Con Air: what is brandjacking?

The neologism brandjacking was coined over a decade ago, by astutely combining the words branding and hijacking. In our industry, when we talk about brandjacking, we usually refer to all those activities whose lowest  common denominator is the exploitation of another company brand's equity, such as the creation of fake social network profiles or mirror-websites. The most frequent use of brandjacking is, however, is the one  that goes under the name of Affiliate Brand Bidding. This mischievous tactic consists in investing in search engines advertising campaigns and bidding on terms that are related targeted company. Ever googled your  hotel’s name and found Booking.com, Expedia, trivago and TripAdvisor before your official website? Well, that’s ABB. 

I have been in this hotel revenue management game for more than 2 decades now. And after all these years it still gets me anxious when I see hotels not performing at their full potential. So I have put together a list of 5 common mistakes made in revenue management in hotels, resorts and hostels.

Here is the fact, Direct bookings have become a key objective for hotels large and small, and is one of the top recommendations at an efficient Revenue Management strategy. In an ultra-competitive sector, through moving room reservations away from online travel agencies (OTAs) and other third parties, direct hotel bookings make possible to take advantage of important opportunities such as repeat bookings, cross-selling and up-selling, and increased brand loyalty, which all ultimately lead to higher revenues and higher profits.

2017 was an amazing year for our hotel industry blog, our Revenue Management community is growthing more than ever. And this is the best Xmas gift that we could have, to look back at the entire year and see that the daily effort of each team member was worthy.

Hotel revenue management has seen spectacular growth in recent years. It has become such a fundamental part of hotel business strategy that it is now on an equal footing with marketing and sales in many hotels, and it is driving hotel profit growth.

Revenue management in the hotel industry is still relatively young. While it began in the 1990s, it has really bloomed and grown exponentially in the last decade, particularly in the last few years. In this time, it has been overshadowed by other departmental functions within the industry, such as sales and marketing. Revenue managers, in comparison, have worked behind the scenes and tended to report to these departments.