Sales & Marketing

Consumers like and demand travel companies to offer a one-stop shopping experience. Hence, it is not surprising to see OTAs, Airbnb, and even Google and Amazon strive to provide a “total travel experience.” Everyone in the market wants to become a mega tourism enterprise.

It's a fantastic move by Expedia and Kudos to them for doing it. It will be a nightmare for hotels though as this provides great opportunities but also put hotels against the other OTA´s. We cannot forget that those actions are to drive more travellers to Expedia as well as make money for Expedia across all connection points and data points.

After reading Kern and Murthy's description of Open World, I can't help thinking that this is just a rebrand of EPS. Not sure? Spot the difference: From EPS' website: "Expedia Partner Solutions unlocks the power of Expedia Group for thousands of partners around the world.

The website itself is part, admittedly a critical part, of the entire digital marketing ecosystem. Think of an iceberg: there is the small visible part that we see (the website) and the larger submerged portion that is invisible to us (back end coding, links, SEO, digital media, etc.).

I firmly believe the hotel website is the most underutilized and quite often forgotten hotel asset. Your hotel website - for a single property or multi property brand - allows you to balance your distribution mix so that your property is the least susceptible to seasonality, group cancellations and calamities, or over dependence on the OTAs or any single distribution channel.

The answer first, then the rational. Get out of your own way. It's hard as an individual and near impossible as an organization, but if it is kept in the daily dialog of activities and decisions, it can creep into the results of your actions.

Can the new crop of OTA-like superapps become viable hotel booking channels? Previous attempts by Google (Book on Google), Tripadvisor (Book on Tripadvisor) and three attempts by Amazon to enter the OTA space all failed due to one simple reason: these players were not considered as credible hotel booking channels by the traveling public.

The age-old question that will always remain unanswered until hotel CEOs, CMO, and CROs take their destiny into their own hands. As long as hotel companies continue to invest below 2% of their turnover, in marketing, technological and digital development, data management, data privacy & CRM, they will remain eternally subject to the dictates of OTAs and their outrageous commissions.

For hoteliers, this new crop of OTA-like superapps is merely an extension of their online distribution options. From opaque sites to bedbanks to metasearch and mainstream OTAs like Booking, Trip.com or Expedia, not to mention GDS sales with travel agencies, there are already numerous possibilities.

OTA penetration fell during the pandemic for one key reason: travelers could only opt for local destinations. Due to confinement and travel restrictions in a majority of countries and borders, it was just simpler to travel to local areas and regions.

I believe it is with certainty that OTAs will again built their dominance and more. Covid was like roadworks where travellers didn't travel at all or those who travelled took a detour as the "normal road" was "closed". The market is always right is a sentence often used in trading and it applies here as well.

I am not sure that the word 'drastically' applies here, as that adjective is hard to quantify. This may be a short term effect, but OTAs are not going away any time soon. Any lost share will be recovered, and very quickly. Consumer habits do not change overnight.

Storytelling is an important component of Content Marketing for any hotel property, brand, company, or chain. Storytelling should permeate across all Content Marketing formats like website content, social media, PR, blogs, etc.

Storytelling always requires a minimum of 3 aspects: The Plot, the characters and then of course the narrators point of view. The major issue with hotels and brands is that in order to tell the story, you need a story. You need to create it and in many cases we just don't.

It starts with consistency. Many hotel want to jump into content marketing before they have established the basics. Who is their target market? What is their brand message? What are their differentiators against the comp set? The second step, once the above is defined, is audit the content across ALL online channels.

There are so many different technology solutions that to list or rank them is all but impossible. The opportunity is to convince owners/brands to make the commitment to, and investment for these solutions. The 'good old days' of operating unchaged through the late 20th century are over.

This is a tough question... but if I had to single out the biggest opportunity in digital marketing for hotels in the upcoming year, I would say Google! To be more precise, Hotel marketers should double down on Google Business Manager - the tool formerly known as Google My Business - to ensure they have completed their profile, products and services.

Changing travel conditions and new COVID variants that have fewer symptoms but still register on PCR test make travel a bit of a gamble. The biggest issue in the recovery is going to be reassuring travelers that their $7K trip will be fine.

It's going to be beautiful!!! We finally will see an evolution that will dwarf anything we have seen before. Fast is: People hate changing, but they love to escape. If there is one thing that Internet has shown us is that we are able to get away with anything and everything (generic usernames allow us to detach ourselves from the comments we make).

The recent video launch of Metaverse by Mark Zuckerberg will trigger the ultimate failure of this toxic social media behemoth (in my humble opinion). The hospitality industry is a precious business sector that enriches lives through the visceral joy of travel, food, wine and culture.

Can the Metaverse bring significant changes, solve some of the pressing issues and become the way forward for the hospitality industry? Sure, it can! Can it do it within the next 5 to 10 years, as predicted by Zuckerberg? Hell, no.

I contest the reference to the word 'becoming'. It has always been a distribution channel. To that end, I would also contest the designation that it be regulated solely by revenue management. If anything we have learned (at an accelerated pace due to the pandemic).

Given today's radical transparent online hotel marketplace, the dividing line between sales, marketing, e-commerce, revenue management, pricing and even loyalty needs to disappear. These traditional organisational structures only create silos that get in the way of insuring that we put the right product at the right price in front of the right customer at the appropriate time moment in their purchase cycle.

Hotel metasearch has become a distribution channel and is no longer an advertising channel ever since Google introduced its Pay-per-stay (PPS) fee model. Other metasearch players like Trivago and Kayak all offer CPA (Cost per acquisition) model, which is not in tune with the current era of high cancellation rates due to Covid uncertainties and ever-changing travel restrictions.

I am quite surprised we're still discussing this topic in "Them Vs. Us" terms. I've been in the travel industry since the late '90s, and I think, except for the early '00s (for obvious reasons), I've never seen a single property NOT listed on -at least one- OTA.

OTAs should educate hoteliers on the long-term benefits of improving their guest stay experiences vs burning time, capital and energy on trying to out-perform OTAs in online bookings. To put it simply, OTAs are perfect for a first-time visitor to your hotel destination.

Not working with OTAs is foolish. Their costs are within the average for distribution costs of other industries (auto industry is 30%, DTC e-commerce is 40-50%, Amazon sellers are around 45%). The problem with OTAs is, like many online distribution platforms, they are really bad at caring for their supply-partners.

This theme is re-occurring! Hoteliers have been late to adapt both operational and technological expertise to engage their guests through the world of 'add-ons.' Randomly test book any hotel and see what extras are available. Many great PMS allow for the integration of in-house activities: spa, golf, dining, but few do it well.

Generating ancillary revenues requires a) the implementation of merchandizing strategy and culture at the property/hotel company, b) incentivizing and training your staff, and c) adopting technology solutions to automate as many of the internal processes as possible.

One of the key opportunities overlooked by many hotels is upselling/cross selling in their pre-arrival email. Firstly, a startling number of properties don't even take this opportunity to reach out to the guest a few days before check-in.