The Choice of Expedia

I would like to thank Max Starkov for bringing up the courageous decision of Choice hotels to leave the conversations with Expedia.

Yes finally we have a big player in accommodation supply to stand up and protest actively against the “Market Dictatorship” of a portal that acts as hotel rooms online are of its property.

We keep experiencing this same authoritarian approach by wholesalers, even now after the appearance of the internet. Hoteliers in coastal resorts and especially in the Mediterranean, are under the “boot” of the tour operators. In Cyprus, due to the flight “embargo” imposed for so many years by the State of Cyprus  its through its Flying Department,  Cyprus Airways,  we suffer by what we can call  Tour Operator Stockholm Syndrome.  Big and small Tour Operators have found the perfect ground in Cyprus so as to have the last word on pricing and availabilities.

Choice Hotels is an example of a non homogeneous group of hotels that has put the interest of their owners above all other priorities. Sharing interests today is a virtue, but sharing them and making common actions in Cyprus is impossible.

In a meeting I assisted recently with tourism businessmen in the chamber of Commerce I have noticed that the interests are not shared. The tourism entrepreneurs are divided and do not share the same objectives and goals. Some think about today, some think about tomorrow some others about 2010 and many are simply pessimists that tourism industry has reached its end.

Well here I need to say that if we keep suffering in silence our “Stockholm Syndrome” then for sure we will loose the only recourse we have left on this island.

I am wondering if hoteliers, and especially the independent ones, will soon wake up and with one united voice take strategic actions and recover the lost ground.  I am wondering if we will stand up and ask for real flight freedom, I am wondering if will stand up and ask for accesible towns, I am wondering if will stand up and demand more funds Technology and Internet applications, I am wondering if we will stand up and claim the abolition of "Taxi Dictatorship" and invest in honest public transport.

Change is hard and painful but defiantly is the only way to achieve profitable numbers and quality. We are looking into change as a thread in Cyprus, we always did, now is time to see it as opportunity.