Dannis Schaal wrote a PR piece for Room Keys that got published this week on many news sites including USA Today, and is designed to help the new hotel consortium to carve its niche among traveling consumers, and successfully compete with online travel agents.
Here are some of the wordings that also make for successful storytelling on hotel websites and their promotion efforts:
- If you like the comfort of booking your stay on a hotel-owned website and dealing directly with the property when something goes awry, then a new collaborative venture, RoomKey.com, should be on your radar.
- Room Key is designed to give the benefits of booking your room directly with the hotel and enough choice from these hotel chains and their partners that you won't be tempted to plunk your money down on an online travel agency site instead.
- Room Key, which has an attractive and uncluttered look.
- You'll get the benefit of earning rewards points, avoid the unpredictability of diverse booking fees from online travel agencies, and make special requests for things such as early check-in or connecting rooms.
- After the reservation, you also can pick up a phone and call the property with any changes or wish-list items. After all. it is the he hospitality industry, says John Davis, Room Key's CEO.
- If you don't want to deal with the uncertainty inherent in using sites such as Hotwire or Priceline, in which you don't know the hotel identity upfront, or want to avoid online travel agency sites and last-minute mobile apps such as HotelTonight, then Room Key is worth a look.
Get the full story at USA Today
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/storytelling_that_drives_direct_hotel_bookings
Yahoo! released TimeTraveler for iPhone and iPod Touch today.
Using TimeTraveler is easy: input your destination, your starting point, and the time you have available. TimeTraveler will do the rest, finding points of interest, tourist destinations, and historic monuments. It will then map them into an itinerary tailored to your available time and desired route, which can be shared with friends via email, Facebook, or Twitter. Yahoo calls it “timed travel” … hence the app’s name.
Part of the technology behind TimeTraveler is, interestingly, Flickr. Apparently, photos uploaded to Flickr with date, time, and geographical metadata are used in the calculation of what destinations you can expect to visit within a set period of time. As Shouvick Mukherjee, a vice-president for Yahoo India told The Business Standard, Time Traveler “computes through Flickr images which people have uploaded in the past and tells him the destinations he would visit, say in an hour.”
Another clever feature is the ability to save your trips in the cloud. Once you publish your trips to Yahoo, they are accessible online as a permanent record of your adventure.
Get the full story at Venture Beat
Related Link: Yahoo! TimeTraveler
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/yahoo_timetraveler_a_travel_app_based_on_flickr_images
TripAdvisor, the world's largest travel site*, today announced that City Guides, the highly rated and free mobile app, is now available for 50 leading destinations around the world, more than doubling its original portfolio of travel guides. Conveniently accessible even when the user is offline, the app now includes three new features on its Android version, giving travelers the ability to view local transit stations, create personalized maps, and see itinerary suggestions from travel experts, in addition to reviews and opinions from the greater TripAdvisor community.
"Users have already raved about the ease of use and helpfulness of TripAdvisor City Guides, with more than a million app downloads to date," said Adam Medros, vice president of global product at TripAdvisor. "We are excited to bring more cities and enhanced functionality to travelers, and ultimately help them enjoy their trips even more."
New App Features for Android Users
1. Transit – Users can now view metro or subway stations on a map. The "Nearby Station" feature helps travelers find the closest station to their current location, or to the restaurant, hotel, or attraction that they want to visit.
2. TripIdeas – TripIdeas are customized itinerary recommendations based on popular travel themes, such as traveling with family, foodie destinations, and places off the beaten path. Each itinerary includes beautiful large photos for inspiration. Users can keep track of their favorite TripIdeas in their "Saves" list.
3. Offline Map Update – Users can now fully customize their own maps. This feature displays saved destinations, metro stations, and any restaurants, hotels, and attractions of interest, to help travelers plan and have their perfect trip.
The app includes now guides for New York City, Las Vegas, Boston, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Hawaii, Orlando, Washington DC, Chicago, London, Paris, Berlin, Amsterdam, Barcelona, Rome, Tokyo, Beijing, Hong Kong, Sydney, Florence, Buenos Aires, Istanbul, Madrid, New Orleans, Prague, Milan, Seattle, Taipei, Toronto, Kuala Lumpur, Singapore, Bangkok, Vancouver, Rio de Janeiro, Seoul, Dublin, Dubai, San Diego, Philadelphia, Shanghai, Edinburgh, Austin, Montreal, Manchester, Miami and Miami Beach, Marrakech, San Antonio, Athens, Budapest, Vienna.
Related Link: TripAdvisor Apps
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/tripadvisor_city_guide_launches_30_new_destinations
HSMAI recently spoke with Cindy Estis Green, co-author of the HSMAI Foundation-published Distribution Channel Analysis: A Guide for Hotels, about optimizing revenue, emerging channels, and more.
Q. How well are hotels optimizing their use of distribution channels today?
A. Hotels have spent so much time optimizing the overall revenue stream that it is a new way of thinking to optimize sub-sets of that overall business volume by channel. This will require some attention on the channel mix patterns and trying different methods to test which ones yield the best results in different market conditions.
Q. How big a factor are intermediary costs in finding your optimal distribution channel mix?
A. Finding optimal channel mix requires several factors, amongst them: (1) knowledge of the demand patterns into a market for each channel and segment, (2) an understanding of the consumer perception of your hotel product and service and how it is viewed versus its competitors, (3) a realistic assessment of how well each channel performs and is evaluated by consumers compared to the same for your competitors (e.g. website, call center, GDS) and (4) an understanding of the costs of varying channel mix combinations to calculate how much contribution there is toward operating expenses and profit. Once a hotel puts a stake in the ground regarding its channel objectives, they can carefully track costs to be sure they are moving toward an optimal mix.
Q. What part are new channels such as Room Key and Flash Sale sites playing in distribution decsion making?
A. Search, social and mobile channels are the biggest growth areas for distribution strategy. Emerging channels such as meta-search (travel-specific search engines) like Room Key and Google Hotel Finder, travel inspiration sites--many built on the foundation of a social platform--and all the new mobile apps and websites will substantially alter the decisions made by hotel management. They are largely referral engines (as opposed to the online travel agency model where bookings are transacted on the third party site) that will mainly send business to a booking engine for a hotel-direct booking. However, they will offer media and promotional opportunities that will have widely varying costs associated with them. The costs will need to be tracked and factored into the overall channel mix for a hotel in order to determine if the channel is worth developing over time.
Q. What has been your biggest surprise when presenting the findings of Distribution Channel Analysis: A Guide For Hotels to industry audiences?
A. I have been most surprised at the readiness of hoteliers to adopt a performance evaluation approach at a channel level. The interest level in exploring different models to calculate costs per channel from economy through to luxury level hotels was surprising to me; this seemed like a financial analysis that I expected would be harder to embrace by marketers and revenue management personnel, but there is a growing appetite to work on delving into this way of thinking and using it to guide day-to-day decisions.
Q. What can attendees at HSMAI Revenue Optimization Conference expect to take away from the session you are moderating on Optimizing Your Distribution?
A. We have a terrific panel representing many facets of distribution: an OTA, a meta-search, and a hotel company with many brands. Having a dialogue about emerging channels combined with existing ones, and how they can be optimized will raise many of the issues that many would want to discuss who work at the intersection of revenue management, marketing and distribution. This panel will cover the costs and benefits of channels, attribution models and how they can be used to drive online marketing decisions, what type of channels will be emerging, and how they may affect the channels that are already established. We have many savvy members of the hotel community in the audience as well who will have a lot to say about these topics and will be participating as actively as the panelists in asking and answering the questions that arise in this dynamic environment. This should make it a lively discussion!
Cindy Estis Green, CEO of Kalibri Labs, and Dr. Lalia Rach of New York University will be leading a panel discussion on this topic at HSMAI's Revenue Optimizing Conference (ROC), June 25 in Baltimore. Visit http://www.hsmairoc.org for more.
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/optimizing_your_hotels_distribution_strategy_by_channel
The report reveals that issue resolution and current room amenities are most sought by customers. PwC's Experience Radar study is designed to uncover experience "recipes" that drive the choices of today's traveler and profits for tomorrow's hotel operators. The research points to important issues on the minds of hoteliers today including: attracting and retaining guests, investing in capital improvements, and reaping benefits from "brand ambassadors."
"Running a profitable business isn't just about keeping costs down, it's about winning and serving your customers," said Scott D. Berman, principal and US industry leader, hospitality & leisure, PwC. "In a setting in which the lodging sector is trying to stay ahead, the ability to understand features on which guests place the highest value is critical. While guests say they want style and decor, flexible cancellation policies and rewards for frequent stays, when you look at what they are willing to pay for, issue resolution shows through for its importance to both leisure and business travelers, and room amenities stand apart relative to overall hotel amenities, particularly for leisure guests."
PwC's Experience Radar differs from traditional methods of consumer research. Unlike market segmentation based purely on demographics, Experience Segments – the market segment groups identified by Experience Radar – are defined by the types of experiences customers desire. Rather than ask customers which characteristics they seek in a hotel, Experience Radar measures the features consumers value as they select a hotel.
"PwC's values-based approach to getting inside the minds of the consumer – coupled with a quantitative DNA that lets us examine experiences with an economic filter – can be the difference between simply listening to guests and truly getting to know them," said Paul D'Alessandro, global customer impact practice leader for PwC.
PwC points to the following Experience Enhancers for hoteliers to build and grow their business by designing and delivering exceptional customer service:
When a negative experience happens, fix it before check-out
- Leisure guests are willing to pay a 20 percent premium for best in class issue resolution, while business travelers are willing to pay a 11 percent premium
- Of guests who shared their complaints with the hotel, seven out of 10 were not satisfied with the result
- Eight out of 10 leisure guests are influenced by well handled issue resolution when rebooking
Experience creates a channel through brand ambassadors
- Three out of five leisure guests are highly likely to rebook after a good experience
- 95 percent of guests discuss noteworthy good and bad hotel experiences
Meet business guests' needs, drive loyalty
- Business guests rank personal experience as their top purchase driver
- A satisfied guest is loyal and will spread the word
Issue resolution and room amenities are "aces" for leisure travelers
- Over half of memorable leisure stay moments are experienced due to customized support, largely driven by attentive staff
- Leisure travelers not only say they want current room amenities, it's a feature they're willing to pay for
"At this stage in the lodging recovery, the focus has turned to pricing," added Berman. "Winning with customers means understanding their needs and putting them first."
PwC's Experience Radar measures the experiences of approximately 6,000 US consumers across 11 industries and assigns value to a broad set of customer experience attributes broken down into industry-specific elements and then ranked by what is most important to target segments.
Download the full report at PwC
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/focus_in_lodging_recovery_has_turned_to_pricing
Voucher codes are an easy way to offer discounts in online stores – most e-commerce checkout software should have built-in support for special offers, so you just need to create the code in your store’s admin panel, and specify how much of a discount it should give.
Mailing lists give you the chance to keep non-converting customers so that you can have a second chance at getting some money out of them in the future. They also work as an effective extension of your website, allowing you to reach out to people without them having to find you in their search results again.
Not many people like ‘like-gating’. It’s the dubious practice of forcing Facebook users to ‘like’ your page before they can access your online voucher, other special offer, or a special video or similar content. Sure, it increases your number of ‘likes’ and looks good to other users, but none of them really like your brand; they just want something for free.
Get the full story at Search Engine Journal
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/how_to_use_discounts_in_online_marketing
Dave Burling, Tui Travel UK managing director, said mobile growth has come mainly from people using the devices to browse. “People are booking on phones, but where the real growth is on mobile devices is people browsing content, so all operators need to improve the quality of their content on mobile devices.” However, Burling said iPads were seeing very quick growth in actual bookings, indicating travel firms should treat the two as separate channels.
Holiday Group chief executive Steve Endacott also described social media as “massively over-hyped” in a similar way to how the internet was generally a decade ago. But he added: “Reviews are massively important – people commenting on your product with a much wider audience than they have ever been able to. “That’s the main area where social media is really having an impact on travel short-term.”
Get the full story at Travolution
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/social_and_mobile_impact_on_travel_sales_overhyped
Part of mobile’s appeal to travel consumers is its ability to draw on location-based information, aiding customers on the move who are looking for car rentals, hotels and other services on short notice. A Q1 2012 report by mobile-local ad network xAd found that almost half of all local travel searches completed on a mobile device in the US were related to transportation. Travel agencies accounted for another 25% of searches, tours and attractions constituted 14% of searches and 12% of searches related to lodging and resorts.
xAd also examined mobile-local search data in the three subcategories of hotels and lodging, car rentals and airlines, finding relatively high clickthrough rates for all. The CTR for ads shown after an airline search was an impressive 17.8%, followed by 17% for car rental searches and nearly 10% for hotel and lodging searches.
According to the report, the leading secondary action - the user’s next action after an initial click—for both car rental and airline searches was the placement of a phone call to a business, at 73% and 89%, respectively. For hotel searches, more than three-quarters of secondary actions consisted of looking at maps and getting directions.
Get the full story at eMarketer
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/mobile_travel_searches_most_often_related_to_transportation
Think Insights houses case studies and thoughts from leaders to help you develop your travel digital strategy. And now the site has expanded to cover 21 different countries, across Europe, the Middle East and Africa. You can now search our expanded library by country and by sector, making the latest travel research even easier to find.
Plus, there are new tools and videos for you to explore, including: two videos on the consumer journey looking at ROPO and attribution.
Get the full story at Google Think Insides
Google Spain maintains its own Thinktravel with Google site (in spanish)
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/google_updates_travel_research_library
Cover Photo: As we mentioned previously, 100% of people view your cover photo. It is taking up the prime real-estate on your page, make the most of it and remember that the cover photo is the first impression people will have of your brand. Utilize the cover photo to give fans a glimpse of the culture and essence of your brand.
Profile Picture: Since the profile picture is nestled inside the cover photo, visitors to your page will also view this before any other content on your page. Leave the bold and detailed images for the cover photo and stick to your company logo in this space. Since the profile picture accompanies posts from your brand account, the logo will visually remind people who you are.
Highlighting/Pinning Posts: The ability to highlight and pin posts to the top is an invaluable tool for marketers. With highlighting, the highlighted post spans the width of both columns – this would be a great space to point out a specific post you want visitors to interact with, think photos or videos. Maybe you just put in an amazing new pool, or you offer a new excursion.
Get the full story at the Micros eCommerce Blog
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/8_ideas_for_improving_your_hotels_facebook_timeline_presence
A new survey of more than 800 business executives indicates many are increasing mobile marketing budgets this year but face challenges, including a lack of resources to expand mobile efforts. The study by email services provider StrongMail showed 45% of companies have adopted mobile marketing, with more than half (57%) of those doing so for less than a year.
More than 70% of managers expect their mobile budgets to increase in the next 12 months, while 55% have already done so in the last year. More than half believe a mobile program could help increase sales and gain new customers, as well as boost brand awareness.
Mobile Web sites (70%), mobile applications (55%) and QR codes (49%) rated as the most popular types of mobile marketing, but less than half of marketers are currently employing any of them. Three quarters of businesses not using mobile marketing programs plan to within a year or more.
Get the full story at MediaPost
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/mobile_marketing_small_but_growing
Rirst we have to move away from thinking of Facebook as yet another channel to blast an ad out to a ton of people “at scale.” Brand advertisers that are used to asking for reach and frequency metrics continued to ask for “number of impressions.” Facebook was happy to oblige, and take their money by displaying several hundred billion ad impressions per month.
Next, brands talk about finding influencers and then having them talk about the brand and advocate it to their friends and followers. That’s all nice in theory, but why would anyone talk about you -- e.g. a toothpaste brand -- all day long? They won’t. However, if you enable your users to help you amplify something that they already believe in or are passionate about -- think, cause related marketing -- they may indeed want to talk about it with their friends.
When the message comes from a friend, and not the advertiser, users tend to trust it more and are open to reading it. That’s why Facebook, Twitter and the like are trying to insert themselves into our timeline and feeds via “sponsored stories” and “sponsored tweets.” But unfortunately these brand advertisers are not our friends, and users are usually ticked off.
Get the full story at MediaPost
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/advanced_social_media_amateurs_and_agencies_need_not_apply
For hotels this means the billboard effect is more important today than ever before. It means you must work with OTAs to increase your distribution. It means you should search out all the different travel search sites like Kayak, Hotelscombined etc and work out how to be present on their platform with a link to your site and if possible your rates and inventory (direct to your site).
This also means that your SEO efforts should target very relevant keywords, less is more. Be precise if you are in SOHO don’t just target Hotels in SOHO but even more precise than that. Combine your SEO with your USP and focus on that skip all the useless keywords that are anyways not on the rise.
Separate the buying process out like this: Leave the broad search and early steps of the buying cycle to OTAs, TripAdvisor, Travel Writers. They give the best user experience but make sure you’re represented on these sites.
Take the typology search such as “boutique hotel in [city]” and leave those searches to special interest sites and travel writers. Again ensure your hotel is represented on these sites.
And when the search is more focused ensure your site is capturing all the visitors that are now ready to purchase.
Get the full story at the wihp blog
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_change_in_hotel_search
Good, but not great, growth has Wall Street punishing car sharing market leader Zipcar, which IPO’ed at $18 last year, zoomed to $28 and now sits at around ten bucks. But the question on many people’s minds is: What is Hertz doing?
The argument for Hertz successfully competing with Zipcar goes like this: Hertz doesn’t require an annual membership fee (Zipcar charges $60), has no late fees (Zipcar charges $50 per hour), it allows one way rentals in some locations, and yeah, it already has a massive fleet of diverse cars.
On paper, Hertz getting into the car sharing game doesn’t sound good for Zipcar, even if you believe there is room for multiple players and that this is a market with considerable future growth. There aren’t good market projections for this nascent industry, though a recent analysis from RAND Corporation took a stab at it, suggesting that with improving tech to locate and rent vehicles combined with favorable government policy, the industry could include 7.5 million users, more than ten times where it currently sits.
Get the full story at GigaOM
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/can_hertz_shake_up_car_sharing
Those predictions are consistent with a report released this month by Smith Travel Research (STR) that said U.S. hotel-room revenue will reach summer record highs this year.
Revenue per available room for June, July and August will rise 5.7% from a year earlier to $73.59, beating out the previous summer record of $73.26 in 2007, according to STR.
But PhoCusWright’s Mullaney said such a boom might be short-lived, noting that the travel industry is in for “one to one-and-a-half more good quarters.” After that, he expects consumers and businesses to pull back on travel spending, owing to uncertainty over both the upcoming presidential election and what Congress will do to address national debt issues.
Get the full story at Travel Weekly
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/travel_forecasts_predict_summer_gains_fall_uncertainty
Vacation travelers around the globe this summer are focused on relaxation and time with the family although amenity preferences and priorities differ, according to a new survey released byWyndham Hotel Group. Thestudy surveyed just over 5,600 adults in key cities throughout the U.S., Canada, China, Brazil and the U.K.
After price and location, hotel quality is the most important factor for U.S. travelers when selecting a hotel, followed by good reviews and extras like complimentary Wi-Fi and free breakfast. Of least importance is the age of the hotel. By comparison, Chinese travelers cite hotel quality as the most important factor.
Most U.S. travelers (73 percent) and Brazilian travelers (70 percent) expect to take vacations lasting between three and seven days. By comparison, U.K. travelers will take the longest vacations, with 25 percent taking trips lasting two weeks or longer. Chinese travelers will take the shortest vacations, with most (75 percent) taking trips that last five days or less.
Get the full story at Travel Pulse
Read also "Americans warming up to summer travel in 2012" and "How to capture early bird summer travel bookers"
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/room_price_takes_top_spot_among_u.s._traveler_considerations
Agile marketing applies many of the same principles as agile product development. Its philosophy is that conventional "big organization" approaches to projects are too slow, expensive, and have a lower chance of success. They rely on "leaps of faith" and breakthroughs that are rare and overlook how the pace of change has made it increasingly difficult to predict the future.
Agile replaces "big leaps" with continuous mini steps -- ongoing "test-learn-commit" loops. It replaces traditional sequential design and development processes -- what's known as "waterfall" in software development -- with multiple "sprints" that produce vertical slices of a project. These allow for continual adjustments, evaluation, and, where necessary, complete new iterations of the product slice.
Get the full story at iMedia Connection
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/turn_off_the_old_way_and_adopt_agile_marketing
Most Facebook ads are bought on a cost-per-click basis. This means the front-end cost of getting a potential consumer to respond is low, typically less than $2 per click. Each click on a Facebook ad puts a consumer on your product web site. If you then can get only 1 percent of those consumers who click on ads to “convert” and buy your product, you’ve achieved a $200 cost per sale. In essence, marketers try to buy customers at the lowest cost per sale possible. Paying $200 per new customer isn’t bad for many business models.
The challenge with Facebook, though, is that conversion rates can be very low in some product categories. Social media users are being social, after all. Unlike the pay-per-click ads that Google (GOOG) serves up only after consumers type in the names of products they are hunting, Facebook ads pop up while you’re bragging about your five-mile run. Curious tire-kickers might click on a GM Facebook ad to see the sexy Chevy Volt, but that doesn’t mean they want to buy one. If your conversion rate—the portion of people who eventually buy after clicking on your Facebook ad—falls from 1 percent to 0.1 percent, you’re now talking a $2,000 per-sale cost. That’s an expensive customer acquisition.
The second challenge with Facebook is that brands struggle to reap real value from its social interactions, which often start with paid advertising. Facebook is famous for its “likes,” which supposedly open the door to a wonderful engagement between brands and consumers. If a consumer sees your Facebook ad, she might “like” your brand, allowing its content to pop up again later in her Facebook stream. The idea is that you move from being an old-fashioned, interruptive advertiser to become a real “friend” of the consumer, sharing brand stories in the middle of her Facebook page, right next to her college roommate’s cat photos.
Get the full story at Bloomberg Businessweek
Read also "Why Google ads work and Facebook ads don’t"
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/more_on_why_marketers_fail_with_facebook_ads
The Global Business Travel Association ("GBTA"), the world"s premier business travel and corporate meetings organization, announces the results of its inaugural GBTA BTI™ Outlook – China, sponsored by Visa Inc. The GBTA BTI™ Outlook – China includes the GBTA Business Travel Index™ (GBTA BTI™). The GBTA BTI™ provides a way to distill market performance and the outlook for business travel into a single metric that can be tracked over time.
Highlights
- Business travel spending in China is forecast to increase by 17 percent in 2012 and 21 percent in 2013, to US$202 billion and US$245 billion respectively
- Growth in international outbound travel spending is expected to be particularly strong, rising by 27 percent in 2013
- The Chinese investment in infrastructure is vital as they must have the infrastructure in place to keep up with the explosion in demand. As such, in the past 10 years, the 4 largest airports have doubled in size and there are plans in place for over 100 new hotels in the next decade:
- Over the past ten years, China"s four largest airports (Beijing / Shanghai-Pudong / Shanghai-Hongqiao and Guangzhou) have doubled in size.
Plans are in place for approximately 100 new airports in the next ten years.
- Key contributors to China"s surge in business travel expansion is in step with increasing manufacturing output, trade growth, job gains, business formations and infrastructure investment.
- Business travel has evolved into a key contributor and benefactor of the Chinese economic growth showing strong correlations with economic indicators like GDP growth, retail sales, job growth, exports, profits and sales.
- China is currently ranked second in the business travel market according to the GBTA findings, but is forecast to surpass the US by as early as 2015
Real GDP in China is forecast to increase by 8.2 percent and 8.9 percent in 2012 and 2013 respectively
- The GBTA BTI™ will reach 340 by the end of 2012 and 475 by the end of 2013. This represents an increase of almost 41% in just two years" time.
Michael W. McCormick, Executive Director and COO of GBTA, commented:
"With China on a robust upward trajectory in business travel spending, they are quickly becoming a world leader in the business travel market. For this reason, we believe it is a most opportune time to have undertaken our first Business Travel Outlook for the country. China"s phenomenal economic growth over the last decade has been mirrored in business travel which is now a key contributor to, and benefactor from, the country"s expansion.
We forecast significant increases in business travel by Chinese citizens over the next two years with at least two-thirds of the growth being real increases in trips and spending as opposed to rising travel prices. This should also be accompanied by GDP growth rates of 8-9 percent a year."
Over the past decade, China has experienced rapid economic growth which has been reflected in China"s dramatic increase in business travel spending according to the research. Between 2000 and 2011, business travel spending averaged over 16 percent a year as a component of overall travel spend and was largely driven by both meetings, incentives, conferences and exhibition business trips alongside a rise in the amount of real spend-per-trip. The rise of business travel spending is also a reflection of increases in both domestic travel and international expenditure.
Welf J. Ebeling, Regional Director, GBTA Asia remarked:
"Business travel drives the economy and China is no exception. From this report we can see just how explosive this growth is going to be over the next few years. The Chinese recognize how important business travel is and the investments that are being made in vital infrastructure expansion demonstrate that."
Over the next ten years, GBTA"s report forecasts that China"s business travel spending will reflect the slow restart of the global economy with both domestic business travel spending and international outbound travel spending showing strong percentage increases. Later in the forecast horizon, international outbound travel spending by Chinese business travelers is expected to increase even more in percentage terms and reach 27 percent in 2013. Domestically, business travel spending is expected to reach US$233 billion by 2013.
This expenditure correlates strongly with several domestic economic indicators including retail sales, job growth, construction activity, profit margins, GDP and exports.
As well as business travel spending being stimulated by a recovery in world economic growth, China"s success in removing supply side bottlenecks will contribute to forecast growth rates. The country"s four largest airports Beijing, Shanghai-Pudong, Shanghai-Hongqiao and Guangzhou have doubled in size over the last ten years and even second and third tier airports have doubled or tripled their capacity. Plans are also in place for 100 new airports to be built over the next decade, adding further capacity.
In terms of economic growth, a retreat from top-down central planning and the embracing of market-based reforms and targeted investment initiatives has enabled China to become a central player in the global economy.
There has recently been a shift towards policies that promote domestic consumption, reducing China"s exposure to the external environment. The Chinese economy has been relatively resilient in the wake of the global economic crisis, and it is expected that China will continue to experience large growth rates. The GBTA BTI report forecasts that China"s GDP will continue to rise in 2012 to 8.2 percent and rise to 8.9 percent in 2013.
For China there is currently only one significant weakness that could potentially dampen the growth of business travel, namely the European sovereign debt crisis. With about 50 percent of Chinese exports going to Europe and the US, the European slowdown was immediately felt. It is, however, expected that the economy"s diversification away from exports will reduce this exposure in the future.
In addition, the GBTA BTI™ Outlook – China includes the GBTA Business Travel Index™ (GBTA BTI™). The GBTA BTI™ provides a way to distill market performance and the outlook for business travel into a single metric that can be tracked over time. It is derived from total Chinese business travel spending. An index base year of 2005 was chosen for consistency with GBTA BTI™ in other countries. Specifically, the GBTA BTI™ in China is set equal to 100 in the second quarter of 2005.
The fourth quarter of 2011 saw the GBTA BTI™ in China come in at 337. The impact of the recession of 2008-2009 was short lived for the Chinese economy and business travel sector. In fact, by the second quarter of 2009, the index had reached 242 or 2.4 times its level only four years earlier. Since the end of the recession, the index has added over 82 points in eight quarters – an increase of over 32 percent, driven primarily by domestic business travel expansion.
GBTA BTI™ in China is poised to return to its pre-2009 explosive growth in 2012 and 2013. Domestic and international outbound travel spend will work together to expand the index by an additional 135 points by the end of 2013, reaching a new high of 475 – an increase of nearly 41 percent in just two years.
Related Link: GBTA
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/china_to_surpass_us_as_largest_business_travel_market_by_2015
Orbitz surveyed nearly 1,000 U.S. travelers about their summer travel plans and of those surveyed 77 percent are taking a vacation this summer with more than half (56 percent) planning to travel by car and 39 percent by air(1). The majority of consumers (60 percent) said gas prices will be a factor in where they travel this summer.
As the economy improves consumers are hitting the road and increasing their summer vacation budgets with 53 percent planning to spend more than $1,500compared to 39 percent in 2011. Orbitz surveyed nearly 1,000 U.S. travelers about their summer travel plans and of those surveyed 77 percent are taking a vacation this summer with more than half (56 percent) planning to travel by car and 39 percent by air(1). The majority of consumers (60 percent) said gas prices will be a factor in where they travel this summer.
Based on the Orbitz survey, more consumers are planning to travel in July (31 percent) rather than in June (18 percent) or August (20 percent) with the rest of travelers still undecided. With increased airfares and hotel rates this summer, researching deals and being flexible on travel dates can stretch summer vacation budgets. "Hotel prices in many of the most popular destination this summer are cheaper in June vs. July, including those in eight of the Orbitz top 10 summer destinations," saidJeanenne Tornatore, Senior Editor of Orbitz.com. "Travelers that can be flexible on travel dates should consider a June getaway when daily hotel rates are 6% less expensive, on average."
Get the full story at HSMAI
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/according_to_orbitz_77_percent_of_americans_have_summer_travel_plans
ABC North Coast recently reported the property’s comments that guests regularly try to extort money in return for positive online reviews.
The Ballina property also confirmed that efforts to have negative comments removed from the TripAdvisor site have been fruitless. This is certainly consistent with feedback from Accommodation Association members who report a high level of frustration with the site resulting from inappropriate reviews – both negative and in fact, positive as well.
The Association regularly takes calls from frustrated operators commenting that “malicious”, “bogus” and “vexatious” reviews have been placed on TripAdvisor. In a recent case presented to us, the site was used in a personal attack on a property manager via a review where the manager was accused of inebriation (amongst other complaints) whilst on duty.
In this case, the property was able to identify that the reviewer was the disgruntled former partner of the manager. Despite having this fact pointed out to TripAdvisor, the site refused to remove the review. The property was fortunately able to go directly to the reviewer and have the listing removed. However, this case underscores the lack of control and severity of attack that is possible.
Get the full story at 4Hoteliers
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/more_on_tripadvisors_challenge_with_genuine_reviews
Hospitality technology buyers and providers will benefit from one of the largest sets of new and improved standards ever incorporated into a single release cycle by Hotel Technology Next Generation (HTNG). Major elements of these just-released specifications result from three of HTNG"s most recently chartered workgroups. The new standards enhance the sharing of customer profile data across hotel systems; they enable improved delivery of guest folio data to systems that need it; and they provide a hosted payment scheme for hotel websites and central reservation systems (CRSs) that can potentially remove those systems from the scope of onerous PCI security standards.
"Our volunteer leaders and contributors from across the industry, as well as the supporting HTNG staff, have been incredibly productive in the past six months. We and the entire industry owe them a debt of gratitude," said Douglas Rice, HTNG"s Executive Vice President and Chief Executive Officer. The workgroup volunteers who collaborated on these specifications represented more than 50 hotel companies and technology solutions providers from across the industry. "Their direction, expertise and collaborative focus have delivered – to hotels and technology providers alike – easier, standardized approaches for systems to exchange basic information," said Rice. "This allows IT organizations and vendors to focus their limited resources on capabilities that drive competitive advantage, rather than on basic functionality."
A summary of the specifications follows.
- Customer Profile Specification Version 1.0 – This specification provides the industry with a common definition of customer profiles that is richer, more hotel-specific, and more structured than previously available. It enables systems to exchange guest and other profiles out-of-the-box and with minimum customization. The specification builds on prior OpenTravel Alliance standards, with modifications developed through cooperation between HTNG and OpenTravel.
- Folio Detail Exchange Specification Version 1.0 – This new specification will allow hotels to share data from guest folios to a range of hotel and third-party systems that can use the data for other applications. To achieve this, the specification defines a set of messages that will pass presentation and transactional-level data from a PMS (or other folio system) to systems that support analytics, loyalty, invoice dematerialization, VAT reclamation, centralized direct billing, corporate expense reporting and other applications.
- Hosted Payment Capture Systems Specification Version 1.0 –Hosted payment capture systems provide a means to collect sensitive payment information from a customer on a secure, hosted system, typically hosted by a payment gateway or other third party. This approach can minimize the burden of PCI compliance for booking websites and for other hotel systems (such as central reservation systems). Control is transferred temporarily to the hosted secure site, maintaining the look and feel of the main website or system. Hotel systems using this approach can potentially move outside the scope of PCI requirements, vastly reducing compliance costs.
- Product Distribution – Updates to HTNG"s distribution specifications, already mature and extensively used throughout the industry, provide many enhancements, corrections and documentation improvements. Functional additions include the ability for Rate Plans to be flagged as yieldable or not, and quotable in multiple currencies. Ongoing efforts are continuing on the development of standards to support dynamic packaging, which will enable hotels and distributors to more easily provide a wide range of entertainment, transportation, services and other activities as part of the booking process.
This release also includes minor updates to HTNG"s very popular Digital Signage and Guest Self Service specifications.
The specifications are publicly available at the links above, including the documents needed to prepare for HTNG certification. By mid-June, HTNG"s certification program will be ready to support product certification for the new specifications. HTNG-certified products provide buyers with the best possible assurance of adherence to relevant standards.
Coming Soon: Standardized Interfaces between Point of Sale and Property Management Systems
HTNG recently launched an effort to address the often complicated and inconsistent interfaces between Point of Sale (POS) and Property Management Systems (PMSs). The new Point of Sale workgroup plans to complete initial specifications later this year. These specifications will reduce the effort needed to connect any PMS and POS system, while enabling them to cooperate more closely to meet the needs of guests, staff, and hotel owners. Standards will allow a POS system to look up guest information from the PMS and post charges to guest folios, even while the PMS is offline or unreachable. PMSs will be able to access and provide line-item check detail from any POS system. End-of-day reporting processes will be synchronized to ensure that accounts balance, even if the date-roll needs to occur at different times in the two systems.
In addition to these technical enhancements, the upcoming specifications should also reduce training costs due to simplification of systems and more consistent interface behavior across brands and systems.
Related Link: HTNG Specs and Docs
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/new_htng_standards_minimize_burden_of_pci_compliance
Now is a really great time to be an email marketer. It’s challenging, to be sure, as technology, business and marketing tactics continue to evolve rapidly. And certainly the days of hitting ‘send’ on broad, one-size-fits-all email campaigns and waiting for customers to respond are gone.
Marketers now have to develop more relevant, tailored campaigns to drive stronger levels of engagement. But the opportunity for success for marketers that do that well is nearly unlimited.
The challenge with engagement is that ISPs and marketers view it differently. Marketers view engagement as opens and clicks. ISPs look at areas such as emails retrieved from the junk folder, and emails deleted without being read. ISPs are increasingly looking to a new set of behavioural metrics whereby their approach to dealing with unwanted email is starting to change. Instead of focusing on how to filter out unwanted email, ISPs are now considering how to be sure they are delivering the wanted email. That might sound like a distinction without a difference, but it’s actually a pretty big shift in thinking on the ISP side. And it means that senders whose subscribers demonstrate positive interactions with their marketing emails are increasingly being rewarded with preferential placement in the inbox by ISPs.
Get the full story at EyeForTravel
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/email_marketing_is_on_the_move
1. Don't make your email one-size-fits-all.
Most department stores cater mainly to women--but if you were a guy walking into that store, no salesman would point you first to the women's beauty section. Yet close to half of companies make a similar mistake online, sending email promotions that couldn't possibly be relevant for the recipient.
Don't be one of them. Ask users what they like and who they are when they sign up—keep it quick and explain your reason, and almost everyone will comply. Then send different emails based on gender, age and other preferences.
Even if you can't ask, be creative. You can often make good educated guesses about your subscribers' gender and age based on what they have clicked on, which previous emails they've opened ... or even their email domains. (For example, Gmail users tend to be younger than AOL subscribers.)
Get the full story at Inc.com
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/email_marketing_7_mistakes_not_to_make
TripAdvisor draws 42 million visitors a month vs. Expedia's 30 million, Priceline-run Booking.com's 28 million and 16 million each at Travelocity and Orbitz.
But these 60 million reviews on TripAdvisor can make or break a vacation spot. To boost business, analysts say some hoteliers have been "gaming" the system by having staffers submit fake reviews. Another tactic involves sending feedback that belittles rivals.
TripAdvisor needed a way to ensure the authenticity of its reviews. Kaufer said, "We've developed sophisticated algorithms that catch it automatically." Furthermore, it hires researchers who review descriptions deemed suspicious. For example, a review submitted with a hotel's Internet address is considered bogus, until it's determined that it was written by a guest or by hotel staff.
Get the full story at Investors.com
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/tripadvisor_grows_while_countering_problems
Last week, the hotel franchise company held its annual conference in fabulous Las Vegas Nevada where the company’s President and CEO Steve Joyce said it’s all steam ahead on positive momentum.
“We think things are generally moving in the right direction. The numbers are good and franchisees are feeling good about where [the market] is going. We are getting closer to 2007 levels and preaching we are in for a pretty good run for the next three years,” said Joyce.
Pat Pacious, EVP Global Strategy, Distribution and Technology, said choicehotels.com is setting new records. More than 100 million people checked the site in 2011 as the company has been deploying more tools to get more traffic to the website and convert them to room renters.
Additionally, the website has seen nine days this year with sales of $10 million or more. Typically the first $10 million day comes in July, but this year the company had the first one in February.
Get the full story at Hotel Interactive
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/choicehotels.com_leveraging_upswing_reporting_daily_sales_of_10_million_and
To sign up, just tell Simplehoney service the types of hotels you like to stay in and the types of vacations you normally take (or would love to take). Once your account is activated, you'll see a number of destination hotels that Simplehoney thinks are great matches for your preferences.
You can fill out your account with even more information, like when you normally travel, where you go, how much planning goes into your trips, and what you like to do there. All of that information is used to refine your results, and you never give the service anything more specific than your email address.
When you see a hotel you like, Simplehoney hands you directly off to the hotel to book your room.
Get the full story at Lifehacker
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/simplehoney_pandora_for_hotel_booking
by Josiah Mackenzie, ReviewPro
If I tell you something, the only way I can be sure you heard it is if you respond. Whether we're sharing information or making a request, we need some type of confirmation to know the communication has been received.
It's no different for people interacting with hotels online.
Listening serves as a prerequisite for any program designed to improve customer satisfaction, but it cannot end there. How would you feel if, when you ask someone for a request, they simply listened to you - then went on with their day? The speed and quality of your response will determine the guest's level of satisfaction with the service you provide.
In this article, I want to explore how this looks for hoteliers today: the process of responding to guest feedback directly, and often, publically.
Response form #1: Replying to Guest Feedback on Review Sites
Management responses on review sites are the most direct form of response. They allow you as a hotelier to tell your side of the story. And for many hotels, each review and response is seen by hundreds of people. With one response, you're not only serving the guest - but sending a message to everyone that is reading that interaction.
Corinthia Hotels does a phenomenal job with responding to customer feedback online. In the words of Jason Potter, their social media strategist, their intention is simple: to "be there." To turn negatives into positives. By providing decisive, prompt service, they can take guest dissatisfaction and turn it around.
"Whether guests are curious about something, or have had a negative experience that requires immediate response, we’re there.
It can seem quite risky for hotel group to put customer service on social media platforms and public websites, but we’re willing to take that risk. The reality of the social web is that whether we engage or not, the conversations about our brand are happening anyway. Customers have all sorts of expectations and it is therefore impossible to keep every customer 100% happy, 100% of the time. So it’s better to view this as a way to build relationships. We’re turning negatives into positives. We’re transparent in reacting to issues in front of everyone.
That helps our customers trust us."
This aspect of building trust through attentiveness and responsiveness is crucial. Rachel Kowalczyk at Amble Resorts told me something that resonated with many of the hotel brand managers I’ve shared it with:
"Brands are becoming more like friends than parents. In the past, brands upheld an image of infallibility to reassure their customers that their every need would be taken care of. In the current atmosphere, brands are acting more like friends (often literally on Facebook) because consumers are looking to join their favorite brands on a journey to excellence, rather than buy into something static and claiming to be infallible."
Response form #2: Responding to feedback on the social Web
Time to response on real-time social networks like Twitter is critical. While you may have a few days to work among your team to provide a detailed response to feedback on review sites, the opportunity window on the social web is much shorter. Obviously, some issues require a little investigation - but aim to at least acknowledge a person's issue as quickly as possible here.
“We aim to respond to all queries within an hour. We set up strict guidelines in our social strategy to try our best to respond to all customers within an hour – whether it is to solve the issue then and there, or if it is to let them know that we’re working on the issue." - Jason Potter, Corinthia Hotels
According to a recent research project presented in a Harvard Business Review article, speed of issue resolution is directly correlated with customer retention and loyalty. Because of this, the top priority for companies should be to provide quick, simple resolutions to problems. The focus of service must be on reducing the amount of effort customers make to get issues resolved.
We see that the hotel groups that have built the most engaged and loyal online communities are the ones that are most responsive to their customers. You typically see a high percentage of "@" replies in their Twitter stream. They participate in these networks to serve their audience: not just push out promotional information.
This approach tends to attract an engaged group of people talking with and about your brand. Done right, this can allow you to provide a level of service that is higher than anything most hotel groups can provide with their own staff. Josh Pelz, chief digital strategist at the Gansevoort Hotel Group, routinely passes along requests for advice and opinion about the Gansevoort back to his Twitter and Facebook audience. By retweeting a question, his fans will often reply to the person asking about the hotel – and say how much they enjoy it. This is tremendously powerful as a sales tool – having others sing their praises. And it also plays a role in service, extending the reach of the Gansevoort Group to sites where they may not be actively participating.
“We can’t always be there when someone has a problem. We’re not everywhere. But our community often comes to bat for us.
“If someone says they can’t get in touch with the Gansevoort, we often have other members of our community saying ‘email Josh – here’s his address’. It’s amazing to watch this.” – Josh Pelz, Gansevoort Hotel Group
Another advantage of responding quickly on a real-time social network like Twitter is that you can catch complaints before they show up on a review site. Make a habit of checking in to see how you can best serve the guest while they are still on property. Many negative reviews are the result of double deviations - a service error followed by a resolution error. Using the social web for real-time service is powerful way to proactively take control of your online reputation by preventing complaints that could have been avoided.
Response form #3: Responding to Guest Feedback by changing communication & marketing messages
Responding to feedback by changing strategy direction is what separates the companies with mediocre reputations from the great ones. Responding exclusively by replying to customers’ reviews and social media activity can result in an endless game of reactive, "firefighting" activity. Building a rock-solid online reputation and constantly improving that requires going a step further: acting on the feedback to make operational and product changes – which Daniel covered also covered in his article.
Once your organization is doing this, take your reputation management program to the next level by changing the way you present and sell the hotel. Adjust your sales messages to accurately reflect what you offer - and how guests perceive that.
How does this look?
Well, you can guide your online advertising and marketing communications to talk about the features guests appreciate most about your hotels. Semantic analysis of social feedback can uncover what customers see as the "secret sauce" of a business. By spending most of your time talking about whatever this is, you are more likely to attract the type of guest that will appreciate your hotels - and will be more likely to write a positive review.
The Roger Smith Hotel in New York is a great example of this. With interior design that looks more like the country home of your artistic friend than the sort of design that fills Contemporist, they have positioned themselves as a "peaceful, comforting sanctuary" - a welcoming home base in the heart of midtown NYC. By being honest about what they are (and are not), they set expectations appropriately - getting the attention and business of travelers looking for this experience. It's one of the big reasons the hotel has become a hub in New York for the arts and digital media elite, attracting influential ambassadors like Chris Brogan, Ann Handley, CC Chapman and Pamela Slim.
Regardless of the type of hotels you are working with, understand what they are doing well – and not so well – so that you can set expectations and paint a realistic picture of what guests will experience on your properties.
One more point on this topic: when it comes to communications and branding, it's all about the presentation. When the marketing team at the Beverly Hills Hotel looks through the semantic analysis of reviews in their ReviewPro dashboard, they can see one of the things guests appreciate most about staying at the hotel is the caliber of service that is offered. Being savvy marketers, the team at Beverly Hills Hotel knows it's far more effective to show an example of how their staff provides world-class service than to simply shout "we provide great service!" Look at one example of how they did this on Facebook recently.
The caption is a bit small, but reads:
“Our five-star concierge team is the best in the world! They once arranged a wedding for two dogs complete with bridesmaids and a best man for the groom, music, cake, champagne, a minister to wed them, and even a honeymoon for the two dog guests.”
So they’re sharing their unique selling proposition through an amusing photo and story.
Brilliant.
What's your level of social responsiveness?
Edward Perry manages social media engagement for more than 450 hotels at Worldhotels. "From what I have observed, 'social responsiveness' is one of the most important issues for hotel companies right now," he said at a recent industry conference. "Being social" requires much more than just setting up shop on the latest social network - it requires active participation in each of these communities.
That's the thought I want you to take away after reading this article. How responsive are you in online review sites and social networks, and how does the feedback you see there shape your communications strategy?
Listening is the first step, but responding must be at the heart of your reputation management program.
Want to learn more details on how this happens? I will be providing a free online training session along with Daniel Edward Craig on the 24th of May, where we'll show you specific examples of how to respond to online customer feedback efficiently and effectively. Save your seat now.
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/beyond_listening_3_ways_to_be_more_responsive_to_social_media_feedback
From corporate giants to small businesses, marketers continue to seek ambitious social media initiatives in order to humanize their brands.
Some brands see this shift as an opportunity to get closer to their audiences, while others act like they’re caught in a digital mousetrap looking for an escape. Regardless of how these different firms respond, there’s no doubt about it: social technologies have had a dizzying effect not only on consumers but also on brands.
While some brands depend solely on Madison Avenue to dictate the rules of engagement, the smartest brands have found a new voice to humanize their image—their employees. Though these employees may appear softly spoken, there is little question whether their voices are being heard. Savvy audiences respond remarkably well to these messages, as a company’s employees represent the most authentic expression of a company’s brand. For many brands, such an approach marks a major shift in mindset.
Get the full story at Uprising
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/brands_under_pressure_the_brand_lives_in_the_employees_voice
Here are just a few of stats that underpin the trend:
- Most US and UK consumers now carry a device around with them allowing them to take and share engaging photos and video. According to Comscore, most UK mobile phones are now smartphones. The other day, Nielsen came out with research saying the same for the US.
- And more and more of those smartphone owners are using those features. In 2010, 52% of photos in the US were taken with ‘single purpose cameras’, while 17% were taken with smartphones. In 2011, that ratio changed to 44% / 27%. Similarly, here in the UK, almost a third of consumers say their smartphone is the camera they use most often
- As a result, we’re heading towards a point perhaps 1-2 years down the line where smartphones will account for the majority of pictures taken. Indeed, the iPhone has been the most popular camera on Flickr for a while now.
Get the full story at Futurelab, and ReadWriteWeb
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_importance_of_the_visual_web
Kayak first filed its IPO documents in November 2010, nearly a year and a half ago, but has held off on launching its deal due to choppy market conditions and erratic earnings.
Its most recent quarter showed a marked improvement. Last week, Kayak reported first-quarter net income of $4.1 million, compared to a $6.9 million loss a year earlier. Kayak's revenues for the quarter rose 39% for the same period, to $73.3 million.
The deal would aim to raise roughly $150 million for the travel website, according to one of these people, giving the website an implied valuation of more than $1 billion.
Get the full story at CNBC
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/kayak_to_ride_facebook_wave
Gogobot is a San Francisco based startup founded by MySpace’s former International GM Travis Katz and Ori Zaltzman, the former Chief Architect of Yahoo Search BOSS. The startup opened up its public beta in early December 2010 and its growth has been astonishing, with a new member joining the site every 15 seconds, on average. After just 18 months since launch, Gogobot is today announcing its 1 millionth registered user along with some pretty competitive stats.
Since launch, more than 5 million places have been shared on the service, with Gogobot’s mobile app and a partnership with Foursquare cited as a major driver of this growth. Since launching the iPhone app in October, the number of reviews submitted by users has doubled each day, the number of trip plans created has doubled each day and the number of photos uploaded by users each day has increased by a magnitude of 5x.
Unlike TripAdvisor, Gogobot was born in the post-Facebook era and baked social in right from the start. It’s part of an entirely new generation of social companies - like Zygna, Spotify and Highlight - that’s been able to beat out the dinosaurs by leveraging the social graph.
Get the full story at The Next Web
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/facebook_travel_app_gogobot_hits_1_million_users_30_times_more_traffic_than
No Facebook. No Twitter. No YouTube. Listing the companies that don’t have access to China’s exploding social-media space underscores just how different it is from those of many Western markets. Understanding that space is vitally important for anyone trying to engage Chinese consumers: social media is a larger phenomenon in the world’sa second-biggest economy than it is in other countries, including the United States. And it’s not indecipherable. Chinese consumers follow the same decision-making journey as their peers in other countries, and the basic rules for engaging with them effectively are reassuringly familiar.
In addition to having the world’s biggest Internet user base—513 million people, more than double the 245 million users in the United States1—China also has the world’s most active environment for social media. More than 300 million people use it, from blogs to social-networking sites to microblogs and other online communities.2 That’s roughly equivalent to the combined population of France, Germany, Italy, Spain, and the United Kingdom. In addition, China’s online users spend more than 40 percent of their time online on social media, a figure that continues to rise rapidly.
This appetite for all things social has spawned a dizzying array of companies, many with tools more advanced than those in the West: for example, Chinese users were able to embed multimedia content in social media more than 18 months before Twitter users could do so in the United States. Social media began in China in 1994 with online forums and communities and migrated to instant messaging in 1999. User review sites such as Dianping emerged around 2003. Blogging took off in 2004, followed a year later by social-networking sites with chatting capabilities such as Renren. Sina Weibo launched in 2009, offering microblogging with multimedia. Location-based player Jiepang appeared in 2010, offering services similar to foursquare’s.
Get the full story at the McKinsey Quarterly (free registration)
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/no_facebook._understanding_social_media_in_china
SocialBooker provides hotels worldwide with integrated booking solutions for their Facebook pages, including the ability to create communities of loyal repeat guests.
Those are exactly the type of guests Plus-U is geared toward: Facebook users who heavily influence travel-planning decisions can become SocialBooker travel consultants, receiving commissions of 8 percent to 12 percent when rooms are booked via their Facebook pages, from a network of more than 25,000 hotels around the world. Those influencers, or travel consultants, can also share, plan, and book trips as groups, and take advantage of exclusive offers for friends and families.
Get the full story at AllFacebook
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/facebook_users_can_now_book_hotel_rooms_and_earn_commissions
Since its founding in 2004, the social network has passed many milestones as it skyrocketed from a few million U.S. users to millions more around the world. Looking back at Nielsen data from over the last eight years, here are some of the key moments in Facebook’s story:
- In January 2009 Facebook passed Myspace to become the top social network/blog site for the first time, a position it’s held in the U.S. ever since.
- Between 2005 and 2009 Facebook doubled its traffic each year in the U.S., surpassing 10 million uniques for the first time in November 2006 (11.6M).
- Facebook connected friends around the globe quickly: reaching 10 million unique UK visitors by April 2008. In 2009, the French, Spaniards and Germans followed suit, with 10 million visitors apiece in January, May and November, respectively.
- As recently as August 2011, Facebook overtook Orkut as the top social networking site in Brazil; it has continued to grow its audience since then.
Facebook continues to grow around the world, with consumers in each market finding unique uses for social media sites. While Facebook is the top social network globally, many netizens visit multiple social media sites; in Japan blog sites are more popular in the social media category (Facebook is ranked 5th), and in Brazil sites like Tumblr and Google+ are growing quickly as well.
Get the full story at Nielsen
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/us_isnt_the_most_facebook_addicted_country
if Facebook is to live up to its pre-IPO hype and reward the investors who are clamoring for its stock this week, it needs to convince some of the resisters to join. Two out of every five American adults have not joined Facebook, according to a recent Associated Press-CNBC poll. Among those who are not on Facebook, a third cited a lack of interest or need.
If all those people continue to shun Facebook, the social network could become akin to a postal system that only delivers mail to houses on one side of the street. The system isn't as useful, and people aren't apt to spend as much time with it. That means fewer opportunities for Facebook to sell ads.
Lee Rainie, director of the Pew Internet & American Life Project, says that new communications channels — from the telephone to radio, TV and personal computers — often breed a cadre of holdouts in their early days.
"It's disorienting because people have different relationships with others depending on the media they use," Rainie says. "But we've been through this before. As each new communications media comes to prominence, there is a period of adoption."
Get the full story at the San Francisco Chronicle
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/as_facebook_grows_millions_say_no_thanks
It may seem counter-productive to invite locals into your hotel, as hotel business relies on over-night visitors and, obviously, people who live in the city where the hotel resides aren’t going to be staying over there. But many hotels also require business in other fashions, like renting out their meeting and conference space, and drawing customers to their restaurants and bars.
I’m part of a local group called ConnectOC. ConnectOC is comprised a handful of businesspeople that initially met through social media that came together to bring our local community together. A local Hilton hosted our two event complimentary, and we were also able to get numerous donations from businesses for goodie bags and silent auctions, which allowed us to raise thousands of dollars for local charities. The majority of the people who came to the first ConnectOC event had never previously set foot inside the Hilton, because they never had to. But, because of the event, they now can visualize the hotel’s gorgeous restaurant. They’ve now tasted the food.
When considering where to dine in the future, the restaurant is going to stand out in numerous ways: in terms of ambiance, taste of food and generosity in donating so much to promote people coming together for a worthy cause. Many people tweeted about returning to the Hilton at later times to dine.
Get the full story at Windmill Networking
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/how_hotels_can_benefit_from_social_media_events
After conducting in-depth guest research and monitoring business traveler trends, Westin is transforming business centers and specially dedicated spaces at its hotels around the world into highly-functional, fully-equipped workspaces. Modeled to support today’s mobile traveler, the interconnected workspace dubbed Project Hive features media:scape by Steelcase technology, video conferencing, seamless connectivity and collaboration areas. The Workspace is perfect for small impromptu meetings and can be booked by the hour, at a moment’s notice. Designed to offer guests a place to work well, efficiently, and comfortably on the road, the new workspace is currently available at The Westin Boston Waterfront and The Westin Arlington Gateway Hotel and soon at the Westin Grand Munich with plans to roll-out globally through 2013.
75% of U.S. Workforce is Mobile
In the U.S. 75% of the workforce is mobile and by 2013 one-third of the global workforce will follow suit. Today’s business travelers are more mobile and global than ever and are in need of a turn-key business and meeting solution designed for collaboration and connectivity. While the majority of today’s companies have moved towards office space that is more open, functional and technology driven, hotel business centers and small meeting facilities have remained low-tech, hidden, and often unused. Westin’s concept turns the traditional offerings on its head and offers guests a modern, fully-equipped and technology savvy space designed to promote productivity. The brand’s signature new workspace features:
- media:scape by Steelcase technology that offers an interactive space for participants to access and share digital information quickly and seamlessly. Video conferencing is also available at a four person seated workspace.
- Samsung televisions, printers, sound systems, Xbox 360® for games or DVDs.
- Floor-to-ceiling white boards and fully stocked office supplies offer convenience and promote collaboration.
- Wired and wireless internet for no additional fee. Flexible outlets are also located throughout the space allowing devices to power up regardless of location.
Privacy for groups of up to four to conduct small group meetings or hold calls and teleconferences.
- Quick, impromptu online bookings from anywhere with LiquidSpace.com.
“The one-size-fit-all small meeting spaces and traditional business centers no longer support the way today’s mobile traveler works,” said Brian Povinelli, Global Brand Leader for Westin Hotels. “More than 70% of business travelers told us that an environment that better supports their work objectives would significantly improve their business travel experience and 48% said having facilities available whenever they wanted to use them would positively impact the quality of their hotel stay. While a hotel room or lobby is a place where you can do work, this workspace was specifically designed as a smart room that promotes productivity and reflects today’s social and work trends.”
High Design Meets High Performance
Westin’s Vice President of Design Erin Hoover worked with her team to create a space that also embraced the trend of “co-working” where flexible, temporary, collaborative workspaces are becoming imperative for high-performance work. Within a small footprint of 260 square feet or less, the workspace consists of communal, interactive and individual work zones.
- The whiteboard area and the media:scape by Steelcase is a collaborative zone used for presentation preparation and brainstorming sessions.
- Closets behind the whiteboards store everything a guest needs, from pens to light refreshments.
- Individuals find comfort in the lounge area and can utilize wired or wireless technology regardless of location in the room.
The design team used Westin’s inspiration from nature to create the color palate for the space and a large-scale wall mural. The inspiration for the mural was derived from Fibonacci sequences, which is a sequence of numbers that generate patterns found in nature, like the spiral of a shell. The color palette was also inspired by colors found in minerals and crystals to create a neutral base of grey, with accents of amber, emerald and sapphire blue.
The brand’s innovative new workspace concept joins a host of initiatives recently introduced by Westin Hotels & Resorts that have been designed with the guests’ well-being in mind. Most recently, Westin announced a complete refresh of the WestinWORKOUT program to match the evolving fitness trends among guests and further enhance the brand’s goal of promoting well-being in travel. In September 2011, Westin launched a brand-wide Associate Enrichment program, introducing the brand’s “Elements of Well-Being Platform” to more than 25,000 associates around the world through key touch points. In May 2011, the brand unveiled its groundbreaking “For a Better You” ad campaign that uses artistic imagery to depict the “Elements of Well-Being” that help Westin guests leave feeling better than when they arrived. In December 2010, Westin announced an exclusive partnership with New Balance, helping hotel guests overcome the hurdles of exercising on the road by providing New Balance footwear, apparel and fitness program content to its guests to borrow.
Read also "Hotels test offering meeting rooms that can serve as offices" at USA Today
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/westin_introduces_a_space_for_the_way_people_work_today
Hotels that participate in Sheraton's "Social Hour" will hold the tastings three to four times per week. In North America, two of the wines they pour will hold a 90 or above rating from Wine Spectator.
To further elevate the experience, the hotels will pour the wine into upscale Reidel stemware. Expect to taste wines from Chateau Ste. Michelle, Stag's Leap Wine Cellars and Northstar.
The Starwood-owned chain today will announce that it's launching the wine program in about 240 hotels around the world, or about 60% of its properties. Currently, these hotels offer a mix of wines with no particular consistency.
Get the full story at USA Today
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/sheraton_teams_with_wine_spectator_for_social_hour
Hyatt is the first global hospitality brand to a make a commitment of this magnitude. This philosophy will guide food and beverage planning at Hyatt properties from the operational level to the guest experience. With this new global identity, Hyatt properties will work to anticipate and satisfy the evolving preferences of its guests, ensuring that travelers have more options to fit their lifestyles while staying in Hyatt hotels around the world.
Driven by insights and in-depth research, Food. Thoughtfully Sourced. Carefully Served. is grounded in three pillars:
The first pillar is focused on healthy people by offering portion control, balanced offerings and natural ingredients prepared with nutrient preserving cooking techniques. Examples include gluten-free and vegetarian options, organic produce, natural meat without supplemental growth hormones or antibiotics, reduced sodium, reduced additives, beverages with all natural sweeteners such as agave nectar, hormone-free milk and real fruit juice.
The second pillar is focused on a healthy planet by implementing sustainable practices that will improve the long-term health of people and the planet. Examples include sourcing sustainable seafood, naturally raised beef and pork, planting on-property chef’s gardens, recycling programs, and new to-go containers and packaging.
The final pillar is intended to support healthy communities by sourcing from local suppliers as well as sharing knowledge and actively supporting farmers’ markets and other community events. Examples include serving at least five local ingredients on menus, partnerships with schools and local community groups, empowering Hyatt associates through education, and sponsoring local culinary schools to participate in competitions.
“At Hyatt, we want to meet the needs of the present generation without compromising what’s best for future generations. We believe we have a responsibility to ensure that every one of our dishes is thoughtfully sourced and carefully served,” said Susan Santiago, vice president of food and beverage, North America operations, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. “This philosophy, which began implementation in the U.S. in mid-2011, is an effort to support the health of our guests, planet, and the local community is at the core of every food and beverage decision that is made at Hyatt properties. We are evolving the way food is purchased and served at Hyatt hotels. We believe it is what our guests deserve.”
“Our goal is to continue to drive change in our industry for the benefit of our guests, associates and our communities,” said Achim Lenders, vice president of food and beverage, international operations, Hyatt Hotels & Resorts. “This new direction for food and beverage operations will enable and challenge Hyatt hotels to explore new opportunities with local suppliers, reinvigorate how our guests are served, and challenge everyone to do what’s best.”
Food. Thoughtfully Sourced. Carefully Served. is a key component of the health and wellness pillar of Hyatt Thrive, Hyatt’s global corporate responsibility platform designed to enable thriving communities.
As an outgrowth of the company’s core values, Hyatt will continue to work with local community groups and organize volunteer efforts and fund raising support to improve the economic future of the people and businesses in the communities where Hyatt hotels are located. From providing cooking skills courses in local schools to supporting and hosting farmers markets, Hyatt will also continue to make an effort to support the health of guests, associates and people in the local community.
To further demonstrate its dedication to Food. Thoughtfully Sourced. Carefully Served., Hyatt has joined forces with Partnership for Healthier America (PHA), which will hold Hyatt accountable for continuously improving the nutritional profile of food menus at full-service managed Hyatt properties across the U.S. over the next 10 years. This pledge marks the first of its kind by a hospitality company to PHA.
Read also "When picking hotels, some ask: Where's the Whole Foods?" at USA Today
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/hyatt_introduces_food._thoughtfully_sourced._carefully_served
Briefly, Knowledge Base is Google’s attempt to change your search experience from strings (of characters) to objects, whole entities with collections of their own data.
For example, yesterday, Google could parse your search for “roots” as five letters that might have a connection to a wide range of URLs. Today, Google knows you are probably searching for The Roots (the music group) or or Roots (the TV miniseries) or roots (the biological feature of plants), and it will help you get to the best results for that object faster.
Knowledge Base takes structured data from Wikipedia, Freebase, and other sources, including MusicBrainz (an open encyclopedia of music facts), the CIA’s World Factbook, and many other repositories of publicly available open data.
Get the full story at VentureBeat
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/google_search_getting_a_new_bigger_better_brain
Facebook will need to find its own marketing and ad model in order to succeed. The same goes for Twitter. I'm not sure Sponsored Stories are it. They're just another variety of ad. A better approach might be helping companies build brand awareness, like TV and most analog ads do.
Lack of purchase intent also explains Google's difficulty monetizing nonsearch products like Gmail. Android seems promising. When people are out and about, they're often looking to buy things and otherwise spend money.
Get the full stoy at the CMO Site
Read also "Facebook’s business model" at Chris Dixon's blog, "Facebook Is Still Figuring It Out" at All Things D, and "Are Facebook ads really that bad?" at VentureBeat
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/why_google_ads_work_and_facebook_ads_dont
When it comes to bookings mobile holds great promise but there are challenges for revenue management (RM) professionals. Chinmai Sharma, Vice President, RM at Wyndham Hotel Group lets EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta in on what to beware of.
Sharma believes revenue management (RM) specialists have so far not observed material differences in booking patterns between the online channels - brand web, online travel agent and mobile. But since that mobile is still a nascent channel for booking rooms, differences could emerge over time and RM specialists should keep a close eye on trends.
In general, mobile platforms are a good investment from a revenue management perspective as they represent another consumer friendly channel where a company can distribute its rates and inventory.
That said, Wyndham disagrees with the idea that they safeguard brands and price integrity, the exception being if the hotels and brands in question are selling the same offers on their own channels including mobile.
An increasing trend has been to offer last-minute exclusive deals to third-party mobile platforms which undermine the value proposition of brand.com and other partner channels. That can never be a sustainable strategy. Just because a customer is booking last minute through a mobile device doesn’t mean that Wyndham gives them exclusive deals.
Get the full story at EyeForTravel
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/mobile_and_its_impact_on_hotel_revenue_management
China is one of the biggest countries of self made millionaires and billionaires and it has managed a strong position on financial map of the world. The number of millionaire and billionaire has increased considerably and that has a positive impact on the luxury travel industry of China. Many of the rich people are taking trips around the world with better facilities. The demand for business class travel and costly destination with shopping opportunities has increased among the affluent class and at the same time they are demanding to stay in well known hotels with all sorts of modern facilities no matter what they cost.
The rise in private property of Chinese people along with the appreciation of Yuan has induced this growing demand of luxury travel. The rising trend that is seen in the property value and the GDP growth are also two major reasons for this demand. There are millions of millionaires in china with personal wealth of RMB 10 or more who are contributing in this.
A survey was conducted by the Harun Rich List Authority to understand the travel habits and decision making of the affluent class of China in 2011 between April and November. Here 401 millionaires and billionaires were interviews on one to one basis on their travel habits. Among these 401 people 45 had an asset of more than RMB 100 million. Apart from these people 62 more millionaires were interviewed between April and May.
Get the full story at Tourism-Review.com
Read also "Ctrip eyes China’s high-end travel market"
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/top_luxury_travel_trends_in_china
The survey shows a notable increase in anticipated Memorial Day travel, as nearly one-third (31 percent) of respondents plan on taking a leisure trip, compared to the 24 percent who say they traveled over the Memorial Day weekend last year. For the remainder of the summer travel season, the majority (54 percent) expect to take a trip between June 1 and Labor Day, which is slightly more than those who say they ventured out during the same time period in 2011 (52 percent). Furthermore, of those respondents who expect to travel between June 1 and Labor Day, one in four (24 percent) plan to spend more money on this year's summer trips than they did last year, while over half (56 percent) anticipate spending the same amount.
"As consumers appear to feel more confident about the economy and the job market, we could see a steady uptick year-over-year in leisure travel during the summer months," said Adam Weissenberg, vice chairman, Deloitte LLP and global leader of Deloitte's travel, hospitality and leisure sector. "This highlights the continued growth and vitality of the travel industry as a whole. However, travelers also understand the value of the dollar in this economy and may expect more from travel and hospitality companies."
Travelers Seek Value in Hotels and Air Travel
While the cost of air travel remains a top concern, it will not cause most consumers to cancel their plans altogether. Among the two-thirds (66 percent) of respondents who have noticed an increase in airfare, only 16 percent changed their summer travel destination or decided not to book a trip that involved flying. However, measures by airlines to increase revenue with additional fees appear to influence the behavior of leisure travelers.
Survey respondents cite crowded/cramped conditions in economy class and increases in airline fees among their top leisure travel grievances. To circumvent the latter, almost half (43 percent) use carry-on luggage more often and 40 percent make more of an effort to book flights with airlines that do not charge checked-baggage fees.
"With airfares up, the tipping point for leisure travelers in choosing an airline may be related to what extra value they offer, whether that's in waiving baggage fees, offering additional legroom or free Wi-Fi," continues Weissenberg.
Air travel is not the only area where consumers are seeking value, as leisure travelers admit they are looking to cut costs throughout their trips. About a third (31 percent) of respondents admit to not tipping hotel staff on a frequent basis because they are no longer using services such as a bellman, a direct result of fliers using carry-on sized bags. However, hotel businesses overall can likely expect an increase in business revenues this summer, with only about one in four (21 percent) of respondents who expect to travel between June 1 and Labor Day willing to spend less on lodging to cut overall travel costs, down from 35 percent last year. Instead, value-conscious consumers will likely be looking for more in services and added amenities, including complimentary breakfast, free wireless internet access and free parking. Additionally, only one-sixth (16 percent) of respondents feel they are receiving more personal attention and/or individual tailored services during hotel stays.
Gas Prices No Longer a Top Concern
Fuel costs will likely be less of a roadblock for consumers hitting the roads over Memorial Day weekend, with more than half of respondents (54 percent) saying rising gas prices will not affect their travel plans, compared to the 41 percent who indicated the same in 2011. However, rising fuel costs may significantly influence travel plans for lower income households. For those respondents who expect to travel between June 1 and Labor Day and with a total annual income of $99,000 or below, one quarter (25 percent) indicate they would cancel a summer trip if gas prices were to increase one dollar, whereas only 11 percent of those earning more than $100,000 per year say the same.
Read also "U.S. summer travel outlook brightens, record gains in leisure travel intentions"
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/americans_warming_up_to_summer_travel_in_2012
Generally, we plan a trip more in advance when we’re going somewhere fairly far from home (as airfare is typically much more expensive when booked close to the departure date) – so your early bird travel bookers will most-likely be your fly-market as opposed to your drive market. Family travel is also generally planned in advance because it requires more research and there are multiple schedules and moving parts to take into consideration.
Capturing the Consumer:
- Advanced Purchased Rates: Encourage visitors to book now for their summer vacations by offering a discount for a longer booking window. A great way to differentiate yourself in this respect is to offer a varying discount depending on how far in advance a person books – i.e. 20% off when booking 20 days in advance, 15% off when booking 15 days in advance, etc.
- Longer-Stay Incentive: Travelers often incur longer stays when traveling far distances. Encourage this behavior with a discount or enticing value-add (such as a room upgrade or complimentary meals).
- Activities-Based Packages: Summer vacations often center around fun activities you wouldn’t otherwise be doing (especially when considering family vacations). Consider teaming up with local attractions and events to create pre-planned experience for potential guests. Museums, amusement parks, concerts, aquariums, zoos, nature preserves, and city tours are all great examples that are typically found all over the country. If you are located on a beach, your primary activity is naturally built in to a person’s stay, but this can be optimized with chairs/umbrellas, camps for kids, and water activities. Creating activity-focused packages simplifies the travel process, making planning easier on your potential guests – and that is always appreciated.
Get the full story at the Micros eCommerce Blog
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/how_to_capture_early_bird_summer_travel_bookers
Less than a month ago, Facebook released a demo tool for Facebook Studio that allows marketers to preview their ads by showing how the placement will look on a real Facebook page.
Today, the company is revealing the results of a small study it conducted into brand engagement.
Their study separated posts by brands into three categories: messages about the brand, messages related to the brand, and unrelated messages. Splitting the posts into those categories also enabled Facebook to determine what marketers should do to derive different outcomes from their posts.
Get the full story at Facebook Studio
Read also "Facebook to debut webinars for small business"
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/facebook_study_shows_brands_how_to_build_engagement
Professional book critics, on the other hand, suffer from nepotism: critics give more favorable reviews to their colleagues, authors who agree with their ideological slant, and if the book has been given an award by other critics. The result, implies this new research, is that Amazon has democratized the book reviewing process, with consumer reviewers less beholden to special interests and more representative of the book-reading masses. Perhaps most importantly, it rebuts critics who have claimed that Amazon is nothing more than a cauldron of corrupt and uneducated opinions.
Both professionals and amateurs are susceptible to bias. But, on Amazon, the masses moderate the corruption, partisanship, and stupidity peppered throughout the crowd. In contrast, we rarely read more than one professional book review, leaving our purchasing decisions up the view of one mind.
Get the full story at TechCrunch
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/how_amazon_killed_book_critics
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/ghe2
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/ghe
It's fashionable to say business travelers increasingly are going rogue, but that's neither new nor true in absolute. While some commentary and certain data of late have supported the going-rogue theme, others have not. Dozens of recent interviews with corporate travel buyers, travel management company executives and corporate travel suppliers have uncovered almost no evidence of a notable drop in compliance among firms that manage travel. What may be different are the dynamics of policy compliance, in which the seemingly endless information and tools now at travelers' fingertips can butt up against corporate mandates supporting traveler safety and security.
Compliance always is a major area of focus as a means to save money - particularly after buyers have done as much negotiating as they can on up-front pricing. The biggest challenge traditionally is in lodging.
"Air, form of payment, car rental all are pretty much under control," said consultant Andrew Menkes of Partnership Travel Consulting. "The weak link is hotel—first, booking the hotel through the TMC, and second, choosing the preferred."
Get the full story at Business Travel News
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_problem_with_hotel_compliance
By powering hotel listings and bookings with realtime data delivered through the Travelocity Connect APIs, hotels and developers can enhance the buying experience they deliver customers on Travelocity’s online properties.
“The Travelocity Connect Developers Portal builds upon our legacy of being the supplier friendly online travel company, making it easy for hotels to connect to us seamlessly,” said Noreen Henry, senior vice president, global partner services, Travelocity. “The portal minimizes costs, errors and delays and will help ensure that our hotel partners are always in sync with us, giving our mutual customers a hassle-free experience. Hotels not using Travelocity Connect are missing opportunities to sell their properties on our sites.”
The Travelocity Connect Developers Portal was developed in collaboration with Mashery, the global leader in API management technology and services. The portal includes Mashery-made tools that help developers quickly take advantage of the unique opportunity to integrate complex real-time property and booking data with Travelocity Connect, and sell to customers with a new level of accuracy and ease.
Travelocity's secure portal for developers provides a comprehensive API toolkit for Travelocity Connect's enrolled partner developers. Developers approved by Travelocity Connect can take advantage of the tools to learn about, and engage with, the APIs and the Travelocity Connect developer community.
Developers can now use the Travelocity Connect API sandbox to test formatting and messages in the full API environment for APIs, including Hotel Direct Update (availability, rates and inventory), Hotel Information, Hotel Booking Retrieve, Hotel Booking Confirmation, Hotel Inventory Verification and Hotel Booking Delivery.
The API sandbox also allows developers to build their own API requests according to specifications for delivery of data to Travelocity and receipt of bookings. The portal also provides the developer community with interactive forums, where they can share ideas, code samples, and learn from other developers how to best use the API to streamline data updates and management in the Travelocity system.
“Travelocity is an example of a data-driven business that is using APIs to give its partners a distinct advantage in a competitive environment,” said Oren Michels, co-founder and CEO of Mashery. “Hotels leveraging Travelocity Connect’s APIs can better promote their current available properties to customers with more detail and accuracy.”
Related Link: Travelocity Connect Developers Portal
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/travelocity_launches_hotel_connectivity_platform
One way Room Key is expanding its base of hotels is with previously announced agreements with Trust International, Sabre Hospitality and TravelClick, but these pacts have not been implemented yet.
The Travelocity agreement will fill the gap and the number of properties provided on a white label basis will be tweaked once the three CRS providers - Trust, Sabre and TravelClick - go live, Davis says.
Davis adds that Room Key made the business decision to add hotels “sooner rather than later because we need to satisfy the needs of consumers.”
Get the full story at Tnooz
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/room_key_adds_travelocity_hotel_content_to_satisfy_needs_of_consumers
Nearly four in 10 (38%) did not purchase a single leisure vacation within the past year. In fact, the entire traveler pool remained stagnant at 62% of all U.S. adults – well under pre-recession levels, when over 70% traveled for leisure. U.S. economic recovery is certainly happening – just not for everyone.
These findings suggest that travel industry growth is being curbed by disparity within the consumer population; some worked back up to taking extravagant vacations while others still struggle to fit travel back in their budgets. According to PhoCusWright's U.S. Consumer Travel Report Fourth Edition, early boomers (ages 45-54) are having an especially hard time. Their travel consumption took a turn for the worse over the past year as vacation dreams succumbed to the reality of college tuition, supporting elderly family members, retirement planning and a looming debt crisis. Incidence of travel within this group fell by 3% to 60%, and average trip expenditure among those who traveled dropped by over 10%.
"While it's encouraging to hear travel companies talk about breaking records rather than recuperating from recessionary setbacks, our research demonstrates how the recovery has left a significant portion of people behind," says Carroll Rheem, senior director, research at PhoCusWright. "The dream of taking a well-deserved vacation has remained a fantasy for many would-be travelers. We expect to see improved results across the spectrum in 2012, but there is no doubt that value-consciousness will trump indulgence in many travel purchase decisions this year."
Get the full story at PhoCusWright
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/many_would_be_travelers_still_not_spending
This includes direct online sales or multichannel transactions where consumers interact with travel agents, hotels or airlines across a number of touch points, including stores, online, social media, peer reviews and smartphone or tablet apps, according to research by Deloitte.
The study shows that 15% of UK travellers going abroad use online travel agents’ websites as part of their research before purchasing, 13% use package holiday websites and 13% price comparison websites.
By contrast, 12% of those researching for domestic travel went directly to a hotel website, 9% used hotel room price comparison websites and 9% browsed a catalogue or brochure.
Speaking at the Abta Travel Matters conference in London, Deloitte head of travel, hospitality and leisure Graham Pickett said: “The digital age has enabled consumers to broaden their horizons in their choice of holiday destination.
Get the full story at Travolution
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_dramatic_impact_digital_has_made_on_travel_purchases
According to an HRS study, almost one third of business travellers have now booked a hotel room from a mobile device. By 2014, HRS expects that one in five business trips will be booked from smartphones or tablet PCs.
Jon West, Managing Director of HRS UK and Ireland, said: "Mobile applications have become a significant sales channel for HRS and its hotel partners. The high annual growth rates confirm the increasing significance of mobile solutions.
“Business travellers in particular often book spontaneously and at short notice. Mobile booking tools thus enable travellers to react to circumstantial changes and spontaneously reschedule their stay, for example, to cater for a last-minute meeting.”
Get the full story at TravelDailyNews
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/hrs_mobile_hotel_bookings_on_the_rise
Expedia’s focus on social and mobile to woo the next generation of travel customers is likely to help the forthcoming float of Facebook and its valuation of $100 billion.
Writing for Travolution sister site travelweekly.co.uk, David Stevenson says in his monthly City Insider piece that the latest trading updated was very positive for the global travel giant.
Stevenson, who is also the author of the Financial Times’ Adventurous Investor column said: “the most important trend is that Expedia is betting the bank on social and mobile”.
Get the full story at Travolution
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/expedia_betting_the_bank_on_social_and_mobile
Additionally, the easy-to-use hotel search engine introduces an expanded list of hotel partners and unveils its new Facebook, which consumers can now visit for a chance to win an exciting weekend getaway with friends.
“While a weekend getaway or a family summer vacation is intended to build enjoyable, long-lasting memories, dealing with the hassle of booking a hotel stay can often be an overwhelming, time-consuming and frustrating task. We see our full site launch today as the first step in building relationships with travelers who can use Room Key’s newly developed tools to elevate the hotel shopping experience from one of uncertainty to one that’s a simple, social solution,” said John F. Davis III, chief executive officer at Room Key. “With website traffic reaching nearly two million visitors per month in our first 90 days, we’re thrilled with the consumer response to Room Key and will continue to expand our offerings as part of our ongoing commitment to helping travelers search, book and relax.”
According to Marriot International, in addition to comprehensive hotel descriptions and relevant pricing information, Room Key now offers an unmatched shortlist feature that enables consumers to compare properties across multiple locations, share their top picks and collaborate with family and friends via email, Facebook and Twitter. Room Key has also added consumer reviews to its hotel properties, delivering consumers the added confidence that they are making the hotel choice that is right for them.
Room Key has been met with a strong reception from the hospitality industry as well, enabling it to make great strides toward its mission to enable travelers to efficiently select and confidently book directly with the right hotel. With the announcement of new direct connect hotel partners Best Western, Loews Hotels, Preferred Hotel Group, and World Hotels, each of which will be live on the site in the coming months, Room Key has expanded both economy and luxury offerings. Additionally, consumers will soon be able to book directly with multiple, independent hotels and hotel chains through new partnerships with Sabre Hospitality Solutions, TravelClick and Trust International.
To celebrate peeling off the website’s beta tag, Room Key has kicked off its “One Suite Weekend”
giveaway on its new Facebook page, encouraging groups of up to four to enter-to-win an unforgettable weekend getaway. During the 10-week promotion, friends, family members, neighbors and more will share on the brand’s Facebook page – via photos and essays – why their group deserves to win the weekend of a lifetime. Room Key will then select the top 10 finalists, and consumers will vote to determine the winners. The first place winners receive a three-night stay at the hotel of their choice from among Room Key’s 23,000 founding partner hotel properties around the world, round-trip airfare to their selected destination, transportation to and from their hotel and $1,000 spending money.
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/room_key_exits_beta_launches_new_tools
With reviews becoming an increasingly powerful way to drive up travel firms’ Click Through Rates on Google, Travolution has had a quick look at how leading UK travel brands are exploiting this.
The search engine itself claims that having a decent star rating on search results accounts for a 17% uptick in CTR, up from 10% in quarter three last year.
No surprise, then, that the travel industry has been attracting the attention of a new generation of review management platforms like Feefo and Reevoo.
Get the full story at Travolution
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/google_urged_to_up_its_game_on_travel_reviews
In a statement, the UK company reiterated that it saw record sales numbers in Q1 2012, with revenue growing by 34 percent compared to the first quarter of 2011.
Livebookings says the number of ‘seated diners’ grew by 65 percent to 3.8 million in the first quarter of this year, and that its consumer-facing website Bookatable saw more than 1 million visits in a month for the first time.
Headquartered in London, with offices across Europe and the USA, Livebookings competes directly with OpenTable, which went public in 2009 after raising roughly $50 million in venture funding.
Get the full story at The Next Web
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/livebookings_europes_opentable_raises_24_million_round
Things didn’t quite look so rosy for Google, though. Searches on Google.com, according to Hitwise, declined 3% in April 2011 compared to the previous month and were down 5% year-over-year. Google, of course, still remains far ahead of its competition. In April, almost 64.5% of all U.S. searches were powered by Google.
The 65 smaller search engines Hitwise also tracks only accounted for 6.51% of U.S. searches, by the way.
While Bing is still losing money – and while there have been some rumors about Microsoft trying to sell its search engine to Facebook – there can be little doubt that Microsoft’s persistence is slowly paying off and eating into Google’s still sizable lead. Leaving out the searches it powers on Yahoo, Bing itself, of course, still remains a niche player at under 15%, but crossing the 30% barrier is quite an achievement for Bing.
Get the full story at TechCrunch
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/bing_now_powers_over_30_of_us_searches
The percentage of Americans planning to travel between May and October is up from 61 percent last April and 56 percent in April 2010.
For the second consecutive year, the outlook for summer travel continues to brighten with more than three in five U.S. adults (64%), or an estimated 154 million Americans, planning on taking at least one trip for leisure purposes during the next six months. The percentage of Americans planning to travel between May and October is up from 61 percent last April and 56 percent in April 2010.
The latest results of the travelhorizons™ quarterly report, co-authored by MMGY Global and the U.S. Travel Association, are based on a survey of 2,200 U.S. adults taken in April 2012.
"The April travelhorizons results come as welcome news for destinations and travel companies ahead of the summer and fall travel seasons," said Roger Dow, president and CEO of the U.S. Travel Association. "We are seeing a renewed enthusiasm for travel among consumers and barring any dramatic events, we believe that domestic travel will remain on solid footing through the summer travel season."
Business travel is expected to improve slightly in the next six months, compared to the same timeframe as last year, with 17 percent of U.S. adults planning at least one business trip between May and October, a typically slow period for such travel. An encouraging sign that general business activity in the U.S. is on the mend is that business travelers took an average of 6.3 trips in the past twelve months, the highest average number in the past five years.
The overall Traveler Sentiment Index™ (TSI), which tracks Americans' evolving attitudes toward travel, reached 93.5 in April, nearly ten points higher than April 2011 (March 2007=100). It was also significant that April's TSI remained essentially unchanged from the level of 93.6 in February, bucking the concern and speculation that higher gasoline prices earlier in 2012 would depress travel sentiment, as it did in 2011.
"While a more substantial uptick in the overall Index would signal an even more robust turnaround from the industry's recent malaise, the results of the April survey clearly reveal that travelers have become more confident in their personal financial situation. The forthcoming summer travel season is therefore a wonderful time for travel service suppliers to capitalize on this growing optimism," said Peter Yesawich, vice chairman of MMGY Global.
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/u.s._summer_travel_outlook_brightens_record_gains_in_leisure_travel_intenti
Facebook usually shows four to seven ads per page on its website, but only a few ads per day in its mobile news feed. That means it makes a lot less money when you visit from your little devices. In fact, this week Facebook had to warn potential investors in its IPO that the more people who access it from mobile instead of the web, the worse its business is doing.
Can Facebook get away with showing more ads on mobile without turning us off?
Way back when Facebook launched in 2004 it was just a website, and it hardly showed ads at all. Over the years it launched a special mobile website called m.facebook.com, and apps for iPhone, Android, BlackBerry, and just about any device you can think of.
Get the full story TechCrunch
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/americans_now_spend_more_time_on_facebook_mobile_than_its_website
Online distribution is getting more and more important for the hospitality industry in Europe – and dependant on a few major players. On average more than three* out of ten hotel rooms are nowadays bought online and this market share is still growing rapidly.
Over the last few years Online Travel Agencies, Online Review Sites and Search Engines have converged and distinctions between them turn out to be rather academic than practical. Nowadays Online Travel Agencies offer hotel reviews and the majority of Review Provider Sites offer booking links vice versa. Search Engines have shown up with booking and review tools, too.
On the other hand, the number of relevant market actors is declining significantly and the market shows tendencies towards at least a narrow oligopoly. In the course of this developments the atomistically structured hospitality markets in Europe, that are still characterized by small and medium sized enterprises, are facing practises in the field of digital distribution, online hotel reviews and metasearches that more and more hoteliers consider to be imbalanced or unfair.
Rate, distribution and product sovereignty must remain with the hotel. Whereas this general market principle should be a matter of course, an increasing number of hotels is losing control of their genuine product as a consequence of emerging pressure by distribution partners.
Therefore, HOTREC aligned the following Benchmarks of Fair Practises in Online-Distribution to keep the markets transparent, open and competitive for the benefit of guests, intermediates and hotels:
1. No unauthorized use of hotel brands for e.g. search engine marketing (SEM), domain names (grabbing) and other types of online-marketing
Some distribution partners use protected hotel brands for their search engine marketing to divert online requests to their sites. Occupying web domains, which feature an explicit similarity to existing branded internet presences of hotels, in order to generate more hits is to be banned, too.
2. No mandatory rate parity
Rate parity mandatorily imposed by distribution partners maintains identical rates for the same room type and identical booking conditions across all online or even offline channels. This wide spread term is levering out the pricing as a key market instrument at the disposition of the hotel entrepreneur and distorts competition results.
3. No mandatory availability parity
If the hotel is obliged by contract to grant any potential online or even offline availability of rooms simultaneously to all distribution partners, basic competition forces are brought out of kilter. Granting availability even of the last room (“LRA”) at any time to an online distribution agent undermines the hotel management’s capacities.
4. No minimum availability
The demand from distribution partners for a minimum level of availability of rooms in number and/or type is an important market barrier especially for small and medium sized hotels and hotels with seasonal peaks of demand.
5. No mandatory access to all of the hotel's offers (no “full content”)
A hotel being driven to deliver the full range of all its room and packages types at the disposition
of distribution partners loses its necessary flexibility to adjust to market requirements.
6. No intransparent auction models (no “biasing”)
The customer should be made aware if the genuine ranking list is subject to other criteria as star categories, guests’ recommendations, rates or distances. Especially if the ranking is influenced by the amount of additional commission a hotel is willing to spend, the customer should be informed about this policy.
7. Rate clearness and rate truth in search engine marketing (SEM)
Distribution partners shouldn’t advertise discount rates on the web that they haven’t contracted with the hotel and that they are unable to deliver just for the sole purpose to divert demand from the hotel’s own website.
8. No unauthorized displaying on auction portals
A rather new phenomenon in online distribution is an unauthorized copying of hotel offers and displaying on auction portals. This method can be compared with a “short selling position” at the stock exchange and leads to damages to the hotel.
9. Adequate reaction times
Distribution partners grant their hotel partners a period ranging from 2 days to 6 weeks to adjust the lists of bookings according to no shows and cancellations before the commission payment is determined. In particular, small and mediums sized hotels need a longer period than just a few days to perform this exercise and to prevent damages.
10. No commissions on “No shows”, taxes or non-pre-booked services
Distribution partners shouldn’t enforce commissions for a turnover that hasn’t been realized or conveyed by them in the end.
11. Cooperation with qualified channel managers
Notably small and medium sized hotels are relying on the support of channel managers to cope with the challenges of digital distribution. Therefore online distribution partners shouldn’t refuse co-operation with qualified channel management tools.
12. Distribution channels must be agreed upon bindingly
The hotel should be informed by the contracting partners on their distribution channels and their potential affiliate programmes that they are going to serve with the hotel’s offers. This information should be made available in advance and/or the hotel should be granted the right to make adjustments later on.
13. No unauthorized “depacketizing”
Rates that have been designated to tour operators to be sold to the customer in travel packages only must not melt into the free web offer as a “rooms only” deal.
14. Official star classification
Distribution partners should respect and ensure the correct display of official hotel stars. They should match the star data base with the official sources regularly, supply information about the official star classification in accordance with the system in place in the country/countries concerned, and specify when they use a self-made classification system. Star symbols must not be used for guest reviews, so as to avoid any confusion with official hotel classifications.
15. Search engines should honour the best organic fit
In full respect for the need to refinance, search engines should ensure that the best organic fit to a hotel request is not disappearing in amounts of third parties’ adverts and banned as an also-ran only on follow-up pages.
16. Meta search engines should crawl hotel websites and display them equally
Meta search engines should include the hotel websites or the hotel companies’ computer reservation systems (CRS) into their range of offer and display the results equally. If the best available rate is to be found on the hotel’s website, the customer should be informed about.
17. Terminology should be according to EN ISO 18513:2003
Distribution partners shouldn’t admix the offers of hotels and other types of accommodation. Any categorisation should be according to the terminology defined by the international and European standard EN ISO 18513:2003.
18. Guest reviews must be prevented from manipulation and fraud
18.1. Editorial control: Guest reviews should only be published after verification by qualified editorial staff of the authenticity, reliability, and legality of the entry.
18.2. Anonymity: Reviews must not be anonymous to the site provider, through whose intermediation the hotelier should have the possibility to react. The site provider should reconfirm e-mail addresses used by guests and exclude temporary e-mail addresses.
18.3. Actual guests: Site providers should ensure that reviews of a hotel are provided only by guests, who have actually stayed in the hotel. Therefore, guests should indicate their date of stay in the hotel and only refer to hotel facilities they have actually made us of in the hotel. Guests should have the possibility to express their comments also via “open” texts.
18.4. Neutrality: Information displayed on review sites should be truthful and not biaised impurely towards the user in order to divert him to third parties’ booking channels.
18.5. Quality assurance: The review site should indicate the source of individual reviews, if they originally stem from a third party’s website in order to give guests and hoteliers the possibility to trace back the review.
18.6. Correct and up-to-date data: Site providers should ensure that hotel contact data, basic contents, availability or rate figures shown on their sites are displayed accurately, and that changes requested by the property owners to these data are carried out promptly.
Sites should only display current reviews. After a maximum of two years, reviews should no longer influence the rating and should be deleted automatically.
18.7. Evaluation criteria: Review suppliers should provide the user with evaluation criteria, which are relevant, with appropriate levels of detail, commensurate with the characteristics of the hotel, and be open for additional questions on request by the hotel.
18.8. Right of reply: In case a review is posted (positive or negative), sites should automatically inform the hotel about it (e.g. by an e-mail “alert” system) and offer the hotel the chance to react. Such a procedure will allow the hotel to assess and manage guest complaints actively and promptly. When available, use should also be made of the official ombudspersons for the hotel industry and their mediation services.
18.9. Legal certainty: Reviews should be truthful and based on the personal experiences of their authors. Hoteliers have a legal right of protection against defamatory criticisms and users should be informed thereof. False factual statements should be removed from sites in a quick and non-bureaucratic manner.
19. Transparency
Providers should indicate the nature of their business in order to make clear to the users, whether these latter are visiting e.g. a travel community and/or a site providing reviews only or an online travel agent providing booking facilities directly or indirectly.
Related Link: HOTREC
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_european_hospitality_industry_is_calling_for_fairer_practices_in_online
Orbitz is seeing some interesting differences between how travelers book through mobile compared to the desktop version of our websites. While it typically sees same-day reservations hovering around 14 percent of total hotel reservations made through a desktop computer browser, that number surges to 65 percent when you look at bookings made through mobile devices. In the past last minute travelers had to "walk up" to a hotel's front desk and inquire about the rates available at that particular hotel tonight – making it very tough to compare options. Now travelers can easily search across properties available nearby, compare prices, check out photos and consult reviews before finalizing their decision and making their booking.
There's another reason for travelers to consider "going mobile" when planning travel: Orbitz and others are able to offer "Mobile Steals" - exclusive mobile-only rates - to users who search from a mobile device. Many of hotel suppliers recognize that the heavy skew towards same-day reservations provide an opportunity to fill rooms that they know will otherwise go unsold, and they are willing to offer significant discounts of up to 50 percent off the rates available through other channels to consumers accessing f.e. Orbitz from a mobile device. Just this week for example, Orbitz was offering a great four-star resort property in Scottsdale, Ariz., on Orbitz.com for $129, already a highly competitive rate, but the resort provided an additional discount for mobile users as part of our "Mobile Steals" offering, bringing the rate down to $83 per night. Bottom line: If you are not shopping for travel on a mobile device, you could be leaving money on the table, or in this case, the nightstand.
Get the full story at USA Today
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/mobile_searches_may_yield_better_hotel_deals
The new National Travel and Tourism Office gives the industry a major platform for influencing policies across the federal government. The office will be the “central driving force” for travel and tourism policy in the federal government, said Commerce Secretary John Bryson in a press call today.
The strategy also encompasses further steps to ease entry for foreign visitors; a promise to better coordinate federal programs that affect tourism, and government support of travel -related research.
“We want the world to know there has not been a better time to visit the U.S. and America is truly open for business,” said Bryson.
Get the full story at Travel Market Report
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/at_long_last_u.s._launches_national_tourism_strategy
On Orbitz.com, once you get to the page for a particular property (let's call it "Hotel A") the company shows consumers a list of alternative hotel recommendations. This list is primarily made up of nearby properties that were ultimately booked by customers who had also viewed Hotel A. That's a pretty useful feature already, but Orbitz is then able to personalize that list by taking into account factors such as whether it sees that the user is using a Mac or a PC.
Similarly, if you start a hotel search and tell Orbitz you want to visit Orlando this summer with your kids, you'd probably hope to see on that first page of results a list of hotels that include options like a swimming pool, rooms with two beds and free breakfast. On the other hand if you are a romantic couple traveling without kids, you're likely going to want a hotel that has a more stylish feel, and potentially one that specifically doesn't cater to families. Orbitz is able to look at the way a given hotel's conversion varies based on whether or not the traveling party includes kids or not. Using this information it can create a "kid friendliness" score for hotels that are particularly preferred by people traveling with kids; similarly it is able to create a "kid avoidance" score for hotels that adults traveling without kids seem to avoid. Those scores are then used by the algorithms that decide which hotels to put at the top of the list of results Orbitz shows to customers when they're searching on its site, based on whether it sees them traveling with or without kids.
Get the full story at USA Today
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/mac_users_book_fancier_hotels_than_pc_users
Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts has unveiled a revamped website that will allow travellers to experience the world’s most enchanting destinations even before their journeys begin. Enhanced features, which include sharing the best of the group’s photography, will help travellers get closer to their destinations. To commemorate the new site, Shangri-La will launch the “#LovingTheMoment” Instagram initiative to encourage everyone to share photos of their location.
“After 10 months in the making, we are proud to launch the new Shangri-La.com, which is just the beginning of an exciting line-up of digital and social initiatives that we will be rolling out in the coming year to create richer user experiences for our guests,” said Michael Leong, director of corporate digital marketing at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts. “We hope the site will make it easier for our guests to explore destinations, make and manage bookings, connect and share through their social media communities, and allow travelers who have not yet stayed with us to have a beautiful entry into the world of Shangri-La.”
Getting Immersed in Shangri-La’s World
From water views at Shangri-La’s Rasa Sayang Resort and Spa, Penang to a bird’s-eye view of Sydney Harbour at Shangri-La Hotel, Sydney, visitors will be taken on visual journeys that bring the hotel and destination experience to life through imagery of the setting, food, services and facilities.
The images featured on the new website were carefully selected to illustrate the story of each hotel and reflect the romance of travel and Shangri-La’s heart-warming service. In addition, each individual property page now features a “Your Shangri-La Story” section, which transports travellers to the hotel and destination through a compelling narrative.
To celebrate the sharing of the group’s best photography, Shangri-La is encouraging travellers to share photos that tell a story about cities they are in through the “#LovingTheMoment” Instagram initiative. During the initiative’s two themed phases, travellers will have the opportunity to share their photos that capture the places and food they have experienced.
Booking Made Easier
The new website features a user-friendly booking engine that was tested by Shangri La.com users for four months to help ensure a more convenient confirmation process. With fewer steps and pages to complete a booking, it has never been easier for travellers to book their Shangri-La stay.
For travellers who prefer to access Shangri-La.com while on the go, fully optimized mobile versions of the site have been created for iPhone, Android and Blackberry users. Now no matter how people connect to the website, they will have access to all the features that Shangri-La has to offer online.
To make booking stays for frequent travellers easier and more convenient, Shangri-La will be launching a mobile application for iPhone and iPad users at the end of June. The application will allow travellers to find a Shangri-La hotel, book their stay, and access all the latest offers. It will also let members of Shangri-La’s guest recognition and reward programme Golden Circle manage their accounts with a few easy touches.
Getting More Social
Recognising that Shangri-La’s presence has moved beyond the boundaries of its own site and into the online communities of social media, the new website will integrate with popular social media platforms including Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, Weibo, Kaixin and Youku. The integrations will not only enable greater connectivity for fans and followers to engage with the Shangri-La brands and share specific Shangri-La.com content with their own networks, but also expand the reach of the new website beyond its own pages.
Expanding Benefits for Reward Members
Members of Shangri-La’s guest recognition and reward programme, Golden Circle, will be pleased to learn that the Golden Circle website has also been revamped with increased functionality to allow them to be more hands-on when it comes to their stays. Golden Circle members will now get to enjoy features including:
- Ability to fully manage points as well as redemption bookings
- Access to a list of all future reservations at Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts
- Ability to make online requests and check the status of each request online
- Submit queries regarding earning points, redeeming points and benefits
To celebrate the launch of the new Golden Circle website, members will be able to earn double points by booking online at http://www.shangri-la.com by 31 May 2012 for stays up to 30 June 2012.
Related Link: Shangri-La Hotels and Resorts
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/new_shangri_la_hotels_website_gets_more_social_faster_booking
Extending the Hilton brand's commitment to well-designed and thoughtful spaces, Hilton Design Studio (HDS) provides a cost-effective and time-saving solution for Hilton owners, operators and design consultant teams. Now available for hotels across the Americas, HDS will evolve as the central design development platform for guest rooms and public spaces at all Hilton Hotels & Resorts properties worldwide. While Hilton Hotels & Resorts continues to grow and evolve with the largest development pipeline in its history and a three-year, $3 billion plan of significant property renovations across the global portfolio, HDS streamlines the arduous design process and minimizes costs.
The new tool allows for creativity and flexibility in the design process while providing parameters based on the brand's design guidelines. It provides a consistent brand design narrative while embracing cultural nuances and styles across the global Hilton portfolio. HDS offers users a guided experience to explore the Hilton Lobby and new guest room design narratives and an interactive 'design a guest room' component built on brand-approved specifications and three style palettes - classic, transitional and modern. The real-time process allows users to quickly choose their guest room layout; style and color palettes; furniture, fixtures and equipment (FF&E); flooring and artwork.
A new FF&E concept is Hilton ValetTM, a multifunctional armoire that includes a built-in ironing board and power outlet for an iron, an "unfolding" closet space, a built-in luggage rack, a safe for valuables positioned at standing height, and a refrigerator and coffee/tea service that both discreetly slide into drawers so they are only visible when in use. The result is a streamlined, uncluttered space that helps guests feel at home.
Get the full story at Hospitality.Net
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/hilton_technology_drives_new_design_innovations
Availpro launched its new Direct Click Manager service, enabling hotel owners to take advantage of the new commercial opportunity offered by TripAdvisor. Independent hotel owners are now able to level the playing field with distributor sites when users search for availability from their hotel's TripAdvisor page. The Kelkoo and Trivago price comparison sites have now been integrated into the Availpro Direct Click Manager offer on the same basis.
Availpro: the official supplier of more direct bookings for hotel owners
TripAdvisor is the world's number one travel site with more than 52 million unique visitors each month, making it a key platform for hotel owners. However, until now, hotels have only been able to advertise themselves on the website using the Business Listing option. With the new Direct Click Manager service, the hotel's official website appears in the list of distribution channels when a user searches for availability on TripAdvisor and on price comparison sites. With Availpro, the hotel's website is guaranteed to be listed among the top three search results. This feature is now also available on the Kelkoo and Trivago price comparison sites.
One of the key benefits of this offer is a guaranteed flow of qualified visitors, with users already searching for availability on the hotel's page. This service uses a cost per click (CPC) model. Matthieu Croisiez, director of the Hôtel de Sèvres in Paris, was one of the first people to use this service: "As soon as I heard that Availpro had released its Direct Click offer for TripAdvisor, I signed up immediately! I can now place my own booking engine alongside the OTAs already present on TripAdvisor and similar websites. This delivers an instant, measurable benefit. This channel used to cost me around 15% (since customers had to book via another website). It now costs me three times less than this. I'm delighted that Trivago has been included in the Direct Click offer."
Availpro cements its role as a generator of additional business for hotel owners
With this offer, Availpro continues to deliver on its core promise – to provide independent hotel owners with the tools they need to improve and increase their sales in a highly competitive market. Availpro was founded in 2001 to provide independent hotel owners with a booking engine that they could use to compete with hotel chains. With Direct Click Manager, independent hotel owners are now able to level the playing field with distributor sites on TripAdvisor and price comparison websites.
"Availpro has a strong customer base of hundreds of active hotels, meaning it can negotiate favourable positioning on TripAdvisor and price comparison sites on behalf of its users. Until now, this level of exposure has only been available to distributor sites. Users will be able to monitor their results in real time using their Availpro extranet dashboard. We expect the Direct Click offer to continue expanding, to include other price comparison sites," explains Philippe Lamarche, Chairman of the Board of Directors and founder of Availpro. Despite this new opportunity, hotel owners should remember that the quality of their offer, and the way in which it is presented, remain critical. While this service undoubtedly offers hotels greater visibility, users will only choose to book through their websites rather than through distributor sites if the hotel's official website is genuinely attractive.
Related Link: AvailPro
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/availpro_launches_its_new_direct_click_manager_service
With more than 1,000 hotels under nine brands, Starwood Hotels & Resorts is the first Pegasus customer to go live on the connection.
"As the largest global operator of upscale hotels in China, we have long recognized the hospitality business opportunity in the country," said Qian Jin, senior vice president, operations, Greater China for Starwood. "Today, the burgeoning middle class is not only traveling domestically, but has also expanded their travel beyond Chinese borders. Our hotels in China will continue to reap the rewards of domestic and inbound travel, and our global portfolio will tap growing outbound demand through the Pegasus/TravelSky connection."
As the number of domestic and international Chinese travelers surges, the agreement makes Starwood properties available to the 7,000 travel agents who work with TravelSky managing the country"s growing demand. TravelSky also now has full access to the Pegasus Hotel Content Database (HCD), the largest repository of hotel descriptive content in the world, which houses nearly 1.5 million images, videos and virtual tours, as well as property and room descriptions.
"TravelSky, often referred to as the fifth GDS, has gone global from a hospitality perspective," said Steve Lapekas, executive vice president, corporate business development for Pegasus Solutions. "As established global chains expand into Greater China, and Chinese outbound travel maintains double-digit growth, this partnership provides a valued and reliable connection to our established distribution network of nearly 100,000 properties. We have completed the certification process to drive immediate value to Starwood, as well as the entire Pegasus distribution network."
TravelSky has long-dominated the airline market in China, now recognized as both the second largest travel market in the Asia-Pacific region and the world"s second largest economy. According to PhoCusWright, China"s total travel market in 2012 is projected to approach US$74 billion. As travelers from the country"s exploding middle class clamor for international bookings, the new connection with Pegasus offers accessibility to the single largest collection of electronically bookable hotels, added QiangXue, vice president, tour and transport solutions, Travelsky Ltd.
"We maintain more than 100,000 terminals in over 300 Chinese cities. Additionally, 7,000 travel agencies and all the global distribution systems depend on access to our air central reservation systems," said QiangXue. "With Pegasus, we now address the hospitality needs of our 1.2 billion customers by allowing them to book a variety of hotels anywhere in the world."
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/pegasus_hotel_inventory_gets_distribution_to_fifth_gds_travelsky
As a result, our air travel agency bookings increased by 6.7% in the first quarter of 2012, driving distribution revenue growth to 8.0%. Recent migrations and organic passenger growth fueled PB growth to 23.3%, which together with the good performance of our broad IT Solutions business drove revenue growth in this segment to 10.4%. Group revenue therefore increased by 8.5%, while EBITDA growth stood at 5.4%1. Adjusted2 profit for the period increased by a remarkable 22.1%.
The Distribution and IT Solutions businesses played equally important roles in the company’s performance during the quarter: revenue in the Distribution business increased by 8.0%, with total bookings, including both air travel agency and non air bookings, up 6.1% to 132.3 million during the quarter.
In addition, during the quarter we continued our significant effort and investment to expand our business into new areas for growth, namely in the North American market, leading to the announcement in April of two landmark agreements in this market: a technology and content agreement with Expedia in North America, and an Altéa contract with Southwest Airlines to manage their international traffic.
Get the full story at Amadeus (PDF 180 KB)
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/amadeus_growth_trend_continues_on_rising_travel_volumes
Priceline has long been a star in the online travel sector, owing much of its success to international bookings on its popular European travel site Booking.com.
But the weakness of the euro against the dollar is likely to erode the value of Priceline's international bookings - which are expressed in U.S. dollars - in the second quarter, the company said.
Priceline said the total value of its bookings increased by 43.9 percent to $6.7 billion, including an increase of 54 percent in the value of international bookings.
"I think the top line growth was strong, better than expected for the international hotel business," Priceline Chief Executive Jeffery Boyd told Reuters. "All in all, a pretty good quarter."
The company, however, forecast second-quarter growth in travel bookings of 26 percent to 31 percent and said it sees international travel bookings up 32 percent to 37 percent.
Get the full story at Reuters, and Priceline (PDF 250 KB)
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/priceline_profit_up_outlook_weakens
Elasticity has been a subject of much discussion – and a heavy component of “gut-instinct” pricing for years, says Bonnie Spalding, vice president of APAC operations, The Rainmaker Group.
“The environments that are best suited to measuring elasticity are not common in a real-world business environment, so integration of these measures into more science-based approaches has been limited,” says Spalding.
Also elasticity is relative – it will vary by customer, by channel, relative to the comp set (a competitive set consists of a group of hotels by which a property can compare itself to the group’s aggregate performance), relative to certain price points etc, she says.
The first part of the challenge can be deciding which element of elasticity to measure.
Get the full story at EyeForTravel
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/planning_for_price_elasticity_based_hotel_revenue_optimisation
Facebook announced Wednesday a series of webinars designed to help small and mid-sized businesses understand and use the new Facebook product offerings, such as Timeline, Offers, Sponsored Stories, and real-time Page Insights. Given the company's impending IPO, and filings that show more than 85 percent of revenue comes from advertising, this looks like a move intended to help drive more usage by small and mid-sized businesses.
According to a survey last month of 100,000 sellers on Facebook by commerce platform vendor Payvment, 39 percent of respondents report having used Facebook Ads, "making this the most prevalent marketing tactic used by sellers to drive traffic to their stores beyond general Facebook marketing--such as promotions and deals posted to their wall--and nearly 70 percent of respondents say they plan to use Facebook Ads again."
Chris Luo, head of small-business marketing for Facebook, described to Inc. two different types of webinars: "One is for existing, more advanced advertisers, and one is for businesses that are new to Facebook's offerings. They will appeal to a wide range of people, from a marketing manager at a small or medium business to a business owner that wants to better understand how to use Facebook to drive sales."
Get the full story at Inc.com
Read also "Facebook to debut webinars for small business"
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/facebooks_new_try_at_wooing_small_businesses
And for good reason: Google+ has been Google's most respectable social effort to date and brands have learned that getting on board services before they get big is often a far better strategy than waiting until it's too late.
While it remains to be seen whether those brands that joined the Google+ bandwagon early will be rewarded with ROI, there is some promising news according to social media analytics provider Simply Measured.
It looked at the Interbrand Top 100 brands that are present on Google+ and found that, six months in, 22% of the brands circler counts exceeding 100,000. Nike, which joined just two months ago, is one of them. All told, the total number of circlers counted has grown 138% since Simply Measured's first report three months ago, and circler engagement is up 112%. Engagement with content, which Simply Measured says is driven primarily by photos and videos, is up too, although not as much (65%).
As one might expect, not all brands and verticals are treated equally on Google+. Four luxury brands -- Ferrari, Gucci, H&M and Burberry -- are tops in terms of the number of circlers they have. Combined, they have more than 2.5m circlers. In terms of verticals, brands in the automotive, electronics and luxury categories are by far the most popular.
Get the full story at Econsultancy
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/google_brand_pages_seeing_adoption_engagement_growth
The funds from Bailador, which specialises in the provision of expansion capital for information technology companies, will assist SiteMinder in further accelerating growth in Europe, Asia and the Americas, with new products and marketing programs aimed at building the online distributor’s client base of hotels that view it as critical to extend their reach on the web.
The capital raising was arranged by Sydney-based corporate advisory firm, Growth Equity Partners.
SiteMinder Managing Director Mike Ford said that since the company’s launch in 2006, SiteMinder had grown rapidly, with over 6000 hotels in 90 countries now using its distribution platform and commission-free booking engine software to generate more than $2 billion in reservation revenue a year.
“Over the past six years, SiteMinder has invested significant capital developing one of the world’s most comprehensive and popular hotel room inventory distribution platforms. We now enjoy a leading market share in the Asia Pacific region and significant traction in key international markets” Mr Ford said. “The additional capital will allow us to quickly build on an already strong European presence, underpinned by the success of our London office which we opened in 2010” he said.
“We will fast-track the development of innovative product features, expand our sales and support capabilities in new and existing markets, and drive further adoption of our platform internationally.”
Mr Ford said SiteMinder was focused on helping hotels lift revenue and improve business efficiencies through technologically advanced, low-cost distribution solutions. “Hoteliers today want smarter, faster and more reliable distribution tools to link their inventory to online channels and to automate the delivery of online reservations directly into their hotel booking systems. SiteMinder is at the forefront of developing cloud-based, zero-transaction-fee technology that helps hotels boost revenue and efficiency,” he said.
Bailador Directors David Kirk and Paul Wilson, who will be joining the SiteMinder board, said: “Bailador seeks to support successful, highly motivated and innovative web-related companies with excellent growth prospects. SiteMinder has developed a leading technology solution, as evidenced by the exceptional growth in their client base and impressive record of customer retention. We are confident that the additional capital will help SiteMinder establish a dominant position in this evolving market and we look forward to partnering with them on their exciting journey.”
SiteMinder, was last year named as one of Australia’s fastest-growing technology companies in the ‘Deloitte Technology Fast 50’ awards based on consistent and exceptional performance over a 3 year period
SiteMinder is a multi-award winning online distribution company whose products are trusted by thousands of accommodation providers in over 90 countries worldwide to help increase online revenue, streamline business processes and drive down customer acquisition costs. The cloud-based product suite continues to set the benchmark in online distribution technology by challenging conventional operating strategies. SiteMinder is redefining distribution.
Related Link: Siteminder
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/siteminder_receives_5_million_investment_to_fund_global_expansion
“RateGain’s expertise in the extraction of rate data from the Web and the GDS and their ability to provide affordable services for our franchisees were reasons for selecting RateGain as a qualified vendor”, explains Rick Summa, Vice President of Procurement Services for Choice Hotels International.
Choice’s franchise hotels -- ranging from limited to full service properties in the economy, mid-market and upscale segments – represent more than 495,000 rooms in the United States and 30-plus countries and territories. Brands include Comfort Inn, Comfort Suites, Quality, Sleep Inn, Clarion, Cambria Suites, MainStay Suites, Suburban, Econo Lodge, Rodeway Inn and Ascend Collection -- historic, boutique and unique hotels that give guests an authentic, local experience.
“As a qualified vendor for Choice franchisees, RateGain is pleased to provide special versions of our PriceGain rate intelligence service that is both affordable and easy to use,” said Bhanu Chopra, CEO of RateGain. “We’re proud that we are able to provide Choice Hotels International franchisees with the most comprehensive and timely rate intelligence data that will be instrumental for optimizing room revenues.”
Related Link: RateGain
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/rategain_awarded_qualified_vendor_status_with_choice_hotels_international
With over 5000 clients and 750+ channel connections, the new office will enable eRevMax to better serve its local partners and global customers.
eRevMax’s expansion into Bengaluru has strengthened its footprint in the region. The fast growing company aims to penetrate new territories and to develop more pioneering products. Initially eRevMax opened a small service office in the city but its success has now led to the opening of a full fledged 4000 sq. ft. office in the heart of the city.
“Our new development centre in Bengaluru is a positive indication of the growing importance of RateTiger solutions in the hospitality industry. We chose Bengaluru, the silicon valley of India, for its highly skilled resources, developed infrastructure and global connectivity. The new team complements the R&D efforts of its Kolkata development center and I foresee its evolution into a multi-faceted team”, said Udai Singh Solanki, CTO & MD India, eRevMax International.
The Bengaluru team has contributed to the successful development and delivery of the hotel guest review management tool – RTReview. The team is now working on eRevMax’s core R&D initiative to create the next generation shopping tool to further enhance RTShopper and RTCorp, thereby taking hotel price intelligence solutions to the next level.
Celebrating a decade in business, the company has been operating in India since its inception at its Kolkata Technology Centre. eRevMax looks forward to continued rapid growth, helping hotels manage online distribution effectively and generate revenue effortlessly, recently launching upgraded versions of its RTSuite and RTCorp tools.
Related Link: eRevMax
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/erevmax_expands_its_india_presence_with_new_office_in_bengaluru
In keeping with its ongoing investment in technology, and a solid commitment to increase the service levels to its clients, Lodging Interactive is rolling out a new solution this month that provides real-time website analytics, key performance metrics, and the latest social media monitoring tools. The InnterACT online client portal is available immediately to Lodging Interactive customers at no additional cost.
Lodging Interactive is an award winning interactive agency exclusively servicing the hospitality industry, and its subsidiary, CoMMingle is an outsourced social media marketing agency that also develops customized solutions for hotels, restaurants and spas.
"The InnterACT branded portal is yet another way in which Lodging Interactive is providing proactive web monitoring tools to our customers," said DJ Vallauri, Lodging Interactive Founder & President. "The digital dashboard provides hoteliers with the ability to remotely access analytical production information about their website performance, search engine ranking performance, as well as the bounce rate and average time spent on the site.
"It's an online repository that contains the data necessary for our clients to access key metric reports to see how well key words are performing," he said. "This means Lodging Interactive customers don't have to go elsewhere to see how well their campaigns are running. They can log in and access real time ranking reports to determine where their website is positioned on Google, Yahoo and Bing, and view their traffic and determine where it's coming from. For example, managers running a new banner ad for their hotel can use this tool to see how much traffic the spot generated as early as the day after the campaign began. Because the dashboard can be customized, hoteliers can view these reports in such a way that is personal to them, so that when they log in, the information they need most is always present, such as website traffic analytics and landing page views."
InnterACT Integrates Social Media Key Performance Indicators
Another key aspect of the InnterACT system is its ability to pull key performance indicators for social media activity. Now hoteliers can see at a quick glance how many "likes" they have on Facebook, "tweets" and "retweets" on Twitter, and "views" their video attracted on You Tube.
"In essence, InnterACT is a business intelligence tool that offers transparency to hoteliers in regard to what is happening with their online marketing," Vallauri said. "Now, in addition to the scheduled delivery of client PDF reports, managers can access data any time they want it or need it."
- InnterACT offers hoteliers the ability to:
- View real-time analytics for a website and/or blog (traffic, keywords, top landing pages, referring sites, etc.)
- Access real-time Search Engine Rankings and keyword reports
- Download archived weekly and monthly management reports
- Monitor a hotel's social media presence on Facebook, Twitter, and YouTube
- Create personalized analytics via the dashboard for quick reference on key performance indicators
- Create customized PDF reports to share with others
- Export data into Excel
In the future, Lodging Interactive will roll out additional functionality within InnterACT -- at no charge -- in order to continually drive relevant analytical data to hoteliers.
Related Link: Lodging Interactive
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/lodging_interactive_launches_website_analytics_social_tool1
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/siteminder_2
Mobile provides unique opportunities to improve the traveller experience, which can lead to customer loyalty. It can also be a great mechanism to capture incremental revenues through upsell of ancillary revenues and reduce operating costs through self-service.
A section of the industry believes that m-commerce is challenging because in many cases the platform to transact over are still immature. But still there are entities like Melia Hotels International that have been quite proactive in coming up with new initiatives in this arena.
Melia Hotels considers its on-site app as one additional service it intends to provide to its guests so they can have the best experience possible while staying with the group.
“We think that in cases such as lifestyle or luxury resorts– like our ME or Paradisus brands - is no longer about having or not an App but what the app can do extra for you to enrich your experience before, during and after your stay,” shared Antonio Batanero, Senior Director Distribution & Ecommerce, The Americas, Melia Hotels International.
The group firmly believes in empowering customers and enhancing their overall experience during the entire planning and booking stage.
Get the full story at EyeForTravel
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/making_the_most_of_m_commerce_as_a_hotel_marketer
Kayak Software Corp., the online- travel company that’s planning an initial public offering, reported a profit for the quarter ended in March amid rising demand for trip-planning information over the Web.
Net income was $4.15 million, or 11 cents a share, compared with a loss of $6.91 million, or $1.33, in the same period the previous year, the Norwalk, Connecticut-based company said today in a U.S. regulatory filing. Revenue rose 39 percent to $73.3 million.
Co-founder and Chief Executive Officer Daniel Stephen Hafner received total compensation of $950,000 last year, down from $1.62 million in 2010. His salary was unchanged at $300,000, while last year’s package included a $650,000 bonus and the 2010 payout was increased by a $1.32 million options award.
Get the full story at Bloomberg.
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/kayak_swings_to_quarterly_profit_on_rising_online_travel_demand
The startup developed a set of algorithms to crawl and parse the Web’s biggest travel information databases (like Wikitravel and Open Street Maps), before ranking the data to determine which pieces have the most relevance to its users and serving them up as rich travel guides.
Of course, this is no easy task, and Triposo has been in an ongoing process of honing these content algorithms, launching 30 destination travel guides for iOS and Android to help test the waters and encourage user feedback. Today, Triposo is ready to take its next big step forward, officially unveiling its new and improved iOS app, which aims to make the old hands of travel content, like Lonely Planet, shake in their boots.
The main attraction of its new app, says COO Richard Osinga, is that Triposo is now a “self-starter” — in other words, a travel guide that actively offers suggestions as to where users should go next. Traditionally, he says, travel guides require users to do all the work in terms of search and discovery, but, as you make your way around, the startup’s new app takes into account your location, the time of day, the weather and the hours of local businesses in your vicinity to present you with the best destinations and travel options. In Rome and need to find the best coffee place nearby? Triposo has your back.
Get the full story at TechCrunch
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/triposos_mobile_travel_guide_actively_recommends_your_next_destination
The hotel industry is currently obsessed with social media. It is particularly obsessed with guest reviews on sites like TripAdvisor and the major Online Travel Agency (OTA) sites. Review scores and volumes affect a hotel's business, and - increasingly - executive compensation, as more and more hotel companies link general managers' bonuses to their hotels' performance on review sites. This week Hotel Compete is proud to launch the Guest Review Rankings Report- a brand new resource that provides hotels, analysts and other interested parties a brand new perspective on review scores across major lodging markets.
The Untapped Opportunity of the Wisdom of Crowds
Hotels' social media capabilities have progressed considerably over the last couple of years, with Reputation Management the main focus of an increasing level of activity. But despite the great strides that hotels have made in interacting with reviews, the industry is still missing an analytical opportunity.
Industry wisdom has it that hotel review scores are unreliable, because reviewers tend to post reviews when they are either very happy or very unhappy with their experience in a hotel. But the data does not support that preconception. In fact, research shows that similar hotels in the same market tend to attract similar and consistent scores - hence over or under-performance relative to the average can have a significant impact on performance. If analysts can understand what constitutes average performance, and how hotels compare to that average, it can help to predict future hotel performance.
How to Keep Track of Hotel Review Performance
The challenge both for individual hotels and hotel analysts is that no good baseline exists for comparing hotel reviews across multiple sites. Different review sites use different scales, and gather responses and compile scores in different ways. To compare scores across sites is to compare apples with oranges, so market-level analysis tends to focus on individual review sites. Multi-site comparison can be done using one of the many analysis tools currently available, but it's up to the hotel to select its own comp set. And anyone who reads this site knows our views on the shortcomings of hotel comp set selection.
It's time for an objective way to compare hotel review performance on an "Apples-to-Apples" basis. Hotel Compete's Guest Review Rankings Report has been designed to solve exactly this problem. This bi-weekly report - which is based on the top 25 US hotel markets - provides regularly updated Guest Review Rating scores every single hotel in that market.
Hotel review scores are a great predictor of hotel performance, provided you understand them. The scores in this report are represented on a 1-10 scale, making it easy to compare properties in the same hotel class, as well as overall market rankings.
Related Link: Hotel Compete / Guest Review Rankings Report
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/hotel_compete_introduces_the_guest_review_rankings_report
A biweekly series kicking off this Wednesday (May 9) at 12:30 p.m. ET/9:30 a.m. PT will focus on educating small and midsized businesses and agencies on best practices and the social network’s new ad products, including offers and real-time insights.
Next Tuesday, May 15, a weekly series introducing “newbies” to the Facebook advertising platform will debut at 12:30 p.m. ET/9:30 a.m. PT.
Facebook said in announcing the webinars:
The goal of these series is to better arm businesses - those both new to Facebook and more experienced - with the latest tips and product information. These sessions will also take questions from viewers to address specific inquiries businesses may have.
Get the full story at AllFacebook and Facebook Marketing Classroom
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/facebook_to_debut_webinars_for_small_business
Mason uses phrases like “reinvent the multi-trillion-dollar local commerce ecosystem” to paint a rosy picture of Groupon’s future. According to this article, he’s wrong. The company faces a long, tough road ahead. Here is my analysis of Mason’s comments:
Mason claims that “Groupon is a marketing tool that connects consumers and merchants.” Actually, Groupon’s daily deals business tries to keep consumers from building relationships with merchants. Groupon (like other deal companies) does not provide consumer information to merchants. It’s in Groupon’s best interests to have merchants buy another Groupon rather than reach out to consumers directly through a free mechanism like email or Twitter.
Get the full story at VentureBeat
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/groupon_facing_a_long_tough_road_ahead
For Adele Gutman Milne, vice president of sales & marketing for HKHotels in New York City, there is no debate over whether or not hotels should link to the TripAdvisor - of course, you link to TripAdvisor. Her four hotels are all ranked in the top 10 when you search New York City and, for her, TripAdvisor is definitely the great enabler. It’s given her small collection of hotels an enormous amount of visibility and that has translated into bookings. Lots of bookings.
HKHotels has great confidence in its guest experience and that the properties focus on a lot of added-value offers, providing travelers with a great deal for their money. It’s a product well suited for these economic times and it’s translating into lots of very positive reviews on TripAdvisor. To the point that HKHotels proactively invites all its previous guests via email to post a review and even includes a direct link to the TripAdvisor site.
On the other side of the equation is the general manager of a branded property in downtown Boston. He respects TripAdvisor but feels like it does more bad than good. As he said, “Opinions are like bellybuttons. Everyone has one.”
Get the full story at MediaPost
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/tripadvisor_great_enabler_or_evil_empire
Whether it is a weekend getaway to Las Vegas, an adventure trek to remote Easter Island or a historical trip to the great cities of Europe, every travel experience should be special. In exchange for the financial investment travelers make in a trip, most rightly expect a payoff in the form of some much needed R&R, a unique cultural experience or lasting memories with family or friends. It is with that point of view that Orbitz wants to make sure it is not only a site that can offer great prices and choices, but also inspire travel and build memorable trips with suggestions for the best hotels, tours and events.
While that seems intuitive, if not obvious, so much of the travel marketing message is about price as cruise lines, hotels, destinations and airlines try to attract customers with deals and affordability. Orbitz does it too; after all, if it cannot compete on price, its customers can easily find other alternatives.
But new Orbitz wants its brand and message to play up its great prices and travel planning tools as the cornerstone for a fun and memorable trip.
Get the full story at USA Today
Related Link: Orbitz
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/orbitz_catering_to_travel_lusters_with_new_site_design
TBiz Chat provides travelers who need help during the booking process the ability to chat online with a certified agent instead of calling. Travelers and arrangers can connect with an agent in a unique chat forum that is a personal one-on-one experience, as opposed to an agent participating in multiple chats at one time.
“Providing our customers with the best possible experience continues to be the cornerstone of our business,” said Yannis Karmis, president of Travelocity Business. “We know travelers have questions when booking travel and we created the chat tool to help them find solutions and book their travel in an engaging and efficient manner.”
Travelocity Business is known for its superior service due to its highly skilled corporate certified agents. The company has a 95 percent satisfaction score from its VIP customer service program.
Of those customers who tested the new TBiz Chat function, 95 percent said they would use TBiz Chat instead of making a phone call to an agent. And, almost all of the respondents indicated they would use the option again for future travel questions, inquiry or travel requests.
Travelocity Business Customer Service Team is comprised of agents with an average of 10 years corporate travel experience. The agent team is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week and is specially trained to assist travelers, including executives, VIPs and international travelers. In addition, the chat team is also certified in the nuances of chat.
Travelocity Business surveyed its customer base and learned some of the top reasons travelers would use TBiz Chat are:
- Navigational assistance
- Book a new reservation
- Change an existing reservation
- Question regarding an invoice or receipt
- Airline schedule change
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/travelocity_business_launches_tbiz_chat
buuteeq partnered with Killer Infographics to combine some of the best hotel marketing knowledge out there with buuteeq’s unique insights to produce this infographic about hotel Internet marketing. Here are some of the key things to take away from our research:
- It is cheaper to gain an online booking from your website than from both online travel agencies (OTAs) and phone bookings.
- Hotels that engage with social media increase bookings, while those that ignore it lose bookings.
- The largest margin of profit comes from mobile bookers.
- Social media campaigns encourage more bookings than traditional email campaigns.
Get the full story at the buuteeq blog
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_cost_of_hotel_marketing
The digital space has evolved quickly and has made marketers adjust often. The bottom line is that consumer usage of social media has made us focus on content marketing. Content including blogs, social commentary, video’s, articles, and photos that illustrate who we are and what we are about. Simply stated, we need to insert ourselves into the social chatter, and contribute and share content as part of our efforts to engage with our customers.
Is it time to add an image marketing plan to your overall marketing initiatives?
It is certainly time to ensure that within your overall marketing mix, whether it is on Facebook, Twitter, on a brand Pinterest page, or on your website – that photos and images are an important part of the marketing mix.
Get the full story at ideahatching.com
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/images_are_the_new_black_in_social_media
What has 2012 delivered marketers in the way of awesome infographics? This post has rounded up the best of the best -- the ones that are chock full of information, excel at data visualization, and deliver brand new data to marketers.
Take a look at Hubspot's favorite marketing infographics so far in 2012.
Get the full story at Hubspot
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/10_best_marketing_infographics_of_2012_so_far
The infographic published by My Destination on Visual.ly looks at several categories: mobile technology has changed forever, who has embraced mobile technology within the travel industry, travellers and mobile technology, who is leading the way with mobile and social technology, interesting and innovative sites for travellers, and the future.
Among interesting facts and figures on the infographic are the top 5 couchsurfing cities. In first place is New York, followed by Paris, London, Berlin and Istanbul. The US is No 1 out of the top 5 couchsurfing countries, followed by Germany, France, Canada and the UK.
Once travel arrangements are made and it's time to catch a flight, 75pc of smartphone users connect their devices to a free airport Wi-Fi network so they can check flight information services, wait times at security checkpoints, time to reach departure gate and even airport parking.
Get the full story at siliconrepublic.com
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/how_mobile_technology_is_changing_travel
1. The world is increasingly social and mobile - think smart-phones, tablets, e-readers - and is inhabited by rising numbers of tech-savvy consumers. Social and mobile are not going away so now more than ever travel companies must keep pace
The use of social media and rising numbers of people searching the web via mobile phone will continue. A recent Google whitepaper found the number of users researching travel via their mobile devices is expected to grow 51% in 2012. In APAC the case is equally compelling; over 15% are projected to book travel products and services via mobile by 2013. While hotel bookings made via a mobile in Asia are lower than elsewhere, this is changing rapidly. What is more, Asia has the largest number of mobile subscribers in the world (2.1 billion) with a forecasted growth of 50% by 2020.
According to Stu Lloyd, senior director for marketing and membership services, Pacific Asia Travel Association (PATA), mobile bookings “are rising fast especially as some countries like Indonesia and the Philippines leapfrog the use of landlines altogether. Indonesia is also one of the most social-media connected markets in the whole world”.
But are companies ready? According to an EyeforTravel survey of over 500 APAC travel brands in late 2011 57% admitted confusion over how to launch, track and achieve ‘mobile success’. While some players, like Kayak, are getting to grips with the mobile platform there is still work to be done.
“Instead of treating the mobile platform as a down-sized version of the web, look at building travel applications that can only be used with today’s smartphones. These apps would be able to integrate great content with the traveller’s social graph as well as location-awareness,” says Robert Bailey, president and chief excecutive of Abacus International.
Get the full story at EyeForTravel
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/travel_trends_affecting_the_asia_pacific_region
As a travel writer, I'm always looking for new tools I can use to help plan my trips. Lately, there's been lots of talk about a social media site called Pinterest, a free online photo bulletin board that's popular with designers, foodies and crafts people.
But could you use it to plan trips? Well, yes. It turns out that the travel industry, as well as individual travelers, are starting to use this visual social platform with interesting results.
The photos make it easy for a traveler to quickly scan a destination's food, architecture or historic sites. If you're intrigued by a picture, a click on it will take you to more content.
Get the full story at the Los Angeles Times
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/pinterest_spreading_to_the_travel_world
The steam behind the hotel industry’s recovery won’t last forever, and one panelist said the long-term outlook shows signs of weakness.
Anne Lloyd-Jones, managing director, HVS Global Hospitality Services, said demand will weaken through 2016. HVS data shows demand slowing to 1% growth in 2016, down from a forecast of 3% this year. HVS also forecast ADR growth to slow to 3% in 2016, down from an expected 5.5% in 2013.
STR forecasts demand growth of 2% during 2012, slowing to 1.8% growth during 2013.
The sentiment from the panelists was one of optimism, however.
“There are reasons to be concerned, and there are reasons to be positive,” Woodworth said. “The positives outweigh the negatives.”
Get the full story at HotelNewsNow.com
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/hotel_demand_could_weaken_long_term
In the past few years, the explosive popularity of social media has led brands to collect massive followings on Facebook, Twitter, and other networks in what seems little more than a popularity contest to build out a “social presence.” Now that most major brands have spent money and time focused on collecting Likes and followers, the question posed to social media marketers is rapidly shifting to: "What comes next?"
Connecting directly to millions of people with affinity for your brand is not an easy feat, and is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to utilizing social media as a marketing and sales channel. Now marketers must begin to focus on how to activate fans -- turning them into brand advocates and essentially evolving their social media presence into a research lab, idea store, and full-fledged peer-to-peer marketing channel.
Get the full story at MediaPost
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_next_phase_of_social_marketing
"By far, the biggest predictor of engagement was that the post was on a topic relevant to the brand," said Sean Bruich, head of measurement platforms and standards at Facebook. "It impacts everything, from lightweight likes to more invested shares. It's actually one of the most important things a brand can do. People are seeing the content because they liked the brand, and it makes sense that content about the brand will get them engaged."
Despite this evidence, Facebook isn't explicitly telling marketers to ditch their most purely conversational posts. "In general, unrelated posts are not predictive of increased engagement," said Mr. Bruich. "That being said, we're not arguing against those types of posts being a nice change of pace. "
Check out Skittles' page to see a brand that's made its own rules, cultivating a weird world where normal definitions of relevance don't really apply. For instance, "Like this post if you agree with what I'm going to say tomorrow" fetched more than 10,121 likes, more than 400 comments and just 21 shares. Meanwhile, a picture of a football helmet made of Skittles got more than 400 shares, which is pretty good.
Get the full story at Advertising Age
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/new_facebook_data_offers_insight_on_the_rules_of_engagement
The study, "Premium or Discount in Room Rates? The Dual Effects of a Central Downtown Location," by Seul Ki Lee and SooCheong (Shawn) Jang, is the featured article in the May 2012 issue of the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly and is available at no charge by special arrangement with Sage Publications, which publishes the CQ on behalf of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration. The article can be read through the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research website. CQis available by subscription through Sage Publications, which is making this article available at no charge for a limited time.
A new study published by the Cornell Hospitality Quarterly (CQ) finds that hotels located in center city business districts can charge higher rates and earn more money - but this is true only during high season.
The premium value of a central business district (CBD) location is generally accepted by the hotel industry with the idea that even though the CBD is crowded, the hotels there see higher demand, can price higher, and achieve greater profitability. However, in a study of hotels in Chicago's Loop, Lee, a professor at Temple University, and Jang, of Purdue University, discovered that the high-rate, high-profit scenario occurs only during high season. When demand is low, on the other hand, the hotels engage in rate-based competition that is intensified by the presence of so many hotels. Thus, they found that hotels see higher premiums in the peak season and steeper discounts in shoulder seasons, as a result of competition with nearby hotels. This brings into question the current models of the location premium for CBD hotels.
Get the full story at Cornell University
Article location: http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/the_effect_of_location_on_hotel_pricing