mike ford
One Year On: Where Will Hotel Bookings Reset First?
Mike Ford | March 19, 2021
By Mike Ford Although at times it can feel longer, this week marks the one-year anniversary of when hotel bookings most steeply decelerated around the world, as countries closed borders and commercial travel was suspended. On the SiteMinder World Hotel Index, one look at the comparison to last year serves as a reminder of just how rapidly hotel booking momentum ground to a halt only 12 months ago. One year and some 400 million vaccines later, we're now able to reflect on the year that's been, and using the five stages of the hotel booking reset—domestic acceleration, plateauing, flux, embracing, and international acceleration—anal...
SiteMinder Appoints Technology Industry Veteran as CEO, Says Its Future Is Central to Travel
SiteMinder | November 7, 2018
Sydney, Australia – SiteMinder, the global hotel industry's leading guest acquisition platform, has appointed its first CEO to drive the continued rapid growth of its business and 30,000-strong hotel customer base. Sankar Narayan is the current chief operating officer of cloud accounting software giant Xero, and his appointment as CEO will see him co-lead SiteMinder alongside founder Mike Ford, who will remain the managing director and assume the role of Executive Chairman of the Board with a focus on driving the company's vision, strategy and product innovation. From January, Sankar will join a distinguished leadership team that ...
The Changing Face of Hotel Tech
Mike Ford, Co-founder and Managing Director, SiteMinder | April 11, 2017
by Mike Ford We work in an exciting industry. Each day brings something new in the world of online hospitality and, last week, it was AccorHotels' acquisition of Availpro, one of our European competitors. It's a well-deserved outcome for the Availpro team, which has created a substantial business serving a meaningful segment of the French hospitality market. A CONTINUING TREND Consolidation in the hotel tech industry continues its march and in the last few years we have seen a significant number of deals. Here are just some examples: Buuteeq, PriceMatch and Hotel Ninjas acquired by Priceline Group (owner of Booking.com) Hetras PMS, S...
Can Hoteliers Ever Really Give Distribution and Online Marketing the Urgent Attention They Need?
SiteMinder | April 12, 2016
By Mike Ford, Co-Founder and Managing Director, SiteMinder Managed guest relationships, integrated technology systems, and improved data collection and security are the three most critical needs of hoteliers when it comes to distribution and online marketing. That is the finding of a whitepaper SiteMinder recently produced in partnership with Revinate and Dr Peter O'Connor – and it begs the question: what support is available for today's hoteliers to meet these needs? For those of us within the hotel technology space, it seems obvious. I recently wrote a piece as such, asking myself why some hoteliers continue to bemoan OTAs and y...
