The Solution

Keen worked with The Sukhothai to give the site a new look and feel, something that felt more modern, but at the same time retained the style and elegance of the brand.

The new website design for The Sukhothai The website copy was rewritten, driven by visitor behaviour trends that put more emphasis on scanning text rather than reading it.

In addition, all pages contained relevant calls-to-action, giving users an intuitive next step. Finally the site included a customized booking mask that mirrored the look and feel of the site and linked directly with a new booking engine. Rather than push this booking

mask in the face of the visitor, Keen persuaded The Sukhothai to keep it behind a prominent Book Online text link. This less forceful sales approach was in keeping with the brand, but did go against common industry practice.

35+ Hotels on Twitter: Examples You Can Learn From

Posted on June 3, 2011 by ReviewPro

Just as we provided you with a list of hotels using Facebook, today we wanted to give you a list of hotels using Twitter. Whether youre just getting started or are simply looking for a little more inspiration check out these profiles:

Single property accounts

@rshotel Roger Smith Hotel @fierrohotel Fierro Hotel @chesterfield_mf Chesterfield Hotel @hotel_murano Hotel Murano @hotel_preston Hotel Preston @napamarriott Napa Marriott @peabodymemphis Peabody Memphis @icehotel_sweden Ice Hotel @oceanisleinn Ocean Isle Inn @sofitelsf - Sofitel San Francisco @hyattmccormick Hyatt McCormick @strandpalace Strand Palace Hotel @w_barcelona W Barcelona @palmslasvegas Palms Casino Resort @mgmgrand MGM Grand Hotel @cosmopolitan_lv The Cosmopolitan @opushotel Opus Hotel @hotel_max Hotel Max

Groups and brand accounts

@citizenm citizenM Hotels @apexhotels Apex Hotels @theacehotel Ace Hotels @roommatehotels Room Mate Hotels @sidorme Sidorme Hotels @worldconcierge Intercontinental World Concierge @mebymelia Me by Melia @fairmonthotels Fairmont Hotels @doubletree DoubleTree by Hilton @loews_hotels Loews Hotels @tiarahotels Tiara Hotels @morganshotels Morgans Hotel Group @marriottintl Marriott @ritzcarlton Ritz Carlton @jdvhotels Joie de Vivre Hotels @kimpton Kimpton Hotels @staying_cool Staying Cool @omnihotels Omni Hotels @thebestwestern Best Western Hotels @MacdonaldHotels Macdonald Hotels

Hoteliers 2011 Top Ten Internet Marketing Resolutions

By Max Starkov and Mariana Mechoso Safer While 2010 was not quite the tough year the industry feared it would be, hoteliers still grappled with a number of challenging issues: a slowly recovering economy, the ever-changing world of social media and the mobile Web, mobile-obsessed consumers and customer review enthusiasts, and significant revenue leakage from hotels to OTAs in the form of abnormally high merchant commissions. These challenges led to a fundamental shift in hotel Internet marketing tactics, including the need for multichannel marketing, engaging the new breed of on-the-go hyperinteractive travel consumers, and a smarter approach to analytics to determine what really works for hoteliers with limited marketing dollars available. The hurdles presented by 2010 encouraged hotel Internet marketers to simply be smarter so they might achieve greater online successes in 2011. The outlook for the industry in 2011 is the most optimistic it has been in years. PKF Hospitality Research predicts REVPAR to grow by 7.8%, a 3.4% increase in lodging demand and a 4.6% rise in ADR. In all of 2010, online travel distribution continued to dominate the hotel distribution space, and HeBS predicts this will continue throughout 2011. How can hoteliers take advantage of increased travel demand this year? What smarter hotel Internet marketing formats should they focus their budgets on? Which new technologies and marketing formats and strategies will most efficiently and costeffectively reach the on-the-go, hyper-interactive traveler? The 2011 Top Ten New Years Internet Marketing Strategy Resolutions, presented by Hospitality eBusiness Strategies for the eleventh year in a row, offers some answers to these questions, as well as a sneak peek into what should be on the forefront of hoteliers minds next year. Here are the Top Ten Internet Marketing Resolutions your hotel company should consider adopting in 2011: 1. I will adapt a new marketing approach around the Customer Engagement Channel and develop campaigns that fully align marketing efforts with the behavior of the hyper-interactive travel consumer. Situation: Todays travel consumer is exposed to and engaged by so many snippets of information coming from all directions in a fast-paced, real-time 24/7 environment,

that they live in a perpetual hyper-interactive information cloud. Consumers no longer keep track of where exactly they have been exposed to information or content, they no longer care what format the information or content they have been exposed to is in (email, tweet, Facebook post, SEM campaign, etc.), and they no longer differentiate between media channels and content formats (i.e. they have become channel- and format-agnostic). In other words, the convergence of marketing/media channels + the new hyper-interactive travel consumer = the emergence of one single Customer Engagement Channel. Action Steps: The Customer Engagement Channel demands a completely new approach to distribution and marketing. Hoteliers must find a way to convince consumers that the channel is theirs, that they are in full control of the content they receive and how they receive it. What are some of the ways hoteliers can engage in this two-way conversation with current and potential guests? Provide multiple options on the hotel website for how consumers can hear from you (email, mobile, Facebook, Twitter, etc.). If they unsubscribe from one marketing format, give them the option to choose to hear from you in another way. Also, invest in eCRM in order to send more personalized marketing messages, keep your marketing plan dynamic (if people arent responding well to a campaign, move on quickly), stimulate website visitors constantly with fresh content, and implement contests and promotions on your website and through social media. Additionally, in 2011 it will be important to invest in technology needed for centralized content delivery. A good CMS can dynamically push content from the website Content Management System (CMS) to social media, the mobile site, email, Web 2.0 functionality on the site, etc. More on this below. 2. I understand that 2011 is going to be the Year of Video and will continue to invest in videos for my hotel website, mobile website and other online marketing channels and efforts. Virtual tours are long out, and videos are definitely in. Situation: While online video was an important part of the hoteliers strategy in 2010, this year it is even more essential that video marketing be in the hoteliers arsenal. Videos excel at selling your hotel product and engaging consumers better than any other medium. Also important in 2011: consumers will be watching video even more while on the go, on their iPhones, Android devices, tablets, etc. Action Steps: Develop hotel videos presenting hotel services and amenities to your different customer segments, post them on the hotel website and YouTube, and send them out via MMS messaging. Due to the shortened attention span of todays traveler plus mobile distribution restrictions, best practices require not a single 30-minute video, but shorter 30- to 60- second videos illustrating different aspects of the hotel product: weddings, spa, entertainment, etc. Consider the impact this would have: a guest is preparing for a stay at your property, and receives a short video on his or her phone

via MMS of the latest entertainment option at the hotel (comedy show, music show, etc.) or a video of dining at the restaurant, or of the spa services. This, followed by an exclusive offer, will increase the likelihood of ancillary revenues while on property. Additionally, advertise your videos on YouTube (an easy and cost-effective marketing tactic), and make sure your videos can easily be found on your hotels website, its Facebook page and from your email newsletters. 3. I will no longer operate in a marketing silo. I should not launch or run any marketing initiatives in silos (i.e. SEM, SEO, social media, mobile marketing, etc.), and I understand I will lose serious revenue opportunities and even market share if I send non-symbiotic or conflicting marketing messages about my hotel across various channels. Situation: Many hoteliers use separate arrangements, departments or agencies some in-house, some outside to manage the hotels SEO, SEM, email marketing, social media, mobile marketing, etc. A silo marketing approach goes against the mere nature of the new breed of consumers hoteliers are trying to reach, and often results in different, confusing, even contradicting messages on different channels. For example, you may run a contest on your Facebook page but not mention it anywhere on your website or in your SEM, text and email campaigns. This will result in lower levels of participation as well as confusion as to the legitimacy of the contest. Action Steps: Hoteliers need to work in a multichannel marketing environment the antidote to the silo approach with centralized content creation and delivery. In this environment, the hotel website, SEM campaigns, email marketing, social media presence, mobile, etc. have a symbiotic relationship. Your website content and marketing campaigns should be managed centrally and distributed via multiple platforms so that similar content across all channels engages consumers at multiple touch points. 4. I will continue to launch multichannel marketing campaigns and invest in technology needed to better execute these types of multi-platform and multi-format campaigns. I know that I need to reach my current and future guests via multiple touch-points, and that there is technology available today that can help me do this more efficiently. Situation: In last years Top Ten Internet Marketing Resolutions, HeBS accurately predicted that multichannel marketing would be the norm in 2010. Many marketing initiatives, on their own, cannot generate the high revenues that multichannel campaigns can produce. Hyper-interactive travel consumers need to receive and share fresh/relevant information and comment on experiences has blurred the boundaries between various distribution and marketing channels. These channel convergences exacerbate not only the need for multichannel marketing and distribution strategies, but also for centralized marketing content creation and multichannel distribution.

Action Steps: Invest in technology that allows for smart and centralized content delivery. As mentioned above, your website CMS should enable you to create a special offer or new package that not only posts this new promotion on the Special Offers page and Featured Special promo tile on the hotel website, but also pushes this promotion to your social media profiles and populates your mobile website. Hoteliers must also consistently provide website visitors with fresh, engaging content such as contests and promotions concurrently on your website, SEM campaigns, email newsletters, mobile marketing campaigns, and through social media. 5. I will make room in the budget for smart investments in 2011 and not rely on outdated business approaches or short term solutions. Situation: Many hoteliers are still investing in 1990 business approaches or quick fixes. Outdated CMS technology that does not allow for centralized content delivery, mobile websites that do not work across multiple devices (Blackberry, iPhone, Android), flash-heavy websites and websites that read like static online brochures are unacceptable in 2011. These investments may save you money in the short run, but in the long run can spell disaster for your business. Action Steps: This year, invest intelligently in technology and marketing approaches that enable customer engagement across all Internet marketing formats. Any investment by hoteliers should go through a litmus test: a) Does this investment help me generate more engaging content? b) Am I engaging the hyper-interactive travel consumer with this campaign? c) Have I created tools that enable the hyper-interactive traveler to share this campaign and/or their experience on my hotel website? 6. I know that I may no longer delay serious time and efforts in mobile marketing & social media. It is not acceptable to provide my website visitors via their mobile device the desktop version of my website. I also know that if I do not make a significant time investment in social media that my competitors are going to leave me far behind. This year, I will work hard to integrate mobile and social marketing into my overall digital marketing strategy. Situation: In October of 2010, Google reported that year-over-year mobile searches for hotels had increased by a staggering 7,000%. Industry experts project that the mobile Web will surpass the traditional web in size by 2013, and HeBS own research and other industry sources show that between 1% 1.5% of visitors to hotel websites already come from consumers accessing the hotel site via mobile devices.

It is also now evident that social media is not going anywhere in 2010, Facebooks traffic surpassed that of Googles. Facebook users uploaded more than 2.7 million photos, shared 1 million links and liked 7.6 million pages every 20 minutes in 2010 (Mashable, Facebook). So how can hoteliers combine these two powerful marketing initiatives and integrate mobile into their social media strategy in 2011? Action Steps: People are utilizing the mobile channel to conduct searches as well as to share content, interact with friends, and browse the web. This year, consider these ideas to integrate mobile into your social media strategy: build your mobile list by featuring a mobile widget on a customized Facebook tab and on your website; run a mobile promotion on Facebook and Twitter to build your mobile list by prompting users to text a keyword to a short code to be entered to win a prize; cross-promote your mobile initiatives on your Facebook customized tab, in Facebook wall posts, and in Twitter tweets; and use mobile to increase visibility of your social media messages (asking people to text to follow Twitter allows non-account holders to follow specific accounts through SMS messaging). 7. I understand that the time has come to upgrade my hotel website, which has become the main face of my hotel to the rest of the world. I understand that my hotel website should offer the best visual and rich media content about the property on the Web and should become the most potent customer engagement tool via Web 2.0 optimizations and functionality. Situation: Over the past two years, many hoteliers who desperately needed website redesigns simply put Band-Aids on their existing sites to save precious budget dollars. Todays hotel website has become the main revenue driver that carries the burden and responsibility of generating the bulk of bookings for the property. The hotel website is the first, (and in many cases) the only, and unfortunately for many hoteliers, the last point of contact with the travel consumer. The property website is the backbone of the hotel multichannel marketing mix and the main engagement tool with todays hyper-interactive travel consumer. In 2011, this approach needs to be rethought. The hotel website is the backbone of your Internet marketing strategy the most important tool in your arsenal. Your outdated website allows your competitors to steal your market share. Action Steps: There have been so many changes in the past 24 months that it would be virtually impossible to have kept up with all of them the emergence of the hyper-interactive traveler, social media, mobile marketing, Web 2.0 functionalities, and more. If your hotel website is over two years old, its time for a redesign. If your website is over a year old, keep it current with search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, a Web 2.0 optimization (interactive elements on your website) and ensuring you are fully addressing all your customer segments in your copy and navigation.

Make the hotel website redesign reflect 2011 industrys best practices. A site redesign is a 90-120 day project (start planning now). Our experience shows that any website optimizations, enhancements or site re-designs pay for themselves within 3-4 months. 8. I will continue to make the Direct Online Channel the foundation of my hotel Internet marketing strategy and stop leaking revenues to the OTAs. I know I need to reduce my reliance on the OTA channel and establish direct relationships with my guests. This will result in significant incremental revenues, increased loyalty and long-term competitive advantages. Situation: Revenue leaked from the hotel industry to the OTAs in the form of abnormally high merchant commissions of 25% and higher will have reached $5.4 billion in 2010. Hotel reservations are de facto financing the OTAs operations and allowing the OTAs to obtain billions of dollars of abnormally high merchant (wholesale) commissions and reap huge profits on Wall Street. Action Steps: The goal for the industry should be as follows:

Major hotel brands: OTA contribution (including agency, merchant and opaque model) should be kept below 15%. Average for the hospitality industry: OTA contribution (including agency, merchant and opaque model) should be kept below 25% (the level the indirect channel has traditionally had for many years, even before the Internet).

Hoteliers should maintain strict rate parity across all channels, create unique product offerings on their own website, and engage guests directly through social media, mobile marketing, and Web 2.0 functionalities on the hotel website. Additionally, every single Internet marketing initiative (PPC, SEO, email marketing, etc.) should be planned and launched with the goal in mind of producing revenues directly on the hotel website. 9. I will no longer suffer through information overload and will use smart analytics to make smart business decisions. From Adobe Online Marketing Suite powered by Omniture to DART, every report that I analyze must answer this important question: How can I use this data to improve my business and generate more revenue? Situation: Understanding business issues and decision-making are often made more difficult for hoteliers by the overwhelming amount of reports that are constantly made available to them. Also, many hoteliers are only focused on website analytics and are not taking advantage of new tools available to them such as offline conversion tracking (i.e. call tracking). Action Steps:

Start requesting reports and analyzing them with specific questions and goals in mind. Also, start utilizing analytical tools to measure your offline efforts/channel contribution. By constructing private landing pages for print offers, enabling call tracking (especially to help you measure what percent of business is coming from the mobile channel), QR codes, and short codes that must be texted to redeem specials, hoteliers can get the bigger picture of what works and what does not work. In 2011, move beyond just using website analytical tools. 10. I will not be intimidated by the complexity of it all. I understand that with each passing day the whole digital space is becoming more and more convoluted with new media formats and marketing channels, with new make-believe and real revenue opportunities. I will make sure to stay on top of these dynamic developments by partnering with the best hospitality experts in Internet/digital marketing to a) learn it all, and b) work jointly on my hotels Internet, social and mobile marketing. Situation: Until recently, having a new hotel website and launching a few Internet marketing campaigns such as email and paid search were considered sufficient by many hoteliers. Today the above falls into the Its elementary, Watson category, and constitutes only the initial step of a comprehensive digital exposure for your hotel. In the past two years a number of very important developments occurred that profoundly changed inventory distribution and marketing in hospitality: social media, mobile Web, cross-channel marketing, and the emergence of the hyper-interactive travel consumer. In 2011, hoteliers need to do much, much more to engage the new breed of hyper-interactive travel consumers in this new multichannel 24/7 environment: from social and mobile marketing, to Web 2.0 and interactive promotions and applications on the hotel website, and multichannel marketing to tie all of this together. Action Steps: Consider partnering with a hotel Internet/digital marketing firm with a proven track record in the industry. Partner with hospitality experts in Internet/digital marketing and direct online channel strategies who can help you acquire new core competencies and adopt best industry practices. Partner with those who can help you and your hotel stay competitive, preserve and increase market share, beat the industry averages and generate the highest direct online channel revenues and ROIs. Hire experts who will work with you in complete transparency and that are ROI-centric, yet innovative and will keep you in the know of the latest trends, including social media and mobile marketing. Most importantly, this partner should make your hotels digital presence your hotels most productive and efficient revenue generating channel in 2011 and beyond.

Lifestyle Communications for the Social Web Explained by Bonnie Knutson, Michigan State University Hospitality Professor
Posted on May 27, 2011 by Josiah Mackenzie

For the next installment in our ongoing series that features advice from hotel industry experts, we have Bonnie Knutson joining us today to share her thoughts on creating lifestyle communications for the social web. Ms. Knutson is a professor in The School of Hospitality Business at Michigan State University, and has established herself as an authority on emerging lifestyle trends and innovative marketing strategies. She often consults with business leaders who want to understand and take advantage of changing consumer demands. Her work has been featured in publications such as The Wall Street Journal, USA Today, and on PBS and CNN. As an expert on emerging lifestyle trends, how should hotels use the social web to publish lifestyle communications? People are always moving, and if we believe the fact that people drive product, then we can be in place when they get there. First, social media isnt an end all, be all. Its not the answer to RevPAR issues. Its just another channel of communication between the brand and the consumer. What makes it unique is that this is the first time in history where the brand does not control the message. We, the consumer, are prosumers. We can dictate the message of our experience. Its not just word of mouth, because in one tweet I can reach a worldwide audience. (Look at whats happened in the Middle East.) Its instantaneous. I as a brand need to have my radar up constantly I cannot sit back. And as a consumer I can control what information I receive from you. Its all in my court. As brands were struggling with this loss of power. How do we manage the new prosumer: getting the right message out, and making sure the message stays accurate? From where I sit, thats the interesting story. Its how we deal with this loss of power on the side of the brand. I read a story one time about luxury brands such as Nordstroms and Tiffanys that have created Facebook pages, Twitter accounts, and so on. They found that they got more value from a Facebook photo of a customer wearing one of their products than they did from putting that outfit on their brand website. So it goes back to word of mouth, which is amplified with new social tools. The other thing that I tell brands is that they have to have a compelling story. You cant just put junk out there. You cant send information for informations sake. What is the story of the brand, and whats in it for me? Our brains are inundated with so many buy me! messages and brand images up to 6,000 per day and somehow you want to be noticed. So you have to have a

compelling story that is relevant for me. If youre not breaking through the clutter youre just contributing to it. Going back to traditional marketing understanding the consumer, knowing what is important to her, what are the needs, and introducing a creative element something that will grab attention. Attention, interest, desire, action: its the old marketing mantra. But in a multi-tasking world, youve got to make your story and message compelling enough that they notice you. And thats probably not going to be an advertisement. What do prosumers expect from hotels in social media today? I, as a traveler, expect a clean room, clean bedding, and safe surroundings. Its Maslows hierarchy of needs. Dont tell me youve got a clean room, I know that. Dont tell me you have great soap, I know that. Dont tell me youve got a cool bar, I know that. I expect it. What do you offer that suits my lifestyle? I dont want to be on the road. Travel is not fun anymore, particularly in the business sector. So what makes your property not necessarily fun, but reaches an emotional need above a clean bed, a safe room, and hot coffee in the morning? Is it the WiFi that I can Skype my kids and read them a bedtime story? The WiFi doesnt mean anything to me, but reading my kids a story does. What if they had a library that stocked Dr. Seuss books? Thats a story. Thats important to me. So look at what your properties can do to write a new chapter in their traditional story, and promote that in social media. That becomes the future value of the medium. What opportunities do you see for using social technologies to deliver better service? Does proactively reaching out deliver better service, or intrude on privacy? We dont know where that line is. Thats one of the challenges we face in social media. We have talked for a long time about permission marketing in email and direct marketing. Now we need to think through what that means in social media. If someone joins your Facebook page or follows you on Twitter, that by definition is permission marketing. They have made contact with you, and you have a relationship with them. Were not sure now from a marketing standpoint how you can take that permission. Is saying Hi welcome to New York. Enjoy a cocktail on our rooftop bar an invasion of privacy? I dont know. We dont know. The line is definitely moving though. But once I make a reservation, the game changes. Im allowing you as a brand to communicate with me, provide service, and make my life easier. If Im a member of a frequent traveler club, such as Hilton Honors, thats one level of permission. So that level of permission is something to explore and exploit. Whats the most common misconception you see about delivering service online through social networks?

The misconception is that social media is the savior of the world. Its not. Its another channel of communication. The bigger issue to me is going back to a concept that futurist John Naisbitt coined a long time ago: High tech, high touch. By definition, a hotel is a home away from home. Its part of the hospitality industry. Hospitality is people serving people. Its that human interaction of service. As Ritz Carlton says, ladies and gentlemen serving ladies and gentlemen. The bigger challenge now is how to convey that gift of hospitality that separates one property from another property in a high-tech world. The more that high-tech invades our lives, the more we need high touch. We need human interaction.This is a challenge the industry has not fully considered. How far can we take high-tech, high touch? Can you be hospitable when skyping? Can I be hospitable having a bar code on my phone that allows me access to my room without needing a key? Can I be hospitable if guests bypass the front desk with automated check-ins? I dont know. I think this goes back to understanding what your brand stands for and what experience youre trying to create. Maybe we bypass the front desk, but bring high touch through another mechanism, like the community lounges at citizenM hotels.

Im trying to attract business travelers Is social media worth my time?

by Josiah Mackenzie on March 14, 2011 4 Comments

If your hotels are focused on targeting corporate clients, is social media worth your time? Should you take a slightly different approach to social marketing than hotels that primarily target leisure guests? I was asked about this a number of times at ITB last week, and want to show how the social web can help you attract the business traveler.

Reviews are universally important

Online hotel reviews written by guests play an important role in the buying decision across all types of travel. This is because they affect someones purchase decision at the final stage of the buying process. (A study showed 35% of social media users changed their choice of hotel after reading online reviews.) Since business travelers often know the exact destination they will be in, they often skip the dreaming stage of travel planning and jump straight to reviews. So do all you can to encourage more positive online reviews. You will probably get the fastest return on investment here.

Social media increases your findability

Corporate travel is booked through a variety of ways: some executives have their assistants do it, some use corporate contracts arranged by someone else in the organization, and some business travelers book their own hotel rooms. Whenever you have a fragmented audience of decision makers like this, its important to build your overall web visibility to enable discovery. Google, Bing and other search engines have confirmed increased inclusion of social media activity in their ranking algorithms. Twitter and Facebook communication, along with the quantity and quality of your online reviews, affect how high you rank for important keywords. Remember, only 3% of web searchers will go beyond page 1 of results pages so its imperative you show up near the top.

Business travelers are people, too

Everyone traveling on business knows that theres work and then theres play. People will continue to engage with their social networks while on a business trip. In fact, travelers tend to stay connected more if theyre on business they are less likely to unplug completely. This makes engaging with them on sites like Twitter, Gowalla, and Facebook just as important as ever. Publishing articles on your blog about things to do in the area is a good starting point increasing your overall web visibility, making it presence in search engines larger. How are you using the social web to attract more corporate travel?

27 social media marketing ideas for 2011 from EyeForTravels Social Strategies Conference in San Francisco
by Josiah Mackenzie on March 04, 2011 7 Comments

The last few days have been full of good conversations and presentations about using social media in the travel industry. Gina from EyeForTravel was able to assemble an interesting group of people to discuss whats changing in this area. If you were following me on Twitter, you probably saw a new tweet every few minutes, but here are some of the concepts shared:
1. Biggest opportunity in social media is bringing the story back into travel Doug Miller 2. When scarcity is removed, the value of (social) filtering increases Leonard Brody 3. Impulse buy trend will be short lived Cree Lawson (not everyone can hop on a plane and fly halfway around the world) 4. I dont use Quora. I have work to do. Yen Lee 5. If you have 50,000 Facebook fans, so what? Yen Lee 6. We pass up opportunities to ask about customer intent all the time. Do you know what your guests want from your experience? 7. CRM is something software does. Engaging is something people do. Leonard Brody 8. If relevance is the engine of the search era, then relationship is the engine of the social era. (via Andy Ellwood) 9. Why do hotels charge me for WiFi? MacDonalds gives it to me for free! Shashank Nigam 10. Is it okay to use your blackberry now? Is it okay to whip out your crossword puzzle now? Del Ross 11. People under 30 only use email to talk to people over 30 Del Ross 12. My personal social media profiles work better for my business than my business social media profiles. Sylvie Laitre 13. What is Gowalla? A social network that inspires people to share the places they go and discover the extraordinary in the world. (A good definition for location-based services in general) 14. People checking in via location-based services are giving their endorsement on the place. It becomes part of their story. Andy Ellwood 15. If you want to act on social media insights, you must invest in infrastructure now. Geoff Lewis 16. People are willing to share personal data if you show the value for them when you ask for it Geoff Lewis 17. Consumers are going to use whatever social network they want. Your job isnt to promote a platform, but go where they are. 18. Location based services are a near-perfect convergence of customer intent and marketing opportunity Susan Black 19. If [Groupon buyers] cant afford rack rate experience-post discount they wont return. As dealseekers, they seek new deals. Michael Hraba 20. Stop marketing to people. Start loving them. 21. Our goal is to create fans not just guests, but also turning employees and communities into fans. JDV Hotels

22. Allow your community to show off and show their personality in social media. Lonely Planet 23. Paid search and sponsored social content can be helpful in gaining traction when launching campaigns Tim Burger 24. Build social media marketing toolkits for local teams to use. This ensures brand consistency, eliminates need for agencies. 25. Use dedicated phone numbers to track social media promotions. 26. Cool, interesting social media is done by cool, interesting people. Dwight Sholes 27. Treat every customer like a VIP KLM Airlines

I enjoyed connecting with many of you there both new and old friends and look forward to continuing the conversation.

111 Hotel Marketing Ideas for 2011

by Josiah Mackenzie on January 01, 2011 13 Comments

As has become my tradition at the end of each year and beginning of a new one, heres my summary of 111 marketing ideas to consider as we enter 2011.

Planning & strategy

The #1 purpose of marketing is retaining your customers. Focus on that before pursuing new markets. Read The Concierge Approach to Content Marketing Why you? Why now? Personalization is a growing trend - use it wherever you can Make a stop-doing list Make sure youre signed up for fresh new ideas from me each week (if you havent already) Talent is everything. Spend all you can (and then some) recruiting, retaining, rewarding the best people. Do you have a list of allstars you want to hire? Always be casting. (Good Seth Godin post) Recruit from clubs Offer new hires $2,000 to quit before they begin Are you prepared to let 75% of your new initiatives fail? The most important trait for innovation today isnt creativity, but curiosity. Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi Consistency is everything Were all stock traders now Post a list of customer suggestions in action Read Peak by Chip Conley

Social Media

Appoint a social media ambassador to own your efforts in this area When building your social media team, include person from every department: management, marketing, PR, product development, customer service, etc. Employees can take brand message, localize it, and put their personality behind it. Claire Elias/STA Travel Read my free report Beyond Account Setup: 29 Ways to Optimize Your Social Media Profiles

Dont try to buy social media fans. Avoid the campaign mindset, and understand that forming the relationships for a great online community will take years. The one-line recipe for success in social media: An inside story from a real person that loves what they do Turn guests into content producers Turn your loyal fans into celebrities Put a Flip camera on every property Make sure to have a human identity behind your corporate social media profile Dont outsource Twitter Retweet your own important content (people could miss it otherwise) Try using Twitter to collect testimonials. Save positive tweet mentions as favorites you can refer back to. Use TwitterSheep to find what your followers care about Create a Twitter background with contact/sales information You dont always have to make sales offers in social media to make a lot of money go 0ff-topic every once in a while Try some of these Facebook plugins from Involver Think twice about advertising your Facebook page URL it only builds their brand, makes you even more reliant on them. Instead, send traffic to a landing page hosted on your site. Get creative in the way you share photos on Facebook Used LinkedIn to generate sales leads If youre opening a new hotel, consider using a Flickr group to build preopening buzz Social media is the richest focus group that ever existed Learn from Fairmont and have social media followers create your next promotional package Social ROI is from insights, not necessarily sales Google and Bing have confirmed that Twitter/Facebook postings do help with search engine placements Understand the basics of social CRM Start observing the best hotels on Facebook, like Joie de Vivre Start following the best hotels on Twitter, like @FairmontHotels @Kimpton @ApexHotels Learn from Fierro Hotel on how to use Tumblr: InsideBuenosAires.com and WeLoveFierro.com

Website

Dont celebrate the launch Be compatible with Googles Instant Previews Build content through partnerships Buy a .TV domain name and create a video channel there Look at these 15 well-designed websites and see why they work so well Try optimizing landing pages around who you know, not what you know. (Including connections from networks like Facebook gives a personal connection to the company.) Drive traffic by reaching out to past guests Make sure you do 3 things in 3 seconds: 1) load the page quickly 2) Visually WOW them 3) Get them involved Use this checklist of 43 questions if youre going through a re-design Take advantage of white hot online touch points when asking for action Use video creatively throughout the revenue cycle Think about using travel webcams like Starwood is doing with RoomWithAView.com

Search optimization is more important than ever, but the rules have changed. Learn and adapt. Know how Google instant affects your marketing Use live chat on your website to close more sales Maintain consistency (in everything) across all booking channels Encourage direct bookings by verifying website security, offering multiple language and currency support Read Speak Human by Eric Karjaluoto

Mobile

Create a mobile-friendly website to avoid platform issues Know that 81% (to 19%) prefer mobile websites to mobile apps for researching products and prices (eMarketer 2010 survey) Make sure you dont run a mobile ad, and then send traffic to a page on your site thats not mobile-friendly Use QR codes to bridge the online/offline gap (Example from Tailor Made Hotel) 4 important things to do with mobile for customers: learn, recognize, reward and personalize Youre not going to succeed in mobile on your first try. Experiment now learn by doing. A big opportunity for mobile is rewarding loyalty. Look at TopGuest Creating great mobile experiences requires you to get out in the world and interact with your environment. Dont design in a cubicle.

Reputation Management

Tracking online reputation should not just be aggregating reviews. Use a tool that gives you insight into trends and patterns. I recommend you start using ReviewPro (Why I am) Begin tying online reputation to your staff bonuses Know that 86% of consumers are using reviews as a deciding factor in their purchasing decision An unhappy customer used to tell 3 people, now they tell 3 million. This highlights the importance of quickly catching and resolving issues. On the brighter side, the majority two-thirds, actually of online reviews are positive [research from Keller Fay Group] Increase customer confidence by monitoring, collecting, and re-publishing positive reviews Monitoring for online mentions sometimes provides you with some great promotional material Write better post-stay thank you emails to encourage online reviews Get creative in how you ask for reviews. Like a banner on your WiFi network login page. It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently. Warren Buffett

Advertising

Run a brand ambassador campaign in social media (Mashable examples) Let a customer write your next ad

Experiment with strong risk-reversal messages in your copy Embrace behavioral ad targeting in PPC and elsewhere Banner ads are quickly evolving Partner with websites that attract people already decided to visit your destination Barter unsold rooms for advertising

Email

Social media use has not replaced email for sales (Just look at Groupon) Make sure to use good landing pages Add some security indicators (like a sample email screenshot) to increase email subscription rates Segment your email list by personas (not just purchase history) Build a preferences center to help subscribers receive more relevant emails Permission isnt forever

Service

Customer service is the new marketing Understand the Brand Butler trend Ask your guests if they would recommend you to a friend Create a buying experience centered around the customer Re-think your guest check-in process Real-time responses are crucial on the social web. Have systems and processes to deliver timely information and support to your guests. Try a service like CoTweet to share support responsibilities among staff Read Experience Economy by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore

Amenities & Technology

A poor hotel Wi-Fi experience influences 36 percent of business travelers on whether they re-book that specific hotel in the future [more research on hotel WiFi] iPads are the #1 most-wanted tech amenity guests want from a hotel [USA Today poll] Consider virtual meeting technology as a way to profit from lower business travel volume

Press & Media

Send out social media news releases Try PitchEngine a social media PR builder Start offering more unique hotel amenities that get people talking Listen to the PR 2.0 chat

Measurement & Analytics

Understand travel booking isnt usually a linear process Learn how Barbara Pezzi improves her marketing with analytics segmentation Run these 10 reports in Google Analytics

Social media should shorten your sales cycle. Watch your number of sales leads, cost per lead, sales closing ratio, channel conversion rate, and time to closing to measure improvement.

For over 1,000 hotel marketing ideas and strategies for implementing these concepts, I encourage you to get the Savvy Hoteliers Guide to Hotel Marketing Ideas If you found this list helpful, please share it with your colleagues via email or through Twitter. Thanks!

130 Hotel Marketing Ideas for 2010

by Josiah Mackenzie on December 28, 2009 27 Comments

To help you prepare for the upcoming year, Ive assembled my annual list of hotel marketing ideas. They say 80% of results come from 20% of work. Its more like 95% from 5%. I spend several hours blogging each day, yet my 120 Marketing Ideas for 2009 was many times more popular than any other post I published this year. Thousands of people found this blog each month through this list of marketing strategies. Well, today Im going to create an all-new version for 2010with even more ideas. Im proud to present:

130 Hotel Marketing Ideas for 2010

Strategy

90% of purchasing decisions begin online (Forrester) Educated buyers now solve problems through Google searches Marketing goals in the past: create brand awareness, target mass media, interrupt and repeat. Marketing now: create behavior change, create conversation, communicate directly New goal: 100% engagement (not 2% conversion) What should you publish online? Anything that saves people time and gives info that positions you as a good source. Understand what your customers need to know, and deliver it in a compelling way What online channels does your demographic spend time in? Find out, then develop a strong presence there. Dont make people come to you put content where they already are online. Think like a content DJ: use and reuse your content in many different formats: blog posts, email, newsletters, articles, PDFs, press releases, case studies, video, and social media updates Spend the large majority of your time trying to reach the most likely buyers instead of the entire market. The smaller the target, the bigger the bulls eye. If youre small, you can be quick & nimble. Capitalize on that. We have 3 jobs as marketers: obtain profitable customers, keep them, and expand their lifetime value

People admire complexity, but reward simplicity Dont do something unless youre the best in the world at it. If someone else does something better, use their services. Focus only on what you do best, and outsource everything else.

Planning

The #1 failure in marketing plans: no clear measures of success You must differentiate to avoid becoming a price-driven commodity Not a lot of hotels know where their market position is. Define and position yourself. On metasearch sites, hotels should move away from price commoditization by providing product-level custom messages to differentiate their offers To find differentiating factors, thoroughly study the service you offer and interview the people that provide it If you spend your resources like everyone else, youll get results like everyone else. Breakthrough campaigns often require unusual approaches. Selling to your best guests is the best way to maximize profits. Setup systems for recognizing and rewarding these people. Identify and test the key strategies your marketing plan hinges upon. The more facts and research you can include in your plans, the better. Hard data is far more valuable than guesswork. Decide what success means to you. Its different for everyone.

Website

Give visual priority to the most important elements of your site Put your offer front and center make it extremely clear (What do you want me to do?) Booking modules should be prominent and above the fold Create guest personas to help you develop content for each target audience People scan web pages, and probably wont take a long time to read all the text. Include stunning visuals. People buy travel on emotion. Write page content from the mindset of the customer. Use their language. Publish guest comments, reviews, and feedback directly on your website Leverage social proof. Everyone likes what everyone likes. First impressions make or break landing page conversion rates Provide next steps for all web content Organic traffic provides you with a low level of control, so make sure these pages appeal to everyone. With paid search & advertising campaign traffic you have a higher level of control. Create landing pages that match the ad creative for higher conversions. Use video to convey emotion or compelling visuals that are hard to show through written words View your main website not as the final destination, but a hub to refer people elsewhere in your online network

Search Marketing

The top 3 results on a search results page gets 79% of the clicks Result #10 only gets 3%and appearing on page #2 and onwards means you are practically invisible Travel queries have increased 40% in 2009 (over 2008)

SEO (organic search) can give much better returns than SEM (paid inclusion). According to Yen Lee of Uptake, 86% of travel sales leads are generated by organic search listings. Dont worry about how search engines work as much as how customers use web search When someone types in a search query, theyre giving you the opportunity to solve their problem The search funnel typically follows this pattern: Awareness, Interest, Consideration, Purchase Identify keywords that are relevant to your hotel, and popular with searchers. Use research tools so you dont get mislead. Consider targeting 2-3 word phrases that are more targeted and obtainable Blogs can be your #1 tool for building search visibility Organizations that blog get 97% more inbound links to their website, and 55% more website visitors according to Hubspot research Reciprocal links less valuable than one-way, because it tells Google that youve arranged it, rather than earned the link through creating great content The best incoming links are earned by merit. Create content people cant help linking to. See SEO as a profit center, not a cost center Yen Lee, Uptake You cannot have a set it and forget it approach to SEO. Constantly create fresh content. Microsoft Be diligent search marketing is an ongoing process

Reputation Management

Your online reputation plays a huge role in the level of success you achieve The majority of travelers today use the internet to make travel plans, and say the reviews they read from other guests influence their buying decision Reputation management begins by listening to what people are saying about you online Use tools like Google Alerts, Technorati, and Radian 6 to track praise and criticism Monitor all important terms: your hotel name, any old hotel names, your restaurants, the names of your manager and concierge Review sites such as TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Qype allow management responses, and this is a good chance to participate in the conversation. A recent survey by TripAdvisor/Market Metrix found that 85% of hotels have no guidelines on how to handle negative guest reviews published online Develop your response policy ahead of time, and make an effort to followup with all feedback Complaints can be an excellent opportunity to improve your hotel If you get legitimate negative feedback, thank the reviewer for pointing it out and explain the steps youre taking to ensure it never happens again TripAdvisor: The most important thing a hotel can do to improve rankings is provide a great experience for their guests Effective online reputation management is more than just playing defense its all about proactively building a positive buzz. Social media is a great way to begin doing this.

Social Media

The conversation about you will go on with or without you. Its better to be involved.

Serve as a concierge of the organization how may I help? Start by figuring out your social media goals. Is it education? sharing? community? Present your blog and social media presence as a way for people to connect with their peers, not just receive your marketing messages Embrace a light branding approach let your customers tell the story and build the brand. Guestsourcing is the technique savvy hotels are using to involve their guests in the content production process. Its the combination of usergenerated content and crowdsourcing. Guestsourcing can build loyalty and raise your online visibility. Active participation in content production creates a sense of brand ownership. If youre small, people may not be talking about your business by name.but theyre probably talking about your region and issues you care about. Monitor who writes about the topics you care about. Build relationships with them. If your online content sucks, youre wasting your money and my time. Make something remarkable. People love to look at picturesare you giving people lots of pictures online? Encourage your fans to take & upload their own photos. Add photos of your hotels design to the Hotel Design Blog Hosting your hotel photos on Flickr increases your web presence, building awareness among potential guests Use Creative Commons licensing on all Flickr photos to increase distribution Introduce your staff with video interviews, and post to YouTube Viral video is for generating buzz and awarenessbut its not the best way to generate sales Hyatt Hotels launched @HyattConcierge to provide 24/7 global concierge services via Twitter. Could you do the same? Use Twitter search to locate people searching for solutions Facebook marketing is all about transitive trust reaching people through people. Helping your fans tell their friends. Facebook isnt about answers. Its friends sharing with friends. This makes Facebook a poor platform for direct marketing. Facebook adds new features fairly rapidly, so take the time to educate your readers about how they can use the new tools. Encourage people to like and comment on your Facebook content as much as possible to raise visibility. Get a vanity personalized Facebook URL as soon as you can for search optimization purposes (you need 25 fans first) Employee blogging is more powerful than executive blogging. According to Edelman research, readers find them five times more credible. Get your team involved. Consider using multiple sites/blogs for each of the niche audiences youre trying to reach Use destination blogs to attract corporate and leisure travel planners. Especially in rural or remote areas, your biggest competition is not the hotel down the street but another location. Get your social media fans to meet up offline as much as possible. Tweetups are a popular way to do this. Create a social media management routine to ensure consistent participation You can make more friends in two months by becoming interested in other people than you can in two years by trying to get other people interested in you. Dale Carnegie

Advertising

Present a realistic picture of what people can expect at your hotel. (There is nothing worse than a disappointed guest) Test advertising messages in low-cost online channels before investing in bigbudget media Monmouth Plantation shifted focus from low rates to selling their lavish experiences using sensory overload and enjoyed a 30-40% increase in response rate. Test using feedback from your guests in your advertising. Its more credible, and makes your ad stand out. Stories sell. Educational-based advertising works best in todays environment of empowered buyers Audit your advertising performance frequently. Ineffective advertising must be stopped immediately. OTAs offer international distribution and significant marketing budgets that can supplement hotels budgets when times are lean. Small & independent hotels should ride the backs of OTAs for these benefits. OTAs get first-time consumers in the door for new brands. They may book later directly & become brand loyalists. According to Expedia research, for every booking made on their site, they send the supplier two extra direct bookings.

Email

Email may have taken a backseat role to social media hype, but its still a very powerful tool when used correctly. It is the cornerstone of permission-based relationship marketing. Email usually has higher psychological value than other types of online communication. Email is an effective branding tool for creating top-of-mind awareness Email drives action and profits Messages dont always have to be sent to your guests and customers. Build systems to nurture partner relationships. Fairmont Hotels sends nearly half of their newsletters for other business partners. You must create your lists organically with the explicit permission of your prospects. Always provide a strong benefit for the person signing up for your list. Receiving updates (marketing messages) alone isnt usually a very strong offer. Exclusive discounts and preferred service are more compelling. Choose a publishing frequency that works for you. Too often, and people will unsubscribe; not enough, and they will forget. If possible, ask your subscribers how often they want to hear from you. Test, test, test. Email marketing success comes through continual testing and making changes based on what you learn. Ideas for testing email campaigns include: sending day and time, frequency, personalization, subject and contents, prices, and call to action. Segment your list as much as possible to deliver relevant messages. Kimpton Hotels built lists around affinity groups for subjects like wine, pets, and dining and increased average revenue generated by a customer email campaign from $70,000-80,000 to $350,000-750,000.

Press & Media

Traditional PR assumes media editors & journalists are gatekeepers New PR understands consumers will decide for themselves what to view Savvy PR 2.0 organizations are using social media to communicate with journalists and increase their media coverage. Help A Reporter Out (HARO) is a 3 times daily email newsletter with dozens of expert source requests from journalists Involve your fans and customers in your PR distribution get them to pass information along Social Media Press Release Builder can help you create stories to share via the social web LinkedIn and Jigsaw can be used to find reporter contact info and start conversations Media on Twitter is a more focused directory of journalists on Twitter Web analytics more important in consumer-directed PR than traditional PR measures of success

Customer Service

Getting a new customer costs approximately five times what it costs to keep an existing one Make collecting guest feedback a top priority. Make sure employees understand the value of this. Biggest operational challenge for hotels today is showing staff how company values look in action [Christoph Schmidt] Never ask a guest Have you stayed with us before? Build a great recognition system so you know that answer already. Collect as much information as you can about your guests. The more details you know, the higher level of service you can provide. Offer free WiFi. As Rajul points out, it makes for happier guests, and just might help you rank higher in TripAdvisor. Understand the power of consistency. This is crucial for building loyalty, and there is nothing worse than letting a customer down after they have a good experience. Use operating procedures and training to provide consistent excellence. Build loyalty through offering unique amenities, not just slashing prices [New York Times] Get inspiration from Ritz Carlton, which permits each employee to spend up to $2,000 to move heaven and earth to satisfy a guest without obtaining prior permission

Going Global

60% of online searches are conducted in a language other than English (Forrester) Potential guests from abroad prefer information about your hotel in their own language even if they speak English The best translator translates into his/her native language (watch for dialects) On your website, dont use flags to link to alternate language versions. Use text links in the top right corner. Alternatively, present a one-time landing page when someone first visits the site that says Welcome in different languages. Use coding to remember the guests preference. SEO optimize each page on your local sites for the local language.

Make sure to promote local content online (social media, etc) as well as the English version.

Measurement & Metrics

What is measured gets improved Metrics can (and should) determine the direction you take your internet marketing campaign New technology requires new metrics. Create new, insightful measures of success. Metrics need to be put in context to make any sense. Raw data is useless unless its viewed in relation to something else. Top email marketing metrics: open rate, clickthrough rate, and conversion rate (people taking the next step) Top website metrics: average page views per visit, average time on site, booking engine abandonment rate Use Analytics to show which keywords are most important to your website (by time on site, bounce rate, etc) Determine which keywords produce the most conversions (sales), and build your search marketing plan around that Always ask guests, How did you hear about us? Build a statistics dashboard that shows the money. You must know which tactics are actually providing revenue.

For over 1,000 hotel marketing ideas and strategies for implementing these concepts, I encourage you to get the Savvy Hoteliers Guide to Hotel Marketing Ideas If you found this list helpful, please share it with your colleagues via email or through Twitter. Thanks!

120 Marketing Ideas for Hotels in 2009

by Josiah Mackenzie on January 06, 2009 30 Comments

Everyone loves a good list. To help you plan for the upcoming year, Ive put together some of the best new marketing ideas for 2009. Enjoy! Note: This list has been updated as 130 Hotel Marketing Ideas for 2010

Website

Buy some great domain names (market is less competitive right now) Remove your intro splash page Have a clean & simple web design Use Website.Grader.com to ensure technical quality Build easy navigation Ensure instant brand identification Make contact forms short & simple Use Google Optimizer for best results Add live chat support Add a virtual host Use video instead of text (where possible) Post directions to your hotel in pictures Syndicate content as RSS Offer in-depth destination information Show pictures of attractions near your hotel with Panoramio Use Google maps to provide step-by-step directions to your hotel Let visitors write and send eCards (email postcards) Publish visitor comments Publish videos of satisfied guests Include positive social media rankings (ex: #1 in San Francisco on TripAdvisor) Add social bookmarking services Digg and del.icio.us to important pages Use Mofuse.com to make your site mobile-friendly Use Diigo to track & share changes to competitors websites Create a public Google Calendar to show upcoming events

Organic Search Marketing (SEO)

Focus on dominating local search Create local keyword lists by pairing geocentric keywords (Seattle) with industry keywords (boutique hotel) Optimize for questions people ask Make your blog search friendly Appear in Google Maps local business listings Make sure your hotel website has the right keywords in the right place Establish a web presence, not just a web site Use Quarkbase to understand your web presence Use Google Trends for websites

Paid Search Marketing (PPC)

Determine your objective first (ROI, growth, market research, etc) Use professional keyword research tools Use property features as keywords Include industry & long tail keywords Do keyword competitive analysis to find opportunities Experiment with different match types (broad, phrase, exact) Use negative keywords Grab attention with your ad copy Use Dynamic Keyword Insertion (DKI) to include search phrases Highlight special seasonal offers & update regularly Disqualify unlikely guests Create many ad variations for each ad group Split test ad copy variations Use unique reservation landing pages Adjust keyword bidding strategies Use seasonality data Try geo-targeting Experiment with ad placements (on travel websites) Target specific demographics Set up weekly statistics reporting Ask your PPC agency hard questions

Social Media

Listen to what people are already saying about you Monitor your brand name with Google Alerts Use Google Trends to find whats hot Start a destination blog Start a hotel blog Have your staff start blogs Understand the 7 types of blog posts Use Feedburner for RSS syndication Offer an email alternative to RSS Make blog posts richer with Zemanta Encourage distribution with ShareThis Build your blog community with MyBlogLog Realize that effective PR takes place in social media Pitch travel bloggers Focus your social media outreach on best groups Start tweeting Create a Facebook page Get listed in WikiTravel (amazing how many smaller hotels are absent) Get listed in TripAdvisor Get listed in Yelp Get listed in VirtualTourist Encourage guests to register with Yelp & Tripadvisor at check in Ask for TripAdvisor hotel reviews when your guests check out Ask for Yelp reviews at the end of all in-house satisfaction surveys When a guest compliments your hotel, ask them to give you a social media review Print a social media review request on the back of your business cards Start a Flickr photostream Start a Flickr group Start a YouTube channel

Shoot a video of your hotel, and post it to Google Video

Measurement & Analytics

Install (free) Google Analytics (if you havent already) Understand how Analytics can help with search optimization Use Compete.com to understand your site traffic (& competitors) Track referral source types Know which websites refer the highest quality traffic Develop meaningful metrics for digital marketing Track number of social media mentions Track social media satisfaction percentage Create new toll-free numbers to track different web promotions Try HowSociable?

Customer Service

Listen to your guests using the web Respond to feedback (positive and negative) in social media websites Develop a more intelligent guest relationship system Build an (opt-in) email list of your guests Offer exclusive rates to your list Reward your best guests: Send special birthday & anniversary packages Reward your best guests: Create seasonal specials packages Hire multilingual staff Hire multicultural staff Offer air conditioning Print and give out (free) postcards Reimburse checked baggage fees Provide a SMART shopping car (like Le Bristol in Paris) Borrow ideas from customer service leaders like Nordstrom and Lexus

Technology

Embrace new technology that improves your guest experience Provide free internet access through WiFi and guest computers Offer technology that complements your hotels heritage Add new entertainment hubs (with iPod docking, etc) Try interactive activity planner centers Experiment with permission-based mobile marketing Get your hotel video posted on TVtrip

Miscellaneous

Look for big advertising discounts (corporation budget cuts mean remnant sales) Try unconventional room pricing Never reduce prices as a quick-fix remedy Partner with local businesses for destination marketing Sell the experience, not the room

Looking for more hotel marketing ideas? See this: 1001 Hotel Marketing Ideas

Guestsourcing: The Art of Turning Your Guests Into Content Producers

by Josiah Mackenzie on June 18, 2009 2 Comments

Id like to create a new word that summarizes how hotels can effectively participate in todays web: Guestsourcing: the practice of sourcing content from customers in the hospitality industry. Terms such as user-generated content (UGC) and crowdsourcing have been popular for the past 4 or 5 years, but I find them unsatisfactory for this concept.

UGC can refer to anything from product reviews to opensource software; guestsourcing should apply only to rich media in the travel & hospitality context Crowdsourcing is a term better applied to project-based work; guestsourcing should be an ongoing process

Its time we had a specific label for this concept in the travel & hospitality marketing industry.

Advantages of guestsourcing
Greater depth of information: theres a reason Wikipedia is over 25 times larger than the Encyclopedia Britannica everyone working together can create more content than one individual organization. A wide range of information is essential for reaching the long tail of niche web searches. Guests perspective: Travel planners would rather hear from other guests than from marketers like us Potential to increase brand loyalty: Active participation in content production can create a sense of ownership Increased search visibility: Neislen Buzz Metrics reports 26% of all search results link to user-created content Free & candid market research: Guests will be freely talking about what they like and dont like without interruptive surveys or focus groups

What types of content?

Guestsourcing primarily focuses on five areas of searchable content:

Photos Video Wikis (for destination information) Blog posts

Audio (to a lesser degree)

Guest-written reviews like the ones you find on TripAdvisor fall outside the definition of this term. While this type of guest-produced content is essential for any hotel marketing effort, much has been written on this topic and no further definition is needed. Blog posts, however, represent a unique type of contribution to an organizations web presence, and should come under the category of guestsourcing.

Traits of highly effective guestsourcing

1. A plan and organizational culture of actively encouraging guests to produce content 2. Providing resources and access to produce the content 3. Explaining a way to organize content uploaded to the internet 4. Creating a central access point for others to access the content 5. Developing sharing mechanisms to distribute the content

Top 5 Ways to Profit from a Positive Guest Review

by Josiah Mackenzie on May 25, 2009 5 Comments

When a guest leaves you a positive review on a site like TripAdvisor, its not only more powerful than advertising it can have multiple uses. I encourage you to recycle your positive guest reviews to get the most benefit: 1) Publish it on your website Rather than just pontificating on how great your hotel is, get others to sing your praises. You may want to feature positive reviews directly on your home page, or create a separate page like the Inn at Bay Harbor did. 2) Include it in your reservations system In my web booking system makeover, I talked about the importance of reassuring the guest if you want to improve conversions. You may want to put the positive review in the sidebar so its visible without being distracting. With a little piece of code, you can randomly draw from a list, and display a different review each time. 3) Feature it in your offline advertising Electronics retailer Best Buy understands the role customer reviews play in influencing buying decisions. Thats why they use snippets of online reviews in their print advertising. 4) Use it in your marketing collateral Take this beyond advertising: what other communications materials could you put positive feedback on or in? Newsletters? Press releases? Social networks? 5) Borrow it for your AdWords campaign Frankly, Im a little hesitant to share this tip because its effectiveness may diminish if a lot of people use it. In limited AdWords test campaigns for a few clients, Ive experimented with using guest testimonials in the ad copy. Because this stands out from the self-praise most hotels publish, Ive seen excellent results. You may want to give it a try:

Email Marketing for Hotels: A Step-by-Step Guide

by Josiah Mackenzie on September 11, 2009 1 Comment

With all the hype over social media during the past several years, e-mail has taken a backseat role in many ways. Thats a shame. E-mail remains a very powerful marketing tool when used correctly. It can serve as the cornerstone of permission-based relationship marketing the concept Seth Godin explained in his 1999 book Permission Marketing. E-mail usually has a higher psychological value than other social media communication. If you are consistently delivering value in your messages people will listen to what you have to say. They may even take action. This may sound like just theory, but in this article I will show you concrete examples of how hotels are using e-mail marketing to make money. We will look at ways your hotel can use email, how to build your list and create a campaign, benchmarks for testing, and finally some case studies of other hotels.

Part 1: Ways your hotel could use email

Use it as a direct response tool. When done correctly, e-mail allows you to communicate with laser-like focus to specific groups of people. This is one of the best ways your hotel can drive direct bookings. Use it as an automated sales force. More than any other marketing tactic, email lends itself well to automation. You can create a powerful sales system, and then sit back and let it do the work for you. (At the end of this article, there is a case study of how the Broadmoor Hotel in Colorado used this tactic to generate $245,000 in revenue from a $15,000 investment.) Use it as a feedback and research tool. Many hotels send an automatic survey link to gather guest feedback. Thats a good start. But I think there are also other ways you can use e-mail to get feedback not only on the guests stay, but also for new ideas and other market research. This depends on the type of list that you have developed, but the potential is there. Be creative about it. Use it as a relationship building tool. You can send loyal guests special offers. You can notify them of new amenities or features. You can provide insider information. You can use email to give your organization some personality. The opportunities are endless for building top of mind awareness. Use it to provide superior guest service. There is so much potential for hotels to use e-mail to improve their guests experience. A series of e-mails could be triggered whenever someone makes a reservation: leading up to the stay, and then following up after they leave. Putting everything on autopilot insures every guest has an excellent

experience interacting with your hotel. It reduces staff busywork and the potential for errors.

Use email to communicate with other important stakeholders. Email communications dont always have to be sent to guests. There are other groups you should focus an equal amount of time on. Fairmont Hotels understands this. Nearly half of their email newsletters are written for and sent to other businesses. One newsletter goes to administrative assistants that handle corporate bookings. Another goes to travel agents. Reaching and working with these people plays a large role in generating revenue. Thought: What business partners should you be communicating with?

Part 2: Plan your list building strategy

Even aside from the ethical considerations, getting the best results from your email promotional efforts requires you create a list organically and with the explicit permission of your prospects.

You can include a signup form on your website. Just keep it short: email & first name is best. Your front desk staff can ask for addresses during check-in or check out You can leave a letter of invitation in their room

However you plan to collect email addresses, make sure there is a strong benefit for the person signing up. The prospect of receiving generic updates from your hotel may or may not be enough. Exclusive discounts or preferred service is more compelling.

Part 3: How to create an e-mail marketing campaign for your hotel

Tips for putting together good emails for your hotel

Make sure you get through the spam filters. Mail that isnt delivered isnt read. Write effective subject lines. Tell whats inside, but dont over do it. Sometimes boring is best. Dont use too much hype. Always send a text version of each message. If youre using HTML, you want to provide an option for people who dont or cant read that format. Use a table of contents for longer emails Make the email content scannable Include descriptive links with a call to action Link to a web version (if the email does not display properly) Include a forward to a friend link on all messages

Choose a publishing frequency Whether you plan to publish a monthly newsletter or special offers as theyre available, its best to create a schedule and stick to it. Publishing too often can lead to people unsubscribing. If you dont publish enough, people may forget about you. Find a frequency that works well with your audience. Better yet, give them the option to choose.

The Deer Valley Ski Resort in Utah publishes a daily conditions email. Daily emails may normally be too much, but it works when youre providing information people want. It certainly made Chip House happy.

Part 4: Test, Test, Test

As with most online marketing, success is achieved through continual testingand making changes based on what you learn. Tests usually take the form of split-testing: where you send two variations of an email at the same time to the same list. Most email services make this very easy. Ideas for testing

Days of the week (Tuesdayor Saturday?) Time of day (morning, afternoon, etc) Frequency Personalization Subjects & Topics Content o Copy o Graphics o Colors o HTML vs. plain text o Length o Number of links Prices Call to action

3 most important email marketing metrics to watch

Open rates Click through rate Conversion rate how many people take the next stepwhatever you want that to be

Email marketing benchmarks for hotels MailChimp, a great little company that I use for most of my email promotions, released a benchmarks report with these figures for the hotel industry:

Open rate: 27.5% Click rate: 7.17% Abuse complaints: 0.08% Unsubscription rate: 0.49%

As they said, this is slightly biased towards smaller hotels - but its close to the averages Ive seen. Of course, stats like these only serve as a point of reference your individual situation may be very different. E-mail campaigns that Ive run typically perform at least 50-75% better than the numbers above. List quality has a huge impact on your metrics. Keep testing, and you can reach above average levels of performance.

Part 5: A few examples of how hotels are using email

Kimpton Hotels uses affinity-based email to boost revenue As this case study from MarketingProfs (membership required) shows, creating your email program around individual preferences can dramatically increase profits. Kimpton had a loyalty program that recognized and accommodated individual perferences of guests: all the way down to the type of pillow they preferred. Steve Pinetti, VP of Sales and Marketing, decided that if their email campaign matched the customer care as well as their loyalty program, they could increase revenue.

To do this, the company created seven affinity groups: wine, pets, dining, eco issues, LGBT, hot dates and great rates, and packages and promotions. By integrating their databases, guest information was updated in real time. Once this system was set up, Kimpton could send very customized emails based on individual preferences. The end result? Average revenue generated by a customer email campaign increased from $70,000-80,000 to $350,000-750,000. Lesson: Identify affinity groups, and plan ways to serve them The Broadmoor Hotel gathers trade show leads with a savvy followup system As Karen explains in a ClickZ article, The Broadmoor Hotel was trying to obtain sales leads at a trade show a few years ago. People visiting the Hotels booth had their badges swiped, which populated a database. Then, a series of 3 email messages was sent to each prospect:
1. Instant followup with an incentive. The recipient was notified of an upcoming drawing for a digital camera. At the same time, the Broadmoors benefits to meeting planners were reviewed. 2. Are you a winner? A week later, an email was sent asking the person to click through and see if they won the drawing. 3. Another contest. Three weeks after the show, prospects received another invitation to enter a contest for a 4-day vacation at the Broadmoor.

The end result? The campaign cost $15,000 and generated $245,000 in revenue. Lesson: Automate emails to create a powerful sales followup system The Monmouth Plantation uses sensory overload to avoid price cutting & increase response Recently, I shared the story of Monmouth Plantation, a historic luxury Mississippi inn. Because of the recent economic crisis, the hotel had been using special (low) room rates in their email newsletters to generate business. Recently, however, they decided to focus on selling their lavish experience and less on the price. They began sending email promoting sensory-overloading experiences. For example, read the description of their $1,900 Gourmet Package offer that included two nights of accommodations, a tour of three historic mansions, a carriage ride through the quaint downtown area, and in-room massages: Upon arrival, guests will be greeted and escorted to their rooms where chilled champagne, chocolates and flowers await their arrival. That evening guests gather in the dining room for hors doeuvres and wine; a host/hostess will give a history of the antebellum home. Dining under 17th century chandeliers on the Empire table with beautiful china, silver and first-class service is the highlight of this package. The chef will greet each guest and invite culinary conversation. After-dinner drinks featuring

the Southern signature drink, mint julep, will be served in the study nightly. A private hot air balloon ride over Natchez is the featured activity in this package. The result? The email open rate increased 15% and their promotions enjoyed a 3040% click-through increase. Lesson: Use sensory overload to sell your hotels experience in your email promotions

Without a doubt, email is one of the most powerful marketing tools we have at our disposal today.

Please, Please, Please (my closing plea)

Speaking as both a marketing professional and a frequent hotel guest, I just ask you to remember what most of us are thinking: Im busy. I dont have much time. My inbox is my sacred space. I use it to interact with friends, family, and business associatesand Im not particularly anxious to hear from an organization I barely know that wants to sell me something.

Whats in it for me? I dont really care about your business operations. I do want to know about stuff that will help me. Ask my permission, and have me confirm before you add me to any list. Dont e-mail me constantly. I probably dont want to hear from you every single day. If you send me something I dont want, Ill consider it spam even if I opted in to your list a long time ago. Make it easy for me to leave. If I like your content, Ill stay.

Exclusive Interview: TripAdvisor Explains Guidelines for Marketers

by Josiah Mackenzie on August 06, 2009 10 Comments

There is a lot of speculation going around the hotel industry on how they should interact with TripAdvisor. Since this site is so important for hospitality & travel marketing, I went right to the source to clarify a few things. Here is my conversation with TripAdvisor Vice President Michele Perry. Josiah: If a hotel has a poor reputation on TripAdvisor, what steps should they take to improve it? Michele: When a hotel has a poor ranking on TripAdvisor, it usually reflects problems with the property grounds, staffing, cleanliness, service, or something else. The most important step hoteliers can take is to read the feedback theyve received on TripAdvisor, and take the necessary steps to improve problem areas. If a new owner has just taken over a property with a poor reputation, they can go to their owners page and fill out the change of ownership form with details of the nature of the ownership change, along with documentation that the change occurred, and we can remove reviews from the prior owners tenure. Lets be honest: as hotel marketing professionals its often our job to increase ranking on your site. What are some ethical ways we can do this that you approve of? TripAdvisor popularity index rankings are significantly impacted by the quantity of reviews, quality of reviews, and how recent those reviews are. You cant approach improving TripAdvisor ranking as you might search engine optimization, where you can purchase keywords and impact your listings. The most important thing a hotelier can do is provide a good experience for their guests. From a marketing professionals perspective, you can educate guests about TripAdvisor and encourage them to write reviews of their stay. The more recent reviews you can help generate for your client, the better their ranking will be (assuming they are running a solid business). On every hotels owners page we provide links that can be added to post-stay guest emails so that hoteliers can ask their recent guests to submit a review the link makes it easy for the guest to get started. Also on the owners pages are new write-areview widgets that can be added to a hotels website in minutes, so that visitors can write a review without searching TripAdvisor for the right page. Are there any specifics you want us to avoid?

While we encourage you to encourage guests to write reviews, any sort of incentive a free night, a coupon off the next stay, a discounted meal, etc. is strictly against our rules. And, of course, reviews need to be the honest, unbiased opinions of real travelers who have had an experience with your property. Do you have any recommendations for integrating TripAdvisor into our website and marketing materials? We strongly encourage property owners to register at www.tripadvisor.com/owners, and to learn about all available monitoring, management and marketing tools. We have a variety of customizable widgets that allow properties to display current review data on their websites, and we also offer recommended on TripAdvisor badges for your site. Research consistently shows that consumers trust other consumers, so adding TripAdvisor content to your propertys web site through our products gives your customers the review information they want. More than 5,000 hotels worldwide have done this and the feedback has been overwhelmingly positive. Registering as an owner also puts properties on our newsletter list, which means theyll receive first notification of new metrics and tools. What day-to-day actions should hotel management take to ensure their hotel has a great presence on your site? First and foremost, take good care of your property and guests. Check TripAdvisor everyday for new reviews and use the feedback to make appropriate adjustments. Owners can sign up for daily emails of new reviews so that they can stay current easily, and respond to reviews quickly. Properties have the option to upload a photo, and as many videos as they like. We encourage owners to take advantage of this, and to keep their listing up-to-date. How should management respond to reviews? Select ones: negative or positive feedback? Ignore them all? We encourage hoteliers to address negative reviews with a management response on our site; we often hear that how a property reacts to the criticism is more important to prospective guests than the negative comments themselves. Some hoteliers choose to respond to positive reviews, also. We consider this less essential, but it certainly gives travelers an even better sense of who you as a hotelier and your property are. Many thanks to Michele Perry and April Robb for making this possible. Copyright notice: Please do not reprint this article without permission from Josiah Mackenzie (thanks!) If you enjoyed this, please consider sharing the article on Twitter using the button below.

Fairmont Hotels Explains Their Twitter Strategy (Interview with PR Manager)

by Josiah Mackenzie on October 20, 2009 5 Comments

Last week I caught up with Fairmonts Public Relations manager, Mike Taylor, to discuss how Fairmont uses Twitter to communicate with their community: Josiah: Whats your overall goal or strategy for Twitter? Mike: On Twitter its about two things: developing awareness and understanding of what our brand is and what we represent. The second part of it is the engagement factor. We are interested in having a dialogue with the people that follow us be it guests, media, travel planners, travel agents we have a wide variety of people that follow us. So I tried to drill down and have a dialogue with all of these individuals that want to know more about us and want to speak with us. The type of content do you try to share through Twitter? Again, its a wide variety. We push out news and information; we think thats valuable. We include package and rate offers. We dont see Twitter primarily as a distribution tool. But if we have something thats a great deal were going to let people know about it. We are really trying to provide behind the curtain type of insider details that you may not know about either. And weve also created specific hash tags that are audience specific. So we have one for our environmental news, and another for our travel agents when were speaking to that community. So were trying to use hash takes to funnel information down to a very specific focus and reach a certain audience. Do you publish all of this yourself? I know you have hotels around the world how do you work with individual properties and how do you manage all of that? At a brand level, I am the guy that does it all! Im coming up with content I dont want to say we develop a publishing calendar, because that seems much too formal

but I definitely have information that isnt time sensitive. That will be sitting at the ready for when there may not be much to talk about. I would say a high percentage of our content is either things that land on my desk that day, or else a result of what someone else has posted. So at a brand level, I would say Im the person that is responsible for all the content. But we definitely do have a number of our hotels at local levels that have Twitter pages. Their focus really tends to be on a local or regional market, trying to develop a presence there. Theyre posting more on things that would be of interest to that local market. For example, maybe theres a drink special at one of the properties they want to promote. So the content is a little more focused on the local, regional market. I would probably say we have about half of our hotels on Twitter. The rest just leverage our brand level account. How do you gain followers? You currently have around 6,000 people receiving your updates Our focus really isnt on follower count. Its certainly one metric we look at, but thats not where our focus is. I dont just randomly follow back anyone who follows us. We really try to follow people that are influencers, people that are interested genuinely interested in our brand and that we want to have discussion with. And of course we follow media. But we definitely dont just go out and start randomly following as many people as we canjust to bump that number up. Thats not natural, and thats not why were on there. Finally, give us a success story whats the best thing thats happened as a result of your participation on Twitter? Narrowing it down to one is a pretty big challenge! Theres been a few things. Twitter has introduced us to people we otherwise wouldnt have a relationship with. So its sort of that global neighborhood concept where these people wouldnt have reached out to us or vice versa if we were not participating. We wouldnt have been able to develop relationships with other brands and other individuals which have been very beneficial for us. Weve had a lot of fun, but thats a hard question to answer there has been so much value we have received. You can follow Mikes updates for Fairmont @FairmontHotels

Is TravelPost the new TripAdvisor?

by Josiah Mackenzie on March 24, 2009 No Comments

Today, travel meta search engine Kayak relaunches its TravelPost.com hotel review site, competing directly with the more established TripAdvisor. According to the Boston Globe, the new site will pull 1.4 million guest reviews from more than 200 websites and room rates from 5-10 websites. The upgraded site will also feature filters that let users pick which websites are searched and find reviews written by guests who share the same interests or demographic details. This meta review approach is very useful for travel planners. Google already does this in their local business listings, and with so many review sites available, its helpful to have everything in one place. Linda Fox at Travolution quotes Kayak co-founder Steve Hafner in a bit of crosscompany sniping: Consumers and hoteliers are woefully underserved by websites like TripAdvisor, who appear to care more about their bottom lines than providing relevant content and a seamless experience. Whether you agree with that statement or not, the TravelPost interface is a bit less cluttered with the advertising you find on TripAdvisor. Founder and former CEO Sam Shank has an excellent post (with screenshots) explaining on the network effect TravelPost needs to overcome: The hotel review business is a strong network-effect business, approaching a natural monopoly like the online auctions business. Travelers want to write a review where the most readers are, and travelers want to read reviews where the most reviews have been posted. However, there are opportunities for TravelPost to gain market share. The fact that TripAdvisor does not share revenue with the reviewers (like Tripr does), presents a good way to build up the review base. What do you think: Is TravelPost just another me-too site, or is it a force to be reckoned with in the future?

The TripAdvisor Review Widget on the Hotel Website: a Good or Bad Move?

We at HeBS are often asked about the pros and cons of: 1. Creating a link on the hotel website to the customer reviews page of the hotel on TripAdvisor 2. Displaying TripAdvisor reviews directly on the hotel website via the TripAdvisor Review Widget We have always recommended against both of these options. Here is why: 1. Creating a link on the hotel website to the customer reviews page of the hotel on TripAdvisor This is a much simpler case. Have you looked at your property page and your customer reviews on TripAdvisor lately? Have you noticed that the page is full of advertisements by all the major online travel agencies (OTAs), all the major hotel brands, and many of your competitors? By linking from your hotel website to TripAdvisor you are actively encouraging your potential customers to book with the OTAs or someone else. On the other hand, it is extremely expensive nowadays to bring visitors to your website (costs related to paid search, website development, SEO, hosting, email marketing, analytics, etc.), and you would not want to lose them that easily by sending them away. 2. Displaying TripAdvisor reviews directly on the hotel website via the TripAdvisor Review Widget The TripAdvisor Review Widget is placed on the hotel website by uploading a special TripAdvisor code that pushes live customer reviews from TripAdvisor. TripAdvisor promotes this as a friendlier option compared to Option 1 above because the hotel website visitors do not have to leave the site, and therefore will not be exposed to advertising by the OTAs and competitors. Here are the cons as we see them: Official vs. Unofficial Web Content With social media becoming the voice of the people online travelers want to see both sides of the story: o The Official Content: this is the hotel websites descriptions of the hotel product and services

o The Unofficial Content: these are customer reviews and postings on social media sites, TripAdvisor, etc. Mixing official and unofficial content by adding the TripAdvisor Widget on the hotel website goes against the very principle of separating official from unofficial content, convolutes the mere nature of social media content, creates confusion among online travelers and ultimately works against the hotel. Lack of Control over Customer Reviews

No hotel will ever publish a negative customer review on its website. Having TripAdvisor push live customer reviews to the hotel website creates the very real threat that negative reviews will appear on the hotel website as soon as they are posted on TripAdvisor. How do you control that? There is no way that you can filter out negative reviews with this TripAdvisor Review Widget. A Guest Satisfaction Survey should already exist on the hotel website As per best practices, the hotel website should already feature a Guest Testimonials Page, as well as a Guest Satisfaction Survey, which aims to solicit customer opinions about hotel services, accommodations, etc. See a sample here: http://www.leparcsuites.com/hotel/guest-survey.php Dont Tempt the Competition

We have noticed that when the competition discovers that you feature live customer reviews from TripAdvisor on your website, they are often tempted to write a fake negative review about your hotel themselves. Best Practices:

TripAdvisor created this functionality to link from the hotel website back in early 2008. As of today only a few hundred hotels have signed up (out of over 50,000 U.S. hotels). No major hotel brand has allowed its franchisees to link to TripAdvisor from their own websites, and no chain website links to TripAdvisor. Why? The reasons sited above, as well as a very practical one: the industry in general should not contribute to the expansion of monopolistic customer review depositories like TripAdvisor. This site already has more than 30 million unique visitors every month. It already has a big chunk of the marketplace. Its closest competitor has only 5 million visitors a month. Our clients agree with us: Here is what one of our clients, a luxury boutique hotel in California, had to say: I agree that the TripAdvisor Review Widget works against the hotel, particularly since in this economy weve been forced to play in the opaque sites (Priceline, Hotwire), weve found those customers posting reviews that are either only partial truth, at best, and/or certainly embellished, showing the hotel in a very negative light. What do you think about displaying TripAdvisor reviews directly on the hotel website via the TripAdvisor Review Widgetis this a good idea or not?

Mobile Marketing & Distribution Strategy in Hospitality: The Future is Already Here

by Max Starkov Back in September 2001, HeBS presented an article titled Wireless in Travel and Hospitality: Hype or Necessity? Today, just as in 2001, the media hype on anything mobile has not eased up. Hoteliers are rightfully confused about the real impact of the mobile Internet and about the importance of the mobile distribution channel in hospitality. Eight years later, we revisit the analysis and recommendations we made back in 2001, offer an update on industry best practices, and provide hoteliers an action plan on mobile marketing and mobile channel distribution. Note: Max Starkov will present the session Mobile Marketing in Travel & Hospitality: The Future is Already Here An Action Plan for the M-Marketer at the upcoming EyeForTravels Mobile Strategies for Travel USA Conference, September 16-17, 2009 in Chicago. How Big is the Mobile Marketplace? The mobile Internet is a reality: 3G (broadband wireless services) is the standard wireless technology, G4 (much faster than 3G) is already offered in the U.S., and smart phones like the iPhone, BlackBerry, Treo, LG, etc. are a part of everyday life. Mobile devices are truly ubiquitous, and mobile users expect instant access to information-as well as an Internet experience that rivals the one via traditional PCs and laptops. A significant number of cell phone subscribers have access to the mobile Internet and use some kind of data service such as texting, email, Web browsing, etc. Worldwide mobile communications usage has increased dramatically since 2001:

The number of cell phone subscribers has surged nearly 25% annually for the past eight years. Mobile penetration stood at 12% in 2000, and has grown to reach over 60% in 2008. There were 4 billion cell phone subscribers worldwide at the end of 2008, according to the United Nations International Telecommunications Union (ITU) compare this to less than 1 billion in 2002. Around the world more people use their mobile phones than PCs to access the Web because mobile phones are cheaper and easy to carry around (constant presence).

What is the situation in the U.S.?

The number of mobile phone lines has already surpassed the number of land lines in the U.S. More than 90 percent of the U.S. population has a mobile device of some sort. US Mobile Phone Subscribers 2008-2013
Year 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 eMarketer, May 2009 millions 270.3 280.8 291.2 298.4 302.0 308.7 Penetration % 88.9% 91.4% 93.9% 95.2% 96.1% 96.7%

New research from EyeforTravel shows the average number of Americans who browsed the Internet via their mobile devices grew by 61% in 2008 vs. 2007. eMarketer estimates 26.3% of mobile phone subscribers will log on to the mobile Web at least once per month in 2009, for a total of 73.7 million mobile Internet users. Why Should Hoteliers Care? The promise of immediate, anywhere and anytime Internet access, instant information and transaction capabilities, location-based services and personalization are the key advantages of the mobile Internet. A recent Nielsen Mobile poll found that in 2008 only 9.2 million U.S. mobile subscribers purchased goods or services with their handsets. Yet today, mobile customers are much more at ease with the idea of m-commerce. How serious is the demand for mobile services in the travel space? A recent report by PhoCusWright projects mobile bookings to reach $160 million in 2010 alone. Sixtyseven percent of travelers and 77% of frequent business travelers with Web-enabled mobile devices have already used their devices to find local services (e.g. lodging) and attractions. Another poll by Harris Interactive, conducted April-May 2009, shows that 71% of U.S. adults felt that it was safe to make a purchase via a mobile phone. Forty-three percent of respondents are willing to purchase hotel rooms and 40% tickets for travel via their mobile devices. In other words, hotel guests-past, current and potential-are increasingly becoming mobile-ready, and hoteliers have to respond adequately to this growing demand for mobile services. This is the reason why all major hotel brands, travel suppliers and OTAs have mobile Internet initiatives in place, including mobile brand websites, mobile applications, including iPhone apps, m-CRM and mobile marketing. The Future is Already Here: Location-Based Mobile Services (LBS)

Location plus personalized services are not only the essence of the mobile Internet, but the very definition of what travel is all about. Location-based services (LBS) are based on the unique ability of the mobile Internet device to determine its exact location by using GPS, and then to use that knowledge to perform functions, provide information, suggest activities, check out if friends are in the neighborhood, etc. eMarketer estimates that there were 63 million location-based services (LBS) users worldwide in 2008, and expects this number to reach 486 million in 2012:
Year 2007 2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 LBS Users, millions 18.9 61.3 134.0 215.3 329.0 486.0 % Change 224.1% 118.8% 60.7% 52.8% 47.7%

Ultimately, the location-based services success is closely tied to addressing existing and significant privacy concerns. CTIA, the international mobile industry organization, has already issued guidelines addressing user notice and user consent. Location-based services have already greatly improved the travel consumer experience. These mobile services are expanding in use and popularity among travelers who expect to receive services such as mapping, navigation services, city guides, etc. upon arriving at the destination. For example, a traveler approaching New York City and using LBS can obtain information on the citys main tourist attractions, Broadway show times and ticket availability, exciting events, hotel information and promotions. They may plan or adjust existing travel plans, as well as make reservations via the LBS-equipped mobile device. Furthermore, if they are browsing a neighborhood such as the West Village in Manhattan, they can easily search for the nearest Italian or sushi restaurant, read customer reviews, select a place, and make an instant reservation. LBS also allows guests at large hotels and resorts to be notified of new and unscheduled performances, dining promotions, cancellation of events, and new special offers (i.e. 2-for-1 seafood buffet, 25% off day trips, $50 off spa treatments, etc). These services not only provide useful information to hotel guests, but allow good hotel marketers to sell auxiliary services and do ad-hoc promotions. In addition to these conventional services, new types of LBS are already here: services like buddy beacons and friend-finders help travelers and pub hoppers alike hook up with friends who happen to be at the travel destination or in the neighborhood. Location-based services are poised to become a great marketing tool in the hands of pro-active DMOs, resorts, hotel and restaurant chains, and tourist vendors.

What Should Hoteliers Do? What are the killer applications for the hospitality space? What are the mobile services that will allow hoteliers to take full advantage of the exploding mobile channel? Over a third of travel companies will be investing in mobile this year (EyeForTravel). Here at HeBS, we believe that the following mobile Internet services and applications will make the biggest impact in hospitality over the next few years. Mobile Hotel Websites A word of caution: the mobile Internet is not wireless access to the conventional Internet. The mobile Internet does not merely duplicate the traditional Web. Many retailers and travel companies who literally translated their conventional websites for the wireless world failed to achieve any significant usage and conversions. Why? The mobile Internet adheres to different rules than the conventional Internet. Mobile users have even shorter attention spans. They have less time to browse and are often on the go. Slower speeds, yet to be perfected mobile browsers, smaller displays, limited data-input capability (e.g. the number of keywords that may be typed in a search), multi-step booking and information retrieval processes are some of the limiting factors. Imagine trying to squeeze your wide-screen hotel website, designed to fit screen resolutions at 12801024 pixels and above, onto the tiny screen of a mobile device. Our analysis shows that more than 90% of mobile users access the hotel website via mobile devices with screen sizes of 320 x 480 pixels. Accessing a conventional website via a mobile device, even the latest iPhone, often results in an undesirable user experience: the inability to find information needed, and a predictable outcome of abandoned websites and reservations. To solve this issue, hoteliers should offer a mobile website specially designed to provide an excellent user experience in a mobile environment. Mobile users demand mobile sites that download fast, provide short and concise textual content with no fluff, minimalistic visual content, and navigation that is straight to the point. Efficient and simple navigation is of particular importance so people can easily find short descriptions of hotel amenities and services, maps and directions to the hotel, a toll-free phone for information and reservations, and an easyto-use, basic booking engine. The economy and budget limitations are no longer an excuse for lacking an inexpensive mobile-ready hotel site. Designing and building a starter hotel mobile site can be fairly inexpensive: from $495 for a 4-page starter site to $1250 for a 10page mini-site. Many of our clients have some type of m-commerce site: from mobileready starter sites and more comprehensive mini-sites, to full-blown m-commerce sites for multi-property hotel clients. A recent Internet Retailer survey found that 7% of online retailers already had an mcommerce site in late 2008. Having a mobile hotel site, due to the nature of location-

based and in many cases impulse-driven services the hospitality industry provides, has become a priority. Here are the typical hotel mobile site features being implemented today:

Multi-property hotel companies and brands automatic detection of mobile browser access, ability to search and book hotels by location, bookable special offers, interactive maps and directions to the property, area attractions information, reward program login for quick reservations and account information, Omniture or other enterprise analytical tools to track traffic and conversions, special 1-800 numbers to track mobile phone reservations, etc. Single property hotels and resorts can start with a simple 4 to 10-page mobile mini-site, featuring code allowing the mobile device to automatically detect the mobile site. Information on this mobile site should include the hotels contact information (email and phone number), reservation information with a link to the mobile version of the booking engine or a simple reservation request form, a description of the hotels main services and amenities, information addressing the main customer segments, and an interactive map and directions to the property. HeBS tracks traffic and conversions on mobile sites via Omniture and uses a special 1-800 phone functionality to track mobile site calls and conversions.

Case Study: Browsing on hotel mobile websites is becoming more and more popular among mobile customers.
Number of mobile site visits January-July 2009: Regional midscale hotel brand Multi-property resort company Regional multi-property hotel company Boutique hotel in San Diego, CA Full-service hotel in Seattle Luxury spa resort in Florida:

79,500 22,279 14,379 4,286 1,891 9,917

Mobile Booking Functionality Enabling reservations via the hotel mobile site is another very important, though more complicated, issue. Today all major hotel brands mobile sites have booking capabilities. Independent hotels and resorts are usually at the mercy of their thirdparty PMS or booking engine vendors. Unfortunately, only a handful of these vendors have developed mobile booking capabilities, most recently SynXis and InnLink. To facilitate mobile reservations due to the mobile devices limited functionality for data input, secure customer profiles need to be stored either via the hotel mobile site, the mobile booking engine vendor, or a subscription to specialized m-commerce digital wallet services. For example, for the major hotel brands, the reward program guest ID number should be sufficient to pull up all customer data and preferences needed for a hotel booking. The property selection, arrival date, number of room

nights and number of rooms, all selected from easy to use drop-down lists and calendars, should be the only missing parameters. Independent hotels and resorts can either use a mobile engine from their third-party booking engine vendor or, for the time being use a simple reservation request form. Today, either way is correct, since the majority of mobile reservations for independent hotels and resorts come from the mobile sites toll-free telephone number. HeBS research shows that as much as 8 out of 10 mobile reservations come via the special 1-800 from the hotel mobile site, and only 2 are true mobile reservations. Case study: Multi-Property Hotel Company: Bookings via the mobile booking engine and the special toll-free reservations number, January-July 2009
Mobile Booking Engine Number of bookings 161 Room nights: 270 Revenue: $32,100 Mobile Toll-Free Phone 650 1080 128,400 Total: 811 1350 $160,500

During the same period, the mobile site had a total of 78,953 mobile visitors. Therefore, the conversion rate was approximately 1%. Naturally, as mobile reservations become more widespread and the comfort factor increases, hotel mobile sites will have to offer mobile booking functionality. M-CRM and Customer Service M-CRM or mobile CRM will rule the mobile Internet. Customer relationship management (CRM) and mobile services were meant for each other: mobile devices are constantly present, always on and usually used by only one person. Hence, using the mobile space to provide intelligent, unobtrusive and highly personalized services convinces customers that this is their service. Custom-tailored services and offerings, based on knowing your customers, matching customer preferences, and predicting behavioral techniques are only part of personalizing the customer service in this space. Here are only some of the m-CRM and customer service initiatives possible, already in use by many of the major U.S. airlines, and some of the hotel brands:

Reservation confirmation text messaging Pre-Arrival texts (up-selling opportunity; reservation reminder; value add e.g. what will the weather be during your stay, events and happenings at the hotel or in the neighborhood, etc.) Post-stay texts with short guest satisfaction surveys Text Alerts: weather alerts, airport delay alerts, traffic alerts (construction on a main highway into town, etc)

When conceptualizing and delivering m-CRM, hoteliers have to tackle serious issues like data security, privacy concerns, how to make services and applications noninvasive, and solicit customer opt-in and consent. M-Lists: Opt-in Customer Mobile Text List Creation Text messaging is huge and growing. In 2008, over a trillion text messages were sent worldwide, and on average there were 357 texts vs. 204 phone calls/per month per cell phone subscriber. Unlike email marketing, which is free, unregulated (except the toothless CAN SPAM Act of 2003) and susceptible to massive abuses in the form of unsolicited spam, mobile text marketing has to overcome two very serious obstacles:

Mobile users, all of them burned by the email spam experience, are vehemently guarding their privacy and protecting their cell phone/PDA numbers. People are willing to share their email with just about anybody, while entrusting their mobile number only to close friends and relatives. Wireless carriers are taking the privacy of their subscribers very seriously and reacting fiercely to any attempts of cold calling or unsolicited text campaigns.

Therefore it is not an easy task for the hotel to create an opt-in list of existing guests and potential customers cell phone numbers (m-list). These guests would have to provide the hotel with explicit consent to receive special promotions or event announcements via their mobile devices-many people are wary of this. How should you create and expand the hotel m-list? Here are some techniques and approaches to solicit opt-ins for the hotels m-list, all of which require a very carefully thought-out solicitation of the mobile users consent:

Guest check-in/check-out solicitations Website sign-ups Interactive sweepstakes, contests, games that require the input of a cell phone number or sending a text message to a shortcode Mobile barcode coupons and initiatives Social media initiatives Quizzes and polls

Mobile Advertising eMarketer projects that mobile advertising will rise from $648 million in 2008 to $3.3 billion in 2013. This year alone marketers will spend $760 million in mobile advertising (+17.3%) and almost a billion dollars in 2010 ($995 million or an increase of 30.9% vs. 2009). Forrester projects mobile marketing to grow from 2009 through 2014 with a CAGR (compound annual growth rate) of 27%, second only to the growth rates projected in social media. Mobile advertisers should take into account several unwritten rules that differentiate the mobile space from general online advertising. Mobile advertising should:

Deliver real value that goes beyond price Provide real convenience for the mobile travel consumer Be conceptualized in a way that puts the mobile travel consumer in charge

Many ugly advertising approaches from the e-commerce world, such as pushy, in your face advertising campaigns, cold calling in the form of unsolicited email marketing, bait and switch type of paid search campaigns, etc. should be discarded once and for all. These advertising formats will never work in the mobile space due to the existing overt hostility toward any intrusion in customer privacy by both consumers and mobile carriers. What are the mobile marketing formats that are of particular interest for hoteliers? In our view there are 4 areas of interest for hoteliers: 1. Traditional Mobile Advertising

This includes proven advertising formats from the non-mobile Internet world: sponsored mobile search listings (e.g. Google mobile ads), mobile banners, and mobile barcode-type of advertising initiatives. Due to space constraints, creating short but appealing marketing messages is a challenge with both the mobile search and display formats. Mobile barcodes, similar to Japans very popular QR code, are already becoming part of the marketing mix of retailers worldwide. Case Study: Google Mobile Ads More and more people are browsing the mobile Internet via their mobile devices and are being exposed to Google mobile ads, which results in visits to the hotel mobile site or reservation calls via the 1-800 number. Here are the Google mobile ad views/impressions for sample hotels across the U.S. from January-July 2009, which constitutes a significant increase of 35%-50% vs. the same period of 2008:
Full-service hotel in San Francisco Casino hotel in Nevada Boutique hotel in Los Angeles Golf resort in Arizona Luxury spa resort in Florida 2,878 24,977 5,031 2,064 4,463

Hoteliers have to be prepared to work with conversion rates and campaign tracking technology that are different from the Internet world. Website analytical vendors like Omniture and ad delivery and tracking technology vendors like DoubleClick have already deployed mobile campaign and conversion tracking technology. For example, DoubleClick Mobile provides full compliance with Mobile Marketing Association (MMA) standards, reports on impressions, clicks, jump pages and third-party metrics, dynamically displayed ads, and handles custom executions for jump pages coupons, media downloads and more.

2.

Location-Based Services (LBS)

LBS-based advertising is a hot new area where m-marketers are already testing interesting initiatives to promote businesses to travelers based on their physical location. LBS-based advertising includes a wide range of marketing formats and options that have one thing in common: advertising is tailor-made to fit the concrete GPS location of the mobile user at any given time. Examples include offering discount coupons for the closest Starbucks, special pre-fixe dining at a nearby restaurant, and banners for businesses based in the vicinity. Imagine the impact LBS-based advertising could have in hospitality, which is location-based itself: from beaming deals for hotels at the next exit to travelers on the interstate, to offering 2-for-1 drinks at the hotel bar to hotel guests or passers-by, to giving $50 off all massages for walk-in guests to come to the hotel spa within the next hour. For example, HotelPal, a new app for iPhone, takes your physical location via GPS and then shows you all the hotels in your vicinity including rates and special offers, and provides booking capability. 3. Mobile Text Marketing

There are two approaches for mobile text marketing: 1) to the hotels own opt-in mlist, or 2) to rented m-lists. Similar to email marketing to the hotels own email list, the preferred and recommended m-marketing approach is to target the hotels own opt-in m-list. Once the hotel addresses the privacy and customer consent issues as discussed above, and generates an m-list of opt-in cell phone subscribers, the next logical step is to conceptualize the text campaigns and decide on their frequency. Providing real value and building expectation should be the underlying considerations. Text marketing to rented m-lists is not considered best practices, similar to renting email lists. With rented m-lists there is an additional aggravating factor, which is the extra sensitivity of mobile users about privacy issues. Here are sample text message marketing campaigns:

M-Coupons e.g. discount coupons for a free drink at the bar, 10% off a reservations, etc. Sweepstakes e.g. text sweeps to a shortcode and enter our Free Room Giveaway Contests Interactive games

4.

Mobile Applications

Mobile applications or apps have exploded in popularity with the introduction of the first iPhone. Apple boasts over 50,000 applications (both free and paid) that people can download via the iPhone Apps Store. BlackBerry has a similar apps storefront with a growing number of apps.

From interactive maps, to Frommers and Lonely Planet travel guides, restaurant and hotel reviews, to flight status, personal tours and currency exchange calculators, there are apps for practically everything. A number of hotel brands have launched their own apps. For example, Omni Hotels new free iPhone application enables iPhone or iPod touch users to book hotel rooms, search rates and reservations and receive special offers directly through the app. The app gives full access to Omnis mobile site, and includes features like mobile check-in and loyalty account sign-in. Here are just some of the intriguing downloadable apps currently available for hospitality and travel:

Interactive games themed around a travel brand, destination or type of travel: cruising, foreign travel, family travel, etc. Interactive contests Apps sponsored by travel/hotel brands Personal tours of a city/destination (e.g. tour starts/ends at your hotel or resort) Interactive games where the hotel/resort is at the center of the activity

Mobile apps are good branding tools, though not many hotel companies can afford the expense in this economic environment. Application development costs vary, but can start from $25,000 for an app that people would want to download. Conclusion When HeBS released the article Wireless in Travel and Hospitality: Hype or Necessity? in September 2001, no one could foresee how big the mobile channel would become. Luckily, many of our predictions materialized, some beyond our most optimistic expectations. The mobile Internet is already here. Mobile marketing allows hoteliers to take advantage of a unique marketing and distribution medium where mobile services, marketing messages or applications are delivered via a very personal device (e.g. your cell phone or smart phone). This creates an additional responsibility for m-marketers to thread carefully and strictly adhere to best practices and standards due to the highly sensitive privacy concerns of mobile users and wireless carriers alike. Travelers are already using their mobile devices to plan and book travel and hotels. Even mobile sites of small, single properties are being visited by thousands of mobile customers. Some travel and hotel companies are already taking advantage of the growing mobile traveler population and generating incremental revenues from their mobile sites, marketing and apps. What can hoteliers do in the remaining months of 2009? An excellent first step is to create a mobile site, which by default is the gravitational center for all future marketing efforts: from text messaging and Google mobile ads, to mobile sweepstakes and applications. As discussed in this article, budget limitations are no longer an excuse for lacking an inexpensive mobile-ready hotel site.

Launching Google Mobile ads as part of a comprehensive search marketing strategy is another natural step. Also, start soliciting sign-ups to the mobile opt-in list (m-list) on the website via hotel email marketing campaigns, social media initiatives, interactive sweepstakes and contests. What should hoteliers plan for 2010 and beyond? Location-based services, m-CRM and mobile apps are initiatives in need of careful planning, sophisticated technology, and a better economic environment. Even so, hoteliers should start thinking about how to incorporate these initiatives in the upcoming years. Consider seeking advice from a mobile-ready, full-service hotel marketing and direct online channel strategy firm to actively help you take advantage of the mobile channel one step at a time. Learn which mobile marketing formats make the most sense for your hotel and how to implement latest trends and best practices in your mobile Internet marketing efforts so you can realize respectable ROI and incremental revenue growth. About the Author and HeBS: Max Starkov is Chief eBusiness Strategist at Hospitality eBusiness Strategies (HeBS). HeBS is an award-winning, full-service Internet marketing and Direct Online Channel Strategy firm, strictly dedicated to the hospitality and travel verticals. Having pioneered many of the best practices in hotel Internet marketing and direct online distribution, HeBS specializes in helping hoteliers profit from the direct online channel and transform their websites into the hotels chief and most-effective distribution channel, establish interactive relationships with their customers, and significantly increase direct online bookings and ROIs. Visit us online at www.hospitalityebusiness.com A diverse client portfolio of over 500 top tier major hotel brands, luxury and boutique hotel brands, resorts and casinos, hotel management companies, franchisees, independents, and CVBs has sought and successfully taken advantage of HeBS hospitality Internet marketing expertise. Contact HeBS consultants at (212)752-8186 or info@hospitalityebusiness.com.

Part 3 of 4 from Hotels Magazine Article: Embrace the Impact of Social, Mobile Media

Part 3 of 4 from the Hotels Magazine Blog Article: Hoteliers Action Plan to Capitalize on Rising Travel Demand. HeBS President and CEO Max Starkov has been invited to lead the Successful eMarketing blog on HOTELS magazines website. The following is an excerpt from Part 3 of 4 of Starkovs article: Hoteliers Action Plan to Capitalize on Rising Travel Demand. Action Plan: Engage your customers with social marketing Social Media has changed how travel consumers research and plan travel, access travel information, and perceive credibility of information. eMarketer reports that more than 70% of Internet users under age 35 browse social networks. That percentage decreases for older users but is still significant, with 43.1% of those ages 35 to 54 and 18.9% of users ages 55 and older visiting social networks. There is no doubt that Internet users are increasingly influenced by social media sites and peer reviews. By utilizing a comprehensive social media strategy, hoteliers can create social media buzz around the hotel, target receptive audiences, and ultimately stimulate hotel website visits, interactions and bookings. HeBS 2010 Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices showed that half of hoteliers surveyed (50% exactly) responded that in 2010 they are planning to create profiles for their hotels on the social networks. Social marketing should become an important component of any hotels marketing mix and part of the comprehensive Direct Online Channel Strategy for any hotel company. Naturally, it is important to use the right ROI metrics to measure the success of social marketing efforts of the hotel. As discussed above, social media and social marketing initiatives should be reviewed with sober eyes and within the context of the impact of the multi-channel marketing strategy of the hotel. Instead of only focusing on bookings and revenue when measuring results from social media marketing, remember that currently the best uses of social media are:

Serving as one important component of hotels multi-channel marketing Buzz-building Brand-building Interacting with and engaging customers Keeping up with the times, making the hotel look current, cool and up-to-date Driving engaged and relevant traffic to the propertys own website

What are the initiatives hoteliers can deploy in 2010 and expand in 2011?

Facebook Fan Page with reservation widget, email capture functionality, custom design tabs, photo albums, hotel blog feeds, etc. Twitter Profile with customized look and feel design, contests and sweepstakes, SEO-friendly posts, etc. LinkedIn profile to reach out business travelers and meeting planners Flickr with photo albums addressing your main business segments YouTube hotel profile: virtual tours are out, videos are in. Develop hotel videos presenting hotel services and amenities to your different customer segments and post them on the hotel website and YouTube.

A word of caution: if your hotel cannot allocate bandwidth and resources or cannot afford to hire an external social marketing firm, do not start with social media initiatives such as Facebook Fan page or Twitter profile. The social media battleground is full of corpses of abandoned hotel fan pages and profiles that do more harm than good to their owners. Social marketing is a very engaging process that requires skills and consistent engagement with the travel consumer. Action Plan: Utilize mobile marketing to communicate in real time with your customers Mobile travel bookings are projected to grow 700% in two short years. U.S. MCommerce will reach a staggering $1 billion in 2010 (ABI Research). Sixty-seven percent of business travelers already use their mobile devices to view hotel locations via maps (Sabre Travel Network Survey). Mobile marketing must become a vital component of the marketing mix for any hotelier. HeBS own research and other industry sources show that between 1% 1.5% of visitors to hotel websites already come from travel consumers accessing the hotel site via mobile devices. Hotel guestspast, current and potentialare increasingly becoming mobile-ready, and hoteliers have to respond adequately to this growing demand for mobile services. This is the reason why all major hotel brands, travel suppliers and OTAs have mobile Internet initiatives in place, including mobile brand websites and mobile applications including iPhone apps, m-CRM and mobile marketing. In order to meet the enormous growth in consumer demand for mobile services, hoteliers must start with a clear understanding of current best practices in mobile marketing. As shown by HeBS 4th annual Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices, while a number of hoteliers surveyed were not yet planning on mobile marketing initiatives for 2010 (32.8%), many are taking some very crucial first steps. What can hoteliers do in the remaining months of 2010 and 2011? Mobile marketing must become a vital component of the marketing mix for any hotelier. An excellent first step is to create a mobile site, which by default is the gravitational center for all future marketing efforts: from text messaging and Google mobile ads, to

mobile sweepstakes and applications. Budget limitations are no longer an excuse for not launching a mobile-ready hotel site. Imagine the user experience of trying to squeeze your wide-screen hotel website, designed to fit screen resolutions at 1280 x 1024 pixels and above, onto the tiny screen of a mobile device. Our analysis shows that more than 90% of mobile users access the hotel website via mobile devices with screen sizes of 320 x 480 pixels. Accessing a conventional website via a mobile device, even the latest iPhone, often results in an undesirable user experience: the inability to find information needed and a predictable outcome of abandoned websites and reservations. What should hoteliers plan for 2010 and beyond? In addition to a mobile-ready website, launching mobile contests, quizzes and sweepstakes as part of the hotel multi-channel marketing initiatives will allow you to test the waters of mobile marketing. Adding Google Mobile ads as part of a comprehensive search marketing strategy is another natural step. Also, start soliciting sign-ups to the mobile opt-in list (m-list) on the website via hotel email marketing campaigns, social media initiatives, interactive sweepstakes and contests. Location-based services, m-CRM and mobile apps are initiatives in need of careful planning, sophisticated technology, and a better economic environment. Even so, hoteliers should start thinking about how to incorporate these initiatives in the upcoming years. Read the full article, including case studies on the Hotels Magazines Successful eMarketing Blog. I look forward to our continued dialogue. Next week, well conclude our eight-step action plan with metrics and achievable objectives for the rest of 2010 and 2011.

Engaging the Hyper-Interactive Traveler Using Web 2.0 and Social Media: Hoteliers Best Practices Guide
Tuesday, July 13th, 2010

By Max Starkov and Mariana Mechoso Safer Todays travel consumer is tweeting, texting, emailing, communicating with friends via Facebook, and commenting, often in real-time, on restaurants and hotels via review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. How will you reach these hyper-interactive consumers at multiple touch points during the research process? And once your hotel has their attention, what should you do to encourage loyalty to your brand, increase site stickiness, create buzz around your hotel, and ultimately increase bookings? Many hoteliers believe they do not have the resources to dedicate to Web 2.0 and Social Media, or in other words, they are unable to meet the needs of todays hyperinteractive traveler . With more than 400 million users on Facebook, an average of 50 million tweets sent a day, and consumers expecting interactive and engaging hotel websites, the bottom line is that your hotel cannot afford to ignore Web 2.0, Social Media, or the hyper-interactive traveler. Why a Sound Web 2.0 & Social Media Strategy Is Critical to Your Hotel Business Numerous articles have been published that discuss the magnitude of participation on social media channels. Nothing exemplifies this more than the fact that recently, Facebook traffic surpassed that of Googles . By encouraging interaction on your hotel website and on social media channels, joining in on the conversation, and making changes to your business based on feedback, you are showing your current and potential guests that you are listening to them. This is invaluable for building brand loyalty and encouraging positive reviews. As stated in the Social Media Revolution video on YouTube, We dont have a choice on whether we do social media; the question is how well we do it. If you are not interacting with your guests via your hotel website and on the social media channels, your competitors surely are (more than 700,000 local businesses have active pages on Facebook). Connecting with your Website Visitors Using Web 2.0 & Social Media Strategies An integral part of the de-commoditization strategy, there are multiple cost-efficient ways to connect with current and future guests via Web 2.0 initiatives and Social Media. You may even find that in addition to further connecting with your key customer segments by utilizing the initiatives below, you are able to engage additional market segments, thereby increasing your market share. All of these initiatives to be

discussed also serve to provide visibility and increase your web presence: essential for SEO. Hoteliers must align the interactivity of the hotel website with the hyper-interactive behavior of todays travel consumer both on the hotel website and on the social web. Create multiple opportunities for your website visitors to communicate with your hotel. If you do decide to engage your hotel website visitors with any of the Web 2.0 tactics described below, make sure to allow those participants to share their experience via all their social networks (i.e. if a website visitor enters a sweepstakes, make it easy for them to share that they entered with their friends on Facebook and to tweet the contest). Before you launch your own strategy, start by assessing what your competition is doing. How many of your competitors have a Facebook page, a Twitter account, a YouTube channel, a Flickr account? How many of them have Web 2.0 functionality on their websites? Do their websites accommodate and encourage feedback? Many hotels do not have a solid, unified strategy, allowing your hotel to stand out and capture an audience that your competition is leaving in the dark. When its time to work on your own strategy, it is important to remember that its not just about having a Web 2.0 and Social Media presence. Its how you execute that strategy that determines your success. Using Web.20 Initiatives to Engage your Website Visitors Most websites are not equipped to handle the hyper-interactive travel consumer of today and offer dead, stale visual and textual content. There is minimal interaction with the user; all he/she can do is sit back and read what is on the website, as if reading a novel in a library. Many hotel websites offer dead, stale textual and visual content. There are no interactive Web-2.0 features engaging the travel consumer and soliciting his/her participation and input. This is contrary to the mere nature of todays hyper-interactive Internet user, who is tweeting, texting, emailing, communicating with friends via Facebook, and commenting, often in real-time, on restaurants and hotels via review sites like Yelp and TripAdvisor. How can you add engaging content to your website that will solicit the participation of your website visitors? 1.) Initiative: Blog on the Hotel Website

42% of consumers accessed travel information on a blog, and 40% of consumers actually posted a review themselves (PhoCusWright 2009). Update your blog at least twice a week, and sprinkle keywords in your posts. Blogs are extremely SEO-friendly and the search engines index blogs almost immediately after a post is made. A welldeveloped hotel blog strategy could provide visibility to unique aspects of your hotel product and destination, and a differentiated approach to reach key customer segments.

2.)

Initiative: Customer Feedback on the Site

By offering a comprehensive customer feedback form where customers can leave comments and complaints, you are communicating to your guests that their feedback is valuable to you. Make sure to include questions about the usability of your website. If possible, offer an incentive for people to fill out your feedback form, such as a free amenity or upgrade during their next stay, to encourage participation. In addition to the positive SEO benefits (many customer reviews include keywords i.e. We were looking for a Boston hotel that fit our budget and found the perfect fit!), testimonials accompanied by photos if possible, make your hotel come to life for your website visitors. Also make sure that you are monitoring and responding to customer reviews on the major review websites. 3) Initiative: Interactive Sweepstakes

Contests and promotions are great for getting people excited about your brand and for building buzz. Additionally, contests offer a way to build your opt-in email and mobile list. An interactive sweepstakes on the hotel website will encourage daily visits to your website and significantly grow your opt-in email list. By offering an incentive for people to enter on a daily basis, people will become more familiar with your hotel and website. Case Study: CVB in Southern California A CVB client wanted to increase their social media following as well as launch a campaign on their website that would generate buzz for the destination. HeBS recommended an interactive sweepstakes that would reach consumers at every online touch point, a way to connect with consumers via mobile, email, and social media. HeBS built an interactive sweepstakes on the website and participants were entered in a drawing to win a $1,000 free vacation. A second, third, fourth, and fifth place prize of a free hotel room was also rewarded. Lastly, an additional prize of a $250 Gift Card was awarded to the person who referred the contest to the most friends to promote viral marketing. Results:

1,200 Unique Registrants + 300 Facebook fans in 5 days + 250 Twitter Followers in 5 days Over 800 mobile numbers added to mobile marketing list Over 500 new emails added to the email opt-in list Over 30 comments on the Facebook fan page regarding the contest Winner of a Major Award for Outstanding Integrated Campaign Initiative: Interactive Calendar of Events

4)

An interactive calendar of events is a great way to keep your website visitors updated on all the latest events happening at and around the hotel. Its also a recommended

way to keep your website content fresh, with a constant flow of new information to encourage repeat website visits. If your hotel has a) popular events such as dining events, tastings, leisure activities, etc. at the property, and b) events close or near the property, such as museum exhibitions, theater performances, sporting events, concerts, and more, a calendar of events is a must. The goal is that it become the go-to for website visitors that want to be kept in the loop of all happenings at your hotel. Web 2.0 functionalities on the website have multiple benefits in addition to engaging your customer segments. They help overshadow any negative presence in organic search, build a stronger brand relationship, and they bring your brand to life for members and customer segments tying these initiatives into your social media presence. Using Social Media Initiatives to Build Loyalty and Increase Traffic to Your Website Four in five travelers read reviews on social media and 95% of those indicated such reviews were influential on the decision making process. (PhoCusWright 2009). There is no doubt that Internet users are increasingly influenced by social media sites and peer reviews. By utilizing a comprehensive social media strategy, hoteliers can create social media buzz around the hotel, target receptive audiences, and ultimately stimulate hotel website visits, interactions and bookings. HeBS 2010 Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices showed that half of hoteliers surveyed (50% exactly) responded that in 2010 they are planning to create profiles for their hotels on the social networks. Social marketing should become an important component of any hotels marketing mix and part of the comprehensive Direct Online Channel Strategy for any hotel company. Naturally, it is important to use the right ROI metrics to measure the success of social marketing efforts of the hotel. Create a positive presence and exude brand voice on the following high-traffic social media networks: 1) Initiative: Facebook

Create a Facebook page for your business. Make sure to respond as often as possible to posts, as it is easy to tell when a hotel is not listening to its audience, a sure way to start losing your fan base. Consider a Reviews or Discussions Facebook tab, where you may respond to customer feedback in a professional manner and show that you care about customer support. Include events, at least one photo album of the hotel, and videos when possible. Add value to your Facebook page with an email sign up form, a booking engine widget, and a customized tab describing the benefits of following your hotel. Post about upcoming deals and promotions, area events and happenings, announcements such as new amenities, questions for soliciting feedback (What is your favorite thing to do in San Francisco?) and exclusive offers only available on Facebook. Always include a link in posts to a relevant landing page to create move

value to followers who want more information (make sure this is often your own website), and choose a thumbnail photo for the URL to attract attention to the post. 2) Initiative: Twitter

Use Twitter to monitor what is being said about your hotel, to engage an audience that is talking about your hotel and/or its location, and to speak directly to your current and future guests. Make sure you are not only tweeting but actively engaging and responding to tweets. It you are only concerned with posting content, you are not listening. Tweet about discounts, upcoming events in the area, general news about your hotel, and offer exclusive discounts for your followers. Always include a brief call to action and a link. Your following on Twitter should be based around your target market; however, if there are special events that you wish to push via Twitter, you should also build the following around those who might be interested in those events (and who are located in that area). The majority of your followers should be local if youre looking to concentrate on last-minute events or special offers. To build your follower list, decide who your main audience is and who would be interested in your brand, and follow them (hopefully they will follow you back). Case Study: Boutique Hotel in Boston HeBS created, customized, and launched a twitter profile for a boutique hotel in Boston in September 2009. We began to build a following by tweeting and hinting about the launch of the new hotel website. We also did branded and informational tweets about the propertyits reputation, its services, its location, etc. By mid-December, we built a loyal following and were an established presence in the Boston-based twitterverse. We had already generated revenue from Twitter and established a reputation as a good place to check for upcoming Boston events. We also introduced {Hotel Name} Chirpslast-minute deals for Twitter followers. Having made the most of its smaller following, HeBS saw that the hotel needed more followers to expand its reach and capitalize on its Twitter successes. In order to increase followers, generate buzz about the property, and strengthen relationships with current followers, HeBS launched a one-day free-room giveaway exclusively on Twitter. Over 120 people entered the Hotel free-room giveaway on 12/18/09 between 10 AM 5 PM. The week of the contest, Twitter generated almost 12% of the click to the site and over 2% of bookings initiated. 3) Initiative: YouTube

Why is YouTube so important? YouTube serviced over 6.6 billion streams in Oct 2009 alone, followed by Hulu (632 million) and Facebook with over 217 million streams. YouTube is the second largest search enginesecond only to Google. Create a YouTube channel, with a look and feel customized to your brand and hotel website. On this channel, feature videos that highlight your destination, your hotel, and any positive news or press coverage. By including optimized tags on videos to

increase your presence in organic search you will help overshadow any negative videos that may be present on YouTube, and ultimately increase your brand presence. 4) Initiative: Flickr

Create a Flickr account and upload albums that highlight your hotel and destination. If possible, include photos of your guests enjoying themselves at your property. All photos may include an optimized description. A Flickr account that is well organized with optimized descriptions of photos is sure to stand out in the search engine results, and an account in Flickr helps your official photos show up in image results making the threat of non flattering photos showing up at the top of search results much less likely. Once you have established these profiles and accounts, find a highly visible place to link to these from your hotel website. Also make sure to pay special attention to how you set up the profiles always include photos and marketing messages and maintain a consistent image that represents your brand. Measuring Results of your Web 2.0 & Social Media Efforts In a world where we now have the tools to measure the return on investment of every dollar, the big question remains: How do you measure the results of your Web 2.0 & Social Media efforts? Web 2.0 initiatives on the website need to be budgeted for, and is it worth it to devote a significant amount of time (or even hire someone) on Social Media? What is the Payoff of Having Web 2.0 Initiatives on Your Website? Here are some of the positive, concrete results of having Web 2.0 Initiatives in your hotel website:

Increased time spent on site: a sweepstakes, blog, calendar of events and even a customer comment form encourage your website visitors to spend more time on your website. The more time they spend on your website, the more familiar and invested they become with your hoteland the more likely they are to make a reservation. SEO: fresh, new content on the site in the form of blogs, calendar of events, and a sweepstakes provides original content on the hotel site for customers and for the search engines. Email capture for future promotions: a sweepstakes on the hotel website is a great way to build your email opt-in list. Case in point: A HeBS client recently hosted a sweepstakes on their website, and when the sweepstakes was over they had 12,000 new email addresses to add to their opt-in list. In addition, over 3,000 people forwarded the sweepstakes to their friends. Pathing towards a booking: use analytics to study where your visitors are going after they interact with a Web 2.0 initiative. Are they on their way to make a reservation? Many times they are. Case in point: in 2010, one HeBS

client had 21.1% of its visitors attempt to make a reservation after visiting the calendar of events page. How do you Measure the Success of Your Social Media Efforts? Social marketing initiatives, if judged on their own merits, rarely generate outstanding ROIs if measured in bookings and revenue. Social media and social marketing initiatives should be reviewed with sober eyes and within the context of the impact of the multi-channel marketing strategy of the hotel. Instead of only focusing on bookings and revenue when measuring results from social media marketing, remember that currently the best uses of social media are:

An important component of hotels multi-channel marketing Buzz-building Brand-building Interacting with and engaging customers Keeping up with the times, making the hotel look current, cool and up-to-date Driving engaged and relevant traffic to the propertys own website

Unleashing a multi-channel marketing campaign simultaneously across all available marketing channels such as social media, mobile Web, search engines (SEM and SEO), display advertising, email marketing, etc produces compounded effect and far greater returns than each individual marketing format. In other words: The Whole is Bigger than the Sum of its Parts. Social Media efforts may certainly result in bookings, yet direct revenue should not be the only metric in which you measure results. If you solely focus on bookings then you are ignoring other valuable metrics such as increased visits to the website, brand loyalty, and SEO. Here are some of the ways you should be measuring the results of your Social Media efforts:

Brand loyalty/engagement: If people are following your brand and commenting on Facebook and Twitter, then they are interested in what you have to say and are more likely to book your hotel over the competition. You are in fact building stronger relationships with current and future guests. Real-time search: the search engines have started integrating tweets into their search results. Google even offers the ability to search by Updates, which are really just tweets. Case in point: recently, a HeBS client showed up second on the first page of search results for the very competitive term of Boston Hotel because of a recent tweet containing that keyword. Customer service improvements: are you using feedback about your hotel from Facebook and Twitter to better your business? Are you monitoring for disgruntled guests and potential guests with questions, and answering them quickly? If you are truly listening to your audience, you will find ways in which your customer service is lacking and work to improve in these areas. Increased traffic to your site: while social media is still not a major revenue generator, HeBS clients have seen significant traffic to their website driven by

social media. Case in point: for a HeBS client located in Northern California, visits from Twitter accounted for 4.5% of total traffic generated to their website in Q1 2010. Measuring the results of your Web 2.0 & Social Media efforts should not be based strictly on direct revenues. Have you been successful in creating more awareness about your hotel and its value proposition? Are you generating more positive buzz about your hotel? Are you listening and engaging with your audience? If the answer is yes, then you have begun to harness the power of Web 2.0 & Social Media. Conclusion Every web savvy hotelier knows that the Internet, especially Web 2.0 and Social Media, has changed the way in which customers plan and purchase travel. Hoteliers need to tailor their hotel Internet marketing strategy to include these initiatives and evolve with these changes in the travel purchase process. It is no longer a question of whether your target markets are engaging with Web 2.0 initiatives or active on Facebook and Twitter. Social media is popular even among the mature generation (63-75): 36% of them had a social network profile in 2009 vs. 10% in 2007 (eMarketer). If you are not reaching the hyper-Interactive traveler using Web 2.0 and Social Media initiatives, then you are going to quickly lose market share as your competitors gain. Consider partnering with a full-service hotel website development and Internet marketing firm to build a strong and cohesive Web 2.0 and Social Media strategy.

Online Marketing Strategies for Travel 2011

2011-05-04 Send PDF Print Bookmark Go Back Text Size:

Small luxury hotels pride themselves on taking excellent care of guests. That same care must be taken in all marketing messages to nurture each relationship, says Madigan Pratt, MD, Madigan Pratt & Associates. Small luxury hotels pride themselves on taking excellent care of guests. That same care must be taken in all marketing messages to nurture each relationship, says Madigan Pratt, MD, Madigan Pratt & Associates. Pratt, who is scheduled to speak at the forthcoming Online Marketing Strategies for Travel 2011 Conference, to be held in Miami (June 7-8), spoke to EyeforTravels Ritesh Gupta about what doesnt lead to differentiation, personalization and lot more. What do you think are the most critical issues today for independent small and medium sized travel brands to differentiate their image and offerings? Madigan Pratt: The sheer amount of noise in the marketplace and clamor for travellers attention is deafening. The depth and breadth of this - alleged - past recession has led to an unprecedented number of ways to scream "SALE!" With so much focus on discounting there never has been a greater need for a hotel to truly differentiate itself from competition. Differentiation requires a clear, benefit-oriented marketing positioning communicated in everything a hotel says and does. Positioning is a fundamental marketing concept, but far too many hotels don't have one. Instead they rely on beautiful, dreamy photography laced with elaborate technological pyrotechnics that sell sun, sea, sand, spa and smiling faces. This doesn't lead to differentiation - it leads to consumer confusion - the last thing a hotel needs. Take a look at the websites for the top 25 Caribbean hotels according to Travel+Leisure Magazine. Try and identify the brand promise or the benefit each hotel offers that not only makes it different from but better than competition. The results may surprise you. Differentiation is difficult, especially in the hectic times we are living in today. That is why it is perhaps the perfect time for hoteliers to step back, take a seriously unbiased view at what they are saying across all media and ask:

Do I have a clear positioning? Will my target market really see me as different from competition? Will they perceive me as better? Is the benefit I am offering motivating? Is the benefit truly unique?

Hopefully the answers are a resounding yes. If it is, great. If not, then the time spent developing a point of differentiation will be well worth it. Your marketing will be more impactful. How are travel companies missing out on personalisation? In one of your blog posting regarding CRM, its been mentioned that one should ensure that the Internet strategy is in order and there is a need to build and maintain a high quality database of prospects and guests. A section of the industry believes that website, email and mobile channels remain largely untapped in terms of personalisation. Whats your viewpoint regarding the same? Madigan Pratt: In How to Win Friends and Influence People Dale Carnegie wrote, "Remember that a person's name is to that person the sweetest and most important sound in any language." It is just as true today as when Mr. Carnegie first wrote it back in 1936. But personalisation goes far beyond simply communicating with customers and prospects by name. Hoteliers need to understand who is in their database and provide them with information each individual finds relevant. Consumers need to feel as though the hotel knows them, understands them and is talking directly to them. That's how strong relationships are built and that's how hotels can increase the percentage of profitable direct business it receives. To do this effectively a hotel needs a robust marketing oriented database that can be segmented so individual messages can be custom tailored to specific audiences. Building a relationship with someone means you are addressing them as if you know them. Hotels need to approach customers differently from prospects. A repeat visitor needs a different message than a first time guest. Sending snowbound specials to someone living in Florida shows them that you do not know (or care) who they are. Beyond having a good marketing database hotels need someone with strong direct marketing skills to make personalisation and relationship marketing come alive. Personalisation and true one-to-one marketing is a largely untapped area and can provide small and mid size hotels a significant advantage over competition. Building a strong relationship with guests and prospects will provide a much greater ROI than simply sending "email blasts" to a subscriber base. A part of 1:1 experience is understanding how at different points of a brand relationship, different channels play better role at different times. How can independent small and medium sized hotels leverage this into their strategy?

Madigan Pratt: The goal of 1:1 and CRM is to move people through the customer lifecycle. This starts with getting someone's attention, then letting them know why your hotel is different/better, getting them to stay with you, and then turning them into a loyal repeat guest and brand advocate. With increased loyalty will come more direct bookings. Different media and channels need to be employed at different stages of the customer lifecycle. For example, advertising and public relations are excellent tools for creating awareness for a hotel and building a database of new prospects. Research has also shown that Online Travel Agencies are an important channel (vehicle) for building awareness of a hotel as vacationers go about research destinations and resorts. In addition to building awareness, advantage of OTAs is they can immediately convert a "shopper" into a guest. Once awareness has been created and an individual raises their hand asking for more information by signing up for a newsletter or contacting reservations a different set of tools are better suited for lead nurturing and conversion. Targeted emails with relevant offers, informative e-newsletters and Facebook exclusive offers are relationship building media that can deliver high revenue while making the guest feel valued. Again this is where a quality marketing oriented database becomes invaluable. Use guest information and behavior to create appropriate messages throughout a relationship. What do you recommend when it comes to a thorough examination of any customer base: their intent, motivations, demographics and psychographics, geography, media consumption, as well as transactions? Madigan Pratt: Larger and more sophisticated hotels and chains have the budgets that afford them the opportunity to overlay demographic, psychographic and behavioral information on their databases to get a more exact picture of their customers and prospects. Most small hotels dont have the financial resources required to go into such depth. There are still a number of actions small hotels can take to segment their database allowing them to target specific individuals with relevant messages. The first thing most hotels should do is conduct an audit of the quality of the information being collected. There is a saying in database marketing, "garbage in, garbage out." If reservations is not collecting complete and accurate customer information it won't be useful for segmentation or sending relevant information. If a hotel only collects email addresses without a first name when someone subscribes to a newsletter all the hotel can do is send non-personalised "email blasts."

At the minimum, there should be separate fields for salutation, first name, middle name, last name, address 1, address 2, city, state/province, zip/postal code, country, email, telephone number # (marked home, business or mobile). If the database is housed in the PMS there should be a wealth of additional information that can be used for customer relationship marketing purposes. Relevant messages can be specifically targeted to repeat guests, first timers, high spenders, people who prefer luxury suites, summer guests, winter guests, repeat guest who haven't returned in over five years. The possibilities are limited only by the quality and quantity of the information gathered. Hotels sometimes have several databases - customer data in the PMS and customer and prospect information in a newsletter database making effective relationship marketing difficult. Fortunately there are new, relatively inexpensive CRM software solutions on the market that can merge various databases into one. This is a major advance for small hotels allowing them to more effectively compete against larger hotels, the chains and even small hotels that do not take advantage of them. The critical step to developing true one-to-one marketing communications is in organising analysing and segmenting the database. Many companies make the mistake of rushing through these strategic steps in order to implement the tactical portion of their marketing plan. How do you assess the situation? Madigan Pratt: The problem small to mid size-hotels have with implementing true one-to-one marketing communications comes from a lack of understanding of database and direct marketing. This lack of knowledge is evident in far too many of the hotel newsletters we subscribe to. While many are beautifully designed from a graphic standpoint, few deliver finely segmented and relevant messages needed to build strong relationships, brand advocates and long-term sales. For the most part, they are simply "email blasts" to an unsegmented database of subscribers. One-to-one marketing and all the knowledge, organisation and coordination needed to achieve it requires a great deal of strategic planning and manpower. Fortunately there are numerous case studies that show the return on investment is well worth the effort.

New Face of Dusit.com enhances Online Marketing Efforts Published by Ozgur Tore Thursday, 17 February 2011 21:49

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Dusit International, one of Asias leading hotel groups, announced its 2011 online marketing strategy with the launch of the new facelift for a more interactive Dusit.com, and gearing up for its online marketing throughout the year. Dusit-new-WebsiteMs Jennifer Cronin, Vice President Sales & Marketing, Dusit International revealed The global traveller of today now expects 24/7 instantaneous connectivity wherever they are in the world. With the ever-fast changing technological landscape, we have made Dusit.com a priority for the future of the company. In less than three years since the last website rebuild, as a company, we have made a firm commitment to investing in the new Dusit.com and to be continually upgrading to keep up with these major changes in the way we do business. The project has taken almost 12 months to finalise to this point that we are at today and will be an ongoing KPI for our online marketing efforts. Dusits online marketing strategy will play a key role in the long term marketing activities of all Dusit Internationals hotels and resorts this year. With a fresh look and design, easy navigation, as well as many new features we will provide an even more convenient 24/7 connectivity to guests, corporate accounts, and the travel industry to book, amend, and confirm their business or leisure trips instantly worldwide. In addition, the new Dusit website will also help us understand our customers behaviour better with guest history, web statistics, conversion rates and google analytics features. With an investment of almost THB 10 million or USD 335,000, we aim to increase the overall online bookings through Dusit.com from 12 percent in 2010 to 25 percent this year as a minimum. Our online marketing programmes will include initiatives such as Click its Magic for special accommodation offers, with an increased proportion of 45 percent allocated for online advertising in our overall advertising spend. We have also invested in the utilisation of e-brochures for our MICE and Global Directories and collateral. Social Networking has also taken a high priority with the appointment last year of the companys first Social Media representative, with Social Media Standard Operating Procedures (SOPs) and Social Media champions at every Dusit property, responsible for all online communications activities. All of which reflects Dusits belief in being constantly in touch with new technologies, communications, and marketing trends. As a matter of fact we were one of the first hotel groups to ensure QR codes are inserted in all advertising collateral and we will continue to look to be ahead of our competitors in all facets of technology and new media, said Vice President of Sales & Marketing. Dusit International selected Ringzero Networks (Thailand) Ltd., a USA and Thailandbased Internet technology and new media business development company, to develop and implement the new Dusit.com website. As part of the press conference to launch the new Dusit.com held recently at Dusit Thani Bangkok, Dusit International also welcomed Dell Corporation Thailand Co., Ltd., who has played a significant role as the IT business partner with Dusit for over

eight years. Dell has showcased Dell Streak wz Android OS, the five-inches ultimate portable tablet PC, as the special prize for the press conferences lucky draw winner and provided one of Dells top computer notebook models to display the new Dusit website at the event.

Smart Hoteliers Guide to 2011 Internet Marketing Budget Planning

By Max Starkov and Mariana Mechoso Safer, October 11, 2010 Hoteliers, we are already in that time of year again: marketing budget planning season. In this environment of uncertainty and mixed economic news, many hotel owners and operators are finding themselves in a state of confusion. Should hoteliers be proactive by raising their marketing budgets, or is it safer to be reactive and wait to see what will happen with the economy over the next few months? For over two solid years, hoteliers found themselves having to accomplish more with less. They faced the end of 2008 and the beginning of 2009 with slashed marketing budgets, staff cuts, and an even more urgent need to show the ROI of every dollar spent. Needless to say, it was a challenging time for many of us in the industry. In 2011, however, its time to be more cautiously optimistic. Its time to un-shrink the hotel marketing budget! 2011: The Good News and the Bad News Lets start with the good news. All signs are pointing to yes, the hospitality industry is in recovery mode. The industry projects to end 2010 with important increases in two of the three key performance measurements, according to the latest forecast of Smith Travel Research (STR). In 2010 occupancy is expected to increase by 4.4% and RevPAR by 4.3%, while ADR is expected to end the year flat. In 2011 occupancy will grow a further 1.4% while RevPAR will increase by 5.3% and ADR by 3.9%. So what is the bad news? The bad news concerns the need for fresh investments in marketing and customer engagement, inventory distribution infrastructure and human capital i.e. the need to increase marketing budgets in 2011. During the height of the recession (over the past two years), a number of very important developments occurred that profoundly changed hotel marketing, customer engagement and inventory distribution in hospitality:

The Internet established itself as the main travel planning and booking channel. In the US, 45% of all hotel reservations will be booked online in 2010 compare this to less than 15% via the GDS! In Q2 2010, Internet bookings for the top 30 hotel brands reached 52.4% while GDS Travel Agent bookings contributed to only 21.8% and voice to 25.7% of total brand CRS bookings (eTRAK). The Hyper-Interactive Travel Consumer became your main customer. This new breed of consumer is tweeting, posting, texting, emailing, communicating with friends via Facebook and Twitter, and commenting, often in real-time, on hotel and dining experiences via review sites. Most hotel websites are not

equipped to handle the hyper-interactive nature of this consumer and read like a static online brochure.

Social Media: engaging your customers via social marketing has become not only the norm, but is expected by past, current and future hotel guests. Mobile Web: the mobile channel has already become an important travel planning and transaction channel in the U.S. and worldwide. Hotel guests and travel consumers in general are already mobile-ready, and hoteliers and travel suppliers have to respond adequately to this growing demand for mobile travel services. Channel Convergence: Todays hyper-interactive travel consumers are seeing your marketing messages across a variety of different channels. Now more than ever, there is a convergence of new and traditional digital formats, of interactive and offline marketing channels. Multichannel Marketing: Some marketing initiatives, if judged on their own merits, generate disappointing ROIs. For example, many hoteliers are struggling to justify returns from social and mobile marketing initiatives which rarely produce significant ROIs as stand-alone marketing formats. But unleashing a promotional campaign simultaneously across all available marketing channels produces a compounded effect and far greater returns than each individual marketing format. The Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) gained market and channel share during the recession. In Q2 2010 the OTA share of the CRS bookings for the top 30 hotel brands reached 33%, compared to 25.4% in Q2 of 2008. Revenue leaked from hotels to the OTAs in the form of abnormally high merchant commissions will reach $5.4 billion in 2010 alone. Read more in HeBS recent article Dj Vu: The Billion Dollar Leakage Continues to Drain the Hospitality Industry.

All of the above developments require new investments in aligning the hotel marketing and distribution efforts with the new hyper-interactive travel consumer, in acquiring new multichannel marketing and technology capabilities, in boosting the direct online channel to overcome OTA dependency and in staff trainings and professional development. Industry Benchmarks: How Are your Peers Allocating their Budgets? Every year for the past four years, HeBS has conducted the Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices to assess hoteliers Internet marketing priorities and strategies for the year ahead. Regarding 2010 budgets, there were two key findings:

The economic environment prevailed as a factor when planning budgets. Even so, hoteliers continued to shift budgets from offline to online marketing formats. In last years survey, 51.1% of respondents said they were shifting a

portion of their budgets to online because they believe Internet marketing produces the best results (55% vs. 10% that think traditional marketing is more effective).

For the first time, we saw static marketing budgets rather than budget increases. Thirty-nine percent said they were not increasing their overall marketing budgets in 2010, vs. 33% last year.

With lower marketing budgets to work with, where did hoteliers predict they would spend their money this year?

Of your total Internet marketing budget, where will you spend your money? Website re-design/design Website optimization Strategic links to property website from online directories, portals Paid Search Engine Marketing: Pay-per-click (PPC) Local search/Online Yellow Pages Meta search (Kayak, Sidestep, etc.) (SEM) Search Engine Optimization (SEM) Display advertising (banners) Email marketing Mobile marketing (mobile search, mobile ready websites, SMS messaging, etc.) Web 2.0 Functionality/Social Media Advertising Consulting fees

2010 (projected) 13% 10% 11% 16% 3% 4% 11% 4% 8% 4% 8% 4%

(Source: HeBS 4th annual Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices).

Overall, last year, hoteliers shifted their budgets from offline to online and focused most of their budgets on proven, ROI-generating Internet marketing initiatives such as website design, paid search marketing, and SEO. We also saw room being made in the budget for mobile marketing, Web 2.0 and social media. In 2011, hoteliers should continue to move funds to the online channel, and carefully employ ROI-centric and customer-engaging initiatives. Additionally, with increased demand next year comes the need for increased marketing budgets. Structuring Your 2011 Hotel Internet Marketing Budget With shrinking GDS bookings, declining voice reservations and group market that will be flat at best next year, the online channel is the only growth channel. HeBS estimates a growth rate of minimum 6%-7%. But hoteliers do not want just any online bookings. The focus of 2011 hotel internet marketing budgets must be on driving bookings through the direct online channel, the hotel website. The OTA channel not only is not free, but also is, on average, 10 times more expensive than the direct online channel. Curious as to how much money can be saved by focusing on the direct online channel? Click here to try the HeBS Direct Online Channel Calculator. Hoteliers need a robust direct online channel strategy accompanied by adequate marketing funds to be able to a) take advantage of the steady growth in the Internet channel and b) shift bookings from the indirect (OTA) to direct (hotel website) online channels. Here are a few guiding principles when reviewing the 2011 hotel Internet marketing budget:

Review and update the budget to meet growing travel demand and increase market share. Include marketing initiatives that align the hotel marketing and distribution efforts with the new hyper-interactive travel consumer. Shift funds to advertising formats with proven, direct, serious ROIs (SEO, SEM, email marketing), and initiatives that help the hotel engage customers and produce great indirect ROI, such as social and mobile marketing initiatives. Hold off on advertising where you cannot measure results (e.g. print) and ROAS (Return on ad spend), or those that have not resulted in good ROIs in the past.

Re-evaluate the importance of each key customer segment and feeder market in the marketing mix. For example, if fly-in guests share has decreased due to airline capacity cuts and declines in corporate travel, focus on your drive-in feeder market. What marketing initiatives generate the best returns according to your fellow hoteliers?

In the past few years, website design, website optimization, and search engine optimization were the initiatives which hoteliers said brought the best returns. In 2010, we see that even though social media and mobile marketing only recently made their way into the hotel budget, hoteliers are expecting good results from these new marketing channels:

What Internet marketing formats do you believe produce the best results and the highest returns on investment (ROI)? Website design/redesign Website optimization Search optimization Organic search Strategic links to property website from online directories, portals Email marketing Web 2.0/Social Media formats (e.g. TripAdvisor, Facebook, Twitter, blogs, etc) Paid Search Engine Marketing: Pay-per-click (PPC) Display advertising (banners) Mobile marketing Online sponsorships

2007 62.9% 71.9% 68.3% 52.7% 58.7% 16.8% 40.7% 16.2% N/A 6.6%

2008 70.19% 68.27% 56.73% 41.35% 60.6% 26% 39.42% 12.5% N/A 26%

2009 56.3% 81.6% 60.9% 48.3% 51.7% 37.9% 56.3% 28.7% N/A 37.9%

2010 61.7% 70.0% 58.3% 48.3% 48.3% 41.7% 38.3% 21.7% 15% 10%

(Source: HeBS 4th annual Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices). In order to drive more direct online channel revenues, which initiatives should be included in your 2011 Internet marketing budget? Here are recommended marketing initiatives and share of each initiative, based on a hypothetical $100,000 annual budget: Website Redesign Over the past two years, many hoteliers who desperately needed website redesigns simply put Band-Aids on their existing sites to save precious budget dollars. In 2011, this approach needs to be rethought. The hotel website is the backbone of your Internet marketing strategy the most important tool in your arsenal. Your outdated website allows your competitors to steal your market share. There have been so many changes in the past 24 months that it would be virtually impossible to have kept up with all of them the emergence of the hyper-interactive traveler, social media, mobile marketing, Web 2.0 functionalities, and more. If your

hotel website is over two years old, there can be no excusesit is time for a redesign. If your website is over a year old, keep it current with search engine optimization (SEO) strategies, a Web 2.0 optimization (interactive elements on your website) and ensuring you are fully addressing all your customer segments in your copy and navigation. Make the hotel website redesign reflect 2010-2011 industrys best practices. A site redesign is a 90-120 day project (start planning now). Our experience shows that any website optimizations, enhancements or site re-designs pay for themselves within 3-4 months. Share of the 2011 Internet marketing budget: 9%-10%, based on a 24-month amortization of the asset. Web 2.0 Initiatives Is your hotel website engaging website visitors? Is it aligned with the new hyperinteractive travel consumers? Or is it boring them to tears with the same stale visual and textual content? Encourage repeat visits and increased time on the site by including Web 2.0 initiatives in your 2011 budget. Start with a blog on the hotel website, and then continue with customer feedback forms, photo and experience sharing, interactive sweepstakes, and an interactive calendar of events. These initiatives are affordable and worth the investment. Share of the 2011 Internet marketing budget: 5%-6%. Search Engine Marketing Between 50-70% of hotel website traffic and revenue is a direct referral from the search engines which makes SEM and SEO especially important (HeBS). Sixty-four percent of leisure travelers and 65% of business travelers begin the travel purchasing process on the search engines (OTX Research).

Paid Search (SEM): We recommend that in 2011, hoteliers raise their paid search marketing budgets by at least 10%. Google Instant Search, recent changes in Google Places such as sponsored tags, and increased market share on Bing since they took over Yahoo Search have all made paid search marketing even more expensive and competitive. Paid search marketing is a popular advertising format for hoteliers because it works. If you are following best practices, conducting keyword analyses on a regular basis and consistently optimizing campaigns after measuring results with your analytical tools, then search marketing campaigns will generate significant revenues for your hotel.

Share of the 2011 Internet marketing budget: 35%-40%.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Organic search engine referrals to the hotel website generate the most cost-effective bookings for any hotelier.

Therefore it is paramount to optimize the hotel website, blog, social media profiles, mobile site, etc. to achieve best possible rankings across the search engines. On the hotel website make sure that the keyword density, H1 and H2 headers, page titles and meta data reflect best practices and latest trends. Share of the 2011 Internet marketing budget: 4%-5%. Email Marketing Email marketing is still an essential component of the hoteliers direct online channel strategy, an easy way to send valuable messages to your key customer segments, and a very affordable line item in the Internet marketing budget. Case Study: A hotel in the Florida Keys was experiencing low occupancy in the months of April and May of 2010 and needed a quick way to generate bookings. The results:

Sent: 56,567 email addresses Opened: 10,743 Clicks: 4,541 Click through Rate: 42.26% Cost: $700 Revenue: $8947 ROI: 1178%

Continue your efforts in increasing your email opt-in list, developing email creative that is eye-catching and consistent with your website design, and stay far away from email rental lists. Share of the 2011 Internet marketing budget: 7%. Banner Advertising & Online Sponsorships These initiatives both offer great ways to reach your customer segments and target markets. Once youve budgeted for the essentials redesigning or optimizing your website, paid search marketing, and email marketingconsider banner advertising and online sponsorships on relevant media. Now and in 2011, hoteliers have access to tools that can help them make smarter and more ROI-generating decisions. Options now available for retargeting (putting your messages in front of people that have already visited your website) and behavioral targeting (marketing to people based on their web-browsing behavior), should replace previous methods of managing these initiatives. Share of the 2011 Internet marketing budget: 5%-6%. Social Marketing

HeBS 2010 Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices showed that half of hoteliers surveyed (50% exactly) responded that in 2010 they are planning to create profiles for their hotels on the social networks. As more and more hotels put more effort into social marketing, we are starting to see results that make us pay closer attention. Focus on engagement and not direct bookings, and ROI will be in the form of increased brand loyalty, buzz around your hotel, and then ultimately, incremental revenues. Include money in the budget for custom enhancements on Facebook pages, Twitter profiles, and YouTube channels. As an effective social media marketing strategy involves a significant amount of a time investment and the constant need to keep up with new developments and latest trends, also consider seeking help from an experienced Internet marketing firm to build a strong and cohesive social media strategy. Share of the 2011 Internet marketing budget: 8%. Mobile Marketing Make room in the budget for mobile marketing. HeBS own research and other industry sources show that between 1% 1.5% of visitors to hotel websites already come from travel consumers accessing the hotel site via mobile devices. Sixty-seven percent of travelers and 77% of frequent business travelers have already used their devices to find local services (e.g. lodging) and attractions (PhoCusWright). If your hotel does not have a mobile website yet, make this one of the first things you cover in your 2011 budget. This is not an expensive endeavor a 10-page mobile website should not cost more than $1500and this should be followed by a mobile booking engine, Google Mobile Ads leading to the mobile site, mobile contests and quizzes. You should already have started soliciting sign-ups to the mobile opt-in list (m-list) on the website via hotel email marketing campaigns, social media initiatives, interactive sweepstakes and contests. Share of the 2011 Internet marketing budget: 7%-8%. Website Operations and Campaign Management Fees As a rule of thumb your website hosting, maintenance, textual and visual content updates, website analytics and campaign tracking, and phone reservation tracking should not exceed 6%-7% of your total budget. Campaign management and direct online channel consultation fees by your interactive agency of record should not exceed 11%-12% of your overall Internet marketing budget. Conclusion Hotel marketing budgets have shrunk considerably over the past two years. During the recession a number of important developments completely changed hotel marketing and customer engagement, including the emergence of the hyperinteractive travel consumer, social marketing, mobile marketing, channel convergence and multichannel marketing. These developments, plus the economy in recovery

mode, require fresh investments and increased marketing budgets in 2011. Continue holding every dollar accountable with analytics, carefully targeting your customer segments, and shifting dollars from advertising formats where you cannot measure results and you will start capitalizing from rising travel demand. Embrace multichannel marketing, and reap the benefits of far greater returns than each individual marketing format would bring. Most importantly, focus your budget dollars on driving revenue from the direct online channel vs. the indirect online channel and your bottom line will benefit exponentially. With 45% of all hotel bookings in North America being made online this year, the effectiveness of your hotel website and Internet marketing campaigns in generating bookings will play a big part in determining the overall success of your hotel in 2011. Work with a partner company that understands best practices in hotel website design and Internet marketing, has proven results in the form of prestigious design and Internet marketing awards, and has transformed its clients hotel websites into their most cost-efficient revenue generator.