Hotels are tasked with marketing across an increasingly fragmented media landscape to customers who have an

unprecedented number of channels at their disposal to search for, review and buy products, services and travel experiences. Philip Alford of Bournemouth University and John Kennedy of Kennedy Andersson AB explain what that means for hotels: Buyers are now in complete control of the buying process, and marketing has to play by new rules to be effective, to attract rather than distract their audience.