The results of a preliminary report released today at ITB Berlin indicate that many hotels and hotel chains are spending considerable amounts of time on reporting.

In a speech given by April J. Key, HEDNA board member and director for distribution products (global connectivity) at IHG Hotels & Resorts, and Fritz Mueller, vice president and head of revenue for Europe at RateGain, it was revealed that the average hotel spends two days per week on reporting.

Broken down, the results showed that half of large hotel chains spent six-to-eight days each month on reporting, with this figure falling to 39 per cent of mid-sized hotel chains and 26 per cent of independent hotels. The initial results also found that 37 per cent of mid-sized and independent hotel chains were manually combining resources from data for reporting rather than go through the process automation.

Key said: “There’s a lot of technology that does a bunch of cool, new things. But what we find is that the basic processes that we have as an industry to sell products are the pain points of today. Things like AI and ChatGPT sound great, but we still run on spreadsheets.”

She added: “Where there is disconnect, there is disparity.”

The report, The State of Distribution – A Global Outlook on Distribution Trends and Practices, will be released at the end of the year. In the meantime, Key and Mueller were looking for more businesses to take part.

Key said: “This will be open until the end of the year. We want hoteliers to be part of the report, and we want to get as much feedback as possible. This is not a one-time thing, though. It’s something that we think needs to live on beyond 2025 and 2026. But we still want to get as much input from the start as possible.”

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