Paypal en Costa Rica: sitios web para comercio electrónico

PayPal en Costa Rica? A qué obedece esa noticia tome importancia en el país. Antes de aclarar ésta pregunta es importante mencionar algunos factores que influyen sobre el comercio electrónico: una estrategia para el medio digital, un sitio web, procesador de pagos en línea, servicio de soporte y un transportista o Courier para el caso de productos.   

Porqué es importante que PayPal establezca operaciones en Costa Rica? A continuación una serie de preguntas que son importantes para el desarrollo de su estrategia en comercio electrónico:

 ¿Cuáles son las plataformas de pago para comercio electrónico que pueden ser utilizadas por las Pymes en sectores de agroindustria, industria, alimentos, turismo y otros?

Las plataformas de pago para comercio electrónico o llamadas gateways de pago existentes son varias como PayPal, Authorize, WorldPay y se encargan de unir la página web para procesar una tarjeta de crédito, cobrarle al cliente y recibir el dinero en una cuenta bancaria.  Esto estaría enfocado en una comercialización directa (productor vendiendo a través de su sitio web).

Si hablamos de plataformas o Marketplaces para comercializar (distribuidores digitales), osea una estrategia a través de canales virtuales dentro de las plataformas para agroindustria, alimentos entre otros son Amazon, Ali Baba o eBay entre los más conocidos. Para turismo son Expedia, Travelocity entre otros y para aplicaciones móviles AppleStore o Android MarketPlace.

- ¿Cuáles son las ventajas de estas plataformas?

Las ventajas de utilizar éstas plataformas son múltiples: primero la exposición del producto (marca) ante miles de consumidores que utilizan éstos portales y las excelentes estrategias de mercadeo que utilizan estas plataformas. Otro elemento es la alta tecnología que utilizan en sus tiendas en línea, formas de pago etc.. que simplifica la comercialización a un costo de entrada casi nulo, y sólo se paga la comisión basado en los resultados (ventas). Por último el alcance a nuevos mercados para desarrollar estrategias de internacionalización.

- ¿Cuáles desventajas tienen y cómo debe estar el empresario preparado para resolverlas?

Más que desventajas, lo primero a desarrollar es entender que la comercialización por medios digitales requiere una dinámica diferente y es un negocio diferente a los canales tradicionales de comercialización. Se debe tener claro si los productos están listos para la exportación (permisos, precios competitivos, calidad, etiquetado, envíos, empaques, políticas de ingreso) a los mercados donde se va a comercializar. Por otro lado, hay que resolver el tema de los pagos, ya que algunos portales o gateways solamente pagan contra cuentas en los Estados Unidos. Por último, asesorarse en toda el área legal para los términos y condiciones de las ventas en internet (políticas de devolución, cancelación, re-embolsos, uso de la información, entre otros).

- ¿Cuáles son las principales recomendaciones que Usted le plantearía a las Pymes para comercio electrónico y para que aprovechen estas plataformas?

Ver el área de comercio electrónico como otra empresa donde se deben establecer métricas y controles. Además, es fundamental que establezcan una estrategia de comercialización a través de los diferentes canales (directo en la página web, intermediarios en línea, entre empresas) y sacarle la mejor partida a todas las nuevas oportunidades que los medios digitales están brindando (redes sociales, sitio web, portales, móvil).  Incorporar dentro del presupuesto la creación de sitios transaccionales que pueden mostrar los productos y servicios y se puedan comercializar.

- ¿Cuáles servicios para comercio electrónico pueden obtener las Pymes con el apoyo de bancos locales y cómo pueden tener acceso a ellos?

En el país, existen varias opciones de servicios de comercio electrónico para las Pymes, como El Banco Nacional, Credomatic y CitiBank. Cada uno solicita algunos requisitos y se centran en velar por una buena seguridad del sitio web, claridad en las políticas (términos y condiciones para la comercialización) y requisitos administrativos de rigor.  Recientemente, la empresa Paypal está lanzando el servicio de pagos en línea mediante una integración con el banco nacional, lo cual va a permitir mayor facilidad para la creación de sitios web que permitan vender y cobrar en línea de forma segura y confiable.

Atrévase a invertir en comercio electrónico y utilizar éstas plataformas, ya que no hay riesgo. Definir una buena estrategia o asesorarse por expertos en el área digital y diseño de sitios web transaccionables para descubrir nichos de mercado a un costo de comercialización muy bajo. La era digital ha “aplanado” el mundo, y el tamaño de empresa no hace la diferencia, la hace la estrategia y visión.

Alexánder Rojas Carranza

Coral Technologies

www.coral-technologies.com

Why hotels shouldn’t sell a $200 hotel room for $50

Rather than abet Expedia in its drive to become a traveler’s supplier of choice, it might be wiser to gamble that hotels’ own channels can achieve more than one sixteenth of what Expedia/Groupon could produce.

Tom Walker, TERADATA

Tnooz’s June 22 article “Expedia: What Groupon Getaways with Expedia means for hotels,” (why a hotel should sell a $200 hotel room for $50) posits an interesting case. But does it withstand a closer look?

To make the argument, Jennifer Mellet, Expedia’s senior director of new channel sales, presents the following hypotheticals.

$100: What the customer pays
$ 50: What the hotel receives
$ 40: Cost per occupied room (CPOR)
$ 10: Net to the hotel

Assuming 1,000 people buy the offer, the hotel nets $10,000.

Ms. Mellet further claims that “those are 1,000 largely incremental room nights that would have otherwise gone unsold.” No doubt some of the business would be incremental, but how much is really an unknown. It is also true that some cannibalization would occur, which again is an unknown.

At a gross level of analysis, $200 is four times the $50 that might otherwise be sold. On the margin, however (using the article’s $40 CPOR), the Expedia/Groupon deal is sixteen times less than what the $200 sale is worth:

$200 - $40 = $160. 160/10 = 16.

Is it realistic to believe that the Expedia/Groupon offer will deliver sixteen times more sales than the hotel would realize without running the special? Anything is possible, but as a hotelier I would be more than a little skeptical.

To further strengthen her case, Ms. Mellet points out that:

- In fact, Groupon customers have been shown to spend as much as 60 to 80 percent on top of the value of the Groupon.

Illustration continued:

- Cross-sell revenue per room (70% on top of $100 voucher at 70% margin to hotel): $49

- Total margin generated if 1,000 vouchers are sold: $59,000.

But is there any reason to believe that Groupon customers are more likely than other customers to spend additionally once staying in the hotel? Perhaps, but the proposition is far from self evident. If the hotel sells one sixteenth of the rooms at $200 that Expedia/Groupon would sell, it would achieve equivalent profitability. And the customer would be the hotel’s, not Expedia’s.

There is a pitched battle today between OTAs and hotels over which of them “owns” the customer. Expedia is aggressively positioning itself to be the owner of what might otherwise be hotels’ customers. Unquestionably, Expedia and other OTAs provide hotels a valuable service, but that value is delivered at a comparatively high price.

Rather than abet Expedia in its drive to become a traveler’s supplier of choice, it might be wiser to gamble that hotels’ own channels can achieve more than one sixteenth of what Expedia/Groupon could produce. In the bargain, hotels retain their loyalty position with the customer, which represent a value far greater than the $10 Expedia/Groupon might deliver.

Tom Walker is Senior Industry Consultant at TERADATA

Read also "Expedia on why you should give away a $200 room for $50"

Editor: Cristian Segura writes articles related with technology, social media and marketing. Sponsored by Costa Rica Hotels, Motor de reservas en linea andTravel to Costa Rica

Study shows promotion effect of online travel sites.

A new study confirms the existence of the so-called 'billboard effect' for hotels that are listed on third-party websites operated by online travel agents (OTAs).

The study used publicly available data from comScore on brands operated by InterContinental Hotels Group to assess the impact of listing at OTAs upon bookings on the "hotelbrand.com" site.

Anderson, an assistant professor at the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, replicated and expanded an earlier study, which found that a hotel's listing on Expedia increased total reservation volume—not including reservations processed through Expedia itself. This larger study looks at 1,720 transactions for InterContinental Hotels brands during the summer months of three years (2008, 2009, and 2010).

"It's clear that there is increased reservation volume on the 'brand.com' site as a result of having the hotel appear on the online travel agent site," said Anderson, "and it appears that the commissions paid to online travel agents actually should be considered a marketing expense."

Anderson also tracked the surfing behavior of would-be hotel guests. He found that almost 75 percent of the consumers who booked at the brand's site visited the OTA, with 83 percent performing a web search prior to the booking (and two-thirds doing both). "Some travelers spend enormous time researching hotels online," he said. "On average, hotel consumers made twelve visits to an OTA's website, requested 7.5 pages per visit, and spent almost five minutes on each page before booking."

The study, "Search, OTAs, and Online Booking: An Expanded Analysis of the Billboard Effect," by Chris Anderson, is available at no charge from the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) at:

www.hotelschool.cornell.edu/research/chr/pubs/reports/2011.html
Fuente: http://www.4hoteliers.com/4hots_nshw.php?mwi=8516

Expedia on how to grow your ADR without impacting occupancy

In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, Expedia identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. This article uses Manhatten as example, but the observations and recommendations can be applied to any market.

By Nick Graham, Expedia Director of Market Management for New York


As the industry recovers from historical lows in occupancy and ADR, I’ve been hearing a common question from many hotels – “How are we going to grow rate?” Occupancy growth has to come first before rate growth, but in markets that are already seeing occupancy come back, hotels have the ability to achieve ADR increases.
In working with hotels across various chain scales and markets, I’ve identified a handful of strategies that can effectively increase ADR without impacting occupancy. I use Manhattan as an example because it is in many ways leading the recovery among U.S. lodging markets, but these observations and recommendations can be applied to any market that is experiencing even modest occupancy growth.

1. Grow your yieldable channels mix
Adjusting your segmentation to reflect more yieldable business, such as OTA channels, is the best place to start because it’s where rate adjustments can have the most immediate impact. In Manhattan, Expedia ADR has been growing faster than the market’s as a whole. Expedia ADR for Manhattan in June was up nearly 25% year over year, versus market-wide ADR growth of just under 18% . Year to date, the spread is just as pronounced, as the market has grown ADR by 9%, versus Manhattan ADR growth of 14% on Expedia. That means the OTA segment is growing at 57% the pace of the market, and this is due to the fact that the OTA channel is yieldable, as opposed to other pieces of business that were contracted at lower rates prior to the recovery. Because OTA pricing floats off of a hotel’s best available rate, revenue managers can raise or lower rates in immediate response to the market, while with traditional wholesale or contract segments, hotels are locked into fixed rates. In a recovery environment such as the one we find ourselves in now, pockets of demand that allow for rate increases may not become pronounced until closer to the date. In these instances, the hotels that achieve the highest rate increases will be those that can yield up a larger percentage of their business, as opposed to hotels that may already have contracted fixed pricing.

2. Implement a need date strategy
Every market, even in a recovery, has slow periods. But with the right strategy, it is possible to grow rate over these need dates. In Manhattan a prime example is the autumn weekend on which Yom Kippur falls. Corporate travelers check out early, and the locals leave town. Year after year, the market tends to react to the gap in occupancy about three weeks prior to the actual date, and cuts pricing to drive last minute occupancy. But once the 3-week window is reached, not only has the prime booking window passed, but the business in that window is at a considerably lower ADR than in the preceding 4 months. By anticipating need dates, hotels can use advance purchase promotions to fill their rooms further ahead. As long as the dates are identified correctly, promotional rates and the occupancy advantage a hotel gains earlier on will result in a higher ADR than if the hotel waits until the last minute to pick up occupancy. And if you have rooms left last minute, having that occupancy base allows you to discount safely through an opaque channel like Hotwire, as opposed to dropping your retail pricing. To successfully implement this strategy, it is critical to know the booking windows, which for many markets may be further out than expected. For example, in Manhattan, 50% of Expedia’s international package business is already booked 90 days prior to arrival. For international standalone, the average booking window is 60 days. These patterns are examples of the information hotels can use to implement promotional strategies to target the customer during their shopping cycle.

3. Use value ads rather than rate promotions
Once you’ve identified your need periods, the next step is to create an offer that will help shift business in your direction without leaving rate on the table. One effective way to stand out that won’t affect ADR is to use value adds. For example, the best performing value adds we have seen in Manhattan are free breakfast and free upgrades. If your property doesn’t have a managed restaurant on-site or the ability to fulfill a value add at check-in, some OTAs like Expedia will manage the value add on your behalf. For example, Hotels.com’s inline merchandising program recently offered a “free” pre-paid $50 Mastercard with qualifying bookings. Participating hotels saw a lift in their bookings, without an impact on their rate.

4. Turn up the volume on demand during eak compression dates
Every now and then, I hear some hotels talk about “cutting distribution costs” over peak dates by closing out OTAs. But a secret that many successful hotels have realized is that they can achieve higher rates over peak periods by ensuring inventory remains available through their distribution channels, and yielding rate up in response to the significant demand that ensues. We recently looked at one of Manhattan’s highest compression years in recent history. That year, there were 50 days with over 95% occupancy (according to STR). Over those dates, the market ADR was $344 and Expedia’s net ADR was $354. The reason behind this is that Expedia brings a lot of fairly price-insensitive demand at 2-3 weeks prior to peak compression dates, driven by customers that can’t find availability at their usual hotel. By keeping inventory open and adjusting rates up, hotels not only fill rooms at higher rates on Expedia, but also on their own channel through the Billboard Effect. We recently started sharing new peak compression date data with our hotel partners, which provides advance guidance to determine when a hotel has the opportunity to increase rates, or in some cases to revisit and perhaps reduce rates for specific dates. We share a mutual desire with our hotel partners to identify the ideal rate based on what the market can bear.

5. Stop giving away room upgrades
Many hotels offer some assortment of room types, even if it’s just a choice between standards and suites. The trouble is, the lead-in room type is often overbooked, forcing the property to upgrade the guest for free at check in. By applying a promotional strategy for upgraded room types (being sure to target dates or upgraded room types that might typically go unsold), hotels can entice bookings for higher rate rooms and achieve a higher ADR overall. For example, a typical mix of bookings at one hotel I work with in Manhattan was 75% standard rooms and 25% suites. After they began applying a promotional rate just for the suites, they boosted the mix of suite bookings to 33% and grew overall ADR from $226 to $253. They started getting paid for those room upgrades, and it paid off in higher ADR.

Obviously, the hotel industry today looks much different than in years past. As hoteliers navigate today’s landscape, they need to remain flexible and open-minded to using new and different marketing channels in order to adapt and drive demand in the recovering market, and putting the above strategies into practice is a great place to start. In the final analysis, it benefits an OTA and its hotel partners to grow rate and occupancy. Reach out and engage your OTA market manager. Odds are, they’ll have insights and suggestions about your marketplace that you may not have considered before. Working together with OTA marketing experts like Expedia will accelerate the return to improved rate - but only through active collaboration.