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 A
seminar on Global Distribution Opportunities In The Hotel
Industry. organised by traveljini.com, saw speakers agreeing
on the imperative of Indian hotels to use online tools to
better their bottomline. Held at The Club at Andheri West,
Mumbai on December 13 2002, the seminar had eminent speakers
like Emmanuel Phillips, country head - Sabre India, B Chatterjee,
Director - ResNet and Anaggh Desai, CEO - Traveljini.com.
State tourism departments, leading resorts and hotels like
Hyatt Regency, Welcomgroup and Choice Hotels participated.
During his presentation Anaggh Desai said that distribution
was the key to success and the most cost effective solution
in today’s times. “Today, with hotels struggling
to maintain occupancy rates, conventional methods of marketing
doesn’t help much. Besides tapping corporates for regular
business, hotels in India have greatly missed out in using
distribution platforms in the world such as Global Distribution
System (GDS), CRS solutions and web based opportunities,”
he said.
According to him, the new distribution mantra is GDS, CRS,
Internet and SMS. Desai said, “Today, with special hotel
rates and deals just an SMS away, hotels in India need to
maximise their reach by adopting these distribution tools.
Hotels in Baroda have succeeded in achieving 300 per cent
occupancy due to faster distribution options.”
Sabre Country Head, Emmanuel Phillips also reiterated the
importance of GDS for Indian hotels. Philips, who heads India
operations of the world’s largest GDS company, spoke
about the success of Sabre as a distribution channel. He urged
hotels in India to participate through ResNet, Sabre’s
partner in India. Phillips said, “ResNet with its easy-to-use
technology enables small hotels to cost effectively market
their properties through Sabre CRS. ResNet offers hotels a
low cost implementation option vis a vis high GDS direct implementation
costs.”
B Chatterjee, Director, ResNet said that the Internet is the
greatest direct to consumer medium ever created, and therefore
the hospitality industry’s fastest growing distribution
channel. “For every one dollar generated online another
five is generated offline as a result of online sales leads,”
he said.
Chatterjee showcased their CRS solution, ResEnable, which
provides real time online booking engine and online payment
gateway to hotels. ResEnable eliminates distributed inventory
and empowers each hotel to manage a common inventory on multiple
distribution channels, be it CRS, GDS, Web-based or a hotel
website. Currently ResNet provides GDS membership on all five
GDS platforms - Sabre, Amadeus, Abacus, Galileo and Worldspan.
Desai summed up the seminar to say that hotels in India couldn’t
have had it better at such low participation costs. “Through
ResNet, more than 600 hotels participate on web distribution
platforms and 350 on GDS,” he said.
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