Skift Take
Today’s edition of Skift’s daily podcast takes a look at hotel branding secrets, TripAdvisor’s incomes, and tourist advantages that could include a Gibraltar border change.
Rashaad Jorden
Good early morning from Skift. It’s Monday, August 8 in New York City. Here’s what you need to learn about business of travel today.
Listen Now
Subscribe Apple Podcasts|Spotify|Overcast|Google Podcasts
Episode Notes
Hotel executives regularly talk about branding, but a lot of them fail to do it well. So what are hotel business doing incorrect? Senior Hospitality Editor Sean O’Neill turns to Cornell University teacher Chekitan Dev, an expert on the topic, for responses.
Dev, who wrote the book Hospitality Branding, said that branding is basically offering travelers factors to choose one hotel over others. He utilizes 5 adjectives to explain an efficient brand name– bold, appropriate, authentic, unique and unique. Those adjectives spell out the acronym brand name, O’Neill mentions.
However in spite of explaining branding as conceptually easy, Dev acknowledged poor brand management is also simple to accomplish. He thinks that research and development is at an all-time low in the hotel market, adding to the massive lack of development he sees. In addition, the pandemic may have stimulated more of so-called brand name unfaithful, O’Neill writes. Parent company-run hotels had on average worse compliance with brand name requirements than franchised residential or commercial properties, according to research Dev contributed to.
We turn beside Tripadvisor. Its brand-new CEO Matt Goldberg said in his first profits call at the helm that he aims to improve the business’s usage of information, reports Executive Editor Dennis Schaal.
Goldberg, who assumed the CEO role on July 1, didn’t supply any specifics about technique changes during Tripadvisor’s second-earnings call. But he believes that Tripadvisor can much better utilize information to enhance the client experience and enhance its partners’ return on investment. Goldberg cited his experience running data-driven businesses as the factor for his self-confidence. On The Other Hand, Chief Financial Officer Ernst Teunissen raised the possibility that Tripadvisor would make acquisitions to complement its brand names Viator and TheFork.
Tripadvisor generated $31 million in earnings during the 2nd quarter, in contrast to a $40 million bottom line the exact same period in 2015.
We end up today in Gibraltar. The longtime UK area could get a substantial tourism boost thanks to a treaty that would abolish border controls with Spain, writes Factor Sonia Menken.
Menken composes that a treaty permitting Gibraltar to sign up with the European Union’s Schengen Location by the end of 2022 is being negotiated. Citizens of the area’s 26 countries can travel freely in the region without needing to show a passport or nationwide identity card. Gibraltar’s authorities have stated its economy would benefit considerably from signing up with the Schengen Area. The territory is home to the prominent limestone promontory The Rock, which would likely see more visitors.
Signing Up With the Schengen Area would likely push more Spaniards to operate in Gibraltar. Approximately 16,000 Spaniards currently cross the border to work daily in Gibraltar.