Last Thursday took place HOTELtrack’09 within the framework of the Sitc (hospitality tradeshow), an encounter taken place in Barcelona and gathering more than 60 professionals from the tourism industry.

This year Hoobing had the opportunity to participate reading the paper “Intermediary Free Environments, an Opportunity for the Hospitality Industry”, and we had the pleasure to share table with Emilia Jódar, Yahoo! Search Account Manager and Ramón Solé, Product manager for Rumbo.es and Viajar.com. Unfortunately, Viçenc Martí, Vueling’s Marketing General Manager could not stay due to work compromises.

First of all we would like to thank Lluis Soler for organizing the event, both the topics reviewed – revenue management, innovation within the hospitality industry, online positioning, etc.-and the readers were excellent. Fernando del Corral, Asunción Zorrilla y Javier García Cuenca were superb in their presentations relating revenue management. Oscar Casasnovas clearly pictured how an independent hotel can innovate in social media marketing and showed the importance not only of listening but also of participating in the conversation, so being able to carry out improvements in the hotel service with the aim to loyalise possible customers.

We, on our behalf, wished to review the evolution of the distribution systems within the hospitality industry, before the internet era, during the first steps of online distribution, what is currently going on and finally, which are the latest trends. Following our motto Book directly | travel smart, direct sales are becoming more and more important, especially during hard times like today’s, a moment when there’s a tendency to cut down intermediary costs.

As a conclusion to HOTELtrack’09, in our opinion, not only innovation is important to generate revenues as Hosteltur online journal noted last Friday, the 17th: microsegmentation of customers is also essential for hotel-driven marketing campaigns to render really effective. To get to know the customer and send him the information he really needs is the best way to “hit the target”.

In the last days two more Hotel Chains have registered with Hoobing.com. On one side, Hotetur Hotels & Resorts, a group based in the Balearic Isles and including more than 10 entities located in Mexico, Cuba, Dominican Republic and the Balearics. On the other, The Three Corners, a hotel chain counting a dozen hotels in Egypt’s Red Sea coast, which we had the pleasure to meet in the past ITB trade show in Berlin.

Now that the Easter holidays are here, take this opportunity to visit their datasheets on Hoobing.com and book directly on their official web sites, where you will find all you need to get some days of well-deserved rest.

During this last week two international hotel chains like GRT and Anantara just registered their hotels with Hoobing.com. GRT Hotels& Resorts is a hotel chain with 8 entities in India that we got to know during our stay in the last edition of the ITB trade show in Berlin. Their resources combine a range of hotels of different categories located in both urban and holiday environments. India is a wonderful country that does not need any introduction. But maybe you do not know it yet. That’s why we recommend you to visit Alba’s blog “El sueño de la India”, Best photography Blog in Lonely Planet’s Travel Blogger Awards.

On the other hand, Anantara is a group with 10 amazing hotels peppered along countries such as Thailand, Maldives, Indonesia and Abu Dhabi, the biggest country within the UAE federation. We especially recommend this chain to those looking for a escapade in the paradise of the Indic Ocean, dreaming with never-ending beaches and crystal-like waters.

Recently, Hotels are often relying on QR Code technology. But, what is the QR Code? The QR Code is a system to obtain data with an operation resembling that of the code bar. The acronym QR stands for “Quick response”. To read QR Codes a mobile phone with an integrated camera is required, it is also necessary that this mobile phone integrates a QR Code reader. If your mobile phone has not this functionality available, you can get more info visiting the website of  the manufacturer

Reading QR Codes from Hoobing hotels is as easy as to focus the code that is displayed by clicking on the link in each hotel datasheet and then taking a picture of it. Automatically, the contact info for that hotel will be displayed on the screen of your mobile phone such as name, address, phone number and email address; you will be able to save this data in the phone’s memory. This is a very handy for users will be able to store the said info in case they need to contact the hotel when travelling.

Other services implemented within Hoobing hotel datasheets:
- Twitter account (enlace wiki/twitter hotel), - microblogging service that allows you to distribute information comprising a maximum amount of 140 characters-,
- Link to the corporate blog
- Link to the hotel RSS system, very useful to receive real-time updates, offers, news, etc.

Would you like to visualize all tools included in each hotel datasheet? Check the datasheet of the Soho hotel in Barcelona and check our project on the terrain.

All these services are an answer to the real needs of the traveler of the future. We hope you find them useful!

On January, the 29th we announced the implementation of Google Street  Views on Hoobing.com, for a better visualization of hotels directly on the terrain. Last week, The Guardian announced that finally, the Google Street Views service was now operative for the whole territory of the United Kingdom. So, all those wishing to have a virtual walk from their living room to the cities available within the application will be able the visit the streets of cities like London, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Leeds, Manchester, Liverpool, Oxford, Cambridge, Belfast, Birmingham, etc…

The implementation of Google Street View is a very useful service for Hoobing users to visualize the hotels as if they were directly “on the ground”. As one can observe in the picture, the tab “Location”, located within the hotel extended datasheet, allows you to activate the Street View option just by clicking on the top left margin of the map. The image of the map will automatically switch to the “Street View” mode. You can get familiar with this service clicking on the following examples:

Malmaison Belfast

Park Plaza Cardiff

Marks Hotel Glasgow

The Threadneedles Hotel

Apex International Hotel

Hi Hoobers,

We are happy to announce that Hoobing.com is now ONLINE!! We have worked very hard to get here and we finally did it!

We invite you to join our community and share your trips, blogs or your hotels reviews with us. You will find lots of useful information for your trips from other users.

Hoobing make things easy for you. You just have to search the hotel you want to stay in and book directly through their official website with no additional cost!

Hoobing.com: Book directly, travel smart!