In just a few years, China has consolidated itself as a potential emitter of tourists with a spectacular inter-annual growth, with more than 200 million Chinese tourists expected to travel abroad in 2020.

In the last few days, the collapse of the iconic tour operator, Thomas Cook, has highlighted how important is it to diversify distribution and optimise revenue strategies for efficient hotel management.

Hotel loyalty no longer depends only on discounts or points programmes. Today, hotels can use first-party data, CRM and automation to better understand their guests, personalise communications and generate more direct bookings.

In a market as competitive as the hotel sector, it is crucial to turn your brand into a reference point for its target market when trying to secure more direct sales. However, getting your company to be the first one that a client thinks of when they consider booking a hotel can be a challenge in its own right.

More and more, the goal of many hotel chains and independent hotels is to decrease how much they depend on OTAs and tour operators; in other words, improving their infrastructure in terms of direct sales strategies and tools that enable them to be more independent. Even though in some cases this means a substantial investment, the result is satisfactory, especially when they start having more direct reservations. But, which is the ideal combination to reach this goal?

From ADGTravel and Hotelinking, we have conducted a global benchmark study on newsletters. In it, we analyse the messages and their usability to evaluate their effectiveness and conversion power.