ICT and e-business in the tourism industry ICT adoption ... - empirica

Tourism
References
Research for this case study was conducted by Matthias Ringel, Rambøll Management,
on behalf of e-Business W@tch. Sources and references used:
Interview with Nicolas Besse, Web Distribution Director Accor Group, 26 th April 2006
“The Cost of New Distribution Channels”, presentation by Mr Nicolas Besse at the
ENTER 2006 conference (26–28 January 2006), Accor 2006
e-Business W@tch, case study on Accor Hotels (August 2004), www.ebusinesswatch.org
‘resources’
“Accor Hotelgruppe setzt auf globalen Internet Distribution Service von Pegasus
Solutions”, article 7 September 2004, www.bz-comm.de/
“La connaissance clients des sites Accor”, article 21 March 2006,
www.relationclient.net
Websites:
• www.accor.com
• www.hotelmarketing.com
4.1.6 Summary of main points and conclusions
The IT revolution and the introduction of e-commerce processes have led to two
conflicting, parallel trends which have a profound impact on the role of intermediaries in
the tourism market: dis-intermediation and re-intermediation. While, on the one hand, IT
and e-commerce represent a challenge and a threat to the role of intermediaries in the
tourism value chain, they also provide new opportunities and chances for traditional and
newly emerging online intermediaries. The case studies presented in this section
exemplify this situation:
The case study on Accor supports to some extent the dis-intermediation argument: By
introducing an electronic revenue management system as well as a central reservation
system (CRS) which links each individual hotel with the group, Accor has managed to
boost its direct sales via its own hotel network, thereby bypassing traditional
intermediaries. This allowed Accor to save commission costs which it otherwise would
have had to pay to intermediaries if it would not have offered these services itself.
However, Accor also realised that completely circumventing the use of intermediaries
would not be an option since these intermediaries proved to be particularly effective and
valuable for the promotion of hotel rooms in the low seasons. Therefore, Accor adopted
an anti-cyclic intermediary strategy: Instead of paying an average commission to
intermediaries for each hotel room booked, it adopted a system in which in an individual
hotel’s high season, when the level of occupancy is high – and hence the need for
intermediary services low – the commission would be lower; in contrast, in a hotel’s low
season, when the level of occupancy is low – and hence the need for intermediary
services is high – the commission for intermediary services would also be high. In this
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