Tag: google

The Hotels vs OTA Paid Search War – Get Your Defensive Strategy Right

Here’s another great guest post by the team at Mirai Espana, this time by Pablo Delgado and César López. This post examines how 3rd Party Retailers / OTAs capture business intended directly for hotels…and how to approach / fix the problem. Also evaluated is the value OTAs CAN add, i.e. via generic and destination level searches.

How Online Travel Agencies (OTA) or 3rd Party intermediaries get the customers that are searching for you on the web

PART 1: The problem

In Continental Europe, hotels with registered trademarks can prevent intermediaries from using their brand names in Google Adwords. Doing this means that more users end up on their own websites. In spite of the advantages, most independent hotels don’t take the necessary steps to benefit from it.

Did you think you were first in line? Others are cutting in front of you.

Your 1st place is barely visible

Continue reading “The Hotels vs OTA Paid Search War – Get Your Defensive Strategy Right”

Advertisements

Review of Google Think Travel 2012 Middle East – World Islands Dubai

The Google team hosted it’s first ever “Think Travel” event here in the Middle East today at the Lebanon Island (World Islands) in Dubai. A well-chosen, buzz-worthy venue, no doubt…most attendees were equally keen about the event as they were to see the state of the (much touted) World Islands. All in all an eventful day with a great mix of insights and industry discussions, garnished liberally with rhetoric.

Continue reading “Review of Google Think Travel 2012 Middle East – World Islands Dubai”

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!

Continue reading “Google Wave – Reinventing online communication and collaboration”