Sydney’s one day No Vacancy Conference kicked off yesterday with a full house of hotel and technology leaders and managers at Sydney’s Dockside Conference Centre, with Stella’s Bob East proclaiming his comments at the conference were off the record!
East said that Stella, the owner of practically all aspects of the travel distribution chain, is and will treat all its partners in distribution, in exactly the same way when it comes to commission as they treat those that are part of the Stella Group, adding that commission parity was a fundamental principle of the Company.
Interestingly the statement by East is rather at odds with statements made by other Stella Group executives who have said that the Group is determined to minimise commission leakage outside the Group with a mission of increasing occupancy and revenue at Group properties.
Other speaker at No Vacancy included:
Darrin Bird, CEO, Carbonza.com
Bradley Cocks, Kiwi Collection
Tessa Court, Hitwise
Russell Farr, Australian Online Travel
David Fernandez, Outrider
Paul Fisher, TotalTravel.com
Jeff Floyd, AAA Tourism
Mike Ford, SiteMinder
Gary Knowles, Roamfree Group
Shannon Knapp, Group Revenue and Distribution Mgr, Mirvac Hotels & Resorts
Nick McCaw, NZ’s Hotel SO
Andrew Maurer, Tourism Research Australia
Martin McConnachie, Allotz.com
Michael Meade, Rendezvous Hotels
Laurel Papworth, Social Media Strategist; and
Terry Schwamberg-Kaljo, Owner, Contemporary Hotels
More reports from the No Vacancy Conference later this week.
A Report by The Mole
