Linchi Kwok, Ph.D.

Alibaba, one of the largest e-commerce companies based in China, debuted  a new prototype of hotels in the future , where  machines provide the service . Let’s see what Alibaba’s futuristic hotel offers. The futuristic hotel The hotel of the future is called FlyZoo. This 290-room property is located in Hangzhou, China, the headquarter of Alibaba. FlyZoo maximizes the guest-machine interactions but minimizes guest-staff interactions. A more powerful app Travelers, for example, can book and check-in into a hotel room with the FlyZoo App, as many other hotels have already offered. What makes the FlyZoo App stand out is that travelers can choose the room they want to stay, including on which floor the room is located and to which direction the room is facing. Possibly because of the country’s strict security controls, mobile check-in is only available to Chinese citizens. Foreign travelers still need to use a kiosk located in the hotel to co...

Airbnb was in the headline again last week. Airbnb is set to acquire HotelTonight , an OTA (online travel agent) that focuses on last-minute bookings through its website or the mobile app for hotel stays. Why is HotelTonight good for Airbnb? Even though Airbnb was commonly known for its dominant position in the room-sharing market, the company has been aiming to become a mega travel enterprise . Besides hotels, Airbnb also competes directly with OTAs . Airbnb to buy HotelTonight for an undisclosed amount  from  CNBC . For example,  Airbnb has begun selling hotel rooms  for a while. At the time when Airbnb celebrated its 10 th  anniversary in 2018, there were over  24,000 boutique hotels listed on Airbnb , a growth of 520 percent over the previous year. Airbnb also  hired an aviation expert  last month to oversee the company’s new plan of transportation services. According to  The Wall Street Journal , adding more hote...

--> IHG, or the InterContinental Hotels Group , just confirmed the company would implement the dynamic pricing model to its reward programs by the end of this year . Such a new policy will affect all the brands that IHG owns or manages, ranging from InterContinental Hotels & Resorts, Crowne Plaza Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn, Kimpton Hotels & Restaurants, to some other newer lifestyle brands, such as EVEN Hotels and Hotel Indigo. In the past, frequent travelers can usually redeem reward points towards a hotel stay according to the category where a hotel is listed (e.g., more points for a luxury hotel than a midscale hotel). This newly-introduced dynamic pricing feature will allow IHG Hotels to update the number of points needed to redeem a free room according to the changing demand by travelers. Such practices are expected to “increase member engagement with variable point pricing.” Why is dynamic pricing crucial to service operations? The se...

This month (February 2019) marks the 11 th birthday for Airbnb. Founded in 2008, Airbnb is the first and now the dominant player in the P2P (peer-to-peer) short-term residential rental business. Last year at Airbnb’s 10 th birthday , the company’s CEO Brian Chesky delivered a keynote speech --- Airbnb for everyone. Around the same period, the company rolled out two new brands to its current product line: Airbnb Plus and Beyond by Airbnb . Airbnb CEO Brian Chesky delivers a keynote speech at the company's 10th birthday in February. (Image: Airbnb) Within 10 years, Airbnb has already turned itself into more than just a marketplace for room-sharing services. The company also sells other travel experiences and even rooms for other hotels , as what OTAs (online travel agents such as Expedia and Priceline ) offer. Additionally, Airbnb began competing head-to-head with other hotel giants in the real estate market.        It is no doubt that Air...