Fritz Demopoulos, Former CEO, Qunar

China

1.  We’ll see a continued shift to online sales vs offline sales, direct-to-consumer vs third-party agency sales, leisure travel vs business, & international vs domestic.

2.  We’ll see the rise of the barbell market, ie a massive increase in high-end/luxury/international travelers while at the same time a massive increase in first-time/price sensitive/domestic travelers.

3.  If there is a macro-economic slowdown, it’s uncertain how big of an impact the slowdown, or hard landing, will have on leisure travel. Worst case, we’ll see a steep drop in demand. Best case, consumer spending will prove to be robust as saving rates are relatively high and consumer debt is relatively low.

Asia Pacific

1.  We’ll see a number of Ctrip clones, ie offline/online hybrids, emerge in various markets, including Indonesia, Vietnam, and Pakistan.

2.  We’ll continue to see the multi-market/supplier friendly approach by Booking.com and Agoda do well in the region.

3.  Singapore, along with Beijing, will emerge to become another Asian Silicon Valley.

Morris Sim, CEO & Co-founder, Circos Brand Karma


1.  Mergers, acquisitions, and IPOs for major social media players 

This prediction isn’t so much surprise as to the extent to which I think this will happen in 2012. Social media has matured to becoming a powerful communication form for people and an engaging platform for brands – which means there’s a lot of money and the goal for any player is to get more information on more people doing more things. Global economic woes may actually facilitate more M&A activities – and services that are B2B are as attractive as B2C.  So watch for lots of activities in this area, and for services to integrate and improve for customers and brands alike.

2.  Videos and games are the “it” engagement

Having just a fan page is now just a hygiene factor. Using good old text and photos won’t be enough, particularly for brands that have been engaging with fans for a while. To keep their attention, videos and games are the next interactive frontier, and contest and promotions will get bigger and more creative to maintain the attention of fans. A golden age of mini-brand interactivity will begin in 2012, and it will initially benefit players with existing infrastructure like Facebook, but look for others to catch up, as well as to integrate SNS with microsites – yes, they’ll be back again.

Brett Henry, Vice President Marketing and Vice President India, Abacus International

1.  2012 is the year of Indonesian Online Travel

One to two organization will be the clear online leaders in the Indonesian market – and going forward they will be difficult to catch. My money is on the local teams.

2.  2012 will also be the year of regional acquisitions

Large regionals (Ctrip, MakeMyTrip, Yatra) will continue to make acquisitions to both expand to new markets as well as better service their customers on the ground at key destinations.  These players have reached serious scale – sending hundreds of thousands of customers per year to single destinations. Targeting acquisitions in these markets provides benefits for these organizations across multiple dimensions.

Patrick Andres, Vice President-Asia Pacific, Sabre Hospitality Solutions

1.  Mobile will emerge from the direct-to-property (online web) “bucket” to truly become its own distribution channel. Sales and Marketing, eCommerce and Revenue Management professionals will discover that mobile users have their own characteristics and tastes, they search for different products, they have very different shopping and booking behaviors. In 2012 hoteliers will start to manage their mobile channel in a very different way than they do with their web-direct channel.

2.  There will be some consolidation in the OTA space in Asia-Pacific. Today we still have a very focused regional presence, where we see different local OTA dominate in one market/country. I would not be surprised to see some regional players acquire, merge or partner cross regionally. That will lead to the emergence of one or more likely a few truly cross-regional Asia-Pacific OTA. At the same time hoteliers will continue to invest in their direct-to-property strategy to try to better balance their direct versus indirect on-line volumes.