Hoteliers Look to Tourists to Save Their Bacon
The importance of holidaymakers and leisure travellers to the hotels industry has increased rapidly as businesses cut back on their spending.
The global economic downturn has seen corporate bookings for hotels dwindle and industry chiefs are now anxious to offer better deals on cheap hotels to attract leisure customers. Last week over a dozen hotel owners and suppliers gathered at Arsenal's Emirates Stadium in London for a World Travel Market (WTM) conference to discuss the ongoing changes in their industry.
The top level delegates, whose identities were not revealed, agreed that the holiday sector was the area to focus on right now, since many businesses were cutting back on their travel budgets.
One area of discussion was how to attract more holidaymakers to their hotels, with such tactics as special offers, deals on cheap hotels to complement the cheap flights increasingly dominating the holiday industry, or even the addition of premium services to accommodate the growth in "more demanding" leisure customers.
One delegate, a British specialist in short breaks, told the gathering that hotel guests were content to pay a decent price for a stay as long as they believed they were getting a excellent value-for-money. Other delegates said that luxury hotels were increasingly requested to offer tour operators better all-inclusive rates to attract more affluent travellers.
WTM Meridian Club marketing manager Mark Jacobsen said: "The idea behind the think tanks is to give senior executives the chance to talk openly with one another about their sector. We will take on board what was said and use it to make sure World Travel Market, the premier global event for the travel industry, is able to service the needs of all players in the challenging and dynamic hotel sector."
Hotels News posted by 
on 10 September 2010
cheap hotels, cheap flights,
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