Distribución y Revenue Management

🏖 World2Meet announces the opening of a new Grand Azul Marino boutique agency in San Sebastián, adding to their premium shop network led by Gabriel Subías. Felipe José Arias Casares to be the store director, located at the corner of Easo and San Martín streets. This expansion brings the total to 18 offices, with presence in Madrid, Barcelona, Bilbao, Valladolid, Zaragoza, Málaga, Valencia, Palma de Mallorca, Murcia, Alicante, Granada, Oviedo, Sevilla, A Coruña, and now San Sebastián.

✈️ Iberojet will launch a direct flight from Madrid to Delhi in April 2025, becoming the only airline to connect Spain with India since Air India ceased the route four years ago. This marks Iberojet's second Asian destination following the Bangkok route and adds to their portfolio of over 15 destinations in Europe, the Caribbean, and the Indian Ocean. The service will be operated by an Airbus A330, emphasizing the company's commitment to expansion and direct flights.

✈ Destinia, a Spanish travel agency, has signed an agreement to sell Ryanair flights, becoming the second in Spain to do so after Viajes El Corte Inglés partnered with Logitravel in March. The deal, facilitated by OTA aggregator Travelfusion, allows Destinia access to Ryanair's inventory without direct system connection. Ryanair requires customer personal data sharing and full price transparency from all Travelfusion platforms, including Destinia. Destinia's CEO Ricardo Fernández expects full operational integration within the month, promising resource-efficient options and technical support. Ryanair's marketing director Dara Brady emphasizes price transparency, continuing Ryanair's strategic partnerships under strict conditions with major intermediaries like Expedia, Tui, and Lastminute.com.

📈 OpenAI launched ChatGPT two years ago, marking a significant shift in AI adoption. In Spain, 85% of 18-24 year-olds have used Generative AI, while 42% of adults have not. A recent YouGov survey for Amadeus, conducted from August 28 to September 5 with 2,211 participants over 18, explored AI in travel. 29% of adults would use AI for travel itineraries, and 58% see real-time language translation as beneficial. Concerns about data security and a lack of human perspective were noted by 20% and 17% of respondents, respectively.

🚂 Adif y Renfe aseguran una circulación normal de trenes en Madrid desde el próximo lunes, tras solucionar problemas causados por un descarrilamiento el sábado. En 2023, España acogió más de 85 millones de turistas internacionales y sus hoteles sumaron 347 millones de pernoctaciones, con un crecimiento del 21,2% en la facturación anual de las 100 principales cadenas hoteleras españolas. Grupo Numa abrirá 132 apartamentos turísticos en Valencia en 2026, ampliando su presencia en la Península Ibérica.

🛫 Play, an Icelandic low-cost airline, has announced a major scale back, discontinuing most of its North American routes due to unprofitability. Despite initially growing slowly and seeming successful, the company will now refocus on European routes, leveraging Iceland's popularity as a tourist destination. Play will also reduce its fleet by a third, downsizing from its modest ten aircraft, with plans to lease out at least one. Additionally, Play is setting up a subsidiary in Malta for tax benefits and establishing a base in Tenerife with flights to both Keflavik and Akureyri in Iceland.

📝 Juan Pedro Mellinas from the University of Murcia and Verónica Leoni from the University of the Balearic Islands conducted a study analyzing nearly half a million hotel reviews on Booking.com. They discovered that blank reviews score 17% higher than single-word reviews, and positive text reviews increase in rating up to 79 words before the score begins to decrease. The research suggests that guests are more motivated to write reviews after a negative experience. While Booking.com and Google allow rating without a comment, TripAdvisor requires justification for the rating. The study is part of a project funded by the Ministry of Science and Innovation.

📰 Mirai Opera Cloud App is now available through Oracle Cloud Marketplace, enabling hotel management of direct channel booking engines natively from the PMS without extra software. Oracle Cloud Marketplace is a centralized repository of enterprise apps by Oracle and partners. The integration differentiates direct channel strategies from OTAs, integrating ARI and bookings, streamlining technology for hoteliers. OCI offers comprehensive cloud services with security, high performance, and cost savings, allowing for quick and efficient business workload transitions to the cloud. Pablo Delgado, Managing Partner of Mirai, emphasizes the ease of operations and focus on optimizing revenues and cost management for hoteliers with Mirai's involvement in Oracle Cloud Marketplace.

🏖️ Travelance, an alliance including Soltour, TUI, Europamundo, Luxotour, Coming2, and Intermundial, marks one year since its evolution from Soltour Travel Partners, highlighting increased sales and new key destinations. Officially operating since December 2023, 2024 represents its first full year. Soltour Travel Partners amicably split from Viajes El Corte Inglés early in 2023. In the past year, 43% of Spanish tourists chose 5-8 day trips, 17% opted for 9-14 days. Soltour reports a 17% growth in hotel-only sales, foreseeing 5,000 travelers on combined trips by year's end, adding 14 new destinations. Europamundo sees a nearly 40% national growth and 8% international increase. Luxotour witnesses a 15% sales increase in destinations like Japan and Maldives. Coming2's direct excursion sales rose by 5%, while Intermundial's intermediate coverage insurance policies were the most sought after.

🏨 In Valencia, on October 17, 2024, tourism professionals gathered for a specialized session on data intelligence and new technologies in the hotel industry, part of The Hotel Data Game Tour 2024 in Ibiza, Lanzarote, Málaga, and Valencia. Organized by ITH with HOSBEC, the event covered Data, AI, Robots&Humans, benchmarking, operational management, online reputation, distribution, revenue management, and customer experience. Speakers included Maricruz Cádiz from Visit València, Javier García Cuenca of ITH/HOSBEC, and experts from companies such as Mews, Duetto, SHIJI, NORAY, STR, EISISOFT, HOTELKIT, and CONNECTYCS. Attendees received free ITH membership until 12/31/2025 and participated in an electronic device collection campaign for rare disease research.