Facebook & Twitter: Where is the ROI?

There's a bottom line when it comes to online marketing: the return on investment, so if your hotel is going to invest in social media platforms like Twitter and Facebook, you want to see the return on the time your staff or agency spends posting links and photos, right? Right.

News from Kantar Media Compete just might make you a little more confident in spending on social media. According to a recent study released by the group, it seems social media does in fact make an impact on consumer purchasing decisions.

Hotel business collapses after 'good' reviews on TripAdvisor!

A hotelier's business has seen a "catastrophic collapse in bookings" after her customers wrote online TripAdvisor reviews which were too positive, it has been claimed.


The hotel has suffered a downturn in bookings after it was 'redflagged' by TripAdvisor following 'suspicious' good reviews

Social media: ‘Test early. Test often. Fail cheaply.’

Image from ZenithDesignStudios.com

The marketing team at InterContinental Hotels Group has a saying when it comes to the fast-moving world of social media: “Test early. Test often. And fail cheaply.”

Visitors are increasingly footing the bill for tourism marketing

An up to date view of Tourism Funding issues across the USA. 

Three years after the onset of the recession, CVBs and other destination management organizations (DMOs) across the country continue to be victims of the gyrating U.S. economy.

It’s a divergent landscape. While many DMOs have lost funds from their state and local governments, some continue to get revenue boosts from theirs.

TripAdvisor talks future plans

The power of hotel review website TripAdvisor in determining which hotels travelers choose to spend the night at only continues to grow.

The statistics speak for themselves — TripAdvisor gets over 40 million unique visitors a month across its brands and operates in 30 countries worldwide. It has tallied more than 50 million reviews since its launch in 2000, up from 10 million reviews in 2007. An average of 26 new reviews and opinions about hotels are posted every minute.

Bermuda tourism board gets Google assist in first mobile advertising campaign

The Bermuda Department of Tourism is midway through its first mobile ad campaign as it targets a relatively affluent audience from nearby markets on the East Coast of the US.

The tourism board enlisted ad agency Ingenuity Media for the campaign and Google’s AdMob unit, which created the mobile banner ads and landing pages.

Anne Shutte, the tourism board’s director of global operations, says mobile was identified “as a key touchpoint for our affluent audience and we wanted to utilize Google capabilities to reach our audience while they are on the go.”

The campaign targets smartphone and iPad users with household incomes of $135,000 and above in key markets along the East Coast of the US, which generally can be a two-hour flight to Bermuda.

Full story on Tnooz: Bermuda tourism board gets Google assist in first mobile advertising campaign | Tnooz:

Hotels: Are You Keeping Customer Service 'Social'?

People are talking about you, and your business; are you clued in to what they're saying?

Even if you're not part of the popular social media circle, your hotel is being tossed around the party. How are you going to react? This is precisely the premise behind social media engagement - how you engage, and respond, is what will keep your hotel in the elite crowd.

Hotel owner's Twitter success

A hotel and restaurant owner says the way he does business has been transformed thanks to Twitter.

Anthony Lloyd, who runs the Fallowfields Hotel in Kingston Bagpuize, says he has generated £150,000 worth of business representing 15 per cent of his annual turnover over the past 18 months thanks to enquiries via the social media platform.

How To: Optimize Your Hotels’ Presence on Foursquare

Location-based services (LBS) such as Foursquare began as a game for exploring your city through a mobile device. But they also present hoteliers with a new way to monitor guest activity, feedback, and loyalty. 

Here are five ways to optimize your hotels’ presence on Foursquare:

Is the Hotel Inspector going the way of the Dinosaurs?

How a meteorite killed off the Dinosaurs is not dissimilar to how the Internet might be killing off out-dated Accommodation Guides.

Ritz-Carlton launches $10M repositioning campaign

The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co. launched a $10 million advertising campaign on Sept. 16 to spread awareness of its new brand positioning. 

The Marriott-owned hotel chain created the effort, which includes direct mail, email, social media and banner ads, with Los Angeles-based agency Team One.

The company is distributing direct mail and email messages to its database promoting the luxury hotel chain's new tagline, “Let Us Stay with You.”

5 Must-Haves for Social Media Planning

Social media has the potential to be a powerful online tool for hotels. If implemented properly, hoteliers can build brand awareness while maintaining customer loyalty. But it’s not something one should jump into blindly. 

Social media is more than just creating an account and writing a tweet or updating a status. The hotel’s reputation is on the line,

Kansas' Dodge City got into tourism as Plan B

Did you hear about the city that decided to skip the recession?

Dodge City has been blowing the doors off its tourism business since the start of 2008, with the Kansas community's guest tax revenues up about 40 percent since 2007.

In 1997, city voters approved a 1 percent sales tax to be set aside for building tourism-related venues and programs in hopes of gaining new revenues.

The city of 27,000 built a racetrack, a sports complex, a convention center and was selected as the first U.S. community for a state-owned casino.

As everything started coming together for Dodge City, the recession hit. But Jan Stevens, Dodge City Convention & Visitors Bureau director, had an idea.

How To Guide: On-line Video Marketing for Travel & Tourism

So how does a tourism region produce a video that rises above the 48 hours of video uploaded to youtube every minute, and harness some of the 3 billion eyeballs watching each day?

Australian travel video producer Mark Shea outlines how to run a successful online video campaign using Australian Tourism and Travel examples

What's Next For Travel in the Social Space?

With so many trends emerging in the social space, how can hotels know where to invest their time and money? That's the common question making the rounds through marketing and sales meetings at hotels around the world. 

The opportunities for hotels and consumers to weigh in on the social space continues to grow. Twitter, Facebook, FourSquare, Tumblr, TripAdvisor and now, Google Travel, have opened the doors for more online content, more consumer reviews and of course, more commentary.

VisitEngland's Visitor Economy Forum to discuss TBIDs

VisitEngland has announced that there will be a Visitor Economy Forum taking place on Thursday 1 December 2011 in London to debate the big issues affecting visitor economy growth and in particular Tourism Business Improvement Districts. 

I recommend that everyone who sincerely has the Tourism Industry at heart does not miss the chance to be part of the first definitive discussion on the development of Tourism Business Improvement Districts (TBIDs) in England. Attend on the 1st December to understand what is involved and how it might progress from those leading TBIDs development, and debate what it means for the visitor economy, you and your area!

VisitEngland lines up £10m 'pride' ad campaign

VisitEngland will run its biggest domestic tourism push to date next year, with the aim of creating national 'pride' among consumers.


The £10m campaign will use the Cultural Olympiad, the Olympic torch relay and the Queen's Diamond Jubilee to showcase the country in the lead-up to London 2012.

IHG introduces new price guarantee

"On Tuesday IHG, Denham, U.K. launched a new online sales initiative called “Best Price Guarantee” for all of its brands that offers a free night for any customer finding a lower price than that on the hotel's website elsewhere online."

In addition to one night free,

Social Media is the new Punk Rock

Great video from EngageORM - I remember Punk Rock and this video brings it all back and helps put perspective on the MASSIVE influence that Social Media will have on all of us, wherever we are, from this point onwards...

” 

I'm sure you weren't going to forget but please remember to follow iVisitorGuide on Twitter

QR codes - are they Great Marketing Tools?

They’re new, they’re funky looking, and no one is completely sure how to best use them. Yet Quick Response (or QR) codes are being used by many hoteliers in their marketing efforts and they see a bright future for these little squares.


A QR code is a matrix barcode, or two-dimensional code, that can be read by smartphones. The information encoded might be text, a URL, or other data. These codes can be scanned by customers, who’ll get linked to customized information, deals, Facebook promotions or other social media efforts.

Guaranteed Ways to Annoy Fans and Followers

When you work with brands using channels like Facebook and Twitter on a daily basis, you become very familiar with some of the pitfalls companies can fall into - and what results they seem to generate.

I've never been one of those people who likes to kick-up a stink when a brand makes a mistake but I like to keep a close eye on what trends seem to annoy customers most, if only to learn from them for the future.

Bournemouth firm takes on travel review website TripAdvisor

Reputation management company KwikChex is acting against TripAdvisor, which carries more than 50 million customer reviews of hotels, airlines and travel services.

The struggle has attracted atttention in America, Australia and Europe and revolves around how much you can trust review websites.

3 Ways Your Hotel Can Make an Impact on Twitter

What you tweet says a lot about you, and your hotel; do you tweet under the hotel's name, or do you have a personal account?


Are you merging the two accounts or do you keep them separate? Your tweets are an insight into your hotel, and what the hotel represents. I'm consistently asked by hotel clients how to keep the conversation going, without being too self-promotional - what happens when you run out of things to tweet about? Impossible!

Saying "I Do" to Social Media Marketing Engagement

In every human relationship there is a courtship phase. We meet, we Google each other, and then we date.

Time passes, and before you know it, we’ve fallen in love and we’re skipping through poppy fields. Well, okay, maybe not poppy fields - but clearly, we’ve fallen for each other.

We learn all the things Google couldn’t tell us, and figure out how to communicate with each other most effectively.

Social Media pays off for a North Somerset Hotel

Double Tree Hilton, Cadbury House

Smart use of social media has catapulted a North Somerset hotel into the Marketing Times list of Top 30 UK hotels on Twitter – well ahead of London's Ritz and the Four Seasons.

Address online guest feedback internally

It’s a relatively new phenomenon - customers actually shaping a brand by commenting and sharing experiences. Yet travelers rely so heavily on peer experiences that to not manage it, to not stay on top of guest comments, is to ignore one of the most important parts of your brand. 

Reputation management can mean different things to different hoteliers. While some may equate it with ensuring their hotel is projected online in a positive light, the hoteliers who truly understand reputation management see it as a way to respond to guests’ demands and improve operations.

How Twitter Can Benefit Your Hotel & Why Facebook Doesn’t Cut It!

There are many social media channels that hotels can use, but by far the most commonly used platforms are Twitter and Facebook. In most cases, hotels (mistakenly) put greater emphasis on Facebook and neglect Twitter. 

Very often hotels that have Facebook account don’t have a presence on Twitter, and if they do, the effort they put in Twitter is not anywhere close to the effort that’s made on Facebook.

How much exactly should a hotel invest in Internet marketing in 2012?

Allocating the appropriate amount of your property’s overall marketing budget to online marketing can be more of an art, than science. Here’s why you need a significant investment in online marketing to increase direct bookings and key areas to focus your efforts on to realise the highest digital ROI.

WHY INVEST MORE IN DIGITAL MARKETING?

Your Tourism Destination Strategy is Wrong

As the digital shift continues, many tourism destinations are falling behind…focusing on followers and fans…rather than providing answers, being helpful and getting potential visitors to actually visit.

The goal of every destination marketing organization is to turn prospective planners into actual visitors.

Add reputation management to your to-do list

There appears to be a cottage industry spawning that surrounds posting fake reviews — good or bad — on websites where consumers go for help making decisions about what to buy, where to go and, most importantly for you, where to stay. 

Ads are popping up on online forums offering people a chance to make some quick cash by populating websites with reviews — even though they never had the experience, bought the product, etc.

Research says OTAs cost hotels $2.5 billion last year

Love them or hate them Hotels can not survive today without Online Travel Agencies no matter how expensive they might seem to be! And according to research OTAs are turning out to be very expensive retail channels for the hotel industry.

Making the case for SEO in a Social Media World

In the last few years social media has jumped to the forefront of online marketing for many small businesses. 

Some business owners aren't even bothering to market (or in some cases even build) their websites anymore.

They can just create a Facebook page. Or a blog on Blogger.com. Or tweet on Twitter. Or build a Google Places page.

Your Business Needs To Change & Become Social

Social media has changed the way we do almost everything. We make buying decisions, find jobs, play games, listen to music and learn socially. But for business it's clearly been a more challenging shift. 

Engaging in social media requires a fundamental change to the way businesses function and think. No wonder so many are slow to embrace social media and devote budgets to it.

Reputation Management should be a Team Effort

Everyone who works in a hotel has their particular job and sticks to what they do best. But everyone, at some point, touches the guest and has the ability to shape his or her experience. 


Therefore online reputation management has got to be a team sport—hotel managers should strive to get everyone involved, experts say.


That’s not to say the housekeepers should be on TripAdvisor posting responses to reviews. Larger properties should have a dedicated point person, said Daniel Edward Craig, former GM of the Opus Hotel Vancouver and now an independent hotel consultant.

Google+ - Do I Need ANOTHER Social Network?

Has Google+ got you thinking about whether you really need 'another' social network.

Epipheo of Epipheo Studios has been having the same thoughts and has put together the following video which, for me, sums up the issues far more effectivley than another long rambling blog post from me! Hope you like it...