Just six weeks after Sydney pub baron Justin Hemmes was quoted as a potential buyer of Sydney Seaplanes, hotel mogul Dr Jerry Schwartz has swooped and invested in the business. As part of the investment, Schwartz, an aviation buff, will add two amphibious aircraft he owns to the Sydney Seaplanes fleet, increasing it to six […]
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Luxury Escapes Buys Scoopon Travel & BonVoyage from Catch
The Lux Group, which owns online travel business Luxury Escapes, has bought Scoopon Travel and BonVoyage as part of a complicated, multi-faceted transaction with the Catch Group that will create a pure-play online travel business with $300m turnover and enormous buying power while clearing the way for further growth. In what the companies are calling Australia’s largest “home grown” e-commerce […]
Webjet proves everyone wrong: people will repeatedly pay more for airfares
The rapid evolution of Webjet over the past year has been something to behold: acquisitions, expansion, creation of new businesses, the profitable sale of Zuji, strong hotel B2B growth and more. Webjet has won a lot of investor kudos for these moves, profit is growing a rapid clip, and a high share price is the […]
Fee for all coming to an end with Airbnb’s host commission switch?
Pricing is set to get a shakeup in Australia’s short term rental (STR) industry from November 1 when Airbnb scraps guest service charges and moves to a 15 per cent host commission only model – up from 3 per cent – for its software-connected hosts and property managers. It is a huge change for an […]
Big moves in holiday park sector
The rapid consolidation of Australia’s tourism asset ownership has continued with news motoring organisation NRMA has bought Australian Tourist Park Management and control of its 27 properties while it’s been reported the sector’s largest ever single park sale has just closed. The ATPM deal means the NRMA now owns and operates 34 caravan and holiday […]
Agoda goes rogue on pricing
Agoda, the original Asian OTA, has gone rogue on pricing. Multiple hoteliers say Agoda regularly sells unauthorized static wholesale rates through the site, undercutting them on price without any regard for contracts. Other times the feeling is Agoda takes a contracted rate and shaves its margin to push the price below competitor and hotel pricing. Agoda’s […]
Yury Shar, Director and Co-Founder, HotelsCombined
After immigrating to Australia from Russia at age 17, Yury developed a passion for computers and strategy games. This passion drew him to the University of Technology Sydney, where he studied Computer Science and met fellow HotelsCombined co-founder, Brendon McQueen. Before co-founding HotelsCombined in 2005, Yury spent five years working at HotelClub where he was […]
Wotif commissions to rise by 25% as Expedia rolls out new contract to hoteliers
Expedia is attempting to move all Wotif.com contracted properties onto a single company-wide contract and is raising site commission for larger producers from 12% to 15% – an increase of 25% – four months after buying the Australian OTA. “We are in discussions with them at the moment and there are a number of matters […]
Turu.com.au moves to booking engine and commissions
Holiday park site Turu.com.au has revamped its revenue model and will introduce a booking engine in the next few weeks, taking commission on each transaction. The move to a booking engine has come earlier than anticipated in the brief history of the site, launched in late July. General Manager Robert Gallagher said the roll out has been […]
Hotels driving many TripAdvisor reviews
TripAdvisor has started revealing the source of reviews for properties that use its guest followup tools – an initiative that reveals hotels can in many cases drive most of the comments. For example, a survey of the first 40 current reviews in several Sydney hotels show that most resulted from management pro-activity. At 57 Hotel, 75% […]