TravelgateX Blog

We interviewed Linda Noskova from Welcomebeds, who for the third time are taking part in CON-X 2023 as a sponsor. Today, she explains the prospects for this year, as well as what it means to them to participate in the conference as a sponsor.

 We live in a period of great uncertainty, in which the main challenge for managers is decision-making. In Con-X we will talk about it, and for this reason we interviewed our CON-X sponsors in order for them to explain to us what are their challenges, their next decisions and experiences in the sector.

- We live in a period of high uncertainty, in which the main challenge for managers is decision-making. At Con-X we will talk about this, but could you tell us about your own case? How do you deal with decision-making in your company?

- In the past 2–3 years was a perfect training on how to do that, however I strongly believe at every challenge there is an opportunity which we have to discover and lessons we have to learn, as a leader … Decisions has to be made and on time in order to motivate a team and drive them into a success which was result at Darina Holidays into the best year records in 2021 in the entire company history, a growth 76.1% in 2022 & 35% growth forecast for 2023, but we ended Jan with 47%!

- Have you taken daring decisions in your company, and can you tell us some anecdotes?

- Yes I have done that during past 2 years, when shakes happened and most of the companies were trying to cut off the cost we have decided to invest more specially in people to make the recovery really fast and even better, that’s exactly what happened as we came back stronger of what we were before!

- What are your perspectives for this year? Where do you want to go?

-  I am still positive specially about our Destination, and we can see that clearly in the growth mentioned above, we will continue with the same vision of specialized services & Direct product with the service more clients & Partner globally, what we are proud of today - & after Covid – is that we have never dropped our commitments or transparently with our partners rather we have invested more to maintain better standards.

- Why should CON-X participants talk to you, what can you offer them?

- It’s a simple approach, a destination management company that offer full services including FIT, Leisure Groups & MICE with its Direct Product only!

- What is your experience with the events organized by TravelgateX, would you recommend them to other companies? 

- Definitely will recommend that, high-end networking event with a quality business meeting to exchange the ideas about our industry and its future!

 

We interviewed Matt Stuart, CCO of Stuba, which in 2023 is supporting the CON-X conference as a sponsor. He tells us about his company's progress and what attendees will be able to learn about Stuba at this event.

- We'll talk about it at Con-X, but could you tell us about your own case? How do you deal with decision-making in your company? 
- Stuba is a very entrepreneurial, owner-driven company, and as a result, decision making is bold and decisive. We see this as a great advantage over much of our larger business competition, where we remain very nimble in the face of market changes and variations. We discuss investment ideas and make decisions quickly. Then we either pull through and accelerate success, or we fail fast, and then we know we have to change direction quickly.

- What do you see as the main trends in tourism distribution today?
- I see two main trends. Personalization. One-size-fits-all is dying, and customers want, expect and deserve more personalization in their travel. People are becoming more discerning and are looking for more experiential travel rather than generic "me too" trips. The average booking value continues to rise. Some of this can be explained by inflation and the cost of living, but we are seeing increases in the value of bookings well in excess of inflation, so I think the covid experience has made people feel more mortal, that life is for living and that travel to other countries and cultures is more important to them than ever.

- Have you made any bold decisions in your company, and can you tell us any anecdotes?

- We make many bold decisions each year about where we take the business, however, three stand out for me. When it became clear in the late spring of 2020 that Covid was going to devastate the travel industry for many months and possibly years to come, we, like most, set about looking for areas where we could reduce costs. With a large development/technology team, this is a significant budget each year for Stuba, so it was very tempting, and it would have been very easy to cut this budget as we did with all other functions. However, we decided early on that eventually covid would go away and people would go back to travelling, so we could take advantage of this downtime to accelerate our technological progress while others slowed down. It was scary, because covid lasted longer than any of us had anticipated, but it was a wise decision, as we are now much further ahead than if we had paused or cut back.
Staying true to our business model. We are very clear about our model. We are clear about our demographic distribution, our sourcing/purchasing methods, our technology strategy and our product line. Hotels. A lot of our competitors set up many product lines, different businesses, try to be everything to everybody, whereas I think we are brave sticking to a very clear and focused business model and not running after every single opportunity that we think we might be able to make some money, but often it means you take your eye off the profitable part of your business, and you end up worse off.
Invest in the new user interface of our "curated hotels" and launch it. While most brag about having ever-increasing millions of accommodations available to book with them, we are doing the opposite, reducing the number of hotels we offer, BUT, using AI and smart algorithms to present collections of hotels that would match the type of product the agent would normally book, based on lifestyle categories and advanced filtering. We don't present millions of hotels, just a few that matter!

- Why should CON-X participants talk to you, and what can you offer them?

With the seal of the Plomer family and a solid track record linked to the hotel and hospitality industry, the Zafiro brand is as unique as the Zafiro gems that give it its name.

Awarded on numerous occasions for its dedication to the customer, its goal is to make luxury and happiness a hallmark of its identity. It currently has 3 5-star hotels, under the Zafiro Palace Collection line, and 9 4-star hotels that make up Zafiro Hotels.

Its latest addition, Zafiro Palace Andratx, shows where the brand is heading, with a commitment to innovation, sustainability and the search for new luxury experiences to surprise guests.

Today we interview Antoni Homar, CCO who explains the support for this year's CON-X conference and the evolution of Zafiro Hotels.

Data analysis is an essential part of the travel industry. TravelgateX and Skift are joining forces to better understand where the market is heading and help make better decisions. 

One of the challenges facing the travel industry is the lack of a global standard for hotel content distribution. Each provider focuses on its own set of standards when distributing content and this can lead to duplication, conflicts, as well as investment of resources and time during one of the key phases of a collaboration, the mapping process.