Distribución y Revenue Management

📝 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.

✈ Ryanair's growth plans for 2025 are hampered by Boeing's delivery delays, potentially worsened by labor disputes. CEO Michael O'Leary expects a setback in next year's traffic growth due to delays in receiving 30 aircraft between March and June. Last year, Ryanair prepared for 50 aircraft but received only 30, resulting in staff surplus and higher costs.

✈ Air Europa will resume direct flights between Madrid and Tel Aviv on October 21, after a three-week suspension. Iberia extends its suspension until November 30, planning to possibly restart in December. The suspensions were due to an attack by Iran, launching about 200 missiles at Israel earlier in the month, which led to a mass cancellation of flights and rerouting to avoid Iranian and Iraqi airspace.

📱 Mirai integrates loyalty program features into their reservation engine to compete with large hotel chains, regardless of establishment size. Mirai now incorporates Hubspot CRM to cater to the specific needs of the hotel industry, ensuring robust data management and precision through API integration, not tracking pixels. This integration synchronizes real-time bookings, cancellations, and loyalty program data without any additional costs for Mirai clients. The goal is to optimize direct channel customer acquisition, retention, and repeat bookings.

🏨 British fund Pygmalion and asset manager CBRE Investment Management listed a portfolio of nine hotels in Spain for sale, with a price range between €240-250 million. Initially acquired from Urvasco group in 2018, marking CBRE IM's entry into the Spanish hotel market, the 4-star hotels have over 1,600 rooms across Sevilla, Madrid, Bilbao, San Sebastián, Santander, Tenerife, Valladolid, and Ciudad Real. The Sevilla-based Silken Al-Andalus Palaces, valued close to €100 million, accounts for nearly 40% of the total portfolio value.

🏖️ Wamos Group rebrands as Grupo Nautalia, clearing its €85 million debt to Spain's SEPI, confirmed after the sale of Wamos Air to Grupo Abra, parent of Avianca and GOL. The debt was approved by the Council of Ministers in February 2022. Grupo Nautalia now focuses on the tourism sector and will diversify services, comprising Nautalia Viajes, Wamos Portugal, Mapa Group Travel and its European subsidiaries including King Holidays in Rome, IALIA Viajes, Plaza 1, and Nautalia Live.

🏖️ World2Meet (W2M) completed the rebranding of Cibeles into a new tour operator for seniors, post-acquisition in December 2023. Cibeles now offers custom travel experiences focusing on quality and service, featuring two product lines: domestic destinations, including 40 spring 2025 departures to Tenerife and Gran Canaria from Madrid, Barcelona, and Bilbao, and 30 departures to Benidorm from Madrid and the Basque Country, totaling 1,600 spots for winter and spring 2025, plus 1,000 Christmas spots in three and four-star hotels. The second line, international destinations, includes 15 destinations with 80 departures from various Spanish airports.