloody Hell are you”, we have Tourism Minister Martin Ferguson imploring us to holiday at home, his message reinforced by the looming presence of Geoff Dixon and Andrew McEvoy from Tourism Australia.

They are all wearing suits and look like they really need a holiday. Instead they are trying to sell us one. Something isn’t right. Could it be they are getting a little desperate? More …

What a year for industry pioneer American Airlines, one in which it's been in the news for all the wrong reasons. First there were the ugly rows with  Expedia and Travelport over distribution. Then there was a first-half loss of US$715m. Now rumours of a potential bankruptcy have smashed its stock, down 69% this year. What's happening at this once great carrier? "They've become old and feeble," says one analyst, and incur the US industry's highest labor, aircraft and borrowing costs. More…

US travel search engine Kayak has suspended its market stock market listing indefinitely due to volatile financial markets. Meanwhile, Travelport management has secured breathing space for the debt-laden distribution conglomerate by renegotiating an extended payment date (end of 2016 rather than next March) for a number of key loans.

Qantas is reviewing its approach to advertising and will increase number of ad agencies it uses. The airline's shortlist includes incumbent agencies M&C Saatchi, Ogilvy, Zenith Optimedia, Mojo and Wonder, plus some new faces. Rob Gurney, Group Executive, Qantas Airlines – Commercial, told industry blog mUmbrella: “Qantas will continue to work with its current roster on various projects and is now specifically looking to expand its roster and increase specialist expertise at both local and international levels.”

The cheapest airfares available in the Australian market have risen by around 20% over the past year, according to Feferal Government statistics. The troubles of Low Cost carrier Tiger Airways, which was grounded for a number of weeks by the Civil Aviation Safety Authority in July, appear to be a major factor. Tiger Airways has been back in the air for a while but is flying a skinny schedule, leaving a number of key routes to Virgin Australia and Qantas Group aircraft. As a result, there appears little immediate prospect of base fares heading back down.

Boeing has has just delivered its first Dreamliner to launch customer All Nippon Airways; Air New Zealand has lifted its stake in Virgin Australia by 5% to the takeover threshold of 19.99% but says it will go no further; Booking.com has recruited Darren Houston from Microsoft as its new CEO with incumbent Kees Koolen becoming Chairman; Pegasus Solutions says the global corporate travel recovery will continue.

The Japanese hotel market is bouncing back from the March tsunami while other Asia Pacific destinations reported steady occupancies and rising room rates during August. “We see almost equal demand and supply growth across Asia Pacific,” said STR Global Managing Director Elizabeth Randall. More …

Tourism was something that Greece used to take for granted, and it shows. Many younger  tourists now come for booze and sex rather than culture and romance. But the Greek debt crisis has forced a rethink, according to a report in Guardian News & Media. "The sector went wrong in every way that Greece went wrong," says Deputy Minister of Culture and Tourism, George Nikitiadis. "There was no strategy, no methodology, no preparation, no business plan. More …

Tourism Victoria has dropped its advertising agency of 18 years, Publicis Mojo Melbourne, awarding the lucrative and prestigous account to Clemenger BBDO Melbourne. Ad industry blog mUmBRELLA says it was "widely tipped following the arrival of ex-Mojo regional partner Tim McColl-Jones, who used to run the business".  There's little doubt the successful 'You’ll love every piece of Victoria’ Jigsaw campaign will remain the bedrock of Victoria's marketing.

Expedia has accused Google of  "using its extraordinary power to manipulate users and foreclose the ability of other sites to compete". Company lawyer Tom Barnett made the accusation in a statement to a US Government Senate Sub-Committee investigating online competition. The main thrust of Barnett's argument is that because Google is now competing directly with many of its major advertisers through products such as Google Flight Search it now has a fundamental conflict of interest – one that has the potential to hurt customers such as Expedia. More …