Loyalty isn’t necessarily a dying breed among millennials if a brand knows how to make a program appealing to their spending and lifestyle habits outside of travel. That means doubling down on experiences and diversifying how points are earned.

— Dan Peltier

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The voice reservations channel continues to diminish, but has it gone extinct? Here’s why hoteliers should continue to capture phone reservations and claim more direct bookings. read more

The last few years have been tough for Facebook marketers. Organic reach has dropped, younger users gravitated toward newer platforms like Instagram and Snapchat and there’s more competition than ever. Despite all of this, we’re here to tell you that Facebook is far from dead. In order to get more out of Facebook, you have to go beyond publishing a handful of posts per day. It just isn’t as effective anymore. Now you have to dive into other features like Facebook ads to comply with their algorithm, but what about Facebook events? read more

Recent M&A activity within the boutique and lifestyle hotel space, including SBE’s planned purchase of Morgans Hotel Group, is changing the segment’s landscape. read more

Social media consultants familiar with the hospitality industry said Facebook’s Messenger chat bot platform could help hoteliers find out more about guests, but could also lead to more questions at the property level. read more

Five days after Choice Hotels International CEO Stephen P. Joyce and CFO David White said the company would embrace direct bookings, the company kept to their executives’ promise on May 10. Later this summer, Choice Hotels will begin to offer a new exclusive hotel rate, supported by the company’s best-price guarantee, for Choice Privileges members who book direct on ChoiceHotels.com and the company’s mobile app. read more

While in the past, fully equipped serviced apartments were considered only for relocation and extended stays of more than a week or two, times are changing. Apart’hotels, or Serviced apartments, are popping up in major cities across the world, and with comparable nightly rates to traditional hotel rooms, they are staking their claim on the hotel industry. read more

At its annual conference in Las Vegas last year, Wyndham announced a reinvention of its Rewards loyalty program, simplifying the process for earning and redeeming free nights. For every qualified stay, members earn 10 points for every dollar spent or a minimum of 1,000 points per stay, whichever is more. When members accrue 15,000 points, they can get a free night in any Wyndham hotel room anywhere, with no blackout dates. (This means that $1,500 spent at any Wyndham hotel automatically earns a free night anywhere in the system.) Those who travel less frequently can still get discounts on rooms with as few as 3,000 points. read more

Some major hotel companies have announced reduced room rates for loyalty program members, and discussion during first-quarter earnings calls turned to the fight against OTAs for direct bookings. read more

Six charts that give us a quick glance of Airbnb’s business versus that of hotel brands large and small. Chart 1 Airbnb’s growth is significant, but the unanswered question so far is whether the growth comes at the expense of traditional hotel business or if it is carving out its own, new business. Up against that, of course, is the ambitious growth of hotel brands in cities like New York, where they’ve been adding rooms at a rapid, double-digit rate over the past six years. read more