Germany and France prepare for new lockdowns
Germany announced plans to shut down large swathes of public life for a month on Wednesday while France prepared to tighten controls further as COVID surged across Europe and financial markets tumbled at the likely cost of a second lockdown. German Chancellor Angela Merkel met state premiers in a video conference and agreed a partial lockdown that will see bars, restaurants, cinemas, sports facilities and trade fairs closing from November 2 to November 30. In France, which has seen more than 50,000 new cases a day, President Emmanuel Macron will give a televised address in the evening and is expected to announce further restrictions following curfew measures introduced across much of the country last week.
U.S. industry health outlook
Observations and trends from Kalibri Labs’ recent “Industry Health Dashboard,” dated October 27, include:
- Total U.S. hotel demand continues to remain generally flat. Last week’s slight uptick probably due to the U.S. Columbus Day holiday
- Group continues to experience short term pickup growth, while Q1 cancellations continue to build. This highlights how potential travelers are managing uncertainty in the current environment
- Recent increases in COVID-19 cases will further delay any recovery in the group and corporate segments
- U.S. Organic Search Traffic is flat relative to Q2 2020. This indicates a general lack of improvement in traveler confidence and optimism over time
Global data benchmarking and analytics forecast
In the recent webinar “Hotel Outlook: 2021 and Beyond,” the Global Business Travel Association (GBTA) led a Q&A session with two global hospitality experts that included global data benchmarking and analytics, as well as an update on the state of corporate hotel negotiations for 2021. Noteworthy insights include:
- Corporate demand will return faster than ADR rebound
- A slowdown in upper upscale and luxury hotel construction will create a supplier’s market in five years
- While not all hotels will make it through this tough time, the industry as a whole will rebound
- “Duty of care” is now of primary importance for corporate travel managers when negotiating their 2021 hotel contracts
Takeaways for distribution, revenue and marketing
A new report lays out the steps hoteliers can take to navigate the “new normal” of the pandemic. Takeaways from the report, “How to lead your hotel through the COVID-19 crisis: Actionable Insights for Directors of Distribution, Revenue and Marketing,” which was released by travel and hospitality business intelligence specialist Fornova, include:
- Optimize the hotel’s Google My Business listing and utilize as many of Google’s free suite of services for the hospitality industry as possible
- Strengthen relationships with OTAs
- Monitor how room rates are being shown by OTAs and metasearch sites in the country where guests are searching and guard against aggressive country rates campaigns
- Ensure hygiene and safety messages are incorporated across all channels and not only on marketing outlets
IHG data indicates what’s leading group travel comeback
InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) is seeing gains in group business with entertainment and sports leading the way. Film and television productions are looking for ways to keep their projects on track and produce content for 2021 and beyond and many productions are utilizing IHG hotels in cities such as Atlanta, Chicago, San Diego and Manchester, England, to create “bubbles” for crews to sequester while filming. Sports has also seen month-to-month improvement since May and, through August, has accounted for more than a third of all booked group business for IHG, with larger bookings slated for 2021 and beyond.
MPI event will be in-person and digital
The 2020 edition of Meeting Professionals International’s (MPI) World Education Congress (WEC) event, originally scheduled in June, is now a hybrid in-person and digital event November 3-6. All activities and engagement will be live; nothing will be pre-recorded or streamed without engagement. Keynote sessions will appear in a “late night talk show” environment with exclusive green room interviews afterwards. All concurrent sessions will take place exclusively for the digital attendees.
Support grows for AHLA initiative
The American Hotel & Lodging Association’s (AHLA) Safe Stay initiative has received endorsements from the Infectious Diseases Society of America, the Association for Linen Management, which represents personnel involved in the textile care industry, as well as a certified industrial hygienist and former infectious diseases epidemiologist with the U.S. Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention and World Health Organization (WHO), Dr. Murray Cohen. Safe Stay is an industrywide initiative focused on enhanced hotel cleaning practices, social interactions, and workplace protocols to meet the new health and safety challenges and expectations presented by COVID-19.
Will a robot replace your staff?
Your F&B staff could soon be replaced by a mechanical counterpart, says a new study from Ball State University. The study, “How to Build a Better Robot for Quick Service Restaurants,” recently published in the Journal of Hospitality and Tourism Research, found that the overwhelming majority of respondents believe that there is no stopping the robotic transformation of the food service industry, including quick service restaurants (QSRs). The study also says that the majority of robots used in the hospitality industry are technologies initially developed for other industries, such as automobile and food manufacturing, which have been modified from their original functions to perform their tasks in a hospitality setting.