Booking.com has identified the most booked destinations by Indian travellers for April to June period of 2018. Middle East, United Kingdom and Europe have proven to be big draw cards with Dubai, London and Paris topping the list of the most booked international destinations by Indian travellers followed by Singapore and Bangkok. On the domestic front, most Indian travellers made their reservations in New Delhi, Mumbai and Bengaluru followed by new entrants Hyderabad and Chennai as the top domestic destinations by Indian travellers.

Image source: India TV

When comparing Indian bookings during the summer season (April to June) from 2017 to 2018, and ranking them by the highest difference between the two years, some interesting insights are revealed:

1. In 2018, Russia, Turkey and Sri Lanka find a spot among the highly-booked destinations for travellers from India as compared to the same period last year

2. Vietnam, Indonesia and Nepal are a few of the emerging destinations preferred for travel by Indian travellers in 2018

3. Some of the destinations that have remained common between 2017 and 2018 include Bangkok, Singapore and Dubai

According to Ritu Mehrotra, Country Manager India, Booking.com, “With the expanding economic scenario and more disposable incomes, the Indian travel industry is currently growing at a rapid pace. Consumers are increasingly moving towards online travel bookings as smartphone penetration grows and use of e-commerce and digital payments goes up. The rise of internet and social media has also helped in creating greater consumer awareness not only in metros but also in non-metro cities as we witness an increasing number of travellers from smaller cities and less populated areas of the country planning both domestic and international vacations.”

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Sabre Corporation, the leading technology provider to the global travel industry, has signed a new agreement with Booking.com, the global leader in connecting travellers with the widest possible choice of incredible places to stay. Under the agreement, Sabre agency customers will have access to all Booking.com listings, including its alternative lodging listings, through the Sabre Content Services for Lodging.

Sabre Content Services for Lodging is an industry-first technology solution that integrates multi-source, multi-representation of GDS, aggregator, and agency-sourced hotel content into the Sabre GDS. TMCs and corporations will be able to more efficiently shop, sell and service millions of hotel options as active GDS bookings.

“We’re constantly working to expand our lodging offerings and bring even more options to our agency customers,” said Traci Mercer, senior vice president of lodging, ground and sea for Sabre Travel Network. “Our collaboration with Booking.com allows us to offer a comprehensive set of interesting and unique properties to our systems. Adding the Booking.com portfolio to Sabre’s lodging offering will allow travel buyers to meet the growing demand for alternative lodging options and deliver even more value to their travellers.”

One of the leading digital travel platforms globally, Booking.com offers more than 28 million listings including more than more than 5.4 million reported listings in homes, apartments and other unique places to stay, and facilitates bookings for more than 1.5 million room nights every 24 hours to over 135,000 destinations around the world.

“As our mission at Booking.com is to empower people to experience the world, this new partnership with Sabre will enable even more travelers to quickly and easily find their ideal place to stay,” said Ripsy Bandourian, senior director of partnerships and business bookers at Booking.com. “Working with Sabre enables us to expand our reach to their global network of high-value travel buyers, instantly connecting all of their customers with the unparalleled depth and diversity of our accommodation offering, including everything from great business hotels to convenient city apartments and boutique B&B options in every corner of the globe.”

Officially launching later in 2018, the new lodging solution will be available via Sabre APIs as well as the Sabre Red Workspace, GetThere and TripCase. The solution will help drive more efficiency and revenue with increased lodging choice as well as enable improved optimization capabilities to better manage chain, property, and rate-level preferred content.

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A small group of online travel agents, including Booking.com, OnTheBeach.com and Trivago, dominated paid search in the first quarter of 2018, each spending over £7 million on search through Google, with Booking.com splashing out almost £20 million, according to new research released by Kantar Media.

The study – which uses data from Kantar Media’s Digital Advertising Intelligence Solution, combining insights on both pay-per-click (PPC) and organic search/display ad spend – also identified TripAdvisor as the clear leader when it came to organic search in the first three months of the year.

TripAdvisor saw over twice as many impressions and almost twice as many clicks as Lastminute.com, its nearest rival in the travel sector, with an estimated PPC value of over £120 million. Of the three biggest PPC spenders, only Booking.com features among the top six sites for organic search impressions.

Accommodation tops the keyword charts, but the battleground is for cheap holidays. ‘Hotels’ was the keyword with the highest spend during the three-month period, with businesses spending an estimated total of £8,504,262, over seven times more than on the next most invested-in keyword, ‘air bnb’.

Booking.com in particular made huge investments in hotel related search terms. The site’s top ten keywords for both spend and estimated PPC value in organic impressions all contained the word ‘hotel’ or ‘booking’, accounting for a total spend of around £4.8 million.

Outside of accommodation, the key battleground for PPC in the travel sector is around low-cost breaks. ‘Cheapest holidays’, ‘cheap holidays’ and ‘cheapest flights’ all feature among the 20 most sought-after travel related keywords, accounting for almost £2 million in spend between January and March this year. 21 separate advertisers were spending on the keyword ‘cheapest holidays’ and 19 on ‘cheap holidays’, making them some of the most competitive keywords in the industry. In comparison, for all the spend on ‘hotels’, the keyword was only contested by 14 advertisers.

Richard Poustie, CEO, Kantar Media UK, commented: “Both search and display advertising are incredibly competitive in the travel sector, especially in the first quarter of the year, and this is reflected in the huge investments brands make in this space. It’s important, therefore, to remember that spend in itself is only one part of the campaign – if brands want to get a good return on their advertising investment, it is vital that there is consistency across their online search and display, and that their chosen search terms complement their display advertising.

“In such a competitive space, being able to see what competitors are investing in – across both search and display – and to understand why, will help businesses tailor their own advertising strategy in order to stand out from the crowd and to continue to attract consumer spend.”

Also read: Booking.com launches ‘Women in Tech’ program.

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Booking.com, one of the world’s largest travel e-commerce companies and a digital technology leader, announced a global partnership with Web Summit. Together they will host a dedicated ‘Women in Tech’ networking and mentoring program at the flagship Web Summit event, as well as initiatives at affiliated events Collison and RISE in 2018. This exclusive collaboration continues Booking.com and Web Summit’s efforts to redress the under-representation of women in technology by creating more opportunities for women to enter, advance and thrive in the sector.

Booking.com will host the first of a number of networking initiatives for women at the Booking.com Women in Tech lounge at Collision 2018, being held in New Orleans, USA, from April 30th-May 3rd, 2018. One of America’s leading technology conferences, Collison brings together CEOs of the world’s fastest growing startups and Fortune 500 companies, alongside leading investors and media. Booking.com CEO Gillian Tans will also participate in a panel on “Sustainability in Big Business”, sharing her insights on the role of major companies in furthering global sustainability and ethical practices.

Image source: Booking.com

Web Summit 2018, taking place in Lisbon, Portugal, from November 5th-8th, will be the focal point of the global partnership and will feature an expanded ‘Women in Tech Mentor Program’, following the success of the inaugural initiative at last year’s event. The Web Summit 2017 women’s mentoring program attracted nearly 200 participants, with 60 high-profile mentors from across the tech sector, including Gillian Tans and other Booking.com executives.

RISE 2018 will take place on 9th-12th July 2018 in Hong Kong and is the largest tech conference in Asia. The event attracts more than 15,000 attendees each year from over 100 countries. Booking.com will host the Women in Tech networking lounge at the event.

“We are excited to partner with Web Summit again this year to build on the strong demand and engagement we saw in 2017 and to continue our efforts in driving gender diversity in tech at a global level. Recent data suggests that 90% of women working in technology across the world have experienced gender bias in the workplace and this, coupled with the lack of mentors (48%) and female role models (42%), are the top three obstacles preventing women from choosing to advance their careers in tech,” said Gillian Tans, CEO of Booking.com.

“We are expanding our partnership with Web Summit with marquee events in Europe, North America and Asia to continue the conversations about gender diversity and to support women through mentoring and providing more opportunities for them to collaborate, network and share experiences. This global partnership will give us another platform to help pivot gender inequalities and gaps in the male-dominated tech workplace and encourage more women from across the world to become positive role models for others.”

Web Summit runs the world’s most highly regarded technology events which bring together world leaders, Fortune 500 companies, tech giants and groundbreaking startups to examine and celebrate the latest advances in technology.

Paddy Cosgrave, CEO and co-founder of Web Summit, said: “Web Summit run the most prominent technology events in the world and we are committed to driving a positive change in the industry. We launched our women in tech initiative three years ago to increase the number of women participating at our events around the world. This commitment to change resulted in a female/male gender ratio at Web Summit of 42% / 58% for the last two years.

“We are pleased to partner again with Booking.com to further this important cause and provide a platform for raising awareness about gender equality in the tech industry globally. The partnership with Booking.com will help us provide further opportunities for female tech talent attending our events to network with and learn from some of the most successful tech entrepreneurs in the industry today.”

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Booking.com, one of the world’s largest e-commerce companies and digital technology leader, announced the 10 sustainable tourism startups, including two Indian companies, that will be joining the 2018 Booking Booster Programme in Amsterdam in May 2018. Building upon its successful launch in 2017, the three-week accelerator program consists of a series of lectures, hands-on workshops and coaching, culminating in a final pitch to receive a scaling grant of up to €500k from Booking.com’s €2 million fund in order to help support the next stage of the startups’ projected growth.

“We’re thrilled with the 10 inventive startups joining us in Amsterdam this spring,” said Gillian Tans, CEO of Booking.com. “The relationships we build with these passionate entrepreneurs not only help fuel their continued growth, but also invigorate and inspire our entire company. Our aim is to build a network of like-minded organisations and individuals that are leveraging technology to create a more sustainable future for destinations worldwide. Through our collective commitment, we are striving to ensure that we can keep the unique destinations we all love happy and healthy for generations to come.”

Image source: Booking.com

With hundreds of applicants from all over the world, the 10 startups joining the 2018 programme hail from six different countries and operate collectively across six continents, including Antarctica. Their businesses also represent a diverse mix of innovative online marketplaces that connect travellers with inclusive travel experiences, cutting-edge technology solutions and initiatives that empower local communities to benefit more equally from the global tourism opportunity.

Community Homestay Network (Nepal)
Community Homestay Network is a platform for travellers visiting Nepal with a core focus on empowering women and cultural immersion by creating homestays and other tourism-based micro-enterprises in off-the-beaten-path communities.

Global Himalayan Expedition (India)
Global Himalaya Expedition (GHE) organizes impact expeditions to provide clean energy and digital education access to the remote mountain communities of the Himalayas, helping to put them on the map for future travellers to explore.

HiveSters (Thailand)
HiveSters is a social enterprise that acts as a hub for sustainable, real Thai experiences, connecting travellers who look for authentic cultural interactions with local experts in Thailand’s largest urban areas.

Hotel Con Corazón (Netherlands: Operating in Nicaragua)
Hotel Con Corazón Granada started as a 15-room boutique hotel in Nicaragua which opened in 2008 with the aim of investing all its profits in education projects for underprivileged children.

Keteka (United States: Operating in Central and South America, Antarctica)
Keteka is an online marketplace of unique, off-the-beaten path activities with a focus on indigenous communities that are instantly bookable online.

KITRO (Switzerland)
KITRO is the first, fully-automated food waste measurement system for restaurants and hotels.

Reflow (Netherlands)
Reflow actively supports destination improvement by collecting plastic waste and transforming it into sustainable 3D printing material, used to build products for the hospitality industry.

Sakha Consulting Wings: Women on Wheels (India)
Sakha Consulting is a unique social enterprise, launched to provide safe transport solutions for women by women in selected cities in India, providing livelihoods with dignity in professional driving to resource-poor women as part of the “Women on Wheels” (WOW) initiative.

Tastemakers (United States: Operating in Africa)
TSTMKRS is an online marketplace that connects local insiders with curious travellers who want to see a different side of Africa.

Wheel the World (United States)
Wheel the World is tackling the challenge of accessibility and inclusion in tourism within the adventure travel sector for people with disabilities.

All the participating social enterprises will also receive several months of ongoing mentoring and coaching from Booking.com experts, as well as opportunities and access to collaborate with the company on potential innovation initiatives and experiments to help accelerate their future growth.

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