Toby March

VP System Initiatives

Design Hotels™

22
Sep

11:00am – 11:15am

The World View

Toby March served as Vice President Global Sales, Revenue Management & Distribution for Design Hotels™ from 2010 to 2013. He recently returned to Design Hotels™, where he assumed the role of a leading coordinator in the Starwood SPG and Design Hotels™ integration. March has years of international experience as a business leader and strategic planner in travel technology, marketing, and distribution at such industry leaders as SABRE, Galileo, Abacus & Carlson Wagonlit.

presentation recap

Technology Trends

Many challenges and opportunities lie ahead in hotel room distribution and revenue management. The ever-shifting industry now faces ongoing consolidation, a rise in online intermediaries, new business models, revenue management engineering, and increasing costs of guest acquisition. Guests today are tech savvy, empowered, informed, always connected, and social advocates for what they like—and what they don’t. New low-cost technologies further complicate the landscape, but provide opportunities for hoteliers who take advantage of communication, network, and storage improvements. It is very difficult to compete with OTAs who are spending some $3.5 billion on keyword search but one can negotiate from a position of strength. The key actions needed to survive and thrive today are the ability to realign online strategies, provide loyalty-based pricing, embrace new players, and leverage scale without surrendering independence.

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