Hotel Internet Marketing by 2013 – Are we on Track?
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.
Google Wave – Reinventing online communication and collaboration
Google’s done it again! Jens and Lars Rasmussen, the guys behind Google Maps, finally unveiled the results of 2 years of labour… Google Wave. The Google Wave page describes the tool simply as “a new model for communication and collaboration on the web, coming later this year”. A slightly more user-friendly description is offered by The Register UK: Google Wave is a browser-based app that crossbreeds email with IM and document sharing, allowing you to respond to email-like messages with IM-like chatter – and vice versa. And inside and among these cascading discussion threads – aka “waves” – you can drag-and-drop photos, videos, maps, documents, and more.
The great thing about this is the possibility of connecting currently divergent streams of communication and make real-time communication and collaboration a lot easier (and more fun!). The variety of extensions, applications and gadgets that can also be developed around this new protocal promises to deliver tons of cool and useful functionalities!
The Hotel Business Game – So you want to be a Hotel CEO?
If you’ve always dreamed of sitting at the helm of your global hotel empire…and terms like RevPAR, GOPPAR, bottom line profits and market share come easy, then perhaps it’s time you put your skills to the test! YoungHotelier.com is proud to introduce the first-ever real-time real-world business simulation for the Hotel Industry, in affiliation with Tycoon Systems, Inc.
Sixth Sense – Wearable Technology that connects the Web and Reality
Here’s a wonderful example of tech development that directly applied to daily consumer life. The limits of adaptability are only our imagination – I’m excited to think how many great applications a device such as this can have in hospitality and travel, both for guests/ travellers and behind the scenes at an operational level!
Of course, there will always be drawbacks to technology too…for example, when this is finally adopted on a mass consumer level, just what sort of impact will it have on our ability to think, reason and choose on our own? Will the constant stream of ‘enabling’ devices and tech make us lazy and gullible to marketing and crowdthink?
Things to think about…but for now, these moves forward in technology need to be celebrated for what they are…an immense paradigm shift in the way we think, interact and collaborate!
About this video: This demo — from Pattie Maes’ lab at MIT, spearheaded by Pranav Mistry — was the buzz of TED. It’s a wearable device with a projector that paves the way for profound interaction with our environment. Imagine “Minority Report” and then some.
About Pattie Maes: At the MIT Media Lab’s new Fluid Interfaces Group, Pattie Maes researches the tools we use to work with information and connect with one another.
About Pranav Mistry: Pranav Mistry is the genius behind Sixth Sense, a wearable device that enables new interactions between the real world and the world of data.
Video Source: TED | For more information on this project, visit http://fluid.media.mit.edu/projects.php?action=details&id=68
The new age of Interactive Hotel Marketing – Surface Computing, Siftables, Multi-touch
As technology evolves to offer creative new ways to interact with digital media, the possibilities for marketers become immense. We’ve all seen what multi-touch displays have done to improve the user experience… the Apple iPod is a wonderful example of this. Even large multi-touch panels like those seen in the movie ‘Minority Report’ are now cropping up in news rooms.
Beyond being plain fun, the great thing about these new interactive input devices is our move towards more intuitive, quicker ways to interact with media…and finally a move away from two decades being tied to the mouse and keyboard. The hotel industry is big on guest interaction and personalization…so multi-touch screens offer an excellent way to interact with hotel guests, from information, ordering and billing to creative deployments that allow guests to create memories and offer feedback.
Social lessons from Twitter
“Great…another lame social networking site. I don’t have time for this stuff! Heck, I hardly use my Facebook account…how do people manage to keep these things updated anyway?” exclaims a fellow hotelier. On some days and with certain social networking offshoots I’d be inclined to agree. However Twitter is truly something else.
Although it’s hard to take a count, there are at least 140 ‘popular’ social networking sites, varying in community focus, from business networks to friend feeds to photo enthusiast platforms. MySpace and Facebook lead the pack, with Compete.com ranking Twitter the 3rd largest, with a population of approximately 6 million users and 55 million visitors per month.
Will Artificial Intelligence spell the end of the TripAdvisor Model?
Travel and Hotel Reviews…love ‘em or hate ‘em, they’re here to stay. The question just begs to be asked though…just how long will the user-generated model of referrals really last?
TripAdvisoris used as an example in this article because its simply too big and too well established to ignore. However this piece is not aimed at the company (to be perfectly fair, I love TripAdvisor and have used it on many occasions to find and book accommodations in strange and foreign lands). There are various other travel and hotel booking websites, guides and online travel agencies that also incorporate user reviews to add an element of trust and ‘referral credibility’ to their products.
Image Source: Compete Inc. “Consumer Generated Content in Travel” 2007. Not surprisingly, 82% consumers in the survey indicated they trust other consumer opinions over what a hotel had to say about itself. But interestingly enough, even now, less than 70% really trust the information and barely 51% feel that TripAdvisor content is unbiased.
The new era of Hotel Experience Marketing – Choice is the new King, All hail the King
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 Revenue Management and Pricing Middle East 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“.
Do Hoteliers Tweet? A Hotel Industry introduction to microblogging with Twitter
The world has been ‘atwitter’ for quite a while now, and the thousands of people join Twitter by the day…and even more ‘tweet’ about their lives, their work, their passions and in some misguided cases, even their bowel movements. So just what IS Twitter, you ask?
In the simplest terms, Twitter is a social networking and microblogging service that allows to send and read others updates in the form of short text messages (140 characters max). It’s kind of like blogging by sms. So who’s doing it? Kids, Professionals, Marketers, Bloggers…and even President Elect Barack Obama, while he was on the campaign trail!
For most hoteliers and indeed most people Twitter is a tough one to relate to, unless you happen to be obsessed with Facebook and updated your status 50 times a day. But there is more to Twitter than meets the eye. At the very basic level, here’s what Twitter can allow you to do as hoteliers or hotel internet marketers:
