Travelers Find It Pays to Wait for Late Deals

By SARAH NASSAUER - íntegra AQUI.

Mark Moses likes to book family trips many months in advance to lock in prices. In November, the 49-year-old finance executive pre-paid $189 per night for a room at the four-star Empire Hotel in New York City on Priceline.com. But over the months leading up to his April trip, he cringed as he watched New York hotel prices steadily plummet, currently hovering around $150 a night for a comparable four-star hotel.

"I was a little annoyed that I was so impatient," says Mr. Moses, of Pleasanton, Calif.

The recession is upending longstanding buying patterns in the travel industry. Instead of booking far in advance for the best deals, travelers can often find cheaper hotel and airline deals if they wait until later, even up to the last minute. Over the past several months, consumers have discovered that if they can be flexible about dates, exact hotel preferences and destinations, they can often take advantage of dramatic price drops across the travel industry.

It's not clear how long the trend will continue. Already, some airline executives are predicting that travel will rebound this summer, driving up airfares and hotel prices. But for now, travelers are finding that procrastination can save money.

Seek Out And Seize

Here's what you hotel owners and general managers must do to endure in the current economy.

Thursday, April 02, 2009 - Mr. Steven Belmonte - Íntegra AQUI.

It’s tough out there nowadays and there’s no denying it. This miserable economic climate that prevails has caused most hoteliers to write off 2009 with only hope that 2010 will be much better. But we can’t afford to keep our heads in the sand for a year and expect to pop it out and have everything will be fine and dandy as though we are waking up from a bad dream. That type of fairy-dust just doesn’t occur in the real world. Hoteliers need to do more than tread water; they need to find tools to build a proverbial raft to stay afloat.

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Here are a few examples hoteliers can employ to maintain a competitive status:

- Stay ahead of the marketing curve by creating a strong presence in social networking sites. If you have a presence in a blog, Twitter, and Facebook sites, it shows the younger consumers that you have your finger on the pulse and are in-the-know of the latest technological and communication tools. Hoteliers should be showing off their properties and taking ownership of their local area as the hotel of their city. When consumers search for a certain city’s name in Facebook, for example, your hotel’s name should show up.

- Research what local competitors are offering and one-up those promotions. Be bold and creative. Caribou Coffee nailed this recently after their competitor, Starbucks, announced they were going to stop brewing decaffeinated coffee in the afternoons. Caribou shot back with a promotion announcing that coffee drinkers deserved better and offered a free decaffeinated coffee on certain days during a limited time window. They took advantage of the market’s affect on a direct competitor to win new consumers. I’m not stating that hoteliers should offer free nights but they should have their eyes open for unique attention-getting opportunities.

- Engage your guests in word-of-mouth grassroots marketing techniques through customer rating sites such as Expedia, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Hotels.com. It’s a no- brainer that consumers have turned to the Internet for inside-track information about properties and they are relying on the other guest’s experiences to judge whether to book a stay. Whereas good reviews are worth more than an elaborate ad in a national magazine, bad reviews are a guaranteed business killer.

- Strengthen personalized service. In order to ensure good word-of-mouth recommendations, your property needs to offer top-notch customer service to guests.