The news from France doesn’t sound very comforting and it emphasizes to me how this really is going to be a difficult year globally. My guess is that 2008/2009 will be traumatic and, after that, we either start to adapt to the climate or the economy improves.

The third option (that things gets worse) doesn’t bear thinking about!.

I think there is a lot of hope here that internal tourism will take some of the strain but I think the UK is still too highly priced compared to some European destinations for attract a lot of EU visitors.

In the UK, the cost of land is higher than in France and so there are going to be more UK businesses struggling with high fixed overheads than their equivalents abroad I think. Additionally, there are indications that ‘our’ pool of cheap good labour from Eastern Europe is drying up, therefore increasing pressure on employers to get decent affordable staff.

Yes, you are right with your comment : ’shall I do marketing or shall I paint the bedrooms – I can’t do both’ >> specialy hotel are in this case, and unfortunatly they chose the room or the kitchen, and don’t know how to invest in maketing and other stuff to bring business.

Well, about the season, I think the resume in september will be bad.

Riviera are in bad conjonction, Provence area was just ok for june, I don’t know for july but hotel have litlle visibility.

I will see in september for DMO’s …

I am not very optimistic for the global market when you read stuff like this :

PKF Hospitality Research is one of the prophets of doom and has predicted “a decline in lodging demand greater than that experienced during the turmoil following the terrorist attacks on September 11, 2001″.

or

“With losses like this, hotel operators would be forced to make drastic cutbacks in staffing and other operating costs,”

Euro parity versus USD is very bad for american people who love 4 stars hotel, Paris charm and Provence area

Well, the stronger will survive, the others need to change or it will be hard for them

Send you some sun from Marseille

Best

Claude

Firstly, lucky you for being in sunny Marseille. In Scotland we have the usual four seasons in one day today!

I would agree with you 100% that insight without action is pointless. But I also recognize that this is often the result of a simple allocation of resources.

At the very small end of the market, it’s a case of ’shall I do marketing or shall I paint the bedrooms – I can’t do both’ and I think that some organizations still suffer from this despite being bigger.

I’ve also noticed a tendency for a lot of organizations to throw people in at the deep end to solve the analytics/CRM issue and so they need to learn on the job what they need to be doing. It’s not their fault but they aren’t going to get the results now they will learn to get in a few year’s time.

Incidentally, how is the French tourism sector feeling about the coming season? I assume that the strong Euro will have an effect on some inbound trade but this will be balanced by the traditional internal trade. Or will the French be seduced away by the promise of cheap holidays in non-Euro countries?

One thought :

tracking isn’t only the process and the tool.

Hotel, destination, tourism portal need to have strong CRM structure and others stuff to handle correctly their emarketing.

And also know-how and internal human ressources.

For France, I can tell, in many cases, DMO’s and others don’t have this ressources.

Specially they lack of good human ressources and many good strategies can’t be implemented ;-(

My godness, it’s always the same story : the human guy

have a good day

best regards from my sunny Marseille

Claude