In our fourth episode of the series “The Importance of a modern online presence” we speak to Martin Oester, Sales Manager for the St.Moritz Tourist Board in Switzerland.
Martin says having a modern online presence nowadays is a must-have. He expresses his concern about keeping up with the latest online developments and the need to be aware of what’s on in the market.
“Our web page is our major investment”, he says, adding that one of the challenges they face is investing a lot of money in keeping up with the constant changes.
We know the bigger companies have a budget for these and other expenses. But from the vast majority of hotel managers and small company owners that contact us, we realize that is not the reality of S&M sized businesses. We believe they should be able to compete with the larger chains without having to worry about their budget when deciding on their online strategy.
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Episode 3 is live now. In this week’s video we talk to Meri Matesic, the director of the Croatian National Tourism Office for “The importance of having a modern online presence” video series.
Meri emphasizes the growing importance of online channel as a marketing toll, not only for the younger generation but also for the 50+ generations. In fact this is something that we’ve experienced on our presentations. Whenever we ask who has a Facebook account, people from all ages say they do. This means that we are all part of this new “Facebook generation”. To face this new challenge, Meri and her team have developed a Facebook and a Twitter page to make the interaction with their public easier. After the first tests, they are now trying to be more proactive and trying to find the best way to communicate and promote their country.
A far as challenges for next year, the economic downturn is still one of the biggest concerns. As main markets like the UK still struggle to overcome the crises, Croatia struggles to maintain and increase their booking. Not surprisingly it seems that so far the online strategy is providing good results as it is for many hotels that are also following this path.
We will update the series with a new video every week so make sure to check the full series here, or just subscribe to our RSS Feed
In this week’s video “the importance of having a modern online presence” we talk to Hani Lashin– General Manager for the Al Jawhara Group, a fast growing hotel group from Dubai.
the Al Jawhara Group was part of a large presence from Dubai at the WTM in London. In this brief conversation with Han, he talks about the importance of the online channel for hotels . Hani’s hotels receive around 25% of their bookings through their hotels booking engine and they want to increase that number for 2012 to 45%. In Hani’s words “no one can live now without a booking engine!”. One big reason is no doubt the fact that direct online bookings are the cheapest bookings a hotel can get. They are cheaper than walk-ins! With increasing number of people connecting and discovering hotels via Facebook, not only one can save on commissions but also on marketing.
How to manage this new reality seems to be a major concern for today’s hoteliers. The good news is there are available solutions
We will update the series with a new video every week so make sure to check the full series here, or just subscribe to our RSS Feed
GuestCentric had the opportunity to attend once more, one of the main Travel industry Events of the year – The WTM in London.
Although events like the World Travel Market in London, FITUR in Madrid or ITB in Berlin are great for networking, getting updated on what’s going on in the industry, and learning from others about key trends, most Hoteliers are not able to attend these.
We had the chance to speak to people at different levels and corners of the world and they all had in common one thing: to be online and have a modern online presence is their main priority.
“The importance of a modern online presence” is the next of our video series where we share with you key industry players’ views and opinions so that you can learn from them.
In our first video in the series we talk to Nick Oltolina – Corporate Sales Manager for Sol Meliá, one of the biggest hotels groups in Spain.
Nick expresses the importance of not only being online, but also to have a modern and strong website, as online competition is much stronger nowadays. Their website is their opportunity to cause a good first impression and captivate their guest. Trends have changed so much lately that their main source of bookings is their own website, which is bad news for intermediaries like OTA’s and Travel Agents (but very good news for Nick). Even Corporate bookings are made through their channel.
These big hotel chains like Sol Meliá, Marriott and others know that direct online bookings is the most economic way of selling hotel rooms, which is why they invest heavily on their online strategy.
Like many other hoteliers, one of Nick’s main concerns is related with the social networks and what is said about their hotel on them. It has become a near impossible task to keep track of this with so many sites and Blogs being created daily. This may also be your concern but the tendency is that hoteliers forget that the large majority of reviews are positive. They worry about receiving bad reviews and do nothing to share the good ones. A study conducted by Tripadvisor shows that of all reviews posted on their site, only 3% are very negative. This shows that the main concern should be about amplifying the positive topics people talk about.
Then the problem would be: how to do that?
Having a system that centralizes the main social media channels in one place and give you a clear and up to date image of what’s going on in the Internet world would be the first step. Apart from producing some stunning effects it will help you save lots of time.
We will update the series with a new video every week so make sure to check the full series here, or just subscribe to our RSS Feed
Welcome to the last video of the Revenue Management Series Part II Social Media and Rate Recovery. In the past videos Pedro Gomes talked to you about the importance of social media and how to take advantage of Twitter, Facebook and TripAdvisor to promote your property.
Now that you learned how to use the social channels to promote your property you need to know how you can monetize the interactions. What a best way to explain what steps to take than to use a real case study as an example. In two years Dell computers have generated as much as $6.5 million in total revenue generated through Twitter. They were able to achieve this by creating an online outlet on their Twitter channel where they sell their perishable inventory.
In this video Kevin May Editor of Tnooz talks about the important role that online social media plays in the travel industry. Particularly in the hotel industry.
The importance of online social media is huge in the hotel industry because it lowers the barriers of entry to reach potential customers. It opens a world of possibilities for the independent properties, because it opens horizons in different markets that before they were not able to reach.
Now a days thanks to social media channels like Twitter and Facebook, hoteliers have easier ways to engage customers and reach out people with no limits. Independent properties do not need to spend thousands of dollars in marketing to reach customers. Now with online social media they only need to know the social media channels where they hang out and reach out to them via that source.
In this video Pedro Gomes talks about the importance of the user generated content for the independent hotels.
Here you will learn about different strategic actions you should take to monitor your user generated content.
The searching patterns of the customers are changing, now they are easily influence by other customer’s reviews and base their decision in someone else’s experience. That is whyu it is extremely important for hoteliers to monitor their customer’s reviews specially if they are bad. One of the most important things to keep in mind is that your customer´s comments should never be unanswered because they are the best reference you are ever going to find.
Stay tune for the last video of the Revenue Management series.
In this interview Alan Neves Account Manager for Vanguard ID Systems talks about the importance of social media not only for the travel industry but for all the industries in general. For the moment social media is still at a very early stage and if it is use properly by hoteliers it can play a very important role in their business. With the use of channels like LinkedIn, Facebook and Twitter people found the perfect way to communicate.
This week we present Peter Vicich Marketing Manager for Casa Andina Hotels, who talks about his view on social media.
Social media is a great way for people to communicate and share their experiences. There are different ways that hotels can benefit from social media, some hotels are able to create long lasting relationships with their customers and create a loyalty programs. Other hotels will benefit from the comments posted by their former guests that will influence their friends’ decision of where to stay when planning a trip. Social media encourages hotels to do better and pay more attention to what their guests are saying and it empowers guests to express themselves.
Welcome back to the Revenue Management Series, today I am going to share with you some tips about how to effectively promote your hotel in Twitter.
Twitter is one of the major social media networks that simplifies conversations to 140 characters. And reaches an audience of 160,000,000 users. It is very important for a business to be part of this phenomenon because a single message will be visible to millions and millions of people.
