60 Seconds With… Bas Lemmens, HotelPlanner & Meetings.com

03/29/2022

We caught up with Bas Lemmens, HotelPlanner President of EMEA & CEO of Meetings.com ahead of his appearance as a speaker at Digital Travel Connect 2022. Read on to discover his top challenges and priorities in the coming year.


What do you feel are the key challenges your company faces in 2022?

Our biggest challenge right now is keeping up with the increased demand for hotel stays. Now that we’ve turned the corner on the pandemic, there is unprecedented demand for travel and hotel stays, both in Europe and in North America.

The other key challenge for all Online Travel Agencies is the increasingly competitive landscape given the number of recent new entrants in our space. The related challenge for HotelPlanner is to continue to differentiate ourselves with the high-tech automation and high-touch personalization we’ve been known for since 2004.


How do you think the pandemic has changed customers' expectations?

Customers now want a more bespoke, personalized and customized experience. They are tired of chatbots and pre-recorded customer service. They want to speak with a real live person who can answer their specific questions in real-time without a long wait. Customers also want a seamless hotel booking experience. They also want a turnkey guest experience during their hotel stay, and with additional office amenities in their hotel room to conduct business.


What are your top 3 areas of focus in 2022 and why?

We’re focused on growing our global gig-based travel agent concierge platform to serve a growing influx of incoming customer calls. We hope to offer this AI and voice over IP-enabled customer service platform to other OTAs as well. We’re also focused on growing our number of affiliate partners and preferred members.


What are you most looking forward to at Digital Travel Connect?

I’m looking forward to learning from all the other diverse speakers and learning about what others are doing in our space and seeing if there are partnership opportunities with other hospitality and travel tech influencers.


You can hear directly from Bas in his sessions at Digital Travel Connect:


KEYNOTE PANEL: Decreasing Third-Party Dependence: How Can You Drive Direct Online Sales to Reduce Your Reliance on OTA Sales and Paid Acquisition To Boost Your Margins?

Panellists:

  • Bas Lemmens, President, Hotelplanner.com
  • Steffen Klotz, Global Head of Digital Commerce, Lufthansa
  • Stephanie Jaffre, Senior Vice President eCommerce Northern Europe, Accor
  • Amanda Du, Head of eCommerce, Penta Hotels


OXFORD STYLE DEBATE: The Pandemic Has Permanently Shifted Travellers’ Buying Patterns and Demands

Against: Bas Lemmens, President, HotelPlanner.com


To find out more view the full agenda here

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