2024 is already in full swing, but we would still like to take a brief look back at the past year. It was undoubtedly exciting. We welcomed many new hotel partners, expanded our interface portfolio and invested a lot of time in optimizing our products. My colleague Julia Schäfer has prepared the technical highlights for you in a separate blog post.
Good connections are everything
There is no lack of vitamin B here. We connect your hotel with the whole world of travel. The goal? Clearly: increase your presence, optimize prices and strengthen efficiency. We have integrated quite a few new interface partners in the past year. These include companies such as Secret Escapes, eDreams, DialogShift, Brandnamic, Voordeeluitjes.nl, thematica and many more… These partnerships open up completely new opportunities for you to further optimize your sales mix. Whether hotel software, booking portal or yield management system – we know how important good interfaces are in a fast-moving world like ours. Of course, we also worked on our existing connections. The payment interface to SaferPay can now also handle Apple Pay and TWINT (for our Swiss customers), for example.
So many beautiful hotels
Our sales team has been pretty busy this year. In fact, we have never had so many new partner hotels in one year. We are delighted with every single one of them. Just to name a few: They included such great hotels as the Seehotel am Kaiserstrand, the LIFESTEIL, the Bergdorf Zaglgut, the Hotel Wassersleben and, of course, our first hotel in the UK. As a representative of all these great hotels, you can read two interviews here that my colleague Julia conducted last year. Incidentally, 87 % of all new customers have opted for our OnePageBooking 6 and the RateDistributor channel manager. This is by far the most popular combination among our customers throughout the years.
But of course we are also incredibly proud of all the fabulous hotels that have been with us for so many years. have placed enormous trust in us for years. Without you, we wouldn’t be the HNS we are today. 72% of all existing customers with OnePageBooking 5 have switched to OnePageBooking 6 . These include BASE Montafon & Hotel Verwall, the Küstenperle, the Panoramahotel Schwarzwald and the Müritzpalais.
Of course, not everything revolves around our booking mask. VoucherBooking 3 has also gained many new fans. For example, the Hotel Edelweiss on the Arlberg.
Knowledge transfer
We have trained you 404 times. There were also 13 webinars by my colleague Julia Schäfer. An incredible 1,542 hoteliers took part. We even had support from our partners Airbnb and Check24 for 2 webinars. We have also launched our new webinar portal. These recordings enabled you to gain in-depth insights into our products at any time, even when we were not available on the phone.
If that wasn’t enough, we have written a whopping 145 newsletters that you have received from us in the past 12 months. In it, we regularly informed you about news, product updates and industry trends. There were also 71 posts on our HNS blog, where we share valuable knowledge with the hotel industry community.
No distance was too far for us
2023 was definitely the most travel-friendly year since HNS was founded. Ok, let’s say since I’ve been working at HotelNetSolutions – and that’s quite a long time. 😉 Our sales colleagues Björn Seidel, Patrick Sobe and Jasmin Minks attended a total of 15 events in Germany, Austria, Switzerland and even the UK. In addition, there were 2 road shows with the fabulous partners from DialogShift, myhotelshop and straiv through Germany. And then let’s not forget the 3 trade fairs. In addition to our home game at the ITB in Berlin in March, we had our own stand at the hotel trade fair in Bolzano in October and a joint partner stand with our colleagues from RateBoard at the GAST in Salzburg in November. So we had plenty of opportunity to finally meet you in person again, deepen existing partnerships and, of course, make new contacts.
What else happened behind closed doors?
2023 was characterized by a number of internal projects. I would like to briefly introduce two of them to you today. For example, we have digitized our manuals. To be precise, it was my colleague Julia Schäfer. Are you missing certain information? Then write to us at marketing@hotelnetsolutions.de. We will add it as soon as possible.
Another major project was – and still is – the switch to a new CRM system. We hope that this will not only improve internal process handling, but also comprehensively modernize the ticket system. The user-friendliness for you will be further optimized and made more intuitive. In future, you will have a quick overview of the status of your tickets.
That was our year 2023. I’ve probably forgotten something very important that I’m sure I’ll remember later. All that remains for me now is to say a big thank you to you. You know, without you, we wouldn’t be here either, etc. … 😉 Here’s to a year 2024 that is at least as eventful.
