Internet Role in Hospitality Industry
- 1. Audience who take this presentation are expected to be experienced in Social media(Facebook,Twitter,blog etc), Internet, LAN,O/S (Windows) & general P.C troubleshooting. They are expected to understand I.T Security problems like Virus, Spyware, Malware & Botnet and their Remedies
- 2. Role of Internet in Present Day Hotel Industery Technology impacts and assists the growth of practically every industry in the present age. Hotel industry too isn’t insulated from its effects. With local and international hotel establishments working overtime to tap into the power of internet, in order to catalyze their sales and to improve customer relations, it is only evident how internet is playing a key role in development of hotel industry today.
- 3. Hospitality industry trends for 2012 • The hospitality landscape is evolving quickly as new technology demands that hotels become more social and engaging in their marketing efforts, travelers are looking for the best value propositions, and consumer demand is pushing for hotels to make concerted efforts on property upgrades and improvements.
- 4. Online booking will continue to (modestly) grow. • The number of U.S. travelers booking and researching online is still growing. More than 114 million people will research travel online this year, while 94 million will actually book reservations. While more than 50 percent of travel bookings are made on the Internet, the online travel market has matured and I expect modest growth and stabilization
- 5. There will be more mobile bookings and research • More and more travelers will be turning to their mobile devices to not only research lodging and travel options, but to book and communicate room preferences directly with the hotel. Mobile channel booking has increased four-fold between 2008 and 2010 according to Forrester Research. Plus, Google is projecting that mobile will overtake PCs as the most common Web-access device by 2013. With travelers adopting smartphones and tablets at such a rapid pace, it's crucial for hoteliers to optimize their website for mobile usage to capture potential mobile transactions.
- 6. Brands will put more money into deals to expand market share. • The brands are at war for the development deals that have a chance to get financed. Starwood, Hyatt, and Intercontinental are aggressively pursuing the Hilton and Marriott juggernaut • Prepare for growth
- 7. Social media will continue to transform connections with travelers. • By 2016, half of the travel industry will be using social media as a way of generating revenue and bookings. Currently more than one-fifth (22 percent) use social media as a revenue generating tool with a further 27 percent planning to do so over the next five years. Plus, social media will become more of a key component of Search Engine Results Page (SERP) algorithms. Facebook's posts are already integrated into Bing search and Google+ emerged with native integration into Google search.
- 8. Social Media Marketing in Tourism Industry A new communication landscape. Social media, unlike traditional media channels, represent a unique way of transmitting information in all directions, not just “one- way” and “top-down”. So people generate and share their own content, which is very vital for marketing in tourism industry.
- 9. Article Marketing in Tourism Industry • Article marketing is vital tool for traffic sourcing and quite importantly for increasing page rank not only in tourism industry. Promoting travel destinations, tourism businesses or travel trade events is an essential component of any long term online marketing strategy. Thousands of unique articles submitted and distributed to hundreds of article directories and e-zine directories will increase the value of your travel & tourism website significantly. • Tourism Review team is ready to create a unique set of articles and submit them to tourism related article directories. As a result hundreds of thematic and highly relevant one-way back links will dramatically increase search engine rankings in the leading search engines such as Google or Yahoo and result in free targeted traffic to your website.
- 10. Blog marketing in Tourism Industry • In addition to article marketing, blogging or blog marketing considerably help promote destinations, tourism businesses and travel trade events in unparallel and efficient way. Posting of different unique articles to hundreds of tourism niche blogs market is an incredibly efficient marketing tool in terms of both developing free targeted traffic to your website as well as increasing your search engine rankings through highly relevant one-way back links.
- 11. Social Media Bookmarking in Tourism Industry • Social bookmarking is one of the fastest methods for internet users to organize, share, and manage web resources currently available as a SEO tool. Most of social bookmarking services support internet users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags such as tourism, travel, marketing etc. Such tags in fact promote your travel business and make it much more visible and searchable by search engines. When Tourism Review specialists submit your website to the leading bookmarking sites such as Delicious, StumbleUpon, digg, Yahoo!Buzz etc., you will quickly notice increased traffic to your website from people interested in your services
- 12. Video Marketing in Tourism Industry • Video on your tourism or destination website is quite essential, but what about all the other video sites where many internet users are already actively watching video spots online? It is important to emphasize that with more than 3.7 billion search queries YouTube can now claim the title of “The 2nd Largest Search Engine”. It is almost unknown that a correctly submitted video is more than 50-times more likely to push your tourism website on the first positions among search engine results than traditional SEO techniques
- 13. The Mobile Era is Here! • Why Cell Phones are Replacing the Laptop • The sharp trajectory of growth for cell phones and the growing number of PC-like features being incorporated into their design are fueling the theory that the cell phone is becoming the new laptop. Here are the reasons why
- 15. • It can e-mail. • It can Web-browse • It is small. • It has Windows • It has Bluetooth capabilities • It is cheaper • It can be used for cloud computing
- 16. Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Web • Hotels do not need a mobile app if they are a single-property, independent hotel. Nor do franchised hotels and resorts or smaller and mid-size hotel chains and multi-property companies. These hotel companies are better off focusing on building and enhancing their mobile websites and promoting the mobile site via mobile
- 17. Here is why!!! • Mobile User Preferences: • The most recent eMarketer survey clearly shows that users prefer a mobile app only in the following three categories: social networking, music and games. For everything else they prefer to browse (i.e. search for mobile websites).
- 18. Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Browsing! Appps Browsing Social Networks (FB, 54% 46% Twitter) Music 55% 45% Games 61% 39% Research 19% 81% Product/Services and Price Comparing Products and 29% 71% Price Reading Customer 32% 68% Reviews Purchasing Product via 37% 63% Mobile Device
- 19. Strong Brand Recognition Needed for Success • In hospitality, the success of a hotel mobile app is directly correlated to the strength of the hotel brand. Mobile apps make sense for a chain of hotels. Smaller hotel companies’ apps have little chance of being discovered by mobile user
- 20. Technological Boundaries between Mobile Apps and Mobile Browsing Are Disappearing • With rapid advancements in mobile technology, the lines between mobile apps and mobile websites are disappearing. Newer, more sophisticated mobile devices, mobile operating systems and mobile browsers have enhanced the quality of the mobile web browsing experience tremendously: touch screen user experience, GPS and LBS capability, HTML5 rich media, video and audio enhancements, data storage and interactive functionalities
- 21. Cost!!! • A good hotel mobile app can cost $15,000 and up, based on custom design, functionality, interactivity, handling of heavy graphics etc. At the same time, a hotel mobile website is a much cheaper endeavor – a 10-page mobile website should not cost more than $1,500, including an integration of the mobile booking engine, Google maps, etc.
- 22. Portability!!! • A well-developed mobile website is by default a cross-platform entity that can be viewed on all platforms capable of browsing e.g. iPhone, RIM (BlackBerry), Symbian Android, Windows Mobile, etc. In contrast, a different app or a customized version of an app is needed for every major platform i.e. an app for iPhone, an app for Blackberry, an app for Google Android, etc. All of this greatly increases the cost of developing and maintaining the hotel mobile app
- 23. Discoverability!!! • There are more than 300,000 apps in the Apple App Store alone. Hundreds of apps are available for Google Andoid, BlackBerry, and now Windows Mobile. How do you promote your new hotel app? You need a very well defined strategy and special budget to promote your hotel app and break into the top list for your category • A mobile website needs good mobile SEO and SEM (Search Engine Marketing) such as Google Mobile AdWords in order to reach potential customers looking for accommodations in your location.
- 24. Reach!!! • Mobile apps can be viewed only on smartphones, which comprise roughly 50% of the mobile device marketplace today. In other words, after you develop expensive apps for iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Android smartphones, you will be reaching only half of potential mobile customers. A cross-platform mobile website will reach 100% of Internet-enabled mobile devices.
- 25. Recommendation • Creating mobile-friendly textual and visual content that presents the hotel product well • Enhancing the mobile user-experience via well-thought out mobile site navigation, a mobile booking engine widget, mobile calendar of events, etc. • Increasing website “discoverability” via mobile SEO and mobile SEM (e.g. Google mobile AdWords) and online media initiatives. • Making the mobile website more interactive via mobile-social media initiatives, interactive sweepstakes and contests. • Soliciting sign-ups to the mobile opt-in list via the traditional hotel website and the mobile website, via hotel email marketing campaigns and various sweepstakes and contests, such as interactive scavenger hunts, QR Code promotions, etc. • Tracking conversions and user behavior via mobile analytics and special tracking phone functionality.
- 26. Beware on web!!! • Brandjacking Index®: How Brands Are Used As Competitive Weapons Hotel brands face a unique brandjacking challenge. Due to the fierce competition for travelers via paid search and other online marketing tactics, major hotel brands are losing more than two billion dollars a year in unnecessary commission payments and online traffic lost to competitors. The travel industry is well- established online, with a robust mix of channels, so these findings serve as a cautionary tale to other industries. Protecting your company's brand online means more than thwarting abuses and attacks--it means monitoring cyber-savvy competitors and partners, too.
- 27. When’s the best time to Tweet? How often to po Facebook? Timing your Facebook: • Most Facebook shares occur on Saturday. • These shares tend to spike around noon, and a little after 7PM. • Posting once every two days will result in the most “likes”.
- 28. Best time to Tweet • When the most traffic happens and when actually the most tweets go out is also the best time for you to tweet, which is sometimes counter-intuitive
- 29. Social Media Risks for Companies • 1) Viruses and malware — Data leakage/theft. • Prevention: Make sure antivirus and anti-malware controls are installed and updated daily. Create updating policies, standards, and training. • 2) Brand hijacking — Customer gets exposed to hijacked and fraudulent presence. • Prevention: Find a firm that can protect your brand. Update customers on potential fraud. • 3) Lack of control over corporate content — When employees post wrong or improper information on social media sites. • Prevention: Establish clear policies that dictate what can and cannot be shared. Create the capability to capture and log all communications. • 4) Unrealistic expectations of customer service at Internet-speed. • Prevention: Make sure staff can handle traffic associated with social media presence. Create notice with clear timeline for responses. • 5) Mismanagement of electronic communications that may be impacted by retention regulations or e-discovery. • Prevention: Establish policies and processes that ensure all communications are tracked.
- 30. Social Media Risks for Employees • 1) Using personal accounts to communicate work related information. • Prevention: Have HR establish policies and awareness training so employees do not share company info. • 2) Posting pictures or information that might damage a company’s brand. • Prevention: Again, work with HR to develop policies that explain what can and cannot be shared. • 3) Excessive employee use of social media in the workplace. • Prevention: Create content filtering or limit access to sites. • 4) Employee access to social media via mobile, which may result in data theft or leakage. • Prevention: More policies, more training, more controls.
- 31. How Often Should You Email Your List? • When you’re putting together your email marketing campaign, there is one very important factor you need to think about: How often you should email your list. Email marketing can be a powerful promotional tool, but if you do it wrong it can do more harm then good to your business. Email your subscribers too much with uninteresting information and they will swiftly unsubscribe from your list. Finding The Right Email Frequency Honestly, there is no one right answer for this question. Different businesses will be able to get away with emailing their mailing list subscribers at different rates, it just depends on the type of emails you are providing. My suggestion, Email your mailing list once a week
- 32. UPDATES!!!
- 33. Google Hotel Finder gets top positio The Google hotel finder is a very interesting development that has the potential to shake up the online market for hotels. As a service, it aims to allow you to search, compare and book hotels from all over the world. It can be accessed at: www.google.com/hotelfinder
- 35. Appearing on the Google Hotel Finder The majority of hotels are already included in the hotel finder but some hotels are currently missing and some hotels that are included are only shown if you use the shape tool on the map to include the area where the hotel is physically located. If your hotel is not currently listed please be aware that Google are constantly adding hotels to their database.
- 36. Analysis & Opinion Key positives ● Clean, uncluttered design. ● Shape tool is useful but only beneficial if you know the area you are visiting. ● Filtering options are useful and easy to use. ● Prices are listed clearly. ● The hotel website link is included automatically and is free. ● Hotels can now compete directly with OTAs.
- 37. Challenges • A user cannot search by hotel name, specific address or landmark. ● Prices are currently displayed in US dollars only. ● English is the only available language. ● Only reviews from Google are listed. ● Some hotels are missing from the finder. ● Not all hotels can show their own prices yet. ● As of mid December, Google is placing its hotel finder as the first sponsored link in search results for hotels in the USA, causing considerable controversy in the PPC market.
- 38. Google panda!!! How fresh is your website? Every year, Google makes more than 500 updates to its search algorithm. The most significant update in 2011 was the Google Panda Update, now in version 2.5, which made most hotel websites obsolete by introducing very strict requirements for content, interactivity, and page download speeds. This required sites to generate engaging and unique website content (as opposed to bland, old and tired content) that would intrigue users and increase the site’s 'stickiness'.
- 39. Google announced that they had rolled out an update now known as the “Freshness” update, which was said to affect 35% of total searches and would allow for more relevant, current information to be displayed for a bevy of high- volume search queries. Why are these updates important for the hospitality industry? Between 50%-70% of hotel website visitors and website bookings originate as leads from the major search engines How does this latest Google algorithm update apply to hotel queries Traditionally, hotel websites are content rich vs. news rich, with descriptions and information featuring and explaining in detail every facet of the hotel business and service, from the bed linens to the capacity of a meeting room. The “static” content is there, but the “fresh” content is certainly lacking, and this is the main issue with current hotel websites after the latest Google algorithm updates.
- 40. So if hotel websites aren’t basically fresh, then how do hoteliers respond to the latest Google “Freshness” Update? • Promotional landing pages for timely specials and packages (e.g. a March weekend package as opposed to an Advanced Purchase package valid for all of 2012) • Event landing pages for events and happenings at the property and in the destination • Promo tiles and banners on the website for featured specials and events • Marketing and sales messages in the main image window on every page focusing on various aspects of the hotel product: room and dining promotions, complete meeting packages, wedding promotions, etc. • New content pages on various topics: from seasonal and sports events, to local festivals and customer segment-specific content (family travel, seniors, weekend travel, romantic getaways, etc.)
- 41. Conclusion! • The Google Panda Update made most hotel websites obsolete. Bare, sparse copy stuffed with keywords can no longer sustain a respectable SERP ranking. • The latest Freshness Update created the need to add fresh content to the website on an ongoing basis. • In order to react to these two algorithmic updates, hoteliers need to re-evaluate their website re-design strategies and budget for website re-design or an optimization overhaul in early 2012. • Be proactive when dealing with your content and the various assets you own. Highlight what’s great about you and make sure that whatever you’re proud of is reflected on the back end of your website, on social media, and within blogs and press releases. Success will continue to come, especially if you stay ahead of the curve
- 42. Q & A
- 43. THANK YOU