A new iPad application called Flipboard has been making waves recently...so much so that the company is struggling to cope with demand for the app. The app allows users to link to their social networks and pull in related content to create a rich visually appealing "social magazine"... watch the video to learn more:

I came across a piece I’d written about 17-18 months ago on the future of hotel internet marketing. The article talked about 5 broad tech trends that I thought would radically alter the way we approached digital / internet marketing for hotels back at the end of 2008. I thought it’d be fun to take a re-look at the article and see how far we’ve actually come in the last year or more and if those predictions still hold water… here goes:



1. Choice is king.
The clear winners of the online distribution race will be suppliers and 3rd parties that provide the most choice to the customer. “Experience building” will become key to the looking and booking process online. This will mean that successful suppliers (hotels) will have to break down elements of their inventory like rooms, dining, sports, spa and supporting services into individual units that can be booked and packaged both internally and externally. The more elements you provide to what I like to call the “Experience Engine”, the better the choice available to customers to personalize and tailor their experiences. This creation of experience units will also allow tourism industry suppliers to collaborate more effectively online, as well as spur the evolution of 3rd party providers who provide superior experience engines, taking destination marketing to a whole new level.

Read the entire blog post at Hotelemarketer.com - The Hotel Internet Marketing Blog

I want to share two very simple but powerful ideas that could radically transform the way the hotel industry utilizes measures like the hotel guest satisfaction index, web analytics, etc.

1. Taking ‘measurement’ beyond just numbers

We all know that to be truly hospitable, one must go beyond just providing the necessary physical comforts that hotel guests and travellers demand. More often than not, what keeps guests coming back again and again are not the features and amenities…but the relationships and memories (after all, human beings ARE 80% emotion and 20% intellect). So perhaps it is time to step beyond the easily quantifiable attributes of a stay and start measuring actual guest ‘happiness’. When was the last time you asked a hotel guest about what made them really happy? Guest satisfaction scores and indexes often fail to consider the true value that employee-guest relationships bring to the table. Plus, since guest satisfaction depends on your employees being happy…how many hotels do you know that actually go beyond the typical corporate HR mumbo-jumbo and actually understand what makes their people tick? Why do they come to work? What makes them happy? What would they like to achieve…and can we help them get there?

Continue reading this blog post at Hotelemarketer.com - the hotel internet marketing blog

Now that I have your attention with my intriguing post title, allow me to explain just what I mean… and boiling frogs and organ donation do indeed feature in this little blog post!

All the recent furore over Facebook privacy has shown no signs of abating…and for good reason. Privacy, after all, is a sensitive and important issue. Or is it?



There’s no doubt that Facebook has made a startling entrance in the online world and taken over our browsers and mobile screens rather quickly. Official stats from Facebook claim that 400 million users currently use the service and almost half log on every day. Globally it appears that people now spend over 500 billion minutes per month on Facebook…an enviable record for any platform.

Read the entire blog post at Hotelemarketer.com, the Internet Marketing Blog

Despite unpredictable economic conditions, one truth endures for the hospitality industry – there is always room for improvement to the guest experience. In tough economic times, improving the guest experience is a worthy investment because the seeds of loyalty blossom into a strong relationship when the spending freeze thaws. In ideal economic times, competition peaks and the key differentiator guests evaluate when determining where to spend their time and money is the experience. Positive statements about “improving the guest experience” are a constant in marketing meetings – but how? When resources are scarce, but investment in the guest experience is paramount, an efficient and accountable approach is vital. The most modern, effective, and accountable approach for improving the guest experience is found in direct digital marketing.

Direct digital marketing is a digital marketing method that delivers relevant marketing communications that are addressable to individuals through the primary online channels of email, Web, and mobile using an email address, a Web browser cookie, and mobile phone number, respectively. Hotel guests value personalized, relevant interactions whether they are on property, reading an email, booking a stay online, or reviewing a text message.


Save Money and Build Relationships with Direct Digital Marketing - By Brian Deagan. Read the article on Hotelemarketer.com (Hotel Internet Marketing Blog)

The term “search engine optimisation” often strikes fear into the hearts of hoteliers and can be especially daunting for the independent hotel that has no marketing or PR department to charge these activities with. But SEO doesn’t need to be scary or costly if you break it down into segments and allocate time to each. This article will focus on 3 areas of search engine optimisation; content, link building and social media. Each plays a vital role in increasing your hotel’s website positioning in Google for your chosen keywords.

In order to understand the purpose of these activities, it is first crucial that you understand the fundamental reason the search engines reward websites with higher positions in the way they do. As an avid user of Google, I know I can rely on it. It doesn’t let me down. If I type in a keyword, Google returns relevant results for me. But Google has to do better than that – millions of websites competing for the 'top spots’ are relevant to my search. Google’s reputation as the ‘search engine of choice’ rests firmly in the hands of measuring criteria, otherwise known as “algorithms” and if it fails, the risk is that searchers go to an alternative engine. But, how does Google choose which websites to reward with page 1 search results for a given search term?

A student request - we encourage hoteliers to participate and help out...thank you!

Dear all, My name is Iro Depasta and i am a postgraduate student on Tourism Management and Marketing at Bournemouth University.

I am now conducting my dissertation on "The Implementation of Online Advertising in Hotel Industry" and i have prepared a questionnaire in order to study the area of online advertising tools. You would be really appreciated if you could answer the below questionnaire which aims to investigate the existing and emerging online advertising tools utilized in the hotel industry.

I would be really grateful if you could dedicate a few minutes of your time participating in my research and enhancing the quality of my research results. Thank you in advance. Yours Sincerely, Iro Depasta

Complete the survey

Aloft Hotels Launches Ground-Breaking Online Experience for the High-Tech, Gen Y Traveler. Aloft becomes the first hospitality brand to incorporate original gaming into its Web experience

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.® (NYSE:HOT) and its high-tech, style at a steal AloftSM Hotels brand, today announced the launch of the newly expanded Aloft Web site, www.alofthotels.com/explore , featuring a range of interactive features never before developed by a hospitality brand. The site includes a guided insider’s tour of the hotel, maps and city guides for each location and engages visitors through a series of original, branded games that bring the Aloft experience to life.

A picture may be worth a thousand words…but most hotel PR & Marketing managers today would be at a loss for words at the plague of user generated photos out on the Internet today. Hoteliers may need to get used to the fact that competing with their ‘official’ previews of what to expect, past guests have provided quite an unflattering visual footprint for those to follow. It’s no secret that hotels pay thousands of dollars for painstakingly taken, doctored photos that would entice even the most hardened globetrotter to positively drool in anticipation…and hit that book button. Great pictures DO sell.



Read the entire article here

tags: hotel, internet, marketing,, hotel, online, marketing,, travel,, user, generated, content

This year promises to be a challenging one for hoteliers. The internet offers a great source of inspiration and a superb platform for efficient marketing. Here is a collaborative document that shares the thoughts, ideas and best practices of 6 hospitality industry experts and bloggers on the key developments and recession-beating tips for 2009:



This document can also be downloaded here: Thoughts on Hotel Internet Marketing in 2009

tags: hotel-marketing, online-marketing, internet-marketing, best-practices, 2009, recession-tips

by Jitendra Jain, HoteleMarketer.com

Following on from the earlier articles, Back to the Future: Meet the hotel guest of 2020 (September 2008) 5 Future Developments that will revolutionize Online Hotel Marketing (October 2008), here are some thoughts on the role of Choice in successful Hotel Marketing of the future. I presented these ideas at the recent Distribution and Pricing Conference in Abu Dhabi…

As we mature into the Web 2.0 world and slowly inch our way to a more Semantic web, technology has made collaboration, connectivity and finding what you want easier than ever possible before. Combine available technology with the challenges posed by the Recession and the timing for a Revolution of “Choice” is absolutely perfect!

Today, hotel guests have the option of various online tools that aid transparency, search and booking. However the research and booking process can still be pretty clunky and fragmented. I believe we need to move beyond the era of Search and Booking Engines to building superior “Experience Engines”.

Continue reading the article here: The new era of Hotel Experience Marketing - Choice is the new King, All hail the King

tags: hotels, hospitality, resorts, travel, choice, marketing, recession, experience, bookings, personalization

The Hotel industry has always been sluggish on the uptake when it comes tech trends. Now, with the recession beating down the door, hoteliers may just have to get creative like never before. Social media, reputation management, blogging, etc are all fair game which have only a few early takers. However this number is likely to rise as more marketers look for new, lower cost ways of guest engagement. Here is an article from HoteleMarketer.com on the Twitter basics every hotelier should be familiar with...

Article Continues: Do Hoteliers Tweet? A Hotel Industry introduction to microblogging with Twitter





tags: hotels, resorts, hospitality, twitter, social-media, hotel-marketing, emarketing, ebusiness

When the going gets tough, Hotel eMarketers play harder: As the world gets harder, better, faster, stronger in many respects, so do the ripple effects of world events. The recent attacks in Mumbai are a prime example - hotels the world over are now scrambling to take a re-look at their security measures. In terms of broader trends, the worrying shifts in climate pales in comparison to the economic downturn now upon us. Experts claim that this recession is the worst since World War II. The world has always gone through natural economic cycles where every decade or more we take a step back and reevaluate just where we’ve been going wrong…but with increasing interconnectedness, reliance on virtual financial models and technology, the house of cards has become ever so precariously balanced.



The great thing about tough times is that it separates the boys from the men! It’s a cleansing process so to speak…one that rids us of old inefficiencies and forces us to look at better, smarter ways of living and doing business.

When the going gets tough, Hotel eMarketers play harder: As the world gets harder, better, faster, stronger in many respects, so do the ripple effects of world events. The recent attacks in Mumbai are a prime example - hotels the world over are now scrambling to take a re-look at their security measures. In terms of broader trends, the worrying shifts in climate pales in comparison to the economic downturn now upon us. Experts claim that this recession is the worst since World War II. The world has always gone through natural economic cycles where every decade or more we take a step back and reevaluate just where we’ve been going wrong…but with increasing interconnectedness, reliance on virtual financial models and technology, the house of cards has become ever so precariously balanced.

The great thing about tough times is that it separates the boys from the men! It’s a cleansing process so to speak…one that rids us of old inefficiencies and forces us to look at better, smarter ways of living and doing business.

A funny but on-the-mark video on the subject of "Inbound Marketing"...essentially non-intrusive...pull vs push marketing which has become a trademark of the Web 2.0 revolution and beyond. Enjoy...