max starkov
Is the Connected Trip the Next Big Thing?
Max Starkov | November 1, 2024
By Max Starkov, Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant Booking has been working for five years to add air, experiences, car rental and other travel components, which in their view provides a better experience for travelers and better returns for the company. How promising is the connected trip concept? First of all, this concept is not new. For 175 years traditional tour operators have offered “connected trips” in the form of tour packages, and in the last 60 years - beach and ski vacations with charter flights. Booking.com’s main rival - Expedia - has been pushing the so called “connected trip” (a trip that includ...
Why Is There a Gender Imbalance in Hospitality Technology Jobs?
Max Starkov | August 20, 2024
By Max Starkov A recent article on PhocusWire discussed the “woeful gender imbalance” existing in the travel technology space, which is “holding back the whole technology sector.” I believe the main reason for gender inequality in hospitality technology is the unsatisfactorily role both parents and educators play to foster female interest in STEM sciences and in the technology sectors in hospitality and the economy as a whole. I am a firm believer that today’s gender inequality in technology has nothing to do with machism or gender discrimination and has everything to do with family upbringing, school education and mass...
Why Rate Parity Still Has To Be “The Law of the Land” in Hospitality?
HFTP | July 22, 2024
By Max Starkov, Hospitality & Online Travel Tech Consultant Just to clarify for the non-revenue management folks here, Rate Parity traditionally means maintaining the same publicly available rate for the same room/same stay across all public distribution channels i.e. channels available to any member of the public that is not a loyalty member or member of some guest appreciation or reward program. Rate Parity is not a new online policy specifically designed for the OTAs. It existed long before the “commercial internet" came into being and there was only one reason for its existence: it made revenue management and management of di...
What Level of Digitization Is Optimum for the Hospitality Industry?
Max Starkov | February 12, 2024
By Max Starkov Digitalization is the future of hospitality, there is no doubt about it! The old-fashion theses that only human-provided service is excellent customer service is being debunked as we speak! Whether hoteliers like it or not, the hospitality industry is moving from low-tech and high-touch to high-tech and high-touch. But what kind of high-tech and high-touch? Achieved with fewer, well-trained and well-paid employees using technology to provide stellar service. AI, mobile technologies, contactless experience, automation, robotics, IoT, blockchain, etc. can help fewer well-paid, educated and trained humans to deliver far supe...
Why Rate Parity Still Has To Be “The Law of the Land” in Hospitality?
Max Starkov | November 14, 2023
By Max Starkov There was a recent discussion on LinkedIn about the need for maintaining rate parity in hospitality and its implications. Just to clarify for the non-revenue management folks here, Rate Parity traditionally means maintaining the same publicly available rate for the same room/same stay across all public distribution channels i.e. channels available to any member of the public that is not a loyalty member or member of some guest appreciation or reward program. Rate Parity is not a new online policy specifically designed for the OTAs. It existed long before the “commercial internet" came into being and there was only ...
Why Hoteliers Should Be Offering Local Tours and Activities?
Max Starkov | July 11, 2023
By Max Starkov Last week Sabre acquired Techsembly, an automated online retailing platform hotels can use to sell on- and off-property experiences and other add-ons. Local tours and activities are the last travel sector to embrace online distribution. In spite of all the industry buzz and its huge potential, less than 15% of local tours and activities are bookable online, some experts even claim this figure to be 10%. Why is that? There are two main reasons: the highly fragmented nature of this sector and historic travel consumer preferences. The local tours and activities sector is greatly fragmented, consisting of millions of small...
Who Are the Winners and Losers From ChatGPT?
Max Starkov | March 31, 2023
By Max Starkov This week I asked a ChatGPT-powered itinerary builder to suggest a week vacation in Kyoto, Japan. Within seconds it spat out a recommended itinerary that was exactly - experience by experience - like the tourist program I did in Kyoto during my recent visit there. I definitely see a huge role of AI in the Dreaming and Planning Phases of the Digital Customer Journey. The question is - who will be the winners and losers from the new generative Al technology like Open AI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Bard or Anthropic’s Claude? Here is my take. The Winners: The OTAs, which have already implemented ChatGPT plug-ins to ...
Hotelier’s Last Untapped Potential for Profitability in 2022: Improving Website Conversions
Max Starkov | June 17, 2022
By Max Starkov Background: As the digital customer journey continues to become increasingly more complex, hoteliers need to be looking for more impactful ways to engage, convert and retain their best potential guests. Today’s typical online travel consumer is exposed to over 250,000 micro-moments a year and undertake a complicated journey of 45 touchpoints (websites, apps, content) via multiple devices before making a hotel booking (Google). Hotels are not just competing with OTAs, their competitive set, and short-term rental accommodations on platforms like Airbnb, Vrbo, Booking, they are also competing with every micro-moment that ...
