Argophilia

Travel news you want to read.

Hilton

Hilton: On Hand to Create Your Heart’s Desire

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A wedding is a once-in-a-lifetime occasion, the biggest celebration of your lives. It captures the big and small moments of a love story, and its narrative sets the stage for the idea, theme, and the feel of the wedding. As you begin your journey together as one, enlisting some of the best wedding specialists to bring your dreams to life is instrumental.

AR Will Change the Hotel Experience Forever

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For those who thought augmented and virtual reality technologies were just for gamers, news from Chinese search giant Baidu tells of the company building an AR lab to research and build experiences for the digital world. Across the spectrum of the mobile-digital realm, companies are in a frenzied uptake mode for developing and launching AR capability. Nowhere is this more prevalent than in the travel, booking, and hospitality experience spaces.

Hotels Accused of Still Fleecing Guests on WiFi

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Even though most hotel guest might figure hospitality players got the negative message over ancillary charges, hidden fees, and particularly pay-for WiFi, even the biggest hotel chains did not. According to a report via The Telegraph, travel portal Gogobot performed a survey recently revealing guest displeasure with hotels still charging for Internet.

Big OTAs and Big Hotels in Price Fixing Lawsuit

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A federal lawsuit naming the likes of Expedia, Orbitz, Booking.com, Travelocity, Trump International Hotels Management, Intercontinental, Kimpton, Sabre Holdings, Priceline, Marriott, Starwood, and Hilton alleges the companies conspired to fix hotel room prices. According to the news from Reuters, the suit claims the travel giants did so in an effort to fend off competition from smaller online retailers.

Treovi Opens: Just Book!

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A couple of weeks ago we announced hotels could load their inventory onto Treovi. Yesterday the Swiss startup announced having opened their beta doors to guests, inviting the world to not only search desired destination hotels, but to just plain “book!” This niche of travel booking entities is growing pretty fast, but Treovi thinks their model is the only truly free one.

The Curious Case of Room Key

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A news release yesterday via Business Wire tells of conglomerate hotel booking site Room Key’s coming out of Beta status. What’s curious about this news is not so much the fluffy nature of it, but claims of millions having flocked to the startup to book their hotel rooms. At least this is the feel of the announcement. A bit of one of those “non-event” specialties creative PR agencies excel at perhaps? What’s the real story?

Hotel Seven: “Paris As You’ll Like It”

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Given your choices for a romantic getaway to Paris, what hotel would you spend a weekend or a week with? The Hilton, the Ritz Paris perhaps, the Westin Paris, or maybe Hotel de Crillon? Possibly, but remember I asked about a romantic getaway.

Roomkey: On the Verge of Success & Failure At Once

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Roomkey. If there were ever a more appropriate name for a hotel booking channel, a more symbolically significant potential for branding, that would have to be perfection. Roomkey.com actually does have that possibility. But, like all great ideas and initiatives, the big time hoteliers’ 3rd interjection of intelligent engagement, has it’s problems too. There’s room for lots of niche products in travel, but is Roomkey an escape hatch or a marketing channel? And if exit marketing is introduced, even niche traffic and conversions could be scared away.