Sascha Hausmann CEO of RateTiger, talks about how social media is revolutionizing the way the travel industry operates. Hoteliers cannot ignore the importance of social media for hotels especially when talking about their online business. Because of this they need to learn how can hotels monetize social media and leverage social media. In order to benefit from all the social media channels for hotels and make the most out of it, managers must define a social media marketing strategy that suits their needs accordingly to their customers.
In this first video of the second season of the Revenue Management Series, Pedro Gomes gives tips on the importance of social media for hotels and how it can be use by them to achieve rate recovery.
With the help of different social media channels you can easily listen to what your customer’s are saying on the web about your property. This can be the best free publicity for your brand but you have to make sure you know how to promote your hotel in social media.
Susan Black Co-Founder of The Black and Wright Group talks about the importance of social media in the travel industry. By learning how to use properly social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, hoteliers can learn a lot from different areas of their business but primarily how to promote their brand online. Social media is about being able to engage customers and establish direct conversations with them to know what they like and what they want in order to offer them a better service. There are many aspects of social media that hotels still need to discover, once they do that they will see the real value that social media can provide to their business.
Hospitality solutions specialist GuestCentric is enabling its booking engine to be integrated with websites built using Joomla.
The initiative means developers using the open source Joomla content management system can integrate a hotel booking engine with rates and availability. The technology also enables deals and promotions to be distributed to social networks such as Facebook and Twitter.
According to GuestCentric the hotel booking engine provides developers with a fast and cost-effective solution as well as helping independent hoteliers market themselves online.
Joomla is already in use by a number of travel companies including NS Hispeed, the Dutch high-speed rail company and a TUI site in the Netherlands. Go to Travolution
GuestCentric extends lead in portable booking engine by taking on the web’s most popular open source content management system
The new module allows Joomla!’s developers to have easy and simple access to GuestCentric’s premier e-commerce solutions
GuestCentric Systems (http://www.guestcentric.com), the social cloud provider of e-commerce solutions for the independent hotel industry today announced the launching of yet another extension. The new module allows the seamless insertion of GuestCentric’s booking engine on any Joomla! website.
Finally web designers using Joomla! will be able to provide hotel customers a modern booking experience and distribute online promotions to Twitter and Facebook. The booking engine provides guests a unique secure shopping experience with a Rates+Availability map that allows increasing conversion rates, maximizing revenue-per-stay and generating satisfied guests. GuestCentric provides the only booking engine in the industry that provides two security shields that guarantee that the customer’s information remains private. The shopping experience is uniquely interactive, allowing key features like deal shopping or one-click checkout for returning guests.
This innovative module further extends the lead of GuestCentric’s booking engine as the most portable in the industry. Just recently GuestCentric announced a plug-in for WordPress, this new Joomla! module is available for any Joomla! website and supports different languages and layouts. The plug-in is available at: http://www.guestcentric.com/booking-engine-module-for-joomla/
“The insertion of the module is extremely easy, in a matter of minutes Joomla! developers can offer their customers a website with professional online bookings”. said Rolando Isidoro author of the booking engine module for Joomla!. “The module provides freedom to Joomla! users to customize their booking engine by selecting from a wide range of languages and layouts. Joomla! users with basic CSS knowledge can optimize its look and feel by customizing simple properties like fonts, colors and buttons.”
Joomla! is a community-back open source CMS with a large and active fan base. The default system includes an assortment of basic extensions and templates, but many more are available for installation. Joomla! has a large installation base and enjoys wide developer and third party support.
“By adopting GuestCentric’s cloud computing platform, Joomla! developers will gain access to a cost-effective web-based e-commerce management solution”, said Filipe Machaz, GuestCentric’s VP of Product Management. “Independent hotel managers can finally fight their increasing dependence on online travel agents by marketing their properties online and leveraging new customer engagement techniques like social commerce.”
About GuestCentric
GuestCentric Systems develops and markets web services that revolutionize the way independent hotels work. GuestCentric has built a social cloud solution that allows independent hotels to develop long-standing relationships with guests, improve online revenues and lower expense and dependence on online distribution. GuestCentric also provides hoteliers with a professional hotel website design. Through use of Web 2.0 technologies, GuestCentric provides easy-to-use tools at reasonable prices that up until now were only available for hotels with big budgets.
Welcome back to new episodes of The Revenue Management Series
Dear friends, following the success of the last Revenue Management Series presented by Pedro Gomes, I am very happy to announce that we will be presenting new episodes. Today we launch the second part of the series: Social Media and Rate Recovery; we will focus mainly on the importance of social media for hotels and how use these channels to generate more revenue for your hotel. The new episodes are going to be divided in 5 videos and we will be present them on a weekly basis.
Listen to your customers – published
Promote your hotel on Facebook – to be published April 1, 2010
How to promote your hotel on Twitter – to be published April 8, 2010
The importance of social media for hotels – to be published April 15, 2010
Monetize your hotel social media channels – to be published April 22, 2010
I hope you find this information interesting. Stay tuned for more.
In this interview with Mark Watkins Co-Funder and CEo of GOBY talks about the importance of social media in the travel industry. Now a day social media is a huge source of information for people and it play a very important role in the travel industry. With the use of channels like Facebook and Twitter people found the perfect way to stay connected and share travel experiences in order to optimize their trip.
This week we present Richard Warther President and CEO of Vanguard ID Systems Inc., gives us his view on how Social Media will become more-and-more important in the travel industry. Rick believes that social media is still maturing and it will take a couple of years until it reaches its full potential. Part of this has to do with the still experimental stage that will lead to simpler and more adaptable applications. Rick focuses his example on video and the multitude of usages that it may have in the near future. The future success of any business will be definitely related to its ability to spread their brand online through social media outlets; hence we should pay attention and learn from younger generations because, not only they are the future customers but they are the ones tracing the future of online travel. Given the evolution of social media, hoteliers need to start adapting their business to cater for a more tech savvy clientele and what a better way to do that by using social media channels like Facebook and Twitter.
GuestCentric launches hotel booking plug-in for WordPress
Author: by Linda Fox | Travolution
GuestCentric has developed an hotel booking plug-in for blogs and websites built on the WordPress platform.
The plug-in allows developers working with WordPress to integrate an online booking engine.
According to GuestCentric, which specialises in hotel booking technology for smaller chains and independents, the service is easy to download and almost instantaneous.
The company also said WordPress is increasingly popular because it allows blogs to be more easily integrated with content management systems.
GuestCentric embraces WordPress community of more than 200 million blogs and websites with an innovative online booking plug-in
WordPress plug-in enforces GuestCentric’s hotel booking engine as the most portable in the industry
GuestCentric Systems the premier Software-as-a Service provider for the independent hotel industry today announced the availability of a plug-in that allows websites and blogs built on WordPress to easily include GuestCentric’s innovative hotel booking engine.
The new plug-in opens the door to WordPress designers to create websites with state of the art technologies for the hotel industry. For the first time designers can easily offer fully integrated e-commerce facilities on websites and/or blogs, by installing GuestCentric’s portable booking engine to promote online bookings. The new plug-in is available at http://wordpress.org/extend/plugins/guestcentric-booking-gadget/
“The idea was to create a WordPress plug-in that simplified the insertion of GuestCentric’s booking engine by using an easy-to-use widget interface,” said Pedro Araujo author of the booking engine WordPress plug-in. “the installation of the plug-in is extremely easy. All you need to do is to insert an API Key that is provided by GuestCentric platform, select the type of widget and in less than a minute a property can have direct online bookings from a WordPress webpage.”
GuestCentric provides the fastest hotel booking engine in the industry based on the latest Ajax technology. The booking engine provides guests a unique secure shopping experience with a Rates+Availability map that allows increasing conversion rates, maximizing revenue-per-stay and generating satisfied guests. The shopping experience is uniquely interactive, allowing key features like deal shopping or one-click checkout for returning guests.
“The WordPress web design and development community has created over 200 million websites and blogs. The new plug-in developed for WordPress is a response to WordPress web designers need to include top-notch e-commerce solutions on hotel sites and blogs.” said Filipe Machaz, GuestCentric’s Vice-President of Product Management “With this new application, WordPress designers finally have the opportunity to easily offer great hotel websites and enhance their market share in the hotel industry. By embracing this leading-edge community GuestCentric will continue its path to level the playing field for independent hotel owners and operators.”
WordPress platform is preferred more and more by hoteliers around the world, because it simplifies the integration of blogs with CMS; this provides managers different and better ways to promote hotels online.
About GuestCentric
GuestCentric Systems develops and markets web services that revolutionize the way independent hotels work. GuestCentric has built a Software as a Service platform that allows independent hotels to develop long-standing relationships with guests, improve online revenues and lower expenses associated with online distribution. Also it provides hoteliers with a professional hotel website design. Through use of Web 2.0 technologies, GuestCentric provides easy-to-use tools at reasonable prices that up until now were only available for hotels with big budgets.
