Advertising Age, a leading advertising industry publication was one of the first to carry the story on Forrester Research's new findings on location based services like Foursquare and Gowalla with a headline that proclaimed "Why most marketers should forgo Foursquare". The exhortation was a consequence of the Forrester study that Ad Age characterizes as a " verdict of Forrester Research on location-based start-ups, which, despite their reputation as the hot new media, are still too small for major marketers. The research firm finds that these heavily-hyped apps currently make sense mainly for brands seeking male influencers."

Forrester's report quoted by Ad Age shows that only 4% of online adults have ever used LBS based mobile apps and as few as 1% update these services more than once per week. Further, as many as 84% of respondents said they are not familiar with such apps. While Forrester's executive summary  of the report does note "most marketers should wait until they can get a bigger bang for their buck" they add the caveat that the wait should be for "adoption rates (to) increase and established players emerge from the fray".

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The Daily News reports that New York's governor signed into law a bill that makes it easier for the city of New York to shut down illegal hotels. The primary focus of the bill was to "to thwart the problem of landlords renting apartments as hotel rooms to charge more than rent laws allow" although a not insignificant consequence is likely to be a clamping down on websites that aggregate individuals seeking to rent out anything from a room to an air-bed to tourists as a supposedly cheaper alternative to hotel rooms.

Renting private space to "wayfarers" is a centuries long practice but the transition from private to public, as in a hotel,  initiated laws designed to protect guests while offering them "shelter" - laws that confer rights to both guests and hoteliers but also imposed liabilities on establishments. Those responsibilities are conspicuous by their absence in the allegedly peer-to-peer rental websites such as this which not only subvert the law but offer no protection and assume no liability by taking refuge under the guise of being a facilitator while, at the same time, raking in millions of dollars via fees (as much as 15% of the rental)  from both "hosts" and "guests".  

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The Wall Street Journal last week carried a report headlined "Premium Traffic Returning for Airlines". The article notes that Qantas and other Asia-Pacific airlines saw growth in premium and economy classes and that is now being driven by business travellers rather than holidaymakers. It was particularly true of Asia-Pacific where premium traffic grew by more than 20 per cent as compared to last year. And intra-European premium traffic also showed strong growth of 23 per cent. That overall trend was true of the US as well where the US Dept. of Transportation noted that " load factors (occupancy) were at 82.5 percent for domestic flights and 79.3 percent for international flights, the highest recorded in any April."

Almost on cue, hotel earnings reported an uptick with Marriott reporting an increase in rates for the first time in two years with its Ritz Carlton chain leading the way. Others will, presumably, follow before long. However, there are pointers to be mindful of and lessons one could draw from the drought in luxe travel whose end one hopes is nigh.

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With few exceptions hotel rates around the world seem to echo the lyrics of the 70's Simon and Garfunkel song, Slip Sliding Away where the due croon "You know the nearer your destination, the more you slip sliding away". The proximate cause remains the flaccid global recovery but in many destinations from New York to New Delhi it is the near exponential growth in inventory coming on line even as there are whiffs of a nascent economic recovery.

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The anemic economic expansion continues to keep room rate  growth around the world largely flaccid at best with some jurisdictions like Florida even offering steep discounts. What ought to translate in to great bargains for consumers has been thwarted if not negated by upticks in jurisdictional taxes and (in some cases) high hotel fees. The latter is a less than subtle attempt at recouping lost RevPar. Both create tremendous customer ill will and arguably long term damage to the reputation of destinations and hostelries.

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VentureBeat, a website that "provide news about innovation for forward-thinking executives" has a story on a hot new virtual intermediary promises to be the bridge between burgeoning location based services and loyalty programs by supplementing rather than competing with the latter. Somewhat aptly named, Topguest, the New York City based start-up aims to connect the loyalty programs hotels and airlines have with various (virtual) check-in services like Foursquare and more quizzically named sites Gowalla and Loopt. VentureBeat notes that Topguest  "is going for a niche market and making a bet the travel industry will venture into the location space using its product."

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The Wall Street Journal reports that "marketing and software companies are increasingly using sophisticated technologies for smartphones and other mobile gadgets to track consumers and target ads based on their location."  While using subscribers' location to sell ads is raising some privacy concerns as many of the businesses don't clearly inform consumers about the kind of data they track, how it is used or with whom it is shared, the technology holds tremendous promise in the nascent but fast growing field of Mobile Advertising.

The Journal reports notes that "Skyhook Wireless, a company which develops location software for the iPhone and other devices, uses GPS satellites, Wi-Fi networks and cellular towers to establish a user's location within 60 feet. A hotel operator could use the software to target its ads to consumers accessing the Traffic.com iPhone app from a nearby section of the highway."  Seems as if the interstate system with hostelry off exits lends itself particularly well to that application. The WSJ report quotes Mobext, a mobile ad marketing firm whose client list includes Choice Hotels, as addressing privacy issues by asking the subscriber's permission for each session.

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Hotel video content has been around a few years in an attempt to sate the seemingly ceaseless craving for information by online shoppers before booking a hotel room. As a medium it arguably offers considerably more than static web pages and even virtual tours by providing a truly authentic peek into a hotel's facilities with a nice scale of depth unmatched by photos or most virtual tours and is best integrated into the homepage of a hospitality facility.

However, the number of hotel websites incorporating video remain relatively small and hoteliers would do well to take note of a recent survey by emarketer which found that by 2014 "77% of US Internet users will be watching online video content at least monthly". And demographics show that it is Gen Y, a key market for hotels beginning in the near term, that is a big follower of online video viewing, most of whom have gone beyond snack-size clips to adopt full-length TV and movie viewing on the Web.

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The immediate effects of April's volcanic ash are well known with most hotels around the world suffering considerable losses (although Dubai's hostelry had a 25% spike thanks to their airport hub being away from the ash cloud).

Fresh on the heels of volcanic ash is yet another disaster, this time human-made, caused by the oil spill. Incredibly, it's effects are being felt as far as afield as resorts in the Florida pan-handle on Pensacola beach. The Wall Street Journal reports that despite "no waves of oil have washed ashore on Panama City Beach, where the sea remains emerald green and the sand sugar white" hotel occupancy is down 30% from a year with experts fearing occupancy in the teens during the normally packed Memorial Day weekend in May. Yet here, as in the aftermath of other disasters, savvy hoteliers have reacted to thus far unfounded fears of oil spoiling a beach holiday by putting up web-cams on their sites that show in real time the pristine condition of surf on the local beach. The expectation is that it will revive bookings that had tapered suddenly. 

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The Crowne Plaza in Copenhagen came up with a novel idea to generate electricity by installing "electricity producing bicycles in its gym for guests to use."  The hotel claimed to want to create "a world first by giving guests the chance to help power the hotel whilst getting fit at the same time."  The payoff for the guest is a "locally produced complimentary meal encouraging guests to not only get fit but also reduce their carbon footprint and save electricity and money." They can also use the new electric bicycles "to monitor how much electricity they’re producing via iPhones mounted on the handle bars. Avid fitness fans can also, from June, race against the hotel’s solar panel system in a bid to produce the most electricity."

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