Things you should know about hotels
Commission rates:
you book a hotel room
through an online travel
agent their slice of the fee is between 15 and
25 per cent. It can even creep higher if the
hotel wants more favourable exposure on
the OTA’s website. The person behind the
check-in desk gets to see the OTA’s cut but
you do not, lest the words “rip off ” should
pass your lips. The big players are Expedia,
which owns Hotels.com, Wotif, Hotwire.
com, trivago, Orbitz, HomeAway and
Venere among others, and Priceline, which
owns Booking.com, KAYAK and agoda.
com as well as several more. Between them
Expedia and Priceline now control about
85 per cent of the online hotel booking
market in Australia. In September the
Australian Competition and Consumer
Commission ruled that hotels can offer a
lower price to guests but only if they make
their booking by calling the hotel direct.
The hotel is not allowed to advertise a price
on its website which is lower than that
offered by the OTA. The OTAs also benefit
from the valuable guest data that comes
their way with each booking, including
email address and credit card information.
When
Overbooking:
like airlines, hotels know that
some guests who booked a room
are not going to show up so they overbook
to ensure a full house. If it should happen
that all the booked guests arrive you
might be out of luck. If the hotel behaves
honourably, you should get “walked” to
another property. While you’re supposed to
get a room in a hotel at least equal to the one
that’s been snatched you might feel you’ve
missed out, in which case a letter to the
general manager and a salvo on TripAdvisor
is salve to the wounds. In a worst-case
scenario you will simply be shunted out the
front door, end of story. You’ll get a refund,
and in most countries you can take legal
action against the hotel under consumer
protection legislation but if you’re from out
of country, the hotel knows that’s probably
not going to happen. Also just like airlines,
the guests least likely to be relocated are
those who have displayed their loyalty to
the hotel or brand via previous bookings.
Just
The concierge:
“Tell ‘em I sent you,” says the concierge as he sends you on your way to a restaurant
he’s just recommended. “Red carpet treatment coming up,” you might think. More
likely that the concierge is getting a slice of the pie. That’s not a reason to diss your
concierge’s restaurant, bar, tour or shopping recommendation. Any decent concierge
will put quality ahead of kickback every time, their reputation rides on you having
a good time, and an unhappy customer broadcasting their discontent in the lobby
is death to them. The word of the concierge is not gospel, but they’re on your side.
credits:
traveller.com.au
soegjobs.com
ihgplc.com
www.happybus.am
We know that you, as an agency, organize high level tours and transfers and you work with
hotels. So, you have a multi-role business, tell us, how you decided to start this company and what
advantages the company “Happy Bus” has to offer to its customers?
T
he company was founded in 2018, we started out as a transportation company, and the ideology
of the company was based on the quality of the service. It was of utmost importance for us to
provide the best possible experience for tourists who visit Armenia. And to be able to provide that
quality to our customers, we broke it down to several points to be able to live up to the standards we
put for ourselves. For us, some of the elements of positive and memorable experience are:
•
perfect mechanical and cosmetic condition of the car,
•
cleanliness of the car,
•
driver’s language skills,
•
affordable prices.
In the beginning it turned out it was much difficult to get integrated in the market, but we did work a
lot and worked hard and were able to get sustainable partners and client’s database.
While we were developing and promoting out company, we decided to diversify our services and to
act as a tour agency as well, because that would allow us to provide a full package of quality services
to our customers, since we already had both the staff and the part of transportation deployed and
smoothly operating.
Do you have any news or any updates for your customers
to look forward to?
Y
es, now we offer a large variety of cars with different capacity
from 2 to 20 people, and we are planning on integrating new
technical and program solutions into our cars. We are already
represented in various digital platforms worldwide. In the near
future “Happy Bus” will also launch innovational solutions in
this sphere which will be totally new in Armenia.
I’d like to add one last note, as a summary, which I have learned
from our own experience; for the success of your business you
need to serve your guests with full enthusiasm, and see them not
as customers, but rather relatives of yours.
Vahan Hovhannisyan
Founder and CEO of Happy Bus