Is this all so bad?

While reading how HomeAway outlines their plan for managers to hide guest contact info, even after a booking is made, I couldn’t but think of all the implications such move entails.

Honestly, this is no big news and not even a surprise, since we’ve been used to understand that the game changed a while ago.

We’ve all had mixed feelings and still do: should I bend? Should I sell? Is this all still worth it? What comes next?

Some owners, property managers and agents decided it was time to set sail to a new land; others go on, struggling in a business who’s margins shrink year after year.

There is no doubt the VR industry is so lucrative that the biggies are doing the utmost to get an ever growing piece of the pie. At all costs…

However, as the history of evolution keeps repeating its patterns, there is  no doubt that there will always be room for progressive entrepreneurs who keep striving for success and will reap the rewards for all their hard earned business.

Future = Innovation + Progress

Innovation is the foundation of progress and in an increasingly competitive and troubled landscape we push the boundaries of what we can do, thus kicking those who can’t or won’t adapt out of business.

Every now and then a new disruptor comes into the scene and revolutionizes the game.

Will blockchain technology be the next disruptor?

I first heard of the word “blockchain” a year or so ago thanks to Rentivo’s Danny Vaughton who published interesting articles on Smarthosts and Skift recently interviewed TUI’s CEO on his take on the issue and how it “will disrupt Expedia and Airbnb”.

Meanwhile, Premier Inn while not a VR brand yet a case study to analyze is the first hotel chain that doesn’t need Booking.com or Expedia, since they’re able to generate 88% direct bookings to their website.

How do they do that?

The Devil is in the Details

Despite OTAs moves to make PMs and Owners business lives harder and new technologies in the horizon that may take our business by storm in a not too distant future, those of us who excel do so because they adopt so many little tricks that leverage on past, current and future guests, as well as their extended families and friends. And they do that in a way that can hardly be commoditized. So they grant themselves a steady flow of returning guests, referrals and word of mouth who all come direct to their own website.

At the 2016 VRWS in Barcelona, we tackled many such things and we’d like to give you a sample of the 100+ takeaways attendees brought back home.

If you haven’t already downloaded the infographic we created and distributed earlier, now is a good time to check this useful map out.