Hotel Industry News - Middle East & Africa Regional News

Over the past few years, TripAdvisor has been expanding its content offerings, evolving from a hotel review site to a comprehensive resource for planning trips. And while the majority of content is traveler-generated, if you’re a tourism bureau you have a variety of options to contribute content of your own, to enhance existing content and to promote travel to your destination.

Looking for the path to the Memorable Experience for your guests? It all starts with the mood that prevails. If I am in bad humor, I am not receptive to those sensors you have created and marketed. That’s right, I need to be 'gruntled'.

IN-DEPTH: The process of nurturing internal experts that take care of social media marketing initiatives depends on several factors including the company culture, making social media intrinsic to marketing and a brand’s business operations, and the model for social media communications that’s been chosen for your brand.

One year since the beginning of the Arab Spring, demand has yet to return to Egypt, Bahrain and the Levant region according to the 2011 year-end data from STR Global.

At a height of 355 meters (1,164 feet), the JW Marriott Marquis Dubai is the tallest dedicated hotel building in the world and is just 26 meters (85 feet) shorter than the Empire State Building in New York.

Marriott International (NYSE: MAR) announced today that it has signed agreements with Prime Hospitality S.A. to manage its first two hotels in the Central African nation of Gabon: an upscale, 250-room Marriott Hotels & Resorts branded hotel and a 40-unit Marriott Executive Apartments extended stay hotel in Libreville.

A key principle for finding personal fulfillment in the never-ending journey to hospitality service excellence is realizing that when we bring out the best in others, we simultaneously bring out the best in ourselves every day, every shift, and with just about every guest we encounter.

Travel is one of those few and lucky verticals that is so broad and engaging that it actually works on various screens – but travel content and service providers need to be thoughtful about what to optimize for each screen and what to carry through to all to convey a consistent and integrated experience and message, says Katherine Bose, Director, Mobile Partnerships, Americas, TripAdvisor.

According to a recent Google whitepaper, the number of mobile users researching travel via their mobile devices is expected to grow 51% in 2012. The case is equally compelling for mobile booking in APAC, with more than 15% of travellers projected to book travel products and service by 2013.

The new hotels are in France, Egypt, Tunisia, Morocco, China, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh and Thailand. The upscale hotel company of Swiss heritage now has 69 hotels in operation and 31 in development of which nine will open this year.