With a foot in the new year of 2021, it’s been a good time for us to reflect on what we’ve tackled together during this unusual year. Without a doubt, 2020 presented us with a whole jumble of unprecedented times but despite the challenges, we’ve seen many glimmers of hope and been heartened by the way our industry has pulled together and found ways to reinvent itself.

Throughout the year, we’ve witnessed hoteliers whip up new and innovative concepts, campaigns, and more to help push past the storm. Likewise, we at The Hotels Network have poured our hearts into developing original solutions and enhancements to our platform so that hotels can build a strong direct channel, which is so critical to recovery. 

From the new launch of our Vouchers & Gift Cards product to publishing relevant content with concrete ideas to overcome today’s situation, we’d like to share with you a few of our developments that helped move our industry along and allowed us to burst through the doors of 2021 with a bang. We're once again ready to give you our all; we have much more in store for this new year and look forward to continuing on this exciting journey together!

Our most-read hotel stories

Starting with content, we’d like to share with you a few of our most-read hotel stories during the past year. Filled with hotelier tips, suggestions, and insights, we hope these pieces will provide you with some inspiration to kickstart your direct booking strategy and help boost your hotel website conversions in 2021! 

1. Netflix - what can hoteliers possibly learn from the megabrand’s success? Perhaps much more than you would think. READ NOW

2. A deep dive into the Black Friday 2020 effect in hospitality - Hotels see a 69% increase in direct booking during the Black Friday. READ NOW

3. 5 lessons from an Irish hotel securing direct bookings during lockdown - How can hotels take advantage of website traffic when closed? READ NOW

4. Unprecedented times: 7 hotel brands who are thinking outside the box - Strategies that go past the limits of typical marketing approaches. READ NOW

6. Meliá Hotels International: Uncovering the formula to social media success - How the brand keeps up with the modern digital landscape. READ NOW
7. 6 tactics to learn from Swedish hotels who remain open during COVID-19 - What’s setting hotels in Sweden apart from those in other markets? READ NOW

Popular Product Releases

Our attention has been always been focused around the goals and needs of hoteliers; this didn’t change in 2020. Listening to feedback from our clients, our new features and products were developed to support hoteliers in their quest to surmount the current challenges. We’re exceptionally glad to see so many hotels putting them to good use. Without further ado, let’s take a look at a few of our most popular product releases of 2020.

1. Vouchers & Gift Cards

THN Vouchers & Gift Cards in action

Vouchers & Gift Cards, a powerful tool to generate immediate revenue and encourage guest loyalty, was something our hotel clients found particularly useful during times of uncertainty around travel dates and even hotel closures. 

With this flexible tool, you are able to manage the entire process, from voucher creation and website promotion to tracking the redeeming of vouchers. Keeping true to our emphasis on personalization, our unique targeting system ensures that messages promoting your vouchers resonate with your hotel website visitors. This new product has helped countless hotels worldwide generate a much-needed spike in revenue when bookings were slow. We look forward to watching more hotels in 2021 take advantage of the opportunity to bring their voucher initiatives to new heights. 

2. Email Capture

THN Email Capture example

Continuing with our emphasis on personalization, we launched our new Email Capture feature to help hotels easily grow their marketing database. With a wide selection of beautiful and customizable forms, hotels can collect emails directly on the website. Once again, segmentation rules can be used to ensure you show personalized messages at key points of the booking funnel to boost email capture rates. Adapt your messaging to the current situation and turn today’s lookers into tomorrow’s bookers!

3. CRM Targeting

THN’s CRM Targeting: The powerful combination of CRM and behavioral data

With personalization running through our veins, we decided to take it to the next level by launching CRM targeting. This latest product innovation enables hoteliers to apply advanced targeting rules based on the user profile information stored in their website data layer. Your hotel’s CRM data can be combined with THN’s existing behavioral targeting criteria to create a powerful mix that’ll help you enhance the experience for users on your hotel website. 

4. Stepping up the message design

In addition to new products, we also released a multitude of new features and enhancements throughout 2020. One of our most requested and popular ones was none other than our extensive image gallery. To help hotel marketers save time and effort with the creative design process, we introduced an image gallery allowing THN users to customize their messages by choosing photos directly within the tool. Creating beautiful website messaging has never been easier!

Our Most Proud Announcements

We feel privileged to have been able to continue growing our team, business and network of hotels throughout 2020. Let’s take a look at three of our most proud announcements.

1. Our €10M funding

Since the very beginning, we have aimed to create a tech ecosystem for hoteliers and to become a pioneer in a new hotel-tech category; direct channel growth for hotels. Doubling down on our commitment to the hospitality industry, we raised 10M euros in new funding to continue supporting the industry’s recovery by building new and powerful technologies that adapt to today’s landscape. What we do is transforming direct booking strategies and we are looking forward to continuing our journey to become the most trusted partner in growth for hoteliers worldwide. 

2. LinkedIn's top startups of 2020

In addition to hitting our 10k follower milestone on LinkedIn, we were thrilled to see ourselves announced as one of LinkedIn’s Top Startups in Spain! We’re proud of this achievement, and are even more proud of our enthusiastic team. Thanks to their passion and motivation in offering our clients the best, this prized announcement was made possible.

3. Website redesign

A look into our new website

2020 has undoubtedly been a year of great changes, so we too decided to shake things up by redesigning our website. If you haven't yet, go explore our brand-new website and let us know what you think!

With 2020 come and gone, we’re proud to look back on our accomplishments. Together, we’ve been able to weather the storm and emerge even stronger, thanks to your continued support. For this, we are truly grateful.