Wednesday, December 28, 2011

OTAs are the clear beneficiaries when it comes to rate parity

Based on new data from RateGain, a maximum of 1 in five hotels in major cities in Europe have introduced a rate parity based rate strategy for the coming three month. Even worse, for the vast majority of hotels, prices on OTA sites were lower than on their own website.

OTAs are the clear beneficiaries when it comes to rate parity.

A new hotel rate parity trends from RateGain for November to January 2012 of three, four and five star hotels across some of the major cities in Europe, shows that the vast majority of hotels don't apply a rate parity pricing strategy.

In top destinations like Paris and London, only a little over 20% of three, four and five star hotels have a rate parity strategy in place. Amsterdam leads the list with the lowest rate parity adoption, with 3% of hotels having a rate parity strategy in place, and 87% of hotels offering lower rates on OTAs than their own website.

Like in Europe, the beneficiaries of rate parity in North America are OTAs and not hotels, in fact only about 10% of hotels apply rate parity strategies at all, with 90% of the remaining hotels offering lower rates on OTA sites than on branded hotel website, or viceversa.

Hotel rate parity trends for December to February 2012 of three, four and five star hotels across some of the major cities in North America. The report shows the percentage of hotels with cheaper rates on their own brand site compared to their rates on other OTAs.

Los Angeles and Toronto leads the report as destinations with no hotels offering rate parity. What's more, both lead also the report with almost 90% of its hotels offering lower rates on OTA sites than their brand websites.

Compared to RateGain's findings on rate parity in Europe, the results look even more troubeling, with OTAs being the clear winner when it comes to rate parity.

Get the full data for Europe and North America.

Madeep.com

Monday, December 19, 2011

Travel & hospitality brands need to make mobile a top priority for 2012

62% of travel brands don’t have a mobile friendly website. This was just one of the findings from a recent global EyeforTravel survey which examined key trends in travel marketing and distribution.

The survey found that globally, Travel brands are failing to adequately invest in mobile, despite widespread adoption of smartphones and increasing customer search queries via mobile (19.5% of search queries for hotels are made via mobile devices).

The survey (released as part of EyeforTravel’s Travel Distribution & Marketing Barometer report October, 2011) highlighted that overall, mobile investment globally for apps and websites had not moved with great pace during 2011 for Travel.

Investment by certain countries however did gain pace.  In Europe, Germany is leading the way with 45% of respondents this autumn indicating that they now have a mobile application for their brand – an increase from just 9% back in February 2011.

China saw the biggest increase in investment with 67% of respondents indicating that they have a mobile website for their brand, up from just 30% in February.

The shift towards mobile has been likened to the seismic shift from offline to online that occurred over a decade ago.  In a month that saw major travel brands such as Thomas Cook feel the impact of being too complacent about adapting to change, the survey comes as a warning to all travel brands.   Those brands who relish and adapt to new consumer facing technology are the ones who will succeed over the coming years.

For many brands, adapting to a rapidly changing technological environment can be daunting.  EyeforTravel’s Mobile Innovation in Travel Awards (which will take place in San Francisco, March 5-6) seek to recognise and reward those brands who are investing in mobile right now.

‘Innovative travel brands who have recognised the urgent need to invest in mobile right now to stay competitive are helping to pave the way for the rest of the industry to follow suit,’ says Gina Baillie, GM, EyeforTravel. 

‘The Mobile Innovation in Travel Awards recognise the valuable time and resources that they have invested and will no doubt serve to encourage industry wide mobile best practices.’

Madeep.com

source: eyefortravel

Sunday, December 18, 2011

Foursquare: what a better tool for hotel disintermediation?

Like all new applications, also Foursquare had to wait some time before the right of being recognized as a useful business tool, not only for playful activities, but also for companies in all markets, trying to keep up with the times, using new technologies.

Perhaps it was too premature talking about tourism and hospitality industry geolocation until a few months ago, when Foursquare has become a real tool for doing business. Until then, in fact, companies' branded pages were manually created by a dedicated department and, obviously, only those big companies with a great-sounding names were successful. 2011 also coincides with the automation of this process of creating business pages in the self-service method, so anyone can have a professional Foursquare page by following a few simple steps.

While remaining faithful to the idea that Foursquare has not yet been well understood in the Tourism industry and it is doing so much work to take root in it, is good to think that such social geolocation netowrk should be considered almost like all the others.

Why almost? Because, in my opinion, it is even better! It's true that the same information is already present on your official channels, such as your website, your blog, Facebook and Twitter, but everything that you post on Foursquare is strictly location-aware, directly accessible from Mobile, and therefore particularly suitable to create real-time interaction.

Initially I thought that Facebook Places and Facebook Deal (what happened to it?) would have replaced Foursquare, which has exceed expectations.

After several check-in and check-out, I finally convinced myself. And for those who have not done it yet, now it's time to approach this channel and begin to study it to understand that:

  • with the growth of the mobile applications, geolocation will be the future for many activities, especially for tourism
  • a "social" channel and a heavily geolocation based tool is the best instrument for getting disintermediated from OTA
  • Badges and gratitudes methods create a strong bond between the company / hotel and client: loyalty!
  • recent partnership between Foursquare and Groupon paves the way for some interesting online promotion for your hotel
  • it is important to assert its "Venue" (as defined on Foursquare) namely its position on the map... as with Google Places
  • location-based social networks like Foursquare allow totally free online promotion and generate an important word of mouth for your Brand
  • you can reach the entire Foursquare community with advices and check-in, besides to post the direct link to your official website

For somebody it is soon to hear about Foursquare as part of its tourism promotion but, honestly, as it often happens on the web, it's already too late!

Madeep.com

Friday, December 16, 2011

Google's Matt Cutts: Good Content Trumps SEO

With the advent of the new algorithm Panda and the new rules set by Google, the life of SEOs (Search Engine Optimization), or those who spend their lives looking for new ways to drag Google users on websites, has become increasingly difficult. The competition for traffic from the search engine has created a real market, which in history has had several changes, some of which are also malignant, since the rise of so-called "cont(ents)ainer" or those sites where the content was produced by weight, with the sole purpose of developing page views and advertising revenue, without even caring about the quality of content, often using automatic algorithms to generate pages full of keywords. Those were the early days, now long forgotten. He then arrived today with SEO services increasingly complex and integrated, aimed at content and research's optimization on the leadership position in the search query.

But Google has become increasingly "smart" by generating a real game of cat and mouse between SEO experts, to invent new solutions, and Google to constantly change its parameters. SEO is now considered a real science, which starts from a number of assumptions about the ways in which to build a web site and its contents. Science for which highly advanced preparation is required and updates almost daily. The negative drift of this science, has created the so-called Black SEO, a malicious use of the various SEO techniques, with the use of tricks that are not allowed to mislead the algorithm. To address this, meanwhile Google has strengthened more and more of his "Team Spam", a department dedicated to counter blow for blow to those who were trying to generate traffic by focusing exclusively on technology and not on the editorial quality. The manager of this team, Matt Cutts, has recently released an interview on specific SEO practices, responding to a question asking whether the sites technically made ​​without following the logic of evil and SEO were actually penalized and removed from Google searches. His answer was pretty clear: "absolutely not".

Cutts said that Google now points to the intrinsic quality of the content and not on how you created the HTML code that contains it. In the interview he said: "Just because someone puts all the dots and write a perfect HTML code, that does not mean you have good content worthy of being rewarded." It would seem, then, that Google will begin to care about the form and go to the substance. Cutts continued: "Although technically stupid pages you may have, this does not mean that you won't have good results. And we want them to be found out by those who looks for them". A blow to the developers and a prize to those who can produce good information? Cutts also says that "Google is doing everything so that no site has to resort to SEO." His words "we try to make it so you do not have to do SEO" leaves little room to the imagination (although in earlier statements encouraging the good SEO) and Google is working so well without SEO content for you to emerge. To hear Matt Cutts, the priority now is to write great content, accessible, interesting, with good titles. Yet another affirmation of the concept "Content is King".

Therefore, if you have a blog or if you are a company that is going to allocate a high budget to pay expensive SEO experts, maybe you should take things slowly and evaluate if it would be better to spend more time and money to produce great content.

In short, SEO experts goodbye? Maybe not, but surely the experts will soon have to expand their way of working, introducing new skills. Meanwhile, one thing is certain: the content, the real one, is what counts. Always.

Watch the interview with Matt Cutts of Google.


Madeep.com

source: RedWrite Enterprise

Wednesday, December 14, 2011

How OTAs boost illegal hotel conversions

Law-breaking residential hotel operators aren’t hiding their illegal activity, they are advertising it – listing their illegal rooms on popular Internet travel sites like Booking.com, right next to and competing against legal tourist rooms.
The rise in the number of residential hotel rooms being rented illegally cast a light on the role that Internet travel sites play in facilitating this illegal practice. In many cases, law-breaking residential hotel operators aren’t hiding their illegal activity, they are advertising it – listing their illegal rooms on popular Internet travel sites like Booking.com, right next to and competing against legal tourist rooms. Call it a strategy of hiding in plain sight. But a closer look at the economics of the travel industry shows that in many ways, illegal tourist hotels and websites like Booking.com were made for each other.

With the high end and middle class hotels off the market, the pressure is on the lower end of the tourist market to meet the demand for rooms. It’s no wonder residential hotel owners are looking to jump into the lower end of the hotel market and no wonder that there is a market for their rooms.

Websites such as Booking.com manage to evade liability because owners and operators are clearly responsible for the content of their postings. But shouldn’t Booking.com know local laws governing residential and tourist hotels in the city, especially since they have an office here? Shouldn’t they know this is an illegal unit? How culpable are they?

Madeep.com

source: HotelMarketing

Sunday, December 4, 2011

Customer Care starts at the time of booking

Anticipate Guest requests is one of the main professional esteem in hotel industry. This is not only for a good customer service, but a real business opportunity if you have the right instruments.

Customizing rates, travel offers, packages and stay amenities and services is increasingly the focus of marketing strategies... especially on the web. In fact, while it's a good way to increase your customer loyalty when the Guest is there, the web is a wonderful opportunity to anciticipate his needs that are no longer only "room accomodation".

Providing the Customer with a wide range of additional services, increasingly opportunities to create his own tailor-made holidays or business trips, is not only a simple plus but a your special attention and the best effort you can do for your Guest.

Customer care (and business opportunity) starts at the time of booking before continuing during the stay in hotel. Nowadays, it makes the difference! The difference between expected service and customized service, so what a Guest is expecting to find when he looks for accomodation and you are able to offer to convince him to choose you.

Not all booking engines and online travel agencies are the same. Some one of that allows you to make better use of your sales skills by offering multiple rates, special offers, travel packages and, most importantly, additional services.

If a young couple newlyweds is looking online for your wonderful Luxury Hotel for their wedding night, why don't you give them the opportunity to book a special bootle of Champagne to be found in room at the time of arrival? Maybe when they'll come to you they will be too excited to remember to ask...

If a business man is going to relax in a Spa at the end of his working day, why don't you give him the opportunity to book a special massage into your Spa, at the time he wish (hour) for the time he wants (duration). Maybe when he'll arrive your Spa will be already fully booked...

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