HOW TO: Use Social Media for Travel Research

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by Ben Parr

Whether you’re traveling to another city, state, or continent, putting in a few hours to do your homework can mean the difference between a great vacation and a week full of headaches. Finding great local restaurants, comfortable sleeping accomodations, and hidden gems should be on the top of your travel list, no matter if it’s a one day business trip or a permanent move to Thailand.

In the past, this type of information was exclusive to travel agents and generic travel books. However, with the rise of social media and stronger interconnectivity, you can get the real story, avoid the tourist traps, and meet real locals. This guide provides an overview of tips and tools for using social media as a travel research tool.

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Step 1. Utilize Wikis and Blogs for Travel Education

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A wealth of information and tips are available in blogs, user comments, and wiki articles. These will provide you with the information found in most travel books, but in a condensed and searchable format. Blogs and wikis have a more human element to them as well - the debates users have on these articles helps combine the best information from multiple minds, instead of relying on the opinions and advice of one or two authors. Some places to visit:

Wikipedia reviews - Wikipedia goes without saying, but make sure to read the discussion on the cities and countries you are traveling to; these reveal some great information.

Wikitravel - Wikitravel is an impressive collection of user-generated guides to destinations across the world. It covers food, hotels, events, and even the safety of different locations.

Gadling - Gadling is a popular travel blog, part of the AOL Weblogs network. It is filled with a wealth of travel information

Concierge - Concierge is a Condé Nast magazine, but also has a great series of blogs for those interested in smart traveling, learning about new destinations, or even culinary delights.


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Step 2. Scope Out Locales Using User Reviews

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Picking out the best restaurants is tough, so let others do the work for you. Social media is a great way to share reviews of restaurants, tourist destinations, and local businesses. You can pick out some top destinations beforehand or at least avoid locations with bad reputations.

The most common user review website for travelers are YelpYelp reviews, and Tripadvisor. But when you’re on the ground, be sure to use Where To? for the iPhone. Where To? connects to Google MapsGoogle Maps reviews and your GPS to find points of interest.


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Step 3. Connect With Locals

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You’ve found information on the location you’re visiting, and now you’ve read user reviews of top restaurants. Now what? It’s time to really use social media to your advantage. Make new friends in the areas you are going to visit using social networks and social media.

Social media is entirely about people and the information they have. You’d be surprised how willing they are to share their first-hand knowledge. Some useful tips:

@reply locals using TwitterTwitter reviews: Twitter is the perfect platform for open conversations about locations. Use the near:location Twitter Search command to find recent tweets near any major city. And then just introduce yourself and ask some questions.

Search your FacebookFacebook reviews friends by location: Take a look at your existing network to see if any of your current friends grew up or currently live in your destination. You would be surprised to find out how many different and unique locales your friends have lived at.

Meet up with the locals you connect with: If it’s within your comfort zone, it’s always an interesting time when you actually meet the locals you talk to. Have them show you the ins-and-outs of the city or the countryside. But do your research on the people you meet for your own safety. Read their blog, their tweets, and friend them on Facebook.

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Step 4. Share Your Travel Experience

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None of this information would be available to you if it were not for the hard work of others to put it in digital form. So return the favor and add your experiences to a wiki, tweet about the attractions you visit, and be open to answering questions about your own hometown.

Social media is a great research tool, especially for things as subjective and personal as travel destinations. Utilizing the reviews and thoughts of others can make your trip a lot more exciting and a lot less stressful. Travel to get away from the stress, not to add to it.
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10 High-Impact, Low-Budget Ideas for Marketing in a Down Economy (Part 1)

by Jonathan Kranz

When the going gets tough, the tough get... cheap. Today, a good marketing idea has to be as inexpensive as it is clever. In part 1 of a two-part series, I offer five inexpensive suggestions that can lead to productive results.

1. Use all of the buffalo

The buffalo was more than a source of meat. Hides became clothing and shelter; bones became tools; sinews became bow strings.

Think like a Plains Indian and get the most use out of every marketing effort possible. One case study, for example, can serve as

Spider-food on your website that boosts SEO and provides meaningful content:

A direct mail insert in lieu of the traditional product brochure

A tradeshow handout to jump start conversations

A leave-behind for sales calls

Bonus
Exploit the public relations potential of a big project such as a whitepaper or e-book. If the content is genuinely valuable (not merely promotional swill), you may be able to pick up good press on the cheap.

One of my clients got a half-page article in the leading trade magazine for its industry—and scored a seat at the executive leadership table in the industry's dominant professional association as a result of the great press.

Target appropriate editors/bloggers/reporters with your content and include a quick note explaining its relevance to their audiences.

2. Choose your social-media weapons carefully

What's that background hum? Oh, it's the swarm of expert wannabes chattering endlessly about Web 2.0, social media, the death of print, etc. No matter what the technology or medium—whether blogs or mobile devices, Facebook or Twitter—the message is always the same: You gotta be there—or you're a dumb-dumb... or worse, a dodo.

Look, no doubt some of these may have real value for your business. But the hard truth is that you can't do ALL of them well. Nor should you. Concentrate your resources on the ones that:

Are likely to be used or welcomed by your target markets

You can excel in

You can sustain on a regular basis

Don't impose unrealistic burdens on your resources or budgets

Bonus
A client of mine leveraged social media to help a branch of the armed services meet its recruiting targets. But instead of chasing the latest social media fads, they focused their efforts by doing two key things: listening to the online conversations already in progress and creating open content that their target audiences could freely share. Result? They've hit their recruiting numbers every month.

3. Go organic

Place greater emphasis on your organic SEO rather than simply dumping money into Google AdWords. It's not only cheaper, it can be more productive; I've read various analyses on the Web suggesting that natural listings attract 60% or 70% of clicks as opposed to 40% or 30% for paid listings.

Successful organic SEO requires

Aggressive identification of keywords that should be optimized for each significant page on your site

Development of deep content that feeds search engine spiders and attracts incoming links

Constant monitoring of your site statistics to track trends and progress

Bonus
Don't neglect your titles and meta descriptions. "Titles" are the words that appear at the top of the visitor's Web browser. Search engine spiders take titles seriously, so be sure yours include keywords. The "meta description" in your HTML is what the search engines use to describe your site when it appears as a response to search query; write yours to appeal to potential customers.

4. Play to your strengths

Many years ago, as I was starting my copywriting career, I met a businesswoman who shared what she described as the best advice she ever got at a motivational seminar: Don't try to improve your weaknesses; just concentrate on developing your strengths.

I think that's wise. For us, it means focusing our business operations on our most productive, profitable areas and focusing our marketing efforts on those strategies or tactics at which we most excel.

It's not a matter of what works, but what works for you. If, for example, cold-calling simply isn't effective, drop it. If you're good at networking, plan on investing more of your time and money on networking opportunities this year.

Bonus
So many of my clients get hung up on this so-called "elevator speech" thing—that 30-second pitchoid that each of us is supposed to have at the ready. The problem with these things is that they sound every bit as contrived and unnatural as they really are. So forget about them. Instead, think about questions, things you can ask new prospects that can jump-start conversations and lead to a natural introduction of your products or services.

5. Profile your best customers

Consider this reverse-engineering for marketing. Think of your best customers. What do they have in common? Is it an industry or role? A similar problem or challenge? A quality of temperament, habit, or attitude? The answers form a profile of the kind of prospects you should pursue.

Then think about how you attracted your top customers. Did they come to your Web site first? Or respond to a direct mail campaign? Or meet you at a conference? Again, whatever worked, do more of. And consider trimming back the rest.

Bonus
Be prepared for surprises. You may have started your business with the intent of serving one kind of customer with one kind of need, but in retrospect you may find that your best business comes from an entirely different kind of client with a different need.

I work with a company, for example, that started out in the business of providing inexpensive security for PDF documents. But, over time, it found that the real interest lay in offering PDF analytics—and they've shifted their efforts accordingly.

More>

Strengthening Your Online Presence: Now is the Time

by Vinay Bhagat, Founder & Chief Strategy Officer, Convio

Many nonprofits are feeling the impact of the financial crisis — in particular those reliant on corporate gifts. Others are bracing themselves for challenging conditions. In difficult economic times, it can be a natural reaction to stop all new investments. Yet, building strong constituent relationships and acquiring new donors to replenish losses is more important than ever.

Nonprofits must adopt a strategic approach to their fundraising investments, cutting less efficient areas and investing where gains can be realized. The traditional fundraising model has been in decline for some time. The financial crisis and competition for donor dollars has heightened the imperative to change models today, re-allocating investment from waning traditional fundraising approaches to new approaches that incorporate the online channel.

Challenges with Traditional Fundraising Channels
Direct mail-based donor acquisition has been getting more difficult and more expensive due to postage rate increases, mailing list fatigue, postal mail delivery challenges, and shifting consumer preferences. The Target Analytics Index of National Fundraising Performance, which tracks some very large nonprofits, shows donor counts have been declining consistently for the past two and a half years. In the first quarter of 2008, for the first time in two years, overall revenue declined as well. Revenue fell 1.8% from Q1 2007 to Q1 2008.

Until now, increases in revenue per donor compensated for donor declines, allowing overall revenue to continue to grow. In the most recent quarter in the analysis, however, continued revenue per donor growth could not make up for the donor decreases nor prevent overall revenue from declining. For most organizations, overall donor declines have been due primarily to a decrease in new donor acquisition. New donors declined 2.3% from Q1 2007 to Q1 2008, on top of a 5.3% drop over the same period one year before. Additionally, telephone fundraising is growing more difficult in the wake of "do not call" regulation and the substitution of land lines for cell phones. In this context, nonprofits must find more economic ways to source new donors and enhance their lifetime value.

The Shift Online
As direct mail-based fundraising has become less effective, online fundraising has grown significantly. According to the Pew Foundation, 75% of all Americans are now online at home or at work. According to The Online Marketing (eCRM) Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study, published by Convio in 2008, the median online revenue growth rate across sectors was just over 26% from the first half of 2006 to the first half of 2007, with some sectors, namely Environment and Wildlife, Visitation (museums, zoos/aquariums, and performing arts) and Higher Education growing at over 50%.

Much of the online fundraising growth has come from new, younger donors. Online donors are typically 15 years younger than direct mail donors. In addition, usable email files grew 32% in the same period, showing that nonprofits are successfully developing online prospect lists for future supporters. A first-of-its-kind national survey conducted for Convio by JupiterResearch, a Forrester Research company, shows that of the 175.6 million online adults (age 18+) in the US, more than half (51%) plan to donate to charities during the upcoming holiday season.

If there is a silver lining in the economic cloud, it is that consumers and nonprofits are aligning around the online channel. Given its growth, it is imperative that nonprofits invest appropriately in the online channel to realize its full potential. In fact, according to the Direct Marketing Association, nonprofits are on average growing their online marketing spend four times faster than their direct mail and telemarketing spend.

Power to the People
Today, constituents are taking a more active role in their philanthropy. Many want to see the direct impact of their giving, others are eager to participate in a movement. Increasingly, people are donating because of being asked to do so by their friends or family versus a nonprofit organization itself. The Internet has accelerated these trends which represent a shift of power to the constituent.

A majority of prospective donors will visit a charity’s website to learn more before making an initial contribution. A growing number of people will research charities on sites like Charity Navigator or Guidestar before giving. Direct to beneficiary giving portals, such as Kiva and DonorsChoose, which give donors unprecedented control over where they direct their gifts, have grown exponentially. At Kiva, a donor can make a micro-loan directly to a specific person in a developing country. At DonorsChoose, donors can support a specific funding need posted by a public school teacher.

Online peer-to-peer fundraising tools like Convio TeamRaiser™ and Tributes have enabled nonprofits to turn their most passionate supporters into prolific fundraisers. Convio’s extensions for Facebook and widgets for other social networks like MySpace have extended the appeal of peer-to-peer fundraising to Generation Y.

The Integrated Effect
The value of online marketing should not be measured solely by money raised online. There is increasing proof that online marketing attracts new donors and influences existing offline donors to give more. At the 2007 Convio Client Summit, Jeff Regen, VP Online Marketing & Communications at Defenders of Wildlife, shared how the organization uses online advocacy as a way to attract new constituents, and subsequently deploys a multi-channel approach using email, direct mail and telemarketing to convert non-donor activists to donors. The cohort of new non-donor activists recruited between January and March 2006 contributed over $90,000 within 16 months after being exposed to a multi-channel fundraising effort. About 78% of the donations were ultimately yielded online.

In addition to being a source for new donors and a feeder channel for direct mail and telemarketing acquisition efforts, online marketing also enhances donor loyalty. Convio's joint study with the analytics firm StrategicOne in 2006 demonstrated that online engagement enhances the lifetime value of a direct mail donor through growing both gift frequency and donor retention rates.

Online marketing is emerging as a strong source for new major donor prospects as well. Defenders of Wildlife has found that about one-third of all new major donors are sourced through their online marketing efforts. The Wired Wealthy research that Convio conducted with Sea Change Strategies and Edge Research confirms that mid-level and major donors are increasingly wired, and online communications can help augment and enhance less frequent personal contact.

Now is the Time
Current economic conditions indicate that competition for donors will intensify. Economically sourcing new prospects, converting them to donors, and maximizing their lifetime value is more important than ever. Savvy nonprofits will make the strategic changes and investments required to succeed online, to align to a world where power has shifted to donors, and to implement multi-channel marketing strategies. Money raised online can now more than justify the start-up costs of online marketing efforts, and is a fraction of the true value created by effectively integrating online marketing with direct mail and major donor development efforts.

More >

Non Profits and Social Media

The Center for Nonprofit Management at Robert Morris University has been doing a biannual survey of nonprofit technology benchmarks for its regional nonprofits for the past ten years.

A few highlights related to social media:

23% use social networking sites, but 68% of those use them "rarely"

20% use blogs, but 64% of those use them "rarely"

11% use RSS feeds

11% use podcasting

My personal feeling on Social Media is it is not just for larger national organizations. Smaller non profits can have a web presence with the big boys if they implement an active social media optimization plan... and all the tools are free.

Read complete report>

What Not to Say on Twitter

What Not to Say On Twitter

Six Hotel Internet Marketing Experts Share Best Practices

By Jitendra Jain

2009: This year may well go down for some as the year that the worst recession since World War II hit the world economy …and threw travel off-balance. Others may remember this year for the exciting challenges posed, opportunities seized and progress made towards a brighter, more profitable and tech-savvy future. Whichever way you chose to remember it, there’s no denying the fact that as travel and hospitality professionals, we’ll all have to break some moulds, get creative, optimize use of resources and collaborate like we’re never done before!

This document was inspired by a similar effort in the field of Online Social Media, initiated by Peter Kim, where prominent bloggers and authors collaborated to share their thoughts on the future developments they saw in 2009. My natural reaction was… collaboration should be a natural fit for the hospitality industry right? After all, we’re all about people! Thus this initiative was born…and I set out to seek the knowledge, thoughts and advice of prominent industry leaders and bloggers, on what they saw as important developments and tips in the field of online hospitality marketing this year. Of the 18 or so people contacted, 5-6 were kind enough to respond and share their remarkable thoughts.

* Professor Dimitrios Buhalisis, Deputy Director at the International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research (ICTHR), School of Services Management at Bournemouth University.
* Todd Lucier, creator of Tourism Keys Internet Marketing for Tourism blog, podcast and learning materials
* Patrick Landman, Hotel Revenue Management, Online Distribution and Internet Marketing Guru and the Founder of Xotels
* Jan Tissera, President, TravelCLICK International (Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa regions)
* Guillaume Thevenot, French Londoner based at Amadeus and founder + editor of Hotel-Blogs.com
* Jitendra Jain (JJ), Online Marketer at Starwood Hotels and founder of The Talent Jungle Network, YoungHotelier.com and HoteleMarketer.com

Common themes that seem to emerge include:

1. It’s time to get back to basics and cover these well
2. There will be an increasing reliance on online technology in the year ahead
3. We’ll have to work together, both offline and online, for the best results
4. Utilization of mobile and on-the-go marketing will increase moving forward
5. There will be a renewed focus on internationalization and destination marketing
6. ROI measurement and analytics will become keystones to online success
7. A better understanding of our customer needs, niches and experiences will be required
8. There will be an increasing use of rich media and online PR in hospitality
9. The Hospitality industry will start experimenting with social media in earnest
10. Creativity and common sense will reign supreme (or so it ought to!)

A big Thank You to those who’ve taken the time to share their thoughts, ideas and insights in this document. This just wouldn’t have been possible without you.

THOUGHTS on 2009

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis

Hotel Online Marketing Predictions 2009: What do you think are the 3 key internet developments and online opportunities the hotel industry is likely to encounter & benefit from this year?

1. Technology to assist cutting costs
2. Location-based services and geography mash-ups increasing
3. Tour operators investing more in bedbanks and repackaging the package further

Leveraging technology to bear the recession: What are your Top tips to Hotels hoping to leverage Internet tech to beat the recession?

Many friends and colleagues have been asking me what to do in their tourism business during these difficult economic times. Here is the advice I gave to a hotelier friend recently:

* look after your customers better - engage with real CRM and work with you client base
* look after your domestic markets and people who can visit you within 90 minutes drive/train/ferry
* identify markets that are less affected or their perception is not affected as others
* create events and work on your value added propositions
* enhance your PR footprint
* work closely with your intermediaries and do not always believe that demand will be at the level they would have hopped
* expand the number of intermediaries available
* work closely with your staff to go reduce costs and to save through operational management
* work closely with your local suppliers to bring local products and reduce transportation, logistics and storage costs
* open your distribution channels as much as possible
* use technology and the internet to be in front of both your individual and trade customers as often as possible
* address you cost base and cut any unnecessary costs throughout
* reduce fixed cost - even if you pay higher variable costs for production
* work with local associations and clubs to organise events, conferences, charity gatherings etc
* be prepared but be cheerful - we have seen it all before !

Professor Dimitrios Buhalis is the Deputy Director at the International Centre for Tourism and Hospitality Research (ICTHR), School of Services Management at Bournemouth University. Email: dbuhalis@bournemouth.ac.uk Blog: http://buhalis.blogspot.com

Todd Lucier

Hotel Online Marketing Predictions 2009: What do you think are the 3 key internet developments and online opportunities the hotel industry is likely to encounter & benefit from this year?

* Blogsites will replace Websites as the principle marketing tool
* Handheld devices will start to play a significant role in the travel choices of travelers – i.e. en route planning for meals and accommodations will be much easier.
* Travelers will expect free wifi, but handhelds and 3G access will be more important to the digital traveller.
* Consumer influences on one another will be much more pronounced with wider acceptance of social media and giving and receiving advice on tools like Twitter, Tripadvisor and Facebook.
* Tourism businesses better be good and have ways of encouraging good word of mouth and monitoring the attitudes of visiting guests.

Leveraging technology to bear the recession: What are your Top tips to Hotels hoping to leverage Internet tech to beat the recession?

Partner, Partner, Partner: Collaboration will be the single most effective way to counter global economic upheaval. We're all in this together. The stronger presence your community has - via partnerships, co-marketing and raising word of mouth marketing, the better positioned your community will be to compete.

This requires significant trust and care for those we normally compete with. It might sound counterintuitive to the idea of seeking as much business as possible, but it is what is required to succeed in tough times.

Todd Lucier is the creator of Tourism Keys Internet Marketing for Tourism blog, podcast and learning materials. Since 1999, he’s been showing tourism businesses and communities how to make the most of the Web in seminars, hands-on workshops and with keynote presentations that inspire, motivate and transform thinking about the Internet. http://www.tourismkeys.ca/blog

Patrick Landman

Hotel Online Marketing Predictions 2009: What do you think are the key internet developments and online opportunities the hotel industry is likely to encounter & benefit from this year?

I have but one advice for most hoteliers during challenging times. And that is going back to basics. Lets not try to move forward with websites, implementing so much new technology.

More important before doing so is making sure the bare necessities are taken care of. Unfortunately too many hotel websites are still in too poor of a shape in terms of relevant content, site structure, meta-tags etc.

Lets go back and look at the hotel websites from a guests perspective. What does he want, how will he be able to find your hotel website. Stop thinking as a hotelier and become more of a destination marketer...

In the end they are most likely not coming or looking for your hotel. You are merely a consequence of the trip.

So lets sell what they are coming for, target the motive of the trip. We have to speak to consumers from each individual micro-segment!

Patrick Landman, a Hotel Revenue Management, Online Distribution and Internet Marketing Guru is the Founder of Xotels. http://www.xotels.com/

Jan Tissera

Hotel Online Marketing Predictions 2009: What do you think are the key internet developments and online opportunities the hotel industry is likely to encounter & benefit from this year?

2009 will be an important year for Online Internet Marketing strategy. As marketing budgets tighten and are increasingly placed under the microscope, more emphasis than ever will be placed on tracking the return on spend. Online Marketing offers hotels the most trackable and cost effective means of marketing their rooms direct to the consumer.

The three major areas that I see developing in 2009 are as follows:

1. Social Media Optimization and Online PR - The Search Engines are not the only channels used now to find information via internet. Channels such as YouTube account to 10% of total internet traffic. Social websites such as Facebook are increasingly popular, highly visited and used to find information and links. The search landscape in Google has also changed to include maps, blogs, news, images, videos etc all provided by Web 2.0 and social media websites. With all these developments, it will be essential for the hotelier to implement a professional strategy to embrace such developments and maximize the benefits given by exposure to such channels.

2. International Approach to Paid Search - Many hotels are now successfully running Paid Search campaigns but are ignoring a huge potential market. Running campaigns internationally does not only mean checking a box to show ads across the globe. To attract visitors and tourists from other countries requires a specific strategy and game plan. Once you have outlined your likely feeder markets, research needs to be conducted to ascertain which keywords they will use to find your type of hotels. Also, Translated landing pages and keyword creative’s need to be produced and of course, if possible the hotel booking engine should feature the appropriate languages to encourage conversion. Making the effort to reach travelers in their own language can seriously improve conversion of paid search campaigns and attract a whole new market to your hotel. Most importantly increase hotel occupancy using a direct, cost effective and measurable channel.

3. Search Engine Optimization & Geo Search - One of the most cost effective methods of driving traffic and reservations online is a robust and effective SEO strategy. There is no charge per click, once an initial investment has been made, the sky is the limit for the benefits achieved through SEO. It's wise to work with a company that knows the marketplace and will support, edit and amend keywords and strategy through the year for optimal impact and quality traffic. As with Paid Search, it's also important to consider a multilingual strategy for SEO not only considering language nuances but also the variety of Search Engines used to find information. Integral to a successful SEO strategy would be a consideration of the Geo Search, i.e the increased usage of mapping tools to locate businesses. Hotels need to make sure that they are registered as a minimum with Google local and Google maps and all of the correct information is present within their listing. Hotels that have successfully optimized a map listing were able to jump to top position in Google for broad keywords like "Hotel in [Insert City]".

Leveraging technology to bear the recession: What are your Top 3 tips to Hotels hoping to leverage Internet tech to beat the recession?

1. Make sure that Hotel Websites are current and optimized for conversion. This involves making sure that your Hotel website is based on a CMS system that allows internal staff to update the website content, news, offers and images with ease. The visitor should arrive at the website and find reassurance immediately that they have arrived at the right place. Information such a prices, photos, offers, room types and booking should be easy to navigate to and above the page fold. It's important to keep the website current and create offers that will attract users convert online. Also of high importance is the ability to offer visitors a "Best Price Guarantee". When users arrive at your website, they should know that they don't need to go anywhere else to shop for prices. Most users will prefer to book direct with hotels when assured that they are getting the best deal. Higher conversion generally leads to higher ROI and happier website owners!

2. SEO - Work with a professional company to optimize your website for increased performance within the Search Engines. This is a cost effective means of driving increased traffic to you website. A good SEO company will work with you to make sure that a professional and effective revenue driving strategy is in place and you are getting good return for your initial outlay. Regular reporting and campaign analysis should be conducted to achieve optimal performance and benefit tracking both ranking and more importantly traffic gained from the Search Engines. Don't ignore the opportunity to create individual SEO strategies for countries that could potentially produce a good stream of bookings to your hotel. Working with a company that has experience performing SEO across countries and continents can be of great benefit when expanding your Search Engine reach.

3. Use the Data from Web Analytics - Whatever web analytics package you are using, make sure it is set-up correctly to record numerous conversion metrics. Regularly review and more importantly act on the data and information that you receive from the reports to increase conversion, quality traffic and customer experience. Doing this will increase the effectiveness of you website to maximize the potential for conversion that each visitor to the website has. Learn to understand what the reports mean for you and your hotel and what actions should be taken as a result of the information gleamed. Using such data can also allow you to evaluate the success of various internet marketing efforts that you are carrying out. Proactive analysis and action based on your web analytics can offer a real edge over your competitors.

Jan Tissera is President, TravelCLICK International and directs TravelCLICK's sales activities in the Europe, Asia Pacific, Middle East, and Africa regions. An experienced international hotelier and hotel industry consultant, Jan advises clients on how to maximize their performance in electronic distribution channels. www.travelclick.net

Guillaume Thevenot

Hotel Online Marketing Predictions 2009: What do you think are the key internet developments and online opportunities the hotel industry is likely to encounter & benefit from this year?

Online Marketing gets better ROI
In 2009, the hotel industry has better control about the ROI on their online advertising than offline, it’s a fact not a myth anymore. Online analytics tools are becoming cheaper if not free, and they should be used to understand where your traffic comes from and how your visitors behave on your hotel site. Also hoteliers can target better the audience they want to reach. For example, there is a community of bloggers who share a lot of travel tips on their site that becoming a more important voice to the consumer’s eyes, so why not sharing with them what your hotel is about. But this needs to be done with a personal touch, forget the traditional press release.

Engage with your customers
Today, you have to be stubborn to avoid all the online hotel reviews available to the consumer and the social communities built into travel. You have to engage with your customers by responding to their hotel reviews when something wrong happened at your hotel. Also don’t hesitate to share with them your blog where you can feature the latest events happening at your property. Finally, only embrace social networking sites if you are comfortable with this and try to find somebody in your team who understands these sites and can be the ambassador of your hotel. It could be your receptionist or a housekeeper. But remember you need to allocate some time in the week to engage with these sites.

Understand how search engines behave
There have been some dramatic changes in the way search engines behave recently. No more you have the results page with only paid listing and organic results. Today, you can find in the results page links, videos, pictures or local business results. You need to be there, hence why you should use sites like YouTube or Flickr to feature your hotel in all these media portals.

Leveraging technology to bear the recession: What are your Top 3 tips to Hotels hoping to leverage Internet tech to beat the recession?

#1 Be clever with who you work online
Make sure your contract gives you the flexibility to close down inventory if you believe you can sell direct. Also look carefully which online travel agent or hotel booking agent can bring you guaranteed business for the year. Don’t hesitate to ask them how many bookings they could deliver you this year. Finally, ensure that the commissions you pay to your online distribution partners don’t affect your targeted margins.
#2 Choose the right booking engine on your site
There are many players in the online tech industry who say they have a fantastic booking engine for you. Be careful about what you choose. Customers like simplicity when booking online. So if they are ready to book on your own website, it has to be clear, fast and efficient. If you are unsure about which booking engine to choose from, ask a trial phase for 2 weeks and run another one for another 2 weeks and compare how your visitors behave on your site. The look to book ratio is still very important to measure.
#3 Be honest with you customers
Whether it is on your website or with your online distribution partners, please be truthful with what your hotel can offer to consumers. Upload recent pictures with all room types and not necessarily the most beautiful one. Make sure your customers have a more positive surprise than a negative one. If you have a camcorder, make little films about your hotel and conduct interviews with your team and share this on your website and online video portals. Consumers will feel the atmosphere of your property more than just reading a formatted text description.

Guillaume Thevenot is a French Londoner working in the Online Hospitality Industry. After graduating from ESSEC/IMHI with a MBA in International Hospitality Management in 2000, Guillaume decided to live in London with his wife and work for online travel companies such as Priceline and Active Hotels. Besides being the founder and editor of Hotel-Blogs.com, a leading blog for the hospitality trade, Guillaume also works for Amadeus - a great European travel technology company. His passion towards the Internet and the hotel world has helped him to discover different ways of doing business with hotels and the travel industry in general.

Jitendra Jain (JJ)

Hotel Online Marketing Predictions 2009: What do you think are the key internet developments and online opportunities the hotel industry is likely to encounter & benefit from this year?

I think the time is right for the following radical shifts to occur this year…hopefully we’ll see moves in this direction as far as the hospitality & travel industry is concerned:

1. The emergence and adoption of Experience Engines: Hotels, destinations and OTA’s break down the units of guest experience and start building superior experience engines that allow for total revenue management as well as maximum personalization.

2. Utilizing hotel guests as a distinct and structured distribution channel: CRM and the world of electronic social networking collide to provide hotels with a first look at monetizing and rewarding guest referrals.

3. Stepping beyond the boundaries of traditional interaction: Hotels step up from behind the curtain and start interacting with their guests in earnest, both offline and online. Corporate and brand hesitation is no match for the voice of the customer…and the hotelier that wants to hear it and respond to it.

Leveraging technology to bear the recession: What are your Top 3 tips to Hotels hoping to leverage Internet tech to beat the recession?

1. Get back to basics and get these right – There are plenty of hotels who still haven’t got their feet wet with the online revolution. These hotels will have to make haste to capture the benefits they’re missing out on (all possible at low costs too!). Those that are at the top of their game will need to go through their ‘basics’ checklist and ensure everything is ticked off and super-optimized.

2. Measure everything – The year of ROI. Every penny will be spent wisely, measured to go the distance and the whole exercise analyzed for future improvement. Invest in good analytics and more importantly USE the results!

3. Get out of your comfort zone – Hoteliers will need to cross the barriers of ePhobia and embrace the ‘e’ revolution. Luckily, like swimming, once you’ve made that jump and floundered a little…the rest to follow is easy and quite enjoyable!

At work, Jitendra Jain (JJ) is employed with Starwood Hotels & Resorts in Dubai as an E-Commerce Manager and handles hotel online marketing & distribution. At play, he is the founder of various online initiatives like www.hotelemarketer.com, www.thetalentjungle.com and www.younghotelier.com (among others) that dream, connect, educate and share all that is glorious about hospitality, technology and most importantly...the people that define our times.

Source> hotel-online.com

Social Media Marketing: Why a Holistic Approach Pays Dividends

Case Studies from Carnival Cruise Lines and Southwest Airlines
22 January 2009

Increasing we are seeing travel companies who aren’t just gently participating in user-generated content, or dipping their toes tentatively into the social networking pool, instead, they are investing full-throttle in a multi-faceted social media strategy. They are participating in a variety of non-travel sites, in a variety of formats simultaneously. Between them, Southwest Airlines and Carnival Cruise Lines now have a presence on all the major social networking and photo/video sharing sites. They have pages on YouTube, Facebook, Flickr and Twitter. They both have their own blogs and their own social networking communities, all of which have been incredibly successful.


So what can travel companies learn from companies such as Southwest and Carnival, when it comes to their social media strategy? Can you work with one site, like Facebook, or do you need to have a presence on all of them, at the same time? How do you manage a multi-faceted social media strategy? And what benefits have Southwest and Carnival seen, by taking a holistic approach to social media?

Read on for an overview on the holistic approach Carnival and Southwest have taken to social media. Jeremy Jameson, Corporate Strategist – Strategic Planning for Southwest Airlines, will be offering a deeper insight into Southwest’s social media strategy at EyeforTravel’s 2nd Social Media Strategies for Travel Conference, being held on March 10-11 in San Francisco. For more information visit www.eyefortravel.com/social-media

Carnival has set up their own cruise-centric social networking community called CarnivalConnections.com. This has been created specifically to bring family and friends together by helping them plan and manage their cruise vacations. The site features an “e-invite” electronic invitation tool that can be tailored family reunions, girlfriend getaways and other groups.

John Heald’s Carnival blog has had attracted 3 million visitors. Through his blog, Heald offers candid and colorful commentary on daily shipboard life, sharing interesting and often poignant tales of the guests and crewmembers he comes into contact with on a daily basis, all with his trademark brand of humor. This enormous amount of traffic creates good brand exposure for Carnival and with 25,000 comments it’s a proven customer-interaction tool.

In terms of videos and photos, Carnival as its own photo stream on Flickr, allowing customers to upload photos, and they also have their own channel on YouTube. On their website they have created a virtual tour, FunShipIsland.com, with sharing options, personalization tools and downloadable content.

Carnival was also an early adopter of Twitter – exploiting it to monitor their brand image, listen to questions from customers, communicate promotions and share experiences

A pioneer in the on-line marketing arena, Carnival’s new Web-based initiatives are designed to provide a effective and innovative means for reaching out to consumers and travel agents. Both FunShipIsland.com and CarnivalConnections.com continue to achieve unprecedented success, with each exceeding the one million visitor mark in 2008.

Southwest Airlines implemented a social media strategy three years ago and, like Carnival, they have taken a holistic approach, participating in numerous sites simultaneously. They currently have a presence on popular sites: Twitter, Flickr, Facebook, YouTube and LinkedIn.

Southwest produces new video content for YouTube on a weekly basis. By creating new and unique content they are reaching out to a vast and growing audience of people who are watching online videos on a regular basis. This strategy will also have a positive impact on their search engine rankings.

Their blog “Nuts about Southwest” is a real success story. A team of 30 employee bloggers regularly keep the site updated with new content and as a result they receive a massive 70,000 unique visitors each month. “Nuts about Southwest” was also winner of the 2008 PR News Platinum PR award for blogs.

As well as a loyal following of blog-readers, Southwest also have a huge following of 8,000 people on micro-blogging site, Twitter. Twitter allows its users to send and read other users' updates (otherwise known as tweets), which are text-based posts of up to 140 characters in length.

Finally, Southwest Airlines is a heavy user of LinkedIn, the world’s largest professional network. They currently have 3,000 active employees connecting their professional networks via this site.

No other US airline has participated in such a multitude of social media sites in such a short space of time. And it is obviously paying dividends for Southwest, not just in terms of brand awareness but also generating huge volumes of traffic. Southwest continues to be one of the most successful airlines in the world posting a profit for 35 consecutive years -- something no other American carrier can boast.

“Our brand is suited to social media because it’s a natural progression of our 37 year commitment of having authentic relationships and conversations with our customers” said Jeremy Jameson, Corporate Strategist – Strategic Planning for Southwest Airlines.

The majority of Southwest’s’ customers are online, and if recent statistics are to be believed then those people are inevitably interacting with social networks. Customer service and transparency make up the DNA at Southwest; social media channels provide a compelling way to bring the brand promise to life. Although Carnival is less dependant on online bookings, their online image presents a down-to-earth attitude with top management communicating directly with customers.

Southwest and Carnival are both “fun” brands with loyal followings so are suitably poised to take advantage of the social media revolution. They both have a mass appeal and a positive, less-than-corporate attitude. Most importantly they are both brands which consumers feel they can easily engage with, and want to engage with.

Jeremy Jameson, Corporate Strategist – Strategic Planning for Southwest Airlines will be speaking at EyeforTravel’s Social Media Strategies for Travel Conference on March 10-11 in San Francisco (www.eyefortravel.com/social-media). He will be joined on his session by Jeff Hanson, Regional Director of Marketing & eCommerce - Western Region, Marriott International, Juston Parker, President, Parker Hospitality Group and Kevin Fliess, CEO, TravelMuse.

For more information on Social Media Strategies for Travel on March 10-11, 2009, in San Francisco, click here: www.eyefortravel.com/social-media

Don’t Be The Weakest Link

by: Katherine Huske

Links into your website are an important component of your web strategies. In bound links are like votes that promote your site. Just like an election, the site with the most votes wins and comes to the top of the search engine results.
One best practice is to beef up your in-bound links.

Back- Links. You can check who is linking to you (a back-link) with several free tools available on the web: wholinks2me, AddMe, Yahoo! Site Explorer and MarketLeap. Back-links are like votes- they validate your site and help improve the site’s popularity.

Web Directories. Getting your website listed on web directories with back-links to your site is important. A web directory lists and categorizes links. Web directories include Yahoo! Directory and dmoz.

News Releases. Posting news releases on your site and elsewhere (like PR Web or PR Leap) is a great tool to increasing links to your site.
Submitting Articles. Writing and submitting articles to web directories like Buzzle, EzineArticles, GoArticles, Articles Factory and WebProNews is a great way to have your links dispersed on the web.

Social Media. Your profile on a social networking site such as LinkedIn or Facebook allows you to post a link to your website — and to invite visitors to visit.

Blogs. Starting a blog is so easy. Links from your blog to your website can boost traffic tremendously.
This is just the tip of the iceberg. To find out more about improving your website contact Huske & Associates- Your Internet Marketing Advocate.

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