Since we launched back in 2009, the industry has recognized our company repeatedly for its innovation.

In 2009, we were selected by Phocuswright for the Travel Innovation Summit.

In 2010, Interactive Media Awards and the Web Marketing Association honored us for outstanding achievements in website design and development for customers that spent less than $1,000 designing their websites.

In 2011, we are breaking through the glass-ceiling again. This year alone we have won 2 WebAwards, 1 Interactive Media Award, 2 Hermes Creative Awards and 1 Stevie award for our customers. Our independent hotels, with website budgets well below $2,500 were distinguished among travel industry titans like the Mandalay Bay or the Ritz in London. And now we have been selected once again as one of the top travel innovators to demonstrate our solution at the Phocuswright Conference in Fort Lauderdale, Florida!

It just proves that simple, easy-to-use, high quality cloud solutions focused on hotel revenue generation can revolutionize the way the industry works.

We would like to invite you to register for our webinar “Look, Book, Interact – The importance of a Smart Hotel Social Marketing Strategy” with Joe Buhler.
Joe will share with you marketing strategies that will help you not only increase your online presence, but also generate more business for your hotel.

During this 60-minute live webinar you will learn:

• Revisit the basic Social Media tool: TripAdvisor (still #1), YouTube (Search Engine #2), Facebook, Twitter, and blogs – What you need to know.
• Tested and successful techniques to bring attention to your brand. Which social media tools you should be using and why, and who shouldn’t bother.
• How to build a successful strategy to generate more direct bookings
• Hands-on demonstration on how easy it is to use some of the tools

Hope to see you there!

[youtube width="599" height="361"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZIA-eoiqXsU[/youtube]

Firstly Hats off to the organization of FITUR with free transportation to and from the fair.

Once our team got there we were welcomed by the usual buzz and excitement of these events.

While Networking is one of the reasons we attend FITUR we also go to see and learn of new trends and record videos with opinions of industry leaders on specific issues. A special thanks to Larry Friedman from Nevada Commission on Tourism for his spontaneous personality and to the President of the Hotel Business Association Madrid, Jesús Gatell for fitting us in his busy schedule with much humour.

General feedback we had from hoteliers and other industry players is their keen interest in exploring and more importantly understanding Social Media. They don’t want to get lost in this online maze.

It’s everybody’s top priority to be online, exposing in a professional manner their business. It’s not enough to just have a business page online anymore. It has to be interactive. Come back for  future videos on industry feedback from WTM and FITUR.

We also had the opportunity to meet up with some of our clients, which both parties enjoyed very much as we were able to put a face to the voice and chat in a different environment.

With respect to the fair itself – Skyteam’s cardboard cart was the most notorious giveaway and people queued to receive one.

Latin America, as usual is very lively with their dancing and Music, but Colombia definitely stood out with their energetic Salsa dancing!

Ecuador offered the best ceviche I have ever tried with an interesting variant introducing ginger and Inca berries and Sweden in the Scandinavian stand offered food, chocolates and Vodka (!) but what probably caught the attention was the reindeer sandwiches

I leave you with one of the many salsa exhibitions Colombia made during the fair.

[youtube width="610" height="368"]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vYdnntiN14Q&feature=related[/youtube]

Pedro Colaco was an invited speaker at the Open Travel Alliance (OTA) 2010 European Conference at The King’s Fund in London. The OTA has become more and more important as it works together with travel related companies to create an accepted structure for electronic messages, enabling suppliers and distributors to speak the same interoperability language, trading partner to trading partner.
Pedro’s presentation topic was: “Empowering small hotels to rebel”. In this presentation Pedro Colaco explains GuestCentric’s vision on how to change the market where majority of the independent hotels struggle to gain visibility online and loose guests because they don’t have the right tools to engage a new generation of travelers. The web has become a democratic platform where independent hotels can leverage their creativity. People are searching with more and more specific queries, they are asking their Facebook friends where to go and where to stay and, more than ever, people want to book directly with the hotel. This is a huge opportunity as direct bookings tend to generate more direct bookings.
The GuestCentric’s Look, Book, Interact virtuous cycle generates a steady growth for hotels as travelers are able to find and have a real look & feel of the hotel, book on a innovative hotel booking engine and, last but not least, interact with the community and share the experience. In fact, the GuestCentric hotel booking engine is the only one that allows people to share a specific booking engine selection by e-mail, on Facebook or Twitter. Funny fact, 3% to 5% of people visiting our hotels booking engines do exactly that.
In a nutshell, GuestCentric is really the fastest and easiest way to modernize a independent hotel online. Our customers immediately feel a boost in their direct online bookings 3x to 10x, fuel viral business with the ease of sharing and interacting with social outlets and lastly, be prepared for the future competing today.

[vimeo width="600" height="340"]http://vimeo.com/16925338[/vimeo]

Pedro Colaco will discuss the important role of technology  for small-to-medium-size enterprises

GuestCentric Systems, the social cloud provider of e-Commerce solutions for the independent hotel industry, announced that Pedro Colaco, GuestCentric’s President and CEO will speak at the OpenTravel 2010 European Conference in London on November 10, 2010.

The conference will explore the Evolution of Destination Distribution, examining the roles of large and small suppliers, travel distributors and new distribution technology on inbound tourism, the rise of many niche-based technology providers to meet the need of small suppliers, and the changing role of distributors and destinations.

For more information visit 2010 European Conference.

When: November 10 2010, 16:20 – 17:00 GMT Time

Where: The King’s Fund 11-13 Cavendish Square, London W1A-0AX United Kingdom

GuestCentric Systems, the social cloud provider of e-Commerce solutions for the independent hotel industry, announced that Pedro Colaco, GuestCentric’s President and CEO will speak at the “Conferencia Turismo 2.0 – Oportunidades e desafios para a Madeira” (Web 2.0 Tourism – opportunities and challenges Conference) in Funchal on October 21, 2010. Pedro will talk about new travelers trends and innovations that are defining the path of the hotel industry and how hoteliers can use them to their advantage to engage more customers.

For more information visit Turismo 2.0 – Oportunidades e desafios para a Madeira

When: May 21st 2008,

When: October 21 2010, 9:00 – 18:00 GMT Time

Where: CS Madeira Atlantic Resort & Sea Spa, Funchal Madeira, Portugal

It is with a lot of excitement that I announce the launching of a compilation of videos call the Social Media series . You are going to know what industry experts like: Bob Offutt from PhoCusWright  Aaron Nissen from Travel Alberta, Mark Atkins from GOBY, Peter Vicich from Casa Andina Hotels, Susan Black from the Black and Wright Group, Kevin May from Tnooz among others have to say about Social Media.

Every week we will feature a different video, we hope this information helps you understand how social media works and its importance in the travel industry.

The videos will be schedule as follow:

Bob Offutt  -  PhoCusWright (video will be published on Friday February 26, 2010)
Aaron Nissen – Travel Alberta (video will be published on Tuesday March 2, 2010)
Richard Warther – Vnaguard IDS Systems (video will be published on Tuesday March 9, 2010)
Mark Watkins – GOBY (video will be published on Tuesday March 16, 2010)
Susan Black – The Black and Wright Group (video will be published on Tuesday March 23, 2010)
Sascha Hausmann – RateTiger (video will be published on Tuesday May 30, 2010)
Claude Walton – Language Weaver (video will be published on Tuesday April 6, 2010)
James Filsinger – Money Direct (video will be published on Tuesday April 13, 2010)
John Walsh – GOBY (video will be published on Tuesday April 20, 2010)
Norman Rose – PhoCusWright (video will be published on Tuesday April 27, 2010)
Peter Vicich – Casa Andina Hotels (video will be published on Tuesday May 4, 2010)
Alan Neves – Vanguard IDS Systems (video will be published on Tuesday May 11, 2010)
Kevin May – Tnooz (video will be published on Tuesday May 18, 2010)

Stay tuned because you are going to love what they have to say!

We hope to see you at FITUR 2011. For now check out our favorite stands images:

Costa Rica	Chile	Dominican Republic
Guatemala	Turkey	Mexico
Jordan	Mozambique	Switzerland
Mexico	Guatemala	Morocco
Colombia	Ecuador	cool stand with bowling alley
cool stand with bowling alley	Madrid	the King and Queen of Spain at the opening