VANCOUVER, British Columbia (May 14, 2009) --Vancouver, Coast & Mountains has welcomed spring with the launch of an inventive Vancouver travel guide for visitors to the Vancouver, Coast and Mountains region. The eco-friendly Virtual Vancouver Travel Guide enables visitors to customize, personalize and create a travel handbook designed specifically for their upcoming Vancouver vacations.

Travel Tripper, a leading provider of hotel distribution, e-marketing and revenue management solutions, based here, will showcase its private-label booking engine RezTrip™ in Stand No. 08 at the Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2009, May 19-20 at the Business Design Centre in London. RezTrip™ is proven to increase ADR, Occupancy, and RevPAR penetration at levels that significantly outpace the market by taking a three-tiered approach to online merchandizing: Attract, Convert, Enable or ACE. In addition, Travel Tripper COO Gautam Lulla will lead an educational session titled: “Driving Revenue Through Your Hotel’s Website in a Down Economy” as part of the event’s Hotel Technology Forum.

14 May 2009 -- Halifax, Nova Scotia -- The Halifax Tall Ships Festival will change the shape of Halifax's skyline from July 16 -- July 20, as Tall Ships from around the world gather in the city's historic harbour. The newest contest from Destination Halifax offers Canadians a chance to take part in the Halifax Tall Ships 2009 celebrations.

Full service hospitality marketing expert, O’Rourke Hospitality, has launched a new online identity for The Green Team, a hospitality solutions company. O’Rourke’s process for developing the e-marketing strategy is a model showcasing the sophisticated blend of hotel industry knowledge and website dynamics that distinguish O’Rourke.

The U.S. Travel Association today praised Senators Byron Dorgan (D-ND) and John Ensign (R-NV) for introducing the “Travel Promotion Act of 2009” – landmark legislation to stimulate U.S. economic growth, create thousands of new American jobs and generate hundreds of millions of dollars in new tax revenue for communities across the country. The legislation is considered especially necessary given that the U.S. dollar is strengthening, the global economy is slowing and America continues to welcome fewer overseas visitors than prior to September 11, 2001.

The Spanish hotel company Sol Meliá announced results today for the first quarter of 2009, a period which statistics indicate as being the worst for the Spanish tourism industry for the last twenty years. The Company’s results reflect the weakness in travel demand – unlikely to recover in the short term according to the European Commission or the IMF – and also contrasts strongly with the first quarter of 2008, a period in which the impact of the crisis on the travel industry was still relatively modest.

This year’s edition takes a closer look at the performance of the key Middle Eastern cities in 2008, analyse the outcome and note the opportunities and threats that lie ahead in the near future. This report has been published by the Dubai office of HVS. By Hala Matar Choufany. HVS Middle East Hotel Survey for 2009 encompasses 140 hotels (a total of 39,500 rooms). Our sample includes branded four-star and five-star hotels but excludes super-luxury hotels, as they could skew the results of this survey. We have chosen to include in our annual survey only those hotels with an operating history of more than three years; this is to avoid the distortion due to the initial years of a hotel operation.

In celebration of Earth Day the Hotel Association of Canada (HAC) congratulates all the Canadian lodging properties that have undertaken efforts to reduce the environmental impact of their operations. These properties are emerging as true industry leaders at a time when the environment remains one of the top concerns on the minds of Canadians.

While the vast majority of senior financial executives foresee continuing cuts in business travel budgets, they still plan to invest in revenue-generating travel for their companies, according to a survey of 285 senior finance executives worldwide released today by American Express and CFO Research Services. The survey reported that 87 percent of the executives said their companies would spend less on business travel this year compared with last year, and 44 percent said their travel budgets would decrease by 10 percent or more. Few said the travel cuts would be across the board, however. About two-thirds of the executives said they would maintain or increase levels of travel for meetings with existing clients, and even more—82 percent—said they would maintain or increase travel for the purpose of winning new clients or business development.

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts continues to manage Four Seasons Resort Aviara, and the Resort is operating as usual. The Company’s commitment to providing an exceptional guest experience remains unchanged. Four Seasons is pleased with events today in the Federal Court in San Diego. The Company sought an order to prevent Broadreach Capital Partners/Maritz, Wolff & Co. from executing its previously announced plan to improperly assume management of the Resort. Broadreach Capital Partners/Maritz, Wolff & Co. today agreed not to take this course of action.

Faced with an unprecedented recession, which caused business to decline more quickly in the first quarter and offers few prospects for an improvement in the second, Accor is focused more than ever on the battle for revenue in the Hotels business and on stepping up its marketing initiatives in Prepaid Services and has decided to take a certain number of additional measures to reduce costs and scale back capital expenditure.

In support of its environmental strategy to address climate change, Marriott International (NYSE: MAR) has announced that its global Headquarters building and more than 30 of its hotels in design, development or under construction are expected to achieve LEED® (Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design) certification from the U.S. Green Building Council(USGBC). Marriott was the first major hotel company in the U.S. with a LEED certified hotel--The Inn and Conference Center by Marriott at the University of Maryland in College Park.

The EMEA hotel investment market experienced a weak first quarter of the year with investment levels reaching only €700m. This represents a decrease of 81% compared to Q1 2008, although notably levels this time last year were still quite strong despite the low full year volumes.

Jones Lang LaSalle Hotels today released its first FocusOn: Outlook for RevPAR Turnaround, a five-year forecast indicating revenue per available room (RevPAR) will reach $68.28 in 2013, exceeding the previous peak achieved in 2007. The firm expects U.S. RevPAR to decline 12.1 percent this year, comprised of a 7.4 percent decline in average daily rate (ADR) and a 5.1 percent drop in occupancy. RevPAR is expected to bottom out in 2010, a positive indicator of upward momentum on the horizon.

In line with measures to simplify Accor's Corporate Governance, and as part of his new responsibilities as Chairman and Chief Executive Officer, Gilles Pélisson has streamlined his chain of command with the aim of accelerating the decision-making process in a time of recession, improving the responsiveness of teams across the organization and maintaining the Group on course.

First-quarter performance by multibrand hotel companies underscored the deep difficulties the industry is facing, particularly in upper-tier hotels, as analysts continue to move 2009 expectations downward. In the first three months of this year, the U.S. lodging industry saw revenue per available room drop 17.7 percent compared with the same period in 2008, according to Smith Travel Research, which also showed occupancy down 10.9 percent and average daily rate fell 7.7 percent. "With the first quarter of 2009 now behind us, it is clear that declining room rates are taking a harder toll on performance than we were expecting," Smith Travel Research president Mark Lomanno said in a statement. "It appears that many hoteliers are embracing the very same pricing and room distribution strategies implemented in the 2001/2002 downturn."

Global hoteliers are pinning their hopes on the east's underserved leisure markets to offset falling revenue as holidaymakers and business travelers cut back to save money in the global downturn. But growth from emerging markets will take time and the new locations still only make up a small proportion of hoteliers' overall businesses, analysts said. "Worldwide, our major locations right now where most of the growth is, are China, India and the Middle East," Ed Fuller, president and managing director of Marriott Lodging International told Reuters last week at a travel industry event in Dubai.

The total active U.S. hotel development pipeline includes 5,033 projects with 533,568 rooms, according to the April 2009 STR/TWR/Dodge Construction Pipeline Report released this week. This represents a 19.7-percent decrease in the number of rooms in the total active pipeline compared to April 2008. The total active pipeline data includes projects in the In-Construction, Final Planning and Planning stages, but does not include projects in the Pre-Planning stage.

Membership in travel and hospitality industry loyalty reward programs has climbed to 556 million, according to the 2009 COLLOQUY Loyalty Census, a study that measured the scope of U.S. loyalty marketing in 2007 and 2008. The breakdown on 2009 Loyalty Census numbers for the travel and hospitality sector is as follows: Airline frequent flyer programs 277.4 million, up 9% (since 2007 Census); Hotel reward programs 161.9 million, up 26% (adjusted to account for 2007 Census revisions); and Gaming reward programs 106.0 million, up 37%.

Two influential companies dedicated to improving the hospitality industry have kicked off the American Hotel & Lodging Educational Foundation’s (AH&LEF) 2009, Annual Giving Campaign (AGC). Despite economic challenges facing corporations today, both Best Western International and USA Today remain committed to cultivating the professional development of the industry’s future workforce. Best Western International was the first five-diamond donor with a gift of $2,500 and USA Today donated $3,000 increasing its support for the third consecutive year.