Category: Recent News

As the curtains closed on the World Travel & Tourism Council’s (WTTC) 2024 Global Summit in Perth, Western Australia, the global tourism body announced the Italian capital of Rome as the host city for the 2025 WTTC Global Summit.

With the global tourism sector shifting towards greater sustainability, the meetings at the Organization’s Madrid headquarters advanced work around effective governance and harmonized measurement and monitoring.

LONDON – Leading travel marketplace Skyscanner, is today publishing a new report exploring the latest trends in global travel. Titled Skyscanner Horizons: 2024/5 spending, planning and destination insights, the report unpacks and explores a combination of consumer survey and proprietary search data to provide a unique view of how travellers are thinking about their plans for the next 12 months.

Swiss Life and B&B acquire 22 hotels in France from Grape Hospitality, Alchemy Step Hotel Group acquires FLI Group, Art-Invest acquires four B&B Hotels in Germany from Covivio, Nrep acquires Clarion Hotel Stockholm from Aspelin-Ramm, Extendam and Vicartem acquire the Atlas Hotel Brussels in Belgium, SCPI Comète acquires the AZ Orus Factory Hotel in Zaragoza, Spain.

Coming out of a high-inflation, high-interest-rate environment, which negatively impacted hotel transactions in Europe in 2023, transaction activity increased to the highest levels since 2019 in the first half of 2024. Reaching €10.6 billion, the total volume transacted increased by 123% year-on-year, already reaching the total volume for the whole of 2023. There were 20% more transactions this semester, with a decrease of 11% in the number of rooms per hotel, translating into a 30% increase in price per room over H1 2023.

While being a sales trainer for a diversity of lodging providers certainly keeps me in touch with what’s going on in the profession of hotel sales these days, I always capitalize on every opportunity to gain insights from real-world practitioners. One such opportunity recently presented itself when I caught up with Jennifer Daudi, Chief Executive Officer of Invigorate Hospitality, which offers remote sales support to a long and diverse list of hotels across virtually all major brands. Besides overseeing her team of expert salespeople, Jennifer herself has decades of experience in the hospitality industry and seems to truly love sales as much as I do. She was gracious enough to answer a few questions for me, and here are the highlights from our conversation.

How important is it to list on the GDS? And how well does the GDS perform compared to other distribution channels? As a worldwide CRS, D-EDGE helps hotels develop their sales on all channels and knows that the GDS isn’t always used by hotels to its full potential.

We’re excited to launch Hospitality’s Leading Voices, a new monthly series offering exclusive interviews where Philippe Roy, Founder of Red Yucca and new member of the upcoming HSMAI Europe France Advisory Board, engages with senior executives from the hotel and travel industry. Each edition brings you up close with leaders who are shaping the future, sharing their stories, and providing valuable takeaways for the industry.

Rotana, one of the leading hotel management company in the Middle East, Africa, Eastern Europe, and Türkiye (MENAT), has announced a partnership with Abu Dhabi Hospitality Academy – Les Roches. Dedicated to hospitality education and training, the Academy has just enrolled its first batch of students for its inaugural intake on September 16th, marking a significant milestone of the hospitality education in the United Arab Emirates and in the region.

Managing a hotel group involves the complex task of leveraging the unique features of each individual property while maintaining a cohesive strategy.