Sales & Marketing USA & Canada Opinion Articles - Hospitality Net

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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, Professor of the Practice, Boston University School of Hospitality Administration

Opinion Article

February 18, 2014

Hotel Brand Revitalization

Like any commercial product, a hotel brand follows a life cycle. At its maturity, the brand becomes tired in the face of changing consumer preferences, new brand competition floods the market, and brand development stagnates while brand-wide revenue flat lines. Although lodging companies continuously try to promote their brands, at this point in the brand life cycle only two options remain. One extreme measure is to eliminate the brand from the company’s portfolio, ensuring development of that brand remains dormant. An example of this is when InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG) eliminated Holiday Inn Select from the Holiday Inn brand family. The other option, which is more commonly undertaken, is to revitalize the brand through a process that is often referred to as a “rebrand,” a “brand refresh,” or a “brand relaunch.”

By Aaron Laurie, HVS

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Opinion Article

February 4, 2014

The Top Ten Questions to Ask Your Paid Search Vendor

In spite of the array of trendy new digital marketing initiatives and formats available to hoteliers today, the reliable old search engines still generate more than 50% of website revenue in hospitality (HeBS Digital, OTX Research). Not surprisingly, Search Engine Marketing (SEM)/Paid Search is currently the most popular online advertising format: More than 45% of every online advertising dollar is spent on search engine marketing (IAB).

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

Opinion Article

January 21, 2014

Hotel Common Sense™: Hotel Owners Must Remain Involved and Aware, Regardless of Brand, Location, Hotel size or Markets Served

Owning a hotel can be either a delight or a nightmare, as it requires both capital investment and an ongoing commitment to paying attention to what your guests want and need. As the CEO of a company that serves and interacts with literally hundreds of hotel owners annually, I am cognizant of many of the challenges facing them, but not all. Early in my career, I learned the concept behind what I came to call Hotel Common Sense™ from a family of Vermont innkeepers who were savvy hotel owners.

By John Hogan, CHA CHMS CHE CHO, HoganHospitality.com

Opinion Article

October 21, 2013

Lack of Directional Signage In Major US Airports A National Disgrace For Tourism and Hospitality

As a conference speaker and hospitality industry trainer, I have often experienced the anxiety of flying into a foreign country with a different language for the first time. Although I (regrettably) have not yet managed to learn any languages beyond my American English, I cannot once remember flying into an airport that I could not easily find my way around.

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

Opinion Article

May 31, 2013

TOURISM

Much has been said and written about tourism and its effects upon local communities. One important issue concerns the question of how we feel about tourists, and research shows that when it is our home community to which lots of tourists come to visit we display several specific responses. This is important since our individual and collective attitude towards inbound visitors has a profound impact upon their stay with us. When they feel welcomed, and see and feel the spirit of hospitality at work, they enjoy their stay and, as a result, when they go back to their homes they speak warmly about their experiences with us to their friends and neighbors.

By Malcolm Noden, Cayuga Hospitality Consultants

Opinion Article

May 31, 2013

7 Tips For Creating A More Powerful LinkedIn Summary

I recently returned from presenting a LinkedIn workshop for hospitality professionals and hotel sales managers who are members of HSMAI's Los Angeles Chapter and one of the areas that I addressed was the importance of completing a profile.

By Tom Costello, iGroupAdvisors

Houston, Texas, United States

Opinion Article

May 15, 2013

Preparing for Google Penguin 2.0: How To Protect Your Hotel Website

When Google rolled out its Panda algorithm update in February 2011, it upended search engine results pages (SERPs) in a major way, affecting 12 percent of all results. The algorithm adjustment essentially penalized low-quality sites and rewarded sites with engaging, high-quality content. Since the initial rollout of Panda, the search engine giant has introduced a number of updates and changes – as of late April 2013, the company has produced 25 Panda updates and a host of other updates, dubbed Penguin.

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Opinion Article

April 30, 2013

Stand Up And Stand Out – Five Ideas To Heighten Your Hotel’s Guest Experience

Mandy Green, the Social Media Director and hospitality industry blogger at Monscierge followed up with me recently about an article that she posted, 'The Guest Experience Five Easy Ideas'. The content of her post was inspired by a piece that appeared in Hotel Management about how Bill Spencer, GM at Hilton Memphis, selects guests on a purely random basis for a program he calls 'Guest of the Day.'

By Tom Costello, iGroupAdvisors

Houston, Texas, United States

Opinion Article

April 25, 2013

Using Research to Determine the ROI of Product Enhancements: A Best Western Case Study

Executive Summary | While enforcement of brand standards is a challenge for hotel companies that do not own and operate their properties, Best Western International (BWI) has a particularly distinctive situation in that it is a not-for-profit membership organization. As such, brand standards or potential upgrades must be approved by vote of the membership. The diverse nature of its member properties presented an opportunity and a challenge when BWI's leadership sought to establish a consistent brand. To achieve this goal, BWI commissioned an extensive research initiative on consumer expectations.

By Rick Garlick, CHR

Opinion Article

March 19, 2013

No Silver Bullets, No Shortcuts in the Customer Experience Business

As is wont to happen from time to time, we have stumbled upon another "silver bullet" moment in the ongoing effort to effectively measure and enhance customer experience. The magic solution of the moment involves taking advantage of the free feedback that customers provide on social media and review websites such as Facebook, TripAdvisor and Yelp and utilizing one of the available online tools to "scrape" and analyze that feedback in an orderly fashion. There has been a good bit of chatter about the value of using this approach and the technologies that enable it to replacemore conventional means of measuring the guest experience.

By Zach Conen, LRA Worldwide

Opinion Article

February 20, 2013

A Revitalized Downtown Orlando is Taking Shape

Since the opening of the Amway Center in the fall of 2010, the Downtown Orlando development scene has been slowly yet steadily gaining momentum, with a combination of new projects being announced and long-delayed efforts finally approaching realization. Hotel developers and various market participants across the U.S. have taken notice, and now three new hotels are set to open over the next two years in a market that hasn't seen a new hotel open since the Grand Bohemian opened in 2001.

By Taylor Gray, HVS

Orlando, Florida, United States

Opinion Article

February 11, 2013

A LinkedIn Prospecting Guide For Hotel Sales Managers

I received a call the other day from a hotel sales manager who was seeking my advice because he was struggling to meet his sales quota. His real dilemma was that he recently relocated to an unfamiliar city and needed to make up some ground as quickly as possible.

By Tom Costello, iGroupAdvisors

Houston, Texas, United States

Opinion Article

January 25, 2013

How Guests Select Hotels Around the World – The Americas

In an earlier post (How Guests Select Hotels Around the World – Global Results), we talked about the reasons people all around the world choose a hotel. Now let's take a look at how drivers of hotel choice change from one global region to another. In The Americas, past experience, loyalty programs and price play a bigger role in customers' purchase decisions compared to other world regions. Past experience is reported by 15% of all guests as their primary motivation for brand choice, more than in any other global region.

By Jonathan Barsky, Clarabridge (former Market Metrix)

Opinion Article

January 2, 2013

Does Goal Setting Have A Dark Side – Not Here!

Since 2013 is just around the corner, I want you to think about the positive impact that setting goals, putting them in writing along with a plan to achieve them can have on your life. Setting and achieving your goals not only impacts you but your family, friends and loved ones as well.

By Tom Costello, iGroupAdvisors

Houston, Texas, United States