Sales & Marketing USA & Canada Opinion Articles - Hospitality Net

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Opinion Article

August 29, 2014

Naked Bootleg: Football Play Gives Game Plan to Hoteliers and Restaurateurs

Naked bootleg is a term used in football whereby the quarterback runs counter to his blockers and tries to create a run or pass opportunity with no help from his blockers. With changes in the economy, new products entering our market and brands trying to out smart other brands, we are operating our businesses naked. We are trying to develop new strategies in the ways we operate and market our hotels while trying to stay ahead of game changers such as new technology, savvy customers and new product in our markets.

R. A. Rauch & Associates, Inc.

Opinion Article

August 27, 2014

Turning Vacation Influencers Into Brand Ambassadors

Prolific vacation travelers have been there, done that. But there's a certain breed of US traveler that does more than go and do. They talk. They tell family, friends, colleagues and even strangers about their trips, and their power of persuasion influences the vacations others take.

By Bilicic, Senior Vice President, GFK

Opinion Article

August 12, 2014

When it Comes to Customer Satisfaction Cleanliness Matters

The recipe to happy customers is good value and a good location. Right? Earlier this month I explored the question of what factors lead to a good customer experience. I developed a list of 100 brand name hotels in the Philadelphia area and using our RightBid Feedback Collector software collected 113,333 customer votes from leading travel sites like TripAdvisor, Priceline, and Hotels.com. The data set included not only summary ratings for each location on a scale of zero to five, but other summary data such as the advertised lowest booking price, and sub-ratings for location, value, staff, and cleanliness denoted on a scale of zero to one hundred. We then applied multiple linear regression to estimate which factors had the largest effect on the overall customer rating.

By Zach Blatt, Founder, RightBid

Opinion Article

August 5, 2014

Nobody Asked Me, But… No. 127: Hotel History: Hotel Theresa: the “Waldorf of Harlem”

Hotel History: Hotel Theresa - The Hotel Theresa opened in 1913 on 125th Street and Seventh Avenue in Harlem and closed its doors as a hotel in 1970. It was built by German-born stockbroker Gustavus Sidenberg to the designs of architects George and Edward Blum. The Blum brothers were trained at the famous Ecole des Beaux-Arts in Paris and they designed a full-blockfront all-white apartment hotel 13 stories high with 300 rooms.

By Stanley Turkel, CMHS, Hotel consultant, Stanley Turkel, MHS, ISHC

Opinion Article

July 31, 2014

Fact or Folly: A Review of Convention Center Follies

This article responds to Heywood Sanders' book Convention Center Follies. It argues for a more moderate picture of the state of supply and demand in the convention industry, and it critiques Sanders' narrative of convention center development. In his book Convention Center Follies: Politics, Power, and Public Investment in American Cities, Heywood T. Sanders presents a critical account of the convention center industry. He targets local and state governments, business interests, and professional convention consultants as complicit in the systematic over-building of convention centers in an effort to demonstrate that, on the whole, convention center developments represent a misuse of public and private capital.

By Thomas Hazinski, Managing Director of HVS Convention, Sports, & Entertainment Facilities Consulting in Chicago, HVS

Opinion Article

July 29, 2014

Make Training Fun!

As experts in adult learning theory have told us for years, to achieve a transfer of training concepts from the workshop to the workplace requires an interactive, experiential learning approach. This is theory seems even more relevant when training the so-called “Millennials,” who have grown up in an over-stimulated world with a keyboard, joystick, mouse pad and now a touch screen in their hands. When conducting training in the hospitality industry today, trainers find themselves facing a multi- generational audience that also includes Baby Boomers and Generation Xers, making it that much more challenging to find common ground.

By Doug Kennedy, President of the Kennedy Training Network, Kennedy Training Network (KTN)

Opinion Article

July 29, 2014

Mid-Year Review: The Rising Tide of Mobile Bookings – How Hoteliers Can Stay Afloat

In the first half of 2014, the massive shift from desktop to mobile and tablet devices continues its rigorous pace and now over 42% of web visitors and nearly 38% of page views were generated from non-desktop devices (mobile and tablet), while nearly 16% of bookings and 19% of room nights came from tablets and mobile devices.

By Max Starkov, Hospitality & travel technologist and digital strategist, Hospitality Net

The next-gen metrics that move hotel P&L

Hotel tech has changed what's possible – and measurable. RevPAR and ADR aren't enough; discover the metrics that really matter.

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Why Hospitality Net Leads B2B in Hospitality

Learn what makes us the industry-leader in what we do.

Hospitality Net

Opinion Article

July 28, 2014

Have You Made Your New Year’s Resolutions Yet?

Okay, be honest. Are you one of the 317 million adults in the US who do? Now, fess up. Are you one of the 300 million who don't keep it up for at least a year? I'm talking about making New Year's Resolutions.

By Bonnie Knutson, Professor in The School of Hospitality Business in the Broad College of Business, Michigan State

Opinion Article

July 21, 2014

How To Mitigate Dependence on OTAs

On the consulting side of my business, I work with many delightful and hardworking hoteliers. True, we get into numerous discussions on issues such as rate and amenities. Ultimately, these individuals are committed to the crux of hospitality: They truly care about their guests. Nary a day goes by where our meetings are interrupted by a guest request. Seemingly trivial in the grand scheme of things, but important at that moment, discourse and intervention are required. A check-in of a VIP guest? No problem; someone from senior management will be there.

By Larry Mogelonsky, Partner, Hotel Mogel Consulting Limited

Opinion Article

July 21, 2014

What can Hotels learn from Casinos? Focus on knowing your guests

Did you know that total consumer spending on gambling at commercial casinos in the US was calculated at $37.34 billion in 2012? $8.6 billion of this revenue was returned to states and local communities in the form of taxes and other levies. The US casino entertainment industry also provides jobs to 332,000 people who earned $13.2 billion in wages, benefits and tips during 2012. It's hard to deny that gaming is serious business. And like all serious businesses, the casino entertainment industry is leveraging predictive analytics to ensure that they stay on a winning streak.

By Natalie Osborn, Senior industry consultant for SAS Institute’s Hospitality and Travel practice, SAS Institute Inc.

Opinion Article

July 15, 2014

The Top Ten Questions to Ask Your Digital Marketing Partner

Any hotel that has a high revenue-generating website and a strong digital marketing strategy that drives direct online bookings needs a great hotel digital marketing agency behind it. It’s challenging to find a good digital marketing partner these days. As more and more companies join the market as ‘experts in hotel website design and digital marketing,’ hoteliers are faced with a difficult decision. With serious revenues at stake, we have provided hoteliers with the most important questions to consider when deciding on who to partner with, or whether or not to stay with their current agency.

By Max Starkov, Hospitality & travel technologist and digital strategist, Hospitality Net

Opinion Article

June 17, 2014

HVS In Focus: Airbnb's Inroads Into The Hotel Industry

Airbnb offers accommodations in nearly every major hospitality destination worldwide. Rates are often lower than comparable hotel rooms, and its popularity is rising—what does this mean for hotels?

By Matthew Kurtz, Associate, HVS

Opinion Article

June 10, 2014

Revenue Management: How to Price Your Rooms Correctly Every Time

In today's highly competitive travel industry, implementing effective real-time pricing strategies has become an operational imperative for all hotels, no matter their size, type or star rating. While revenue management has been a hotel buzzword for years, many hoteliers seem to have conflicting understandings about what exactly constitutes revenue management. So, I'm here to remind you of the fundamental principles of revenue management and why revenue management technology is so important for hotels.

By Jean Francois Mourier, CEO of REVPAR GURU, RevPAR Guru Inc.

Opinion Article

May 22, 2014

A Practical Guide to Competitive Set Selection

Determining a competitive set is something those in the hospitality industry do routinely, however, these selections can have lasting effects on market positioning and performance and ultimately, asset value. The three most common reasons for competitive set selections include pro forma development, market positioning and performance benchmarking. Selecting an appropriate competitive set and evaluating this selection over time as market conditions change is a worthwhile undertaking. It is one exercise that shouldn't be taken lightly, but it is often more difficult than it appears to be at first glance.

By Trevor Stuart-Hill, Founder and president, Revenue Matters

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Why Hospitality Net Leads B2B in Hospitality

Learn what makes us the industry-leader in what we do.

Hospitality Net

Opinion Article

April 15, 2014

Streamlining tough choices: Applying an optimization approach to hospitality marketing

You have spent your time carefully crafting a number of campaigns for distribution to your various customer segments, and it doesn't take you much time after that to realize that you probably can't execute on all of these campaigns. Perhaps it is because you realize that the combination of campaigns that you have planned will exceed customer contact policies, or perhaps they won't meet mail-house minimums or maybe you just don't have enough time and resources to complete all of the campaigns. How do you identify which campaigns will get you the results that you both want and need? Enter the analytic-centric approach of Marketing Optimization. Marketing optimization can help you contact the right customers with the right offers at the right time, while staying within the constraints of your budget and channel capacities, all without diluting future sales or exceeding customer contact policies. Marketing optimization helps maximize your economic results by making the most of each individual customer communication.

By Natalie Osborn, Senior industry consultant for SAS Institute’s Hospitality and Travel practice, SAS Institute Inc.

Opinion Article

April 14, 2014

Measure Hotel Reservations Through Increased Mobile Bookings

Consumers are shifting to using their mobile devices to call hotels and travel destinations to book due to the amount of friction in the booking process. Consumers are finding it easier to call to book rather than trying to use their cell phone's mobile booking applications, to search for the accommodations they desire and punch in their credit card information. The measurability of mobile bookings gives the hotelier the opportunity to build a relationship with the consumer by having a human voice connect with them.

By Ryan Fitzgerald, Co-Founder, Net Conversion

Opinion Article

April 11, 2014

Holy #Hashtag! Loyalty in The Digital Age

Loyalty may be marketing's Holy Grail, but the rules are changing in the digital age. So you just might want to hold that tweet and lighten up on the hashtags. That was the take-away from Wharton’s recent marketing conference, “Building Loyal Customers in the Information Age.” While marketers have more data than ever, the truth is that customer loyalty is declining according to Chris Malone, managing partner at Fidelum Partners, a global marketing firm.

By Madigan Pratt, President, MP&A

Opinion Article

March 13, 2014

The Top 10 Questions Hoteliers Should Be Asking Their SEO Vendor

With Google releasing over 500 algorithm updates each year and search engine results constantly in flux, Search Engine Optimization (SEO) best practices are always evolving. And with search engines contributing at least 50% of bookings on hotel websites, website SEO must be kept up to par via high-quality, helpful, engaging and relevant website content.

Opinion Article

February 27, 2014

Does my hotel website even need to run PPC? In short, yes.

When running a paid campaign (as in pay-per-click advertising, or PPC), Vizergy often bids on terms that we rank well for naturally (from our search engine optimization, or SEO, efforts), and we may lose some natural traffic to paid traffic. This phenomenon is referred to as "cannibalization." Because of this, some of our clients feel strongly that bidding on brand terms and terms they already rank naturally for is unnecessary. But we'd like to dispel this notion.

By Bill Jefferson, Senior Analyst, Natural Search, Vizergy

Opinion Article

February 18, 2014

The Digital Direction: Hotel Marketing Budgets and a Digital 101 for Hotels Part 1 of a Two-Part Series

The Digital Direction: Part I. This article is Part I of a two-part series analyzing the landscape of digital marketing for hotels and motels in 2014. Part I reviews the fundamentals of digital marketing and why it is vital hotels understand current trends. Part II of this series will further analyze digital marketing, and emphasize the role of earned content in a hotel’s marketing stratetgy. The article will look at earned content through the perspective of the brand, the online reputation management (ORM) provider, and the marketing expert.

By Leora Halpern Lanz, Associate Professor of the Practice, Boston University School of Hospitality Administration