Wyndham boasts. Wyndham Rewards on Tuesday was named No. 1 in U.S. News & World Report’s annual Best Hotel Rewards Programs 2016-’17 ranking. “We believe a great loyalty program should be simple and generous, offering perks and rewards that benefit all,” said Noah Brodsky, senior vice president of Worldwide Loyalty and Engagement at Wyndham Hotel Group. “We’re leveling the playing field.”
Hipmunk updates. San Francisco-based travel metasearch website Hipmunk updated its hotel search product to add natural language search, larger images, an “amenities card” that shows hotel amenities at a glance and an option to compare hotels’ locations to other attractions.
U.S. pipeline. Lodging Econometrics reported Tuesday that the five U.S. markets with the largest hotel construction pipelines by project count are: New York with 196 projects/32,121 rooms; Houston with 170 projects/20,083 rooms; Dallas with 128 projects/15,682 rooms; Nashville with 109 projects/13,789 rooms; and Los Angeles with 104 projects/17,912 rooms. New York has continuously had the largest project count since the fourth quarter of 2011, while Houston has had the second largest for the last 10 consecutive quarters.
Intenet and travel planning. Use of the Internet for travel planning in the U.S. market has reached saturation point but there are still opportunities for growth, according to Dr Dan Wang of the School of Hotel and Tourism Management at The Hong Kong Polytechnic University and her co-researchers. In a recent study the researchers reveal the changing trends in the use of the Internet for travel planning, with a growing “bifurcation” between traditional users who use it for “standard planning” and those who are increasingly using it to search for products that offer “deeper and more authentic experiences.”
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