Survey during MarketHub Americas reveals challenges in tourism trade

Hotelbeds, the leading B2B bed bank in the world, today published details of the audience survey conducted at its recent MarketHub Americas event held in Costa Mujeres, Mexico.

Participants in the MarketHub Americas event, comprised of more than 350 representatives from travel agencies, tour operators, airlines and redemption partners from throughout the Americas, participated in a digital audience survey during the conference sessions. The attendees answered a series of questions about their views and understanding based on technology.

The results showed that many companies in the B2C space could improve their mobile consumer websites. When asked “How does your mobile website qualify for the consumer?”, 44% of respondents said they needed some help, 23% said they needed a lot of help, 6% admitted that they were terrible in this area and 9% admitted not having a website. Only 18% felt that their mobile consumer site was the best of its kind.

In addition, the results showed that machine learning, still represents a great opportunity for B2C travel companies. Only 24% could confirm that their business was currently using machine learning, 10% had plans to introduce machine learning and 6% had no plans. Interestingly, 38% were not sure if their business was using machine learning or not.

Another detailed analysis of the audience survey also showed that the participants of the event could benefit from a better knowledge and understanding of the technology, with more than 50% admitting that they do not know what cloud computing is; and 35% think they have never used a chatbot interface, ‘virtual assistant’ even though they are now in common use.

Carlos Muñoz, Bedbank Managing Director of Hotelbeds commented: “Part of our motivation to organize these events is to obtain a vision of the knowledge and needs of our clients; These audience surveys are fantastic ways to get instant feedback in a way that could never happen through an email or a telephone survey. “

“For me, these results show the role that providers like us play in the travel distribution ecosystem, helping to educate B2B travel buyers to respond to technological developments and the increasing needs of consumers.”

“Through events such as these, the experience and support of our internal product management and IT (information technology) teams, we provide our B2B2C customers with the knowledge and tools to remain competitive and profitable, while delivering the same role with our hotel partners, to connect both parties without any problem. “

“For example, our booking platform can have peaks of up to 3 billion searches per day, something that few individual companies could face; In addition, so much information gives us a great perspective of the consumer’s desire, something that we then communicate to our hotel partners to ensure that they are providing the right product, at the right price and the right buyer. “

The MarketHub Americas event was a three-day event, by invitation only, attended by some of the most important Hotelbeds partners from all the key markets in the Americas. The event was held from Tuesday, May 7 until Friday, May 10 at the Gran Palladium Costa Mujeres Resort & Spa in Mexico.

Guest speakers and panelists on stage included representatives from Skift, Phocuswright, Accor, Google, Disney, Universal and Amazon. The attendees of the event varied between high level executives and decision makers of tour operators, airlines, loyalty companies and points exchange companies and even travel agencies.

Hotelbeds has been organizing MarketHub events with a successful career since 2009 and will hold its MarketHub Europe event in Istanbul from Tuesday 28 to Friday 31 May.