Duff on Hospitality Law

This week’s Update features a variety of stories, including updates on Sabre’s attribution sales efforts and the growing importance of Booking.com’s mobile application in the U.S. Enjoy.

Sabre Moves Forward With Attribution-Based Sales
(“Sabre on Hospitality Marketplace Development, Attribute Selling,” June 14, 2022 via Phocus Wire)
For some time now, clients have complained that Sabre’s (and other GDS providers’) innovation efforts have largely been focused on airlines, leaving hoteliers to fend for themselves with the old legacy GDS platforms. According to Sabre, that “airline-first” approach may soon change as Sabre continues its efforts to launch its new intelligent retailing platform. According to Sabre’s Senior Vice President of Sabre Hospitality Solutions, Frank Trampert, Sabre’s new platform will allow hoteliers to create personalized offers like those found on traditional retail websites (e.g. Amazon). Hotel rooms will remain central to the platform, but other ancillary amenities and services will be available for booking at the same time. This month, Sabre plans to introduce 23 features as part of the platform’s initial product test. Pilots of the platform will begin in October with a general release of the platform scheduled for early 2023.

Greg and I were fortunate enough to be asked to present at this year's Northwest Chapter of PCMA and MPIWSC's 9th Annual Meetings Industry Summit:  The New Norm at The Conference Center here in Seattle. For those of our excellent attendees who asked so many good questions both during and after the session and who requested an electronic copy of our slides, and for those who would no doubt have attended had they known, here you go.

As the post title suggests, we discussed trends in group sales/event contract negotiations attributable to the "new norm," primarily, the economy and its attendant changes (AIG effect, any one?) from both the venue and the group perspective. We took a look at contracts we had seen in the last year or two, group and meeting publications and did a brief and entirely unscientific survey of some of our clients to see what new things, if any, they were seeing.

We also talked about what has not changed, namely, the basic positions from which each party negotiates and what their objectives are, as well as some of the most important provisions in any group contract. 

Thanks again to Tom Norwalk of the SCVB for recommending us and PCMA and MPI for having us.