3rd Party Site

I have chosen to take the example of the Hotel Plaza Athénée at Paris. The Plaza Athénée is 4 stars, deluxe category hotel, with a high of standard services, luxury and comfort. The hotel is located in a prestigious avenue, just off the Champs Elysees, close to many famous designer boutiques, and restaurants.The rooms are medium in size and in excellent condition. The decor is either "Art Deco" style or "Louis XVI" style. In both cases they are very attractive with a strong personality, and highly furnished.

Now, I have selected SideStep (The Traveler’s Search Engine) like a 3rd Party Site for the Plaza Athénée.

SideStep is a Website which suggests to its guests some services like:

* Flights
* Hotels
* Cars
* Vacation Packages
* Cruises
* Activities
* Travel Guides

The hotel Plaza Athénée is the only Luxury hotel (Palace) in Paris except if we include the Grand Hôtel InterContinental.

The image of this site (SideStep) is good but suggests to its guests most of the times Chain hotel (Holiday Inn – InterContinental Group) for an International clientele and especially American.

Ice Kube

Article posted by Rémi Blomme on March 22nd, 2007


Regarding the websites, the article about the Ice Kube is very relevant in terms of Buzz & Viral Marketing. Now, from my point of view, Rémi didn’t talk about the concept of Ice Kube (Where – Why – Who – What – When). Indeed, I think it was interesting to observe the hotel and to analyse its strategy and for example the reasons why the Kube is located in the district 18 and no in 8 like other. Which are the wishes of the GM (Jérôme Foucauld, also GM of Le Murano Urban Resort in Paris)?

Located in the heart of the XVIII district, a few steps away from Montmartre, the KUBE is tucked away in a quiet street, sheltered from the city crowds. With its historic facade hides an innovative and high tech universe, the Kuke contains 41 rooms and suites, the Ice Kube (the city's first ice bar), one lounge bar, 2 state of art screening rooms as well as a gym. Harmonious and loft like spaces spread around an open air courtyard reflect its contemporary surroundings and trendy atmosphere. The large bedrooms are designed for the modern traveller. Each is equipped with digital door openings, multifunction computer, DVD, CD, TV screen... The beds are lit from beneath, creating the illusion of levitation, which definitely adds to the overall sense of spaciousness, clarity and calm. The Kube is Future-Retro made real.

As a conclusion, even if the concept is very new in France, the Ice Kube is not currently the N°1 Trendy Bar in Paris. Indeed, the localisation plays a great role in the frequentation of the bar. Consequently, some people come one time to test and live an unforgettable experience but never a second time.

Expedia Reaches New Global Agreement With Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts

All Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts Now Available to Expedia and hotels.com Customers


Article posted by Guillaume Congratel on February 15th, 2007


Guillaume has completely right when he talks about the wish of Expedia to attract and also to make new partnership to increase offers. This new alliance shows us the power of Expedia and especially its strategy of expansion.

However, from my point of view, Guillaume has forgotten to talk about Expedia and introduce the Company a little bit (Expedia is the world's leading online travel company, empowering business and leisure travellers with the tools and information they need to easily research, plan, book, and experience travel. Expedia, Inc. also provides wholesale travel to offline retail travel agents).

It is the same thing for Shangri-La Hotels & Resorts (Hong Kong-based Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts, Asia Pacific's leading luxury hotel group, currently manages 50 hotels under the five-star Shangri-La and four-star Traders brands, with a rooms inventory of over 24,000).

As a conclusion, this article is very relevant because it show us the evolution of online Travel Companies like Expedia through years and also highlight the fact that more and more Great Groups like Shangri-La sign contracts and partnerships to continue to stay in the very closed circle of Prestige hotels with high occupation rate and average daily rate.



www.hospitalitynet.org/news/154000320/4030322.html

Accor opens 300th hotel in Asia Pacific


Accor announced today its 300th hotel in the Asia Pacific region with the launch of the Grand Mercure Xidan Beijing in China.



First of all, I would like to mention that Accor is a large French multinational corporation, part of the CAC 40 index, whose main business is running chains of hotels and restaurants. Accor is currently the world's largest hotel and tourism group with more than 3,500 hotels and resorts in 90 countries, with the most comprehensive choice of hotel styles and locations. Accor's hotel brands include the luxury of Sofitel, business class of Novotel, variety of All Seasons, flexibility of Mercure, value of Ibis and convenience of Formule 1.

Accor is also one of the global leaders in tourism, travel, casinos, restaurants and the provision of corporate and public institution services. Each day, more than 12 million people in 31 countries use a range of services created and managed by Accor. Accor Services is the Accor Group's second largest international line of business.

The goal of Accor Services is to help companies and public institutions to improve performance by fostering the well-being of their employees and citizens. Present in 35 countries, more than 300,000 client companies or public institutions and 19 million employees uses our services everyday. In the Asia Pacific region, Accor is the largest and fastest growing hotel group with some 180 hotels and more than 30,000 rooms in 15 countries - Australia, New Zealand, New Caledonia, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Australia and New Zealand, there are over 100 hotels and resorts covering all prime business and holiday destinations with many new hotels to be opened over the next few years.

The new Grand Mercure containing 296 rooms is a well-established hotel in a prime location in the Xidan commercial and shopping area of Beijing, conveniently close to the capital’s landmarks such as the new National Theatre, as well as the Financial Street commercial district. All rooms and suites offer attractive garden or city views, with many facing the Forbidden City and Tiananmen Square. It is also a short walk to the city’s underground train system.

To conclude, Accor succeed one more time with its Strategy of expansion through the world and more particularly in Asia. This Group has found the keys of health and prosperity: the properties are more and more beautiful and the service becomes impeccable…

It is interesting to mention that Accor currently manages 17 Grand Mercure hotels and resorts around Asia Pacific, with another six to open before the end of 2007.


www.hospitalitynet.org/news/154000320/4030719.html

Buzz Marketing

CAMPARI HOTEL



The new idea of Campari is very original. Indeed, the famous brand of wines has decided to create a “Charm” online hotel called Campari hotel. It is also a perfect example of viral & buzz marketing. The notion of network is here very IMPORTANT.

The theme of the Hotel Campari website is of a raunchy hotel. Purely for research purposes of course, I browsed around the site. It is a Flash-driven website with sensual music and a lot of interactivity (mainly involving the opening of doors). The campaign and website features the lovely Salma Hayek too.

To complement the website, MRM developed a social network campaign based on youtube, myspace, flickr and many more. The MySpace profile features the same soft porn music as the Hotel Campari website - and is fronted by a "28 years old" female from Milano in Italy, called "Red Passion". Her interests include "Photography, movies, traveling..." and she is a fan of the movie Eyes Wide Shut. She is on MySpace for "Dating, Friends" and lists her orientation as "Not Sure". There are also some, ahem, photos of her that adorn the MySpace page. All of this of course is a fake profile, but I guess the casual MySpace user might think it's real should they come across it (especially ever hopeful teenage boys). As for the Flickr site, it has a lot of photos and once again comes across as a real person's Flickr site (well, a real person who lives the high life in Italy that is!). The YouTube profile features some videos from the campaign, prompting one YouTube user to comment: "masks are cool". You get the picture.

As a conclusion, the results of the social networks campaign have been very good. The Hotel Campari website got 170,000 views. For the social network sites, they got more than 3,000 "friends" and 2,500 comments across the sites. The number of views across the social network sites is currently around 92,000.All up, 13.5% of the total traffic to Hotel Campari was thanks to the social networking sites.

Buzz Marketing

MGM GRAND
Las Vegas



The website of MGM Grand Las Vegas is the perfect example of Buzz Marketing. Indeed, it is easy to see that it capture attention of consumers and the media to the point where talk about this hotel becomes entertaining, fascinating, and newsworthy and a conversation starts.


The Property:

The MGM Grand Las Vegas, which opened in 1993, is a hotel casino located on the Las Vegas Strip in Las Vegas, Nevada, United States, as a Hollywood themed resort.

Owned and operated by the MGM Mirage company, the 30-floor main building is 293 feet (89 m) high and features five outdoor pools, rivers, and waterfalls that cover 6.6 acres, a 380,000 square foot (35,000 m²) convention center, the MGM Grand Arena, CBS Television City, and the Grand Spa. It also houses numerous shops and night clubs, 16 restaurants, two food courts, and the largest casino in Las Vegas, which occupies 171,500 square feet (16,000 m²).

The hotel rooms are located in several buildings including:

* The world's largest hotel building, with 5,044 rooms (4,293 rooms and 751 suites)
* The three The Signature at MGM Grand towers each with 576 suites (only 2 open)
* SKYLOFTS at MGM Grand with 51 lofts
* The Mansion at MGM Grand with 29 villas

Located on the Tropicana - Las Vegas Boulevard intersection, pedestrians are not allowed to cross at street level. Instead, the MGM Grand is linked by overhead pedestrian bridges to its neighboring casinos: to the south across Tropicana Avenue, the Tropicana, and to the west across the Strip, the New York-New York.

Concerning the 3rd Party :

First of all, most of the hotels appear on different 3rd party websites and not only on the Official Website. You can have an access to a good rate for the same service and also at the same date. 3rd party websites can be for example websites like Expedia, VirtualTourist, Hotels.com, etc...

* Expedia :

If you find a better rate on another website than Expedia, They refund the total invoice of your booking.

Now, regarding Best Rate Guarantee :

For this exercise, I have chosen to take the example of Starwood Hotels & Resorts. Indeed, as you can see, this chain suggests to its guests the possibility to obtain a reward of 2000 points or 10% in supplement on the lower price we find in other websites / channels compared to the official website.