Learning Hub

Innovation is Key to Our Future

DerbySoft enables travel companies to work together through technology and innovation by providing high-performance distribution services to Suppliers, Distributors, Metasearch Engines, and a variety of other travel technology providers to conduct digital commerce efficiently and effectively. While Connectivity and Digital Marketing solutions are the keystones for the company, innovation and...

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Not all hospitality technology is created equal!

Understanding the compatibility of a technology provider and the end goals for hospitality companies is key to the success on both sides. And DerbySoft understands this and has created a line of industry leading services that is proven successful for over 240,000 hotel properties, over 300 OTAs around the world...

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Stand Out. Increase Bookings. Webinar

Watch: Stand out. Increase Bookings. Webinar held Sept 22. Brought to you in partnership with Tripadvisor and Scandic Hotels. The webinar panel spoke in-depth insight into current metasearch and travel behaviour, looking at how hotels can stand out in the current market to increase bookings. Ken Nishizu, President, Marketing Services...

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How to Increase Your Footprint in Metasearch

Expand to Regional Metasearch Audiences at No Risk and Access to an extra 40+ Million Audience The metasearch world has expanded significantly in the past decade. Google, Tripadvisor, Trivago, Kayak, and Bing are the first channels to come to mind due to the respective brands’ longevity in the industry, and...

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Insights into Artificial Intelligence Applications in Cloud Computing White Paper

Insights into Artificial Intelligence Applications in Cloud Computing Innovation Lab – DerbySoft Executive Summary In recent years, global cloud computing expenditures and the demand for cloud services have increased substantially. DerbySoft’s services are constantly increasing, which requires thousands of machines to run various business services on AWS, resulting in an...

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Booking.com Awards DerbySoft as Premier Partner for 2021

DerbySoft, a leader in high-performance hotel connectivity, is committed to the support and innovation with all of our partners, and Booking.com has awarded DerbySoft as a Premier Connectivity Partner for 2021! Booking.com’s Partner Program reviews and scores all partnerships based on a set of growth and performance categories the company...

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How to Prepare for the Recovery or the New Normal

October 1, 2020 Despite the situation still being unstable in many areas of the world, DerbySoft is starting to see the hospitality industry showing signs of recovery with rising occupancy curves. We have seen over the last few weeks that occupancy levels were at or close to 50% in several...

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Launching New ROAS Bidding Strategy to Maximize Revenue

The Hotel Chain wanted to increase the efficiency of their account, by maximizing the revenue within a specific target ROAS. TripAdvisor is the main channel driving most of the business for the chain. The revenue registered was beyond the target due to the ROAS constraints. An immediate action on valuable...

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Bid Multipliers– Are you taking advantage of them?

Metasearch has become more complex than it initially was in the beginning, and advertisers demand this type of complexity. The question is no longer about a fixed CPC per property or country. With the increasing competition on the market, all advertisers are looking for more flexibility and refined targeting to...

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Create Your Google Pay Per Stay Campaign

A New Risk-Free Strategy for Google Hotel Ads that Allows Hotels to Pay Only When the Guest Stays July 23, 2020– In partnership with Google, DerbySoft is launching a new commission strategy for the campaigns that will help to keep the visibility of hotels at no risk: Pay Per Stay. The...

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Cross-Channel Optimization Helps to Maximize Performance

What to budget for each metasearch channel? What strategies to apply for each one of them? These are the questions that DerbySoft frequently hears. Historically, each metasearch website was treated as a separate marketing channel, operating with different budgets and measurements of performances. However, the question right now is: Does...

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Increase Your Footprint in Meta Beyond the Big Players

Are you making the most of your metasearch campaigns? Being connected to the biggest channels does not mean you get it all. At DerbySoft, we provide you with the solution to expand your hotel to the channels that are not getting your attention yet. When booking a hotel on a...

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Metasearch Traffic and Bookings: Continuous Growth

June 8, 2020– In a previous analysis, DerbySoft looked at the first recovery signs in the metasearch traffic behavior for the hotels located in Germany and Spain. DerbySoft continues to see positive trends in these locations and other countries that are taking small steps to start getting back to their...

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European Hotels Metasearch Data: Signs of Recovery

June 1, 2020– Each country is approaching the end of its lockdown a bit differently, and DerbySoft can see that European countries are willing to open for this year’s travelers sooner rather than later. As a whole, DerbySoft is monitoring the metasearch queries to identify current trends and shifts in...

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International Metasearch Demand: Europe

May 18, 2020– As the countries begin to ease their lockdowns and travel restrictions possibly disappearing (hopefully), DerbySoft keeps monitoring the metasearch queries to identify the current trends and shifts in traffic and demand. Week over week, we look at the evolution of domestic and international travel intentions. From what...

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Metasearch Targeted Campaign Successes

May 15, 2020– While the entire hotel industry is suffering and certainly well below volumes pre-COVID-19, some specific hotel groups are showing that they can generate some revenue by taking advantage of the depressed market with very targeted campaigns.   For example, two of our partner hotel groups have been able...

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Risk-Free Metasearch Campaigns

May 12, 2020– The travel environment is always changing but is now truly in uncharted territory. The economics of running ANY business are very challenging, and marketing dollars are often the first thing to go. History has taught us, however, that this approach will have long-term negative effects. These include...

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New Google COVID-19 Responder Policy Tag for Hotels

May 11, 2020– Google has introduced a new feature in Google My Business for hotels: COVID-19 Responder Policy. This functionality allows hotels to add a special tag if they are offering accommodation or discounts for healthcare or medical workers, frontline responders and other essential workers. Hotel owners can set this...

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TripAdvisor’s New COVID-19 Message Functionality

May 11, 2020– TripAdvisor is providing hoteliers with a new way to communicate COVID-19 messaging to their potential guests so the properties are able to share their response to COVID-19 through their TripAdvisor’s listing. When this function is enabled, the message will appear on top of the hotel listing conveying...

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Kayak Adds a Cleanliness Filter for Hotels

May 6, 2020– With many countries still under travel restrictions, citizens are forced to postpone their travels. Many hotels have started to prepare for the post-COVID world with travel. One of the most important things will certainly be the cleanliness of the properties. The behaviors of travelers will change with...

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Metasearch Today: Low Cost, High Returns

May 6, 2020– As mentioned in our previous post, we continue to see global CPCs decreasing in all metasearch channels.  During the last two weeks, DerbySoft registered CPCs over 80% lower than the previous year, and some total averages around $0.20 per click. Reduced competition, decreased budgets for advertisers and...

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Google: Property Promotion Ads

May 4, 2020– Last year, DerbySoft saw Google testing Promoted Hotels product, which is a kind of like a hybrid between Google Ads and Google Hotel Ads. After months of alpha and beta testing, this functionality is finally available to all advertisers. With the global roll-out, Google has also decided...

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When Users are Looking to Book on Metasearch

May 5, 2020– In the previous analysis, DerbySoft looked at the click and booking data of domestic markets versus international markets. We continue to monitor the data, and it is needless to say that the trends tend to change daily during these uncertain times. For the last two weeks, DerbySoft...

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Opportunity? CPCs Global Decrease in Metasearch

April 22, 2020– We are seeing global CPCs dramatically decreasing across all the metasearch channels and point of sales since the beginning of March. Currently, they are about -70% lower than last year: This means that we are witnessing a very important change: the biggest OTAs are slowing down their...

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Assumptions vs Data: Do we need to target only domestic?

April 20, 2020– The most common assumption these days is that domestic travel will recover quicker than the international one. But what does the data really show us when it comes to metasearch? We can see the conversion rates for domestic traffic are higher than the international ones in the...

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Google Update: Cancellable Rates

April 16, 2020– One important way to help Hotel Search users during the COVID-19 crisis is to present cancellation policies for hotel bookings to users whenever possible. Google’s Hotel Search UI is being updated to include a filter for hotels where partners are offering rates flagged as “cancellable” so users...

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Trivago Updates Free Cancellations Display Policy

April 15, 2020– With new and unpredictable travel restrictions arising with the pandemic evolution, it is extremely important to make travelers feel confident. One way to do this is to provide flexibility. Your customers want to know that in case of a disrupted travel, they are able to postpone or...

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Google My Business Updates

April 14, 2020– It is important to keep your Google My Business listing updated as the core information part of the search results. Current travel conditions have prompted many hoteliers to change information such as business hours and policies. You can find how to add COVID-19 info here, and a...

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Branding on Metasearch: Callouts, Photos, Favicons…

April 13, 2020– Your brand identity and image are important, so make sure you use all the available tools on different metasearch channels to reinforce your branding. Favicons – small logos of your brand that highlight you in the metasearch auction results. Favicons help you differentiate between a large number...

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Digital Marketing Playbook

DerbySoft understands that the digital marketing industry is at a very challenging point, but that doesn’t mean there is not a need for strategy during this time.

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How Hoteliers Can Master Metasearch Advertising With Machine Learning

Hoteliers are typically at a disadvantage when it comes to competing efficiently in metasearch with online travel agencies. But most of these challenges can be overcome with the right technology partner in place. — DerbySoft Metasearch sites, such as Google, Kayak, TripAdvisor, and Trivago, have redefined the travel landscape. They...

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DerbySoft Expands Content Suite Functionality

DerbySoft Expands Content Suite Functionality DerbySoft announces the launch of the new Content User Interface as part of its industry-leading Content Suite. This new user interface will be available to all Suppliers currently working with the Content Suite through both view and/or edit functionalities, including adding new properties, for hotel...

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The Surprising Rise of Hotel Spending on Metasearch Advertising

Many hotel groups are directing more of their ad budgets toward price-comparison search sites. That’s a boon for vendors providing connectivity and automation services. But it’s also a welcome, if still modest, injection for metasearch players like Trivago that have recently been struggling. – Sean O’Neill for Skift Skift Editorial,...

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Baidu Launches A New Product for Hotel Ads

The economic growth in China has fueled outbound tourism with the Chinese GDP representing 16% of the global GDP in 2019 and will grow to an estimated 20% by 2029. More importantly, the Chinese GDP per capita is rising and empowering millions to travel. Currently, China represents about 166 million...

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Network Security and the Online Travel Market

Two years ago, an article released by Allied Market Research estimated that the global online travel industry will potentially reach $1,091 Billion in 2022. Per the report, analysts stated that direct bookings through hotels, airlines and car rental companies will play a major role in this number, but Online Travel...

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The Future of DerbySoft

For 15 years, DerbySoft has grown to include an array of products and solutions like Build, the industry’s gold standard for custom connectivity, and Go, a more streamlined connectivity platform for distributors and suppliers looking for faster speed to market. DerbySoft also provides solutions for metasearch and digital marketing challenges...

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The History of DerbySoft

DerbySoft was founded over 15 years by Ted Zhang and Feng Ou, who were dedicated in making contributions to the travel technology industry after returning to Shanghai from Silicon Valley.

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Additional Callouts on Google

Google Aligns Hotel Search for Desktop and Mobile

Google has updated its desktop hotel search to a more user friendly experience. For some time, hotel searches displayed between mobile and desktop has been inconsistent, but now, there is a new update from Google that aligns desktop hotel searches to match the look and feel of its mobile hotel...

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Google’s Trademark Policy Updates

What You Need to Know Google recently made changes to their advertising trademark policy. The update affects brands advertising on Google Adwords, which has been simply renamed to Google Ads. The Changes Within the update, Google states that ads may use trademarked brand names if: “The ad’s landing page is...

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Get Started on Bing Hotel Ads with DerbySoft

Add a New Channel to Your Hotel Digital Marketing Mix Earlier this year, Bing announced the inclusion of Hotel Ads as a part of their search platform. Derbysoft has been working closely with Bing as partners to begin offering the new channel to hotels. DerbySoft is pleased to announce Bing...

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The Importance of Personalization

By definition, personalization is a means of meeting the customer’s needs more effectively and efficiently, making interactions faster and easier and, consequently, increasing customer satisfaction and the likelihood of repeat visits. Personalization, as described above, has been repeated over-and-over in the hospitality and travel technology industries since the launch of hand-held...

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New Sales Channels in the Mobile Era

WeChat Mini-Programs Real-Time Booking Launched in January 2017, WeChat mini-programs are similar to native apps but are cloud-based and available within the WeChat platform, China’s largest social media platform. This means that users do not need to download a mini-program to their phones, saving them large amounts of data storage....

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Google is Testing A New Metasearch Booking Module Above Adwords

Google is testing two new changes to their search results page which put Hotel Ads in a more prominent position over their traditional Adwords space. The two modules Google is currently testing are: 1. The Booking Module Appearing Above Traditional Ads Google is testing the Booking Module which appears in...

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Increasing Direct Traffic with KAYAK’s Hotel Specific Inline Ads

At DerbySoft, we are continuously looking for opportunities for our customers to drive direct bookings, and we are happy to offer KAYAK’s new Hotel Specific Inline ads to help increase direct traffic to your website. Increasing Your Exposure KAYAK’s Hotel Specific Inline (HSI) is a cost-per-click advertising asset that allows...

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Google Displaying Similar Hotels on Hotel Ads

Lately, Google has been busy with the release of many updates to their user interface including the release of the Occupancy Filters, the tool where travelers can search for single and multiple occupants while searching for various hotel rates. Google has recently released another feature to their Google Hotel Ads...

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Google Adds Occupancy Filter to Hotel Ads Search Results

For some time now, Google Hotel Ads has been the only metasearch channel that did not allow travelers to include the number of guests as a filter in their searches, and this has been a missed opportunity for bookings since rates usually differ based on various occupancy levels. Recently, Google...

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Trivago Testing Cheapest Deal on Rate Card

Recently, one of our Digital Marketing Managers noticed a change to Trivago’s user interface. This change is the inclusion of a ‘Cheapest Deal’ slot within the Trivago hotel rate card. Trivago has stated that the test is currently live only on 20% of the traffic for several markets including: Australia,...

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How Artificial Intelligence Will Make Hotel Distribution Smarter

Because of its vast complexity and reliance on a large quantity of data, hotel distribution is one area of the travel sector that has the potential to be greatly improved by artificial intelligence. In today’s hotel distribution landscape, inventory information such as rates and availability data are passed from one...

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Additional Callouts on Google

Five Strategies to Turn Your Data into Actionable Insights

Organizations have been working in data-driven environments for some time now with access to a wealth of transactional, personal and behavioral information. But what is the data worth if you are unable to draw any meaningful insights from it? We draw on our experience to provide five strategies to make...

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Five Tips to Converting Your Mobile Visitors

The importance of mobile has been widely accepted by digital advertisers, which is demonstrated when we see adspends continuously increasing. There is a Phocuswright study showing brands allocating 44% of their digital spend through mobile channels.   With the continuous growth in mobile, are you investing time in creating the...

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The Most Common Myths About Metasearch and PPC Advertising

We recently wrote about the changes to the structure of Google Hotels Ads with the introduction of Campaigns. It’s been known for some time this is Google’s first step to integrating hotel ads into their wider Google Adwords platform. Integrating Hotel Ads into Adwords creates an opportunity for hotel marketers...

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Using Expedia TravelAds to Increase Your Web Traffic

Now Offering Expedia TravelAds Direct Here at DerbySoft, we are continuously looking for opportunities that our customers can use to drive direct bookings. This is why we are happy to offer you Expedia TravelAds Direct to help increase direct traffic to your website. Increasing Your Exposure Expedia TravelAds Direct is...

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TripAdvisor to Introduce New Metasearch Auction

One of the quirks of metasearch campaign management is that each media channel presents a challenge on how best to optimize your bids. Each channel offers a varying level of control (or multipliers) which enable DerbySoft to fine-tune final bids to make sure it is optimized to your campaign objective....

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Google Campaigns for hotels – What it means for you

2018 is a key year for Google Hotel Ads, with many changes planned to their hotel ads platform. During Google’s IP partner event in Berlin, they announced the roll out of Campaigns. This is a new account architecture for hotel ads, similar to what you can find on Adwords. It...

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Additional Callouts Appearing on Google Hotel Ads

Additional Callouts Appearing on Google Hotel Ads Since the beginning of 2018, we’ve noticed more than one callout on Google Hotel Ads. Previously, a callout would display only if an advertiser reached position 1. Now Google has started to make this feature available to advertisers in positions 2 and below....

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Competitive Pricing for Metasearch

The importance of competitive pricing for metasearch. Having the cheapest rate advertised on metasearch channels will lead to increased conversions at lower CPC. Although the statement above is true for many, we understand achieving competitive rates is not an easy accomplishment. We explore what happens when our clients focus their...

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Empowering our Customers – WTM 2017 presentation

DerbySoft continues to move the needle and push the envelope by using the latest high-performance distribution services that empower our customers. If you missed our presentation at WTM or want to refresh your memory, you can download here

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Meta by Phone (aka Google’s Click to Call)

Hotel direct bookings are becoming the most talked about booking method. Hardly a day goes by that we don’t hear about the latest eCommerce initiatives to drive more business to brand websites. Metasearch, paid search, loyalty programs, discounts, customized experiences and other similar topics tend to be the focus of...

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Hotech IT Systems

"...the tourism ‘family’ is a world ‘family’ and that is exactly what I discovered with DerbySoft..."

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HotUSA Hotels

“The people at DerbySoft help us to find ways to collaborate. We feel very supported by the team at DerbySoft.”

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John Burns, Consultant

"People said they’re like a partner that not only wants to work with us, but is willing to make extra efforts to bring success to us"

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Tourico Holidays

“Whether it’s in the middle on the night, first thing in the morning, anywhere in the world, you’ll get an answer.”

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Costco Travel

“I think the big difference with DerbySoft is that we are viewed as partners rather than… clients.”

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IHG

“The team is phenomenal so it’s just been a wonderful experience.”

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Testimonial Hyatt

They’re very flexible and able to meet what we need as a distribution partner….They’re quick, their speed to market is so fantastic. When we need something, we have a new need that just cropped up in the marketplace, we can go to them and they’re going to turn on a...

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Testimonial Best Western

The first thing that comes to mind when I think about DerbySoft is their professionalism. They understand our needs and help us resolve any issues, which is very valuable for us… In summary, we have great confidence working with DerbySoft. Phoebe Xu, Regional Head of WWS China and Southeastern Asia,...

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CEO Insight: Evolution of the GDN

In our world of fast moving technology, we take for granted how easy it is to plan and book travel itineraries for flights, hotels, and more. It’s illuminating to reflect on how far our industry has come in just a few years.

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Google Travel and Book on Google Explained

Following our recent workshops at the HSMAI Digital Strategies Conference 2017, we’d like to share some fantastic insights presented at the conference. For our first workshop, we welcomed Michael Mo, Partner Development Manager at Google, who shared some exciting information about Google Travel and Book on Google.

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Nippon Travel Agency

"In just one year, we have been able to connect to dozens of hotel companies after our system was successfully developed."

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H.I.S.

"They are patient and always solve all our technical challenges.”

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JL Tour

"DerbySoft provide us with the most efficient and effective IT solutions."

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4 Reasons To Go & Bypass Connectivity Queues

The Global Data Network empowers suppliers and distributors of all sizes and types in the hospitality industry to do business with each other. The ultimate beneficiaries of this evolution are the consumers who increasingly enjoy more choices to fulfill their travel needs. Whether you are a hotel distributor like an...

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Google Travel and Book on Google Explained

Following our recent workshops at the HSMAI Digital Strategies Conference 2017, we’d like to share some fantastic insights presented at the conference. For our first workshop, we welcomed Michael Mo, Partner Development Manager at Google, who shared some exciting information about Google Travel and Book on Google. As a recap,...

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DerbySoft’s Dee Thomas Wins HEDNA’S Award of Excellence!

Hot off the presses:  Just minutes ago, Dee Thomas, Director of Content Services at DerbySoft, was honored by HEDNA for her many contributions over the years to our industry and to HEDNA. The trade organization’s president, Rajesh Vohra, surprised her with the announcement during a general session in front of...

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5 Easy Ways To Increase Profits by Getting Your Hotel Out There

As an independent hotelier, your main aim is to make sure that your guests are happy. That is, after all, why you joined the hospitality game. But you do need to make a profit, too, and that requires keeping your rooms occupied and controlling costs. For most hoteliers, online distribution...

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Understanding Mobile Conversions in Metasearch

We already know that mobile is seeing record year-over-year growth in the travel industry. A forecast by eMarketer expected 2016 to be a landmark year for travel booking. They predicted that 2016 would be the first year when more than half the travel bookings are made using a mobile device....

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8 Must-Read Hotel Marketing Rules for Independent Hoteliers

In this age of Internet marketing, successful independent hoteliers need to know and practice a number of marketing rules to compete with the bigger players. While some of these rules may seem sophisticated, the good news is that they’re within reach for every independent hotelier. RULE 1—Write targeted hotel website...

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Opportunities and Challenges for Metasearch Marketing with Hotels

As hotels continue their efforts to keep up with latest and greatest in electronic distribution, the three hottest topics continue to be mobile, social media and metasearch. All three have one common thread we haven’t seen for many years. The ability to target and win direct consumers back to the...

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How To Win, Manage and Optimise Hotel Prices Ads on Google

As we all know, Google entered the hotel metasearch game with the introduction of Google Hotel Price Ads (HPA) in a number of Google products. These included Google Hotel Finder, Google Maps, Google+ Local and Google Search on desktop, tablet and, increasingly, mobile devices. According to Google: “Hotel Price Ads is...

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Metasearch Cross-Channel Optimisation

Remember the good old days of hotel metasearch? It seems like just yesterday when all you had to do was get connected to start enjoying the traffic. OTA sites would scarcely take notice because they had bigger fish to fry, and the mere presence of your direct website as a...

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