Why is the introduction of Yvette, the Hotel Matchmaker, so important to the hotel industry?
In the past two years, the hotel industry has experienced its most tremendous structural change ever in terms of its travel distribution model. The traveling public has quickly migrated to booking their travel purchases online because they realized that a “hotel supermarket” (like Expedia or Hotels.com) allowed them to efficiently tap into the post-9/11/01 discounts that were popping up in the travel industry. This new method of distribution has led to an “efficient market” which drives down hotel room rates in sort of a reverse auction format as hoteliers realize that in order to fill empty rooms they have to place product on the shelves of these supermarkets at discounted prices. To make matters worse, the fastest growing segment of the travel websites is the Expedia and Hotels.com “merchant model” which charges the hotels a 25% commission on each room sold off their shelves. So, the hotel industry is suffering from lower occupancy and average rooms rates and dramatically higher comm
