HeBS Digital Caps Off a Great Year With Best in Class Interactive Media Award

New York, NY (December 15, 2011) – HeBS Digital, the leading hotel digital marketing, website design and direct online channel strategy firm for the hospitality industry, commemorates the end of a great year for the company, its client portfolio and its hotel digital marketing successes. Most recently, HeBS Digital was awarded the Best in Class Interactive Media Award for its website design for the Urban American Grill Austin restaurant, its 30^th creative award for the year.

In 2011, HeBS Digital celebrated the following:

• Its 10^th anniversary
• Thirty major creative and industry awards for website and mobile website design, multichannel marketing campaigns, social media marketing, and mobile marketing. Notable awards include the Best in Show AMA Award for Shell Vacation Hospitality's Black Friday Campaign, a Gold Davey Award for Brush Creek Ranch, Gold Travel Weekly Magellan Award for Valencia Group's Search Engine Marketing Campaigns, the Internet Advertising Competition (IAC) Best of Industry Awards for Best Restaurant Website (Vu Restaurant), Best Hotel & Lodging Application (Vu Restaurant Mobile Site) and Best Hotel & Lodging Ad (Silver Legacy Resort & Casino Banners).
• Launch of a new company website www.HeBSdigital.com (a 2011 Silver Adrian Award Winner).
• HeBS Digital's experts and industry thought leaders continued our decade-long tradition of publishing groundbreaking articles on hotel e-commerce and online distribution hot topics and latest trends with 15 articles in 2011, including "Hotelier's 2011 Top Ten Internet Marketing resolutions," "2011 Social Media Marketing Resolutions," "The Future is Now: The Emergence of The Customer Engagement Channel in Hospitality," "Controlling Distribution Costs in Hospitality," and "The Smart Hotelier's Guide to 2012 Digital Marketing Budget Planning," among others.
• Launch of new products and services designed with the hotelier's needs in mind, including the HeBS CMS Premium, the most advanced content management system in the industry today, fully compatible with the recent Google Panda and "Freshness" Updates, featuring automated content push to the hotel's social media profiles (Facebook, Twitter, etc.) and mobile site; the Reservation Recovery Strategy to recover abandoned hotel bookings, a Mobile Marketing Starter Package to help hoteliers generate incremental revenues from their mobile websites, Facebook Sweepstakes functionality to engage the hotel's social fans, as well as a Flash Sales Functionality for the hotel own website.
• One hundred-plus new accounts added to HeBS Digital's hotel client portfolio. New hotel clients selected HeBS Digital for its award-winning website design, direct online channel strategy consulting services and full-service digital marketing services, including CMS Enterprise and CMS Premium solutions, search engine optimization (SEO), search engine marketing (SEM), mobile website and mobile marketing campaigns, social media and other digital marketing services.
• Achieved 2,649% ROI for our clients (weighted average), with an average cost per booking via the hotel website 10 to 15 times lower than a typical booking via the OTAs.

"The year 2011 was great for both HeBS Digital and our clients, and the entire team is excited and eager to bring our services to an even higher level in 2012," said Max Starkov, President & CEO of HeBS Digital. "Every day, we proactively research and implement ways to generate even higher ROIs for our clients; we also seek to create digital products and offer services to address their needs and concerns. That's the bottom line for us. We take our credo to heart: HeBS Digital strives to be the smartest hotel Internet marketing firm in the industry, and to maximize clients' online revenues and ROIs while providing real value and not just a service."

Here are some comments made by HeBS Digital clients in 2011:

"We are very pleased that HeBS won these awards [the Web Marketing Association presented HeBS with two WebAwards for work created for The Lodge & Spa at Brush Creek Ranch and for High Velocity in Indianapolis]. We have enjoyed a great working relationship with everyone on their team, and they are creating some exceptionally creative work."

-Michael Bennett,