Introduction 
      
Primary school learning is typically centred in the three �R�s� � reading, �riting and �rithmetic. By comparison, hotel executives today need to learn to think about the 3 �C�s� �customers, content and channels � if they are to make the right decisions in planning and executing tomorrow�s electronic distribution. 
      
This article attempts to summarize and put in context some of the issues. 
      
HEDNA 

Early May in London saw more than 300 people from around the world congregate for several days as delegates at, and visitors to, the annual meeting of HEDNA, the Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association. The plenary sessions brought into the open many of the issues facing the industry, and in particular the quest for excellence in managing distribution channels in this changing world. 

HEDNA was in London celebrating a decade of accomplishment. Founded in 1991, the association started off with an issues list to better use the Global Distribution Systems (GDS) for the sale of hotel inventory. At the time of the first survey of GDS delivery, in 1994, it was thought that 25million bookings per annum were made for hotels; by the end of 2001, electronic reservations had almost doubled to 47million and the new distribution channels using the Internet as a tool are growing at rates in excess of 60 percent. As HEDNA enters its second decade, its membership now from over 200 of the most influential companies in the hotel distribution industry, the playing field has changed � the Internet may be eroding brands, HITIS and OTA standards are in place and will become increasing important, the GDSs are metamorphosing into new business models, etc. It is trite, but accurate, to state that the only constant is change. 

The membership of HEDNA has been at the very centre of the enormous changes that have taken place in the last decade and no doubt will be instrumental in enabling tomorrows future successful businesses sell to tomorrows customers.

The customer the King; content is King 

The new distribution channels have changed, and are changing, the relationship with the customer. In the past, hotels described themselves with difficulty, in brochures, in pictures and through intermediaries. But the very essence of the experience was difficult to explain in words � in many cases, it is much more than just bed, breakfast and bathrooms but how to explain the sense of wonder from an atrium design, the sense of pleasure obtained when a staff-member goes out of their way to provide personal service, the sense of relaxation obtained from an hour at the pool under the setting sun, etc., etc. The challenge for hotel�s in-house sales and marketing teams, and particularly intermediaries, has been to move from marketing and selling the physical to selling the experience.

Current technological tools are able to transform this situation, enabling hotels to communicate in a content-rich way with target and actual customers bi-directionally. The opportunity now exists for hotel companies to radically change their approach to marketing; best practice companies really are designing their position in the marketplace.  However, many hotels are still only using these new distribution channels to promote one aspect of their offering � price. There is considerable opportunity to move beyond merely price promotion to product, experience and price promotion. 

The customer today is not the same as the customer yesterday � today�s customer is much better informed, much more knowledgeable about the hotel industry�s product and enabled to shop in a very different manner. Web-savvy customers are increasingly accustomed to designing personalized products and services. As time moves on, it seems likely that these trends will be core to customer behaviour such that we may see increasing levels of price sensitivity but also increasing expectations of being able to demand personalized packaging of travel products and services. Woe then to a hotel company in the future that cannot, or does not, enable its target customers to design their leisure and business hotel experiences on the web, and then arrive at the property to have the experience delivered faultlessly. 
      
So is loyalty to the hotel, the channel or the brand? Loyalty programmes are a reason for customers to come to your web site in the first place, and the type of price guarantees recently introduced by Six Continents and Starwood are tools to keep the e-customer loyal to your Website, your brand. Customers are increasingly expecting the same price for the same product irrespective of channel. The only exception is the �Web Fare� where the supplier shares some of the distribution cost saving with the customer in a very transparent way. But nowadays, this really is the only application for the concept of �never knowingly undersold� price guarantees. 
      
And just as customers are increasingly accustomed to having a single price available irrespective of channel, so too customers will come to expect a single product, service and experience description, irrespective of channel. 
      
Channel-shift 
      
Will the emerging distribution channels simply lead to channel-shift or enable access to new sources of demand? There is no doubt that the new channels are stimulating channel-shift � as hotels increasingly manage the distribution of inventory to lower cost channels. But the new channels also make more inventory available to more people and this must lead to new demand being created. New demand is likely to be attracted first to the lower priced inventory; in much the same way as low-cost airlines and car hire companies have emerged to target new markets. 
      
One of the more expensive channels is voice � when a customer calls a hotel or a call centre, or indeed arrives at a hotel unannounced. Channel management techniques will increasingly move voice �shoppers� to the CRO or Internet, voice business guests will increasingly be managed by corporate procurement agreements, and the individual leisure traveller will therefore remain as the high yielding segment for which the voice channel will be reserved. But for this to happen, the voice customer needs to have the same level of trust in other channels as he today gets from his voice contact. 
      
But is the Internet not better described as an enabler rather than a channel in its own right? The Internet will act to discipline all other channels because of it�s low-cost nature and huge reach, as well as the fact that a growing number of business and leisure customers are happy to use the channels that are enabled by the Internet. As TravelCLICK famously pointed out, December 2001 saw the end of the growth in Travel Agent reservations for hotels, reversing a trend that had gone on for years. And as TravelCLICK also identified, September 11 caused a reduction in the growth of Internet reservations but the residual growth was still impressive. We are in uncharged territory but there is no going back. 
      
What will the next wave of technology enable?
      
There are several key elements which, when put together, will change the way that customers relate to hotels. The first is XML, the second is Direct Connect and the third is Web Services. Added together during the next three to five years, these technologies will enable a customer to access rich and deep content for a multitude of travel suppliers easily � constructing complex travel packages that once were the domain of the intermediary. Indeed, the long-forecast demise of the intermediary is likely to be some way off, as the more aware intermediaries will adopt the role of custodians of rich digital content. 
      
Conclusion 
      
We see a move towards truly integrated systems, with technology vendors and their customers increasingly cooperating to create a content-rich network that will in the near future become the distribution channel of choice, for the industry and for the customer. The  successful companies of the future will be those, whether today�s GDSs, today�s major hotel brand owners and franchisers or even some businesses as yet un-invented, that best harness today�s and emerging technologies, to connect target and actual customers with hotels and other travel providers, using current and new channels, making full use of the new types of content to sell the experience that is on offeringle and successful whole.