m-Travel.com and Travel Distribution News

HomeAway Hires former Opodo France Chairman of the Board to Lead European Business

AUSTIN, TX, June 2, 2009 – HomeAway, Inc., which operates the world’s largest network of vacation rental websites, today announced the appointment of Petra Friedmann to the position of President of HomeAway Europe.  A longtime veteran of the travel industry, Friedmann brings invaluable online consumer experience to her new role managing the company’s European presence.  She replaces Alexis de Belloy, who transitions to a similar position overseeing the HomeAway brands in the U.S.

 “We’re pleased to have a proven leader to oversee our rapidly growing European business," says Brian Sharples, CEO of HomeAway.  "Her expertise in online consumer travel will benefit our operations throughout the world.”

From Paris, Friedmann will manage teams based in the U.K., Germany and France and oversee the business operations of Europe’s leading vacation rental sites, including Holiday-Rentals.co.uk, OwnersDirect.co.uk, FeWo-direkt.de, Abritel.fr and Homelidays.com.

She joins HomeAway from one of Europe’s top online travel agencies, Opodo, where she most-recently served as chairman of the board of its French operations. During her seven-year tenure at Opodo, Friedmann managed the Pan-European sales and marketing efforts and oversaw the product strategy for the $1.3 billion business. Prior to Opodo, she was Managing Director of QXL, France, a leading online auction brand.

Friedmann began her career in Germany creating a travel agency specializing in discount flights and launching Mosaic Travel, a tour operator, before settling in France and joining Marmara, part of the TUI group in 1992.  She earned her doctorate in Politics and Economy from The University of Bremen in Germany.

Bing adds 'Tweet' search function

Microsoft has reportedly added a feature to Bing that allows the search engine to query the Internet for so-called real-time data, including postings from Twitter users.

"There has been much discussion of real-time search and the premium on immediacy of data that has been created primarily by Twitter," said Sean Suchter, general manager for Microsoft's Search Technology Center in Silicon Valley.

The company did not appear to work directly with Twitter to deliver the capability. 

"We think this is an interesting first step toward using Twitter's public API to surface Tweets in people search," he wrote. 

The first of the three major Internet search engines to include this functionality, Bing's move shows the importance Internet companies are attaching to "real time" blogging services like Twitter, and likely foreshadows an arms race as digital marketers try to make money searching through this content, highlighted Dow Jones. Real-time search, which is in its infancy, is regarded by Internet marketers as a promising source of future advertising revenue, due to the exploding popularity of services like Twitter.

JetBlue tops in customer satisfaction

Airline customer satisfaction has declined for a third consecutive year to a four-year low in 2009, according to J.D. Power and Associates.

The survey, which queried nearly 13,000 travelers, measured airlines in seven categories: cost and fees; flight crew; in-flight services; aircraft; boarding/deplaning/baggage; check-in; and reservation.

For a fourth consecutive year, JetBlue ranked highest in the low-cost carrier segment. J.D. Power says it performed well in two of seven categories measured - aircraft and in-flight services. Southwest Airlines and WestJet followed, in a tie.

Alaska Airlines topped in the latest J.D. Power and Associates 2009 North America Airline Satisfaction survey of traditional network carriers. According to the survey, Alaska performed well in five of the seven categories: flight crew; aircraft; boarding/deplaning/baggage; check-in; and reservation.

On a positive note, the customer-reported length of flight delays was down by eight minutes, to an average 72 minutes. And average wait times at the ticketing/baggage check counter dipped from 14 minutes to 12 minutes over the past year.

0 to 7,000,000 in few years – consumers accessing Travel sites via mobile browsers soars – But is that the only story?

The number of consumers accessing information and services via their mobile browsers hit a record high for many markets by the end of last year. The US in particular has experienced phenomenal growth with an increase of almost 62% during 2008 (m:metrics).

The continuous and stable growth in the penetration of mobile web usage in many travel markets is a clear indicator that mobile browsing is becoming more mainstream. It is by no means a dominant activity amongst mobile users yet but certainly indicative of the fast changing use of mobile phones. ComScore data reveals that across the US, UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain, there were almost 7 million mobile browsers that accessed remote services or information related to travel, a significant shift given that only a few years ago this number would have been very close to zero. However EyeforTravel Research clearly shows that is not just mobile web browsing that is impacting the travel industry. Mobile has started to impact across all the consumer touch points. 

Industry gets closer than ever to travel consumers

Travel companies from all across the industry are increasingly turning their attention towards the role of mobile in the quest to get closer and more engaged with the travel consumer. Travellers are beginning to interact with travel related services via their mobile phones in many ways and there’s evidence of innovations at many stages of the buying and customer cycles. Data does show that the role of travel services in the mobile application space is relatively low at the moment, but growth is highlighted in many of the key travel markets and the use of mobile applications to access information and services in general showed a sharp increase following the launch of the Apple App Store in June 2008. Italians are particularly avid users of mobile applications, and other non-voice data as well, and reached about 3.4 million users by the end of last year (m:metrics). Travel related information and functional applications such as weather, maps, currency converters, etc have experienced high growth and according to EyeforTravel Research the popularity has been echoed in their recent survey amongst UK consumers.  

Revealed in a brand new report next week, EyeforTravel Research illustrate in the markets they review, that different demographic patterns have emerged for users of mobile data in general and mobile travel services. For example, the age of consumers accessing mobile travel services via their mobile browser appears very different between markets. The US, UK, France and Germany are dominated by the younger age groups but in Italy and Spain the users are weighted towards the relatively older consumers.

Mobile is at the point where ongoing growth suggests a similarity to many other areas of technology and almost exponential. There has been astonishing growth of the mobile ecosystem whether in terms of mobile adoption in general, data use, search, downloading mobile applications or browsing the mobile internet and analysts argue that becoming more familiar with the mobile user is vital for building a solid business case for mobile. In EyeforTravel’s recent Mobile Technology in Travel Report: The Detail, guidelines for developing user-centric mobile initiatives are offered and some of the highlights around the mobile consumer include some real positives:

• It is important to think in terms of ‘scenarios’ as to how a typical customer could use their mobile as they engage with brand touch-points and move through their travel experience.
• Some mobile travel consumers are willing to pay for innovative and appealing services on their mobile phones as the mobile culture has always operated on a paid service model in marked contrast to the free culture of the internet. Micropayments are a good way to generate revenue streams from customers using your mobile services.
• It is clear that some customers want to share information about their trips and they want to do so in a way that is simple and user-friendly. Customers are proving very receptive to the idea that travel companies act as ‘enablers’ of the entire travel experience and have shown interest in such mobile initiatives.

Some clear points of caution and practical advice include:

• Effective delivery of services to an individuals’ mobile device must be defined by personalisation and relevance.
• Mobile travel consumers have high expectations and are impatient with services that are expensive, have a poor user experience or add any negativity to their travel experience.
• Mobile travel consumers are very sensitive about their personal mobile device being used for marketing and advertising, care is needed.
• With respect to serving the mobile customer effectively, the answer is in the detail
• Usability, Usability, Usability. Oh and did we mention usability?
• Your mobile customers are not just repackaged, scaled down and poorly focused versions of your online customers so don’t offer them mobile products and services that treat them as such. Once you lose a customer on mobile, given its personal nature it will prove almost impossible to get them back.

Insights from leading travel companies featuring in the Mobile Technology in Travel Report: The Detail include these:

• Sixt advises: When it comes to offering services to mobile customers; ‘less is more’
• Lufthansa reminds us that your customers are mobile so as a travel company you need to be too
• Lufthansa also notes that mobile is a standalone medium and that it offers new ways to connect with your customers and that it is a different not a limited channel
• Egencia notes that sometimes, travel companies say ‘we tried something on mobile but nobody used it’ - you cannot push technology only through technology and you need to shout from the hilltops to your customers that you are mobile and that they should be trying your sexy new offering... engage your customers to buy-in to mobile
• Rearden Commerce and Egencia advise companies to be aware of being entirely led by what customers say they want. Be user-centric but do not slavishly develop products and services. It is more important to anticipate customer’s needs and how they will use their mobiles in practice rather than developing a particular piece of functionality based on superficial customer feedback
• Some customers love to use products and services that are addictive and fun. Rearden Commerce has taken this to heart in delivering mobile services that recognise that corporate travellers are social beings too.
• Kayak indicates that mobile can be used to re-energise relationships with existing customers and engage with new customers
• Lonely Planet has been focusing on mobile as a window into how customers are changing. They have found some consumers want to engage in rich content and social media activities delivered via their personal mobile device. This reflects the evolving relationship between content, experience and social media
• Lonely Planet recognise that as customers evolve they are demanding a more and more interactive relationship with brands
• Don’t assume customers will use a service in a particular way. lastminute.com suggests that customers do not necessarily behave in the way you expect and it is necessary to understand the broader concept of ‘mobility’ when creating mobile products and services that are customer-centric. Deliver a mobile service that is tailored to the way customers actually move through the travel experience.
• Egencia have learnt that a part of understanding and serving mobile travellers is in applying the concept of the ‘time value of money.’ This is extremely important to not only corporate travellers but discerning leisure travellers as well
• Put yourself in your customers’ shoes and be critical. WAYN have stressed that mobile initiatives should always enhance the core value proposition to the customer, if the added value is not clear-cut then don’t bother; go back to the drawing board
• WAYN also points out that mobile consumers are social consumers, they note that the travel industry needs to think about mobile as inherently viral and that having a compelling service that users want to show their friends and acquaintances should not be underestimated. This way, the customers can help to do a lot of the hard work for you!
• Don’t treat mobile as a box ticking exercise, Visit Britain warns, your mobile customers deserve better and it is crucial to develop services that reflect how customers use their mobiles

To be successful in mobile, as with any digital strategy, it is necessary to match and indeed exceed customer expectations. Amy Scarth, Head of Research at EyeforTravel explains that much of EyeforTravel’s School of Mobile going forward will be about working out exactly what those expectations are, the values, needs and desires, and how they are formed particularly in light of different social and cultural contexts and taking account of demographics, traveller typologies and geographies. They’re currently working on building global consumer intelligence for the travel industry ready to launch at World Travel Market in November and are keeping a close eye on the mobile solutions out there. 

To learn about how travel or tourism companies can build a business case for mobile, look through 16 exclusive case studies with leading travel and tourism companies from around the world and benefit from aggregated insight from leaders in the mobile space, you can register free today as an EyeforTravel Research Advanced Member. EyeforTravel Research Advanced Membership is a free resource for the travel industry and you can sign up here http://www.eyefortravelresearch.com/user/registration to gain immediate access to Advanced Member reports. 

Line up for The Get Funded Show@WTM announced

The line up of Travel Gurus and Investors who will be heading the panel at The Get Funded Show@World Travel Market is here!  With a potent mix of travel expertise, entrepreneurial flair and investment experience.

The Get Funded Show@World Travel Market is a high-profile platform where the innovators of the industry will pitch ideas that will shape the future of travel. The unique event will catapult savvy start-ups into the limelight at the world's premier travel event. With over 25,000 travel professionals and almost 3,000 travel press in attendance at World Travel Market, The Get Funded Show@WTM offers unsurpassed exposure and the ultimate visibility for ambitious entrepreneurs.

They will be judged by our panelists, who include:

Hugo Burge, Founder, Cheapflights and Howzat Media
Steve Endacott, Owner and CEO, On Holiday Group
John Kent, Founder and CEO of youtravel.com and the founder of Aquis Hotels and Resorts
Roger Allard, Owner, All Leisure Group
Peter Waller, Group Mergers and Acquisitions Director, Thomas Cook
Paul Evans, Founder and Chief Executive, Low Cost Holiday Group
Faisal Galaria, ex-Managing Director, Kayak Europe & Angel Investor
Dinesh Dhamija, Founder, eBookers
Cree Lawson, Founder and CEO, Travel Ad Network
Glenn Fogel, EVP Corporate Development, Priceline
Dhruv Shringi, Founder, Yatra
Jeff Wasson, Founder, TravelNow.com (tbc)
David Scowsill, Chairman, YuuGuu.com (tbc)
Patrick Hoffstetter, Managing Director UK, lastminute.com
Roberto Bonanzinga, Partner, Balderton Capital
Jason Katz, Founder, KP Capital
Bill Morrow, co-Founder, Angels Den
Daniel Smith, Assistant Director, New Investments, ISIS Equity Partners (tbc)
Nic Brisbourne, Partner, DFS Esprit
Alexis Bonte, co-Founder, CEO and Angel Investor, eRepublik Labs

The Get Funded Show is unique as it is a focused event bringing together the entrepreneurs who have shaped the industry with the future ones set to change it again.  With such a wealth of industry expertise and entrepreneurship in the room it will be a fertile environment ideas – a valuable opportunity to tap into he bleeding edge of innovation in travel.

More information can be found at www.getfundedshow.com .

The Application Process is now open – make sure you’re the first to apply at www.getfundedshow.com/how-to-get-involved-entrepreneurs.asp .

United Airlines asks agents to pay credit card fees

United Airlines is in news for its decision to “make some travel agents pay the credit card fees on flights that they book”.

The airline told an unspecified number of travel agents that starting July 20, they will no longer be able to access its merchant agreements with credit card companies such as Visa, MasterCard and American Express.

That means agents must set up their own agreements and pay the fees, usually around 2%, that credit card companies charge merchants for every sale, reported USA Today. 

In the notice, a United vice president told the agencies to report the sale to the airline as a cash transaction. He warned that agencies that try to assign the credit-card processing fee to United’s account would be dinged $75 per ticket.

Credit card companies typically charge merchants between 2 percent and 3 percent of the transaction amount per card swipe.

“Credit-card processing costs are escalating at a high rate and represent several hundred million dollars each year,” said United spokeswoman Robin Urbanski. “We’re exploring ways in the current economic environment to reduce our costs and run an efficient airline.”

United spent $710 million last year on distribution costs, which includes payments to the distribution systems such as Galileo, reported The AP.

Flo Lugli joins Wyndham

Wyndham Hotel Group has appointed Flo Lugli as executive vice president of marketing, responsible for the strategy and execution of the Hotel Group’s global marketing efforts.

Previously, she was senior vice president of commercial in the Global Distribution Services Division at Travelport.

Lugli, who joins the company on July 20th, will oversee the Hotel Group’s distribution and e-commerce, loyalty and direct marketing, research and analytics departments. 

She will work closely with the Hotel Group’s brand marketing teams to lead the overall strategic direction for customer engagement and market positioning for the company. 

Ryanair’s customer care is better than BA’s: report

Ryanair has stated that BA “charges passengers high fares but delivers a dismal on-time performance and a ridiculously high rate of lost baggage”.

The airline made this statement as it welcomed the release of punctuality, flight cancellation and baggage performance statistics by the Association of European Airlines (AEA), for November 2008 – March  2009.

According to the airline, the findings indicated that Ryanair is Europe’s number one airline for customer service with the best on time performance, fewest cancellations and least lost bags.

Ryanair confirmed that over 90 percent of its fights were on-time, 99.6 percent were completed and less than one bag (0.67) per 1,000 passengers was misplaced by Ryanair between November and March while AEA statistics confirmed that 17 percent of British Airways’ flights were delayed, 97.9 percent were completed and BA lost sixteen bags per 1,000 passengers, more than 20 times the number of bags lost by Ryanair.

Recently, BA had launched an online price checker to highlight no-frills airlines’ “hidden” additional charges.  BA’s Value Checker allows consumers to see how much extra they have to pay the value airlines for additional features including using a debit card, checking-in and priority boarding. All of these come with the price of a ticket on BA.

BankersAvenue.com adds hotels feature

BankersAvenue.com, a social networking website for the financial sector, and Expedia Affiliate Network (EAN) have formed a hotel reservation partnership.

The pact will give the social networking portal’s members booking access to Expedia's hotel products through a white label portal on www.BankersAvenue.com.

“We have been gathering feedback from our members regarding their preferences and suggestions for the site and specifically asked them which feature they’d like to see added to the portal. More than 80% wanted something that would save them sufficient money in the tough economic times. A good proportion also wanted a feature that could help reduce their travelling expenditure,” said Emiliano Caradonna, the founder of Bankers Avenue, which now has more than 1500 members.

As part of the partnership Bankers Avenue has devised and implemented its own reward system for their users passing on a share of any marketing fees that the website receives from a hotel booking to the person that made the booking, the member who originally invited the person making the booking to join the site and a portion for the company itself.

Currently EAN works with more than 10,000 private label partners across the globe.

Travel rewards points quite significant in vacation planning: survey

Twenty percent of Americans polled in a survey said they would be unable to take their next vacation without cashing in rewards points, indicating that the current economic climate has increased the importance of travel rewards points in vacation planning.

The survey (commissioned by the Wyndham Rewards loyalty programme and conducted by Rabin Research on June 16) found that nearly one-third of Americans (31 percent) belong to one or more travel industry loyalty or rewards programme, and almost half of them (47 percent) plan to redeem travel rewards points for their next vacation. It featured 1,040 Americans.

“Knowing that travelers are still taking vacations, but watching their overall spend more carefully, we wanted to find out exactly how important rewards points are to Americans,” said Jill Noblett, Wyndham Hotel Group senior vice president of Loyalty and Direct Marketing.  “This survey tells us reward points are rather significant.”

According to the survey, nearly two-thirds (64 percent) of Americans say rewards points are either “very important” or “extremely important” given the state of the economy.  Twenty-nine percent responded “very important” and 35 percent responded “extremely important”.  

In an effort to help summer travellers stretch their vacation dollars further, Wyndham Rewards has launched “Save Summer”, a promotion that features 15 to 50 percent off at participating brands, the opportunity to win up to 750 free hotel nights and the possibility of walking away with one million Wyndham Rewards loyalty points. 

Consumers may download a widget to their Facebook, MySpace and other social networking profiles that allows them to register for the “Save Summer” promotion and share it with online friends.  Every time a friend enters the promotion the originating consumer automatically gets another chance to win.  Membership in the Wyndham Rewards programme is not required to enter, and no purchase is necessary.  The promotion is available now through Sept. 10, 2009.

Read more: loyalty

Thomson to launch a pre-holiday site for customers

Thomson Holidays is to launch a personal pre-departure website for online customers at the end of the summer.

Named MyThomson, the site’s aim is to enhance customer’s pre-departure experience by providing all their holiday details and information in one place.   

To be launched for Thomson’s Premier customers first, the service will then be rolled out to all Thomson online bookers. 

Users will be able to view useful information such as the weather forecast for their holiday destination, directions to the airport from their home (powered by Google Maps) and notifications of road-works en-route. Further details about the hotel and destination will also be available, with links to videos and photos.    

From the site customers will be able to purchase extras such as UK airport parking, car hire, holiday insurance and excursions in resort.  

The dynamic nature of the site means all quotes are personally tailored, for example a customer travelling from Bristol on 18th November for a 7-night holiday, will only be quoted car parking relevant to this trip.

“The idea behind MyThomson was to offer our customers something that would not only be useful in the run-up to departure, but would also add to the pre holiday excitement,” said Jeremy Gidley, CRM General Manager, TUI Travel UK.  

“Our research showed that online bookers often wanted even more information about their holiday. Thomson’s ‘holiday countdown’ email programme was a great start, but this new personalised website enables the customers to choose what they want to see when they want, and also provides a lot more engaging features and content.”   

“Importantly, we’re not trying to take away the human element – if a customer still has questions unanswered, they are able via MyThomson to email the Thomson resort team in their holiday destination for expert local knowledge and advice,” shared Gidley.

Only 15 pc of airlines have optimised their websites for mobile phones: survey

A survey has indicated that 78 percent of airlines intend to adapt their websites to work on mobile phones by 2012.

According to the 2009 Airline IT Trends Survey, 38 percent of respondent airlines do not provide any mobile services as they see no clear business case yet and only 20 percent currently offer mobile phone check-in.

The Airline IT Trends Survey shows that only 15 percent of airlines have optimised their websites for mobile phones.

“Our approach in SITA Labs is to develop a common platform to maximise the use of mobile phones as a travel tool. Our prototype interface works via the mobile device’s web browser, and we ‘mobilise’ rather than simply miniaturise the airline website for the convenience of the passenger eliminating unnecessary content,” said Jim Peters, chief technology officer, SITA.

The company has also announced the creation of a Mobile Workforce Innovation Focus Group to define industry requirements for a common-use context aware platform at airports to boost the efficiency of airside operations and reduce flight delays through the improved provision of mobile solutions to airline and airport staff.

When it comes to airline workforce mobility, the survey shows that 51 percent of respondents plan to deploy data-centric mobile solutions at key hubs, and 37 percent are waiting to do so pending the availability of sufficient wireless access coverage at airports.

The biggest drawback of existing mobile solutions today is the difficulty of adapting them to meet the real-time needs of workers in the airport environment and the cost of deployment. The key to success is contextual information, adapting information delivery dynamically, to completely transform airport business processes especially for key on-the-ground staff such as turnaround dispatch teams and maintenance engineers.

Mobile Technology in Travel Report: The Detail

Mobile Technology in Travel Report: The Detail is the second in the series of EyeforTravel’s School of Mobile reports. This report features 16 detailed case studies from leading travel companies offering advice and illustrating diverse experiences in Mobile.

For more information, click here: http://www.eyefortravelresearch.com/reportsales/record/id/10/id_permalink/mobile-technology-in-travel-report--the-detail

or contact Amy Scarth on +44(0)207 3757545 or info@eyefortravelresearch.com

Amadeus to deliver new mobile services for business travellers

Amadeus is planning to introduce a suite of mobile solutions for business travellers in the coming months.

This includes the possibility of having efficient approval workflow while on the road and itinerary-based location information upon demand, as well as an employee security tracker. 

The new solutions will function on all the major mobile operating systems such as Windows Mobile, Symbian and BlackBerry.  

The company shared that Amadeus Mobile Partner is synchronised with Amadeus e-Travel Management. Travellers can store complete itineraries on their mobile device at the push of a button. They can access everything from flight schedules and hotel addresses, to car-rental and check-in information, even when they do not have network connectivity. It also means that these details can be checked while abroad without incurring any roaming fees.

Amadeus Mobile Partner has an additional function for travel approvers within a company, which allows them to confirm or reject trips while on-the-go via their mobile. Approvers see the full list of trips waiting to be approved, and can quickly endorse or reject them directly from their mobile. 

The company has worked on a traveller tracking and security tool, Amadeus SMS Traveller Contact, to facilitate ad hoc communication with travelling employees before, during and after they travel, allowing them to take care of their travellers in just three easy steps. It allows the travel manager to reach out to travellers who may be at risk during an emergency; send SMS notifications before, during and after their trip; and quickly send information via email to all those employees with planned trips for a given destination.

Amadeus has teamed up with mobile technology company ConTgo to offer an additional mobile solution to corporations. Mobile Travel Assistant’s (MTA) main feature, known as the Follow-Me Itinerary, delivers relevant information directly to the traveller’s mobile phone using SMS messages only when they need it. The information sent is based on the actual itinerary for the traveller, and the content can be customised and controlled by the corporation based on location-specific rules. Secondly, the Travel Alert functionality on the MTA helps locate travellers by SMS and keeps track of their responses so that the travel manager can keep a clear view of those who may be in need of assistance during a travel security incident. 

Mobile Technology in Travel Report: The Detail

Mobile Technology in Travel Report: The Detail is the second in the series of EyeforTravel’s School of Mobile reports. This report features 16 detailed case studies from leading travel companies offering advice and illustrating diverse experiences in Mobile.

For more information, click here: http://www.eyefortravelresearch.com/reportsales/record/id/10/id_permalink/mobile-technology-in-travel-report--the-detail

or contact Amy Scarth on +44(0)207 3757545 or info@eyefortravelresearch.com

Kuoni Group selects Tealeaf

Kuoni has selected Tealeaf to support its future global website roll-outs, which are part of an increased online-focused business strategy.

The tour operator intends to understand customer needs and preferences in order to improve usability, site content, information architecture and transaction simplicity. 

Benno Iten, head of sales for Kuoni Switzerland, who is also heading the group wide e-business, said, “This is a significant year for Kuoni’s ebusiness. We are shifting to a new model that allows us to improve user experience and efficiency.

Tealeaf will also support Kuoni in further optimising its e-business strategy.

The Kuoni Group has started Tealeaf implementation for the UK and Switzerland with more countries to follow. The first next generation website went live in Switzerland in June 2009.

Kuoni is the first tour operator outside the USA and UK to deploy Tealeaf’s customer experience software.

Read more: online customer experience

“Europe’s troubles can be found in the fall of average room rates”

The European hotel industry posted mixed year-over-year results when reported in U.S. dollars, euros and British pounds for May 2009, according to data compiled by STR Global.

“Europe’s troubles can be found in the fall of average room rates”, said James Chappell, managing director of STR Global. “In U.S. dollar and euro terms, the region reports the highest drops in ADR for the month and year-to-date May compared to Asia/Pacific, the Americas and Middle East/Africa.”  

“For May, of the 40 markets tracked on our European Hotel Review, only four increased their average rates in local currency terms: Frankfurt, Tel Aviv and the northern European markets of Helsinki and Malmo”, Chappell added. “The trade fairs helped Frankfurt to achieve the highest ADR increase of 22 percent for the 40 markets tracked”. 

Highlights from market performers for May include (year-over-year results, all currency figures are in euros): 

• Frankfurt, Germany, reported the largest occupancy increase, rising 7.6 percent to 59.9 percent.
• Budapest, Hungary, experienced the largest occupancy decrease, falling 21.5 percent to 60.4 percent, followed by Geneva, Switzerland (-21.2 percent to 58.8 percent) and Tel Aviv, Israel (-21.0 percent to 71.0 percent). 
• Frankfurt posted a 22.4-percent jump in ADR to EUR114.47, the largest increase of that metric.
• Three markets posted ADR decreases of more than 25 percent: Moscow, Russia (-41.9 percent to EUR165.49); Düsseldorf, Germany (-32.9 percent to 79.34); and Cardiff, United Kingdom (-25.5 percent to EUR64.90). 
• Frankfurt reported the only RevPAR increase, up 31.7 percent to EUR68.55.
• Seven markets experienced RevPAR decreases of 30 percent or more: Moscow (-49.7 percent to EUR101.15); Düsseldorf (-41.5 percent to EUR41.52); Madrid, Spain (-36.4 percent to EUR61.15); Budapest (-34.4 percent to EUR45.48); Prague, Czech Republic (-33.2 percent to EUR59.00); Stockholm, Sweden (-32.8 percent to EUR77.41); and Dublin, Ireland (-30.0 to EUR59.17).