We identified prepaid rates as a big trend in 2012 in our post Predictions for hotel digital marketing in 2012. To make this a reality for our hotel customer base, we are making pre-paid rates as simple as 1-2-3 with our automatic payment confirmation via Paypal.

As long as the hotel has/opens a Paypal merchant account (a simple, online process), we will be able to get the funds for reservations and guarantees into their Paypal account as soon as the reservation is confirmed.

We also integrated with multiple payment gateways (e.g. First Data), so that if you already have a merchant account with a payment processor, you can continue using it.

2nd largest tourism market in the World adopting all-in-one hotel digital marketing solutions to combat OTA dominance

GuestCentric, the award-winning provider of hotel digital marketing solutions continues its worldwide expansion and announced today the launch of its Barcelona office in Spain. Spain is according to the World Tourism Organization the 2nd largest tourism destination with over $50B in annual revenue from international tourists alone.

Spain’s hotel market is highly fragmented and led by independent operators that have traditionally relied on a few distribution channels to promote their properties to consumers. It is critical for these hotels to have access to a centralized tool that allows them to publish their digital content to as many online, mobile and social channels as possible so that they can provide extraordinary service to their guests wherever they may be.

“An all-in-one solution that provides easy and intelligent access to hotel digital marketing can change the way independent hotels do business in Spain,” said Pedro Colaco, GuestCentric’s CEO. “Leading the way with opinion leaders like Casa de Madrid in Madrid and El Palauet in Barcelona is the first step to change the landscape in Spanish hotel digital marketing.”

Explosive adoption of the GuestCentric digital marketing solution in the second half of 2011 anticipated the need for a permanent presence to provide local support and meet the demand of an exciting hospitality market. The Barcelona office will host GuestCentric’s Spanish sales and support team, and will be led by Pedro Gomez as e-Commerce director. The office is expected to grow to 8 full-time headcount by the end of the year.

“The need to diversify from the growing dominance of OTAs in Spain is providing a huge increase in demand for GuestCentric’s digital marketing solutions,” said Pedro Gomez. “We felt that it was the right time to increase our presence with the new office space here in Barcelona and am honored to lead the team. I expect to achieve significant market share in the country in the coming year just like we have done in other markets where we have a local presence.”

GuestCentric continues to expand your market reach by adding translations to the platform. With this update we added support for Polish and made it the 10th language on the GuestCentric hotel digital marketing solution.

Witamy w naszych polskich przyjaciół!
(Welcome to our Polish friends!)

As part of our continued effort for improved usability and faster performance of our hotel digital marketing solution, we have updated the tools in the revenue are to be easier, more readable and faster to load and execute. Tools like range update, and mass open/stop sales now display a more modern look and should provide increased productivity.

With the adoption by small brands and hotel groups of the GuestCentric solution, the needs for customization of the booking engine have increased.

Therefore, we introduced a new feature that allows hotel managers to customize the message that is displayed to users when there is no availability in the hotel, and to refer/link to sister or partner properties in the case when the selected hotel is full.

The new menu is under Setup->Payments->Unavailability Message

The end of the year is the perfect time to look back and plan the year ahead. Technology for the hospitality industry in 2011 moved at the speed of light. Social, local, mobile (SOLOMO) is the hot topic of the year.

But as consumers tighten their purses and look for truly unique experiences, hotels will need to use 2012 as a pivot-year to becoming truly guest-centric in their digital marketing efforts.

Below are my top 5 predictions for hotel digital marketing in 2012:

1- Last minute will be back

As consumers brace for a not-so-good 2012 in many markets, especially in Europe, last minute booking is going to make the lives of hoteliers more difficult in 2012. Forecasting models will put price pressure on revenue managers to achieve decent RevPar performance.

Independent hotel managers will need to be more flexible in their digital marketing and adapt to changing market conditions in order to stop leaking revenue to OTAs. The direct channel will be the largest investment area and new opaque pricing products for mobile and social, as well as groups and meetings and conventions will play a bigger role in how larger hotels perform.

2- Mobile same night business will explode

Mobile is exploding and 2012 will be the year of hoteltonight.com. Major OTAs and specialized competitors will get into the business but hoteltonight.com will be able to maintain its lead.

In addition, hotels will start offering same and next day specials on their direct channel and these rebates will drive even more last minute buying behavior.

3- Pre-paid rates are going to be the norm

Pressure from consumers to lower prices will drive revenue managers to exchange cash-in-hand for higher ADR. Pre-paid rates, already prevalent at hotel chains will emerge as one of the growth areas for independent hotels in 2012.

Widespread adoption of pre-paid rates will drive massive adoption of payment gateways by independent properties and cash upfront will compensate for lower price points. Lastly, this trend of better rates on hotel websites will finally help start the drive of consumers away from an already too-powerful booking.com, especially in Europe.

4- The boutique segment and channels like Jetsetter.com will be the bright spots

Boutique offerings from jetsetter.com, tablethotels.com and mrandmrssmith.com will experience significant growth by offering unique experience-driven products. Expect ties to other niche offerings like lot18.com for wine-related travel, eartheasy.com for eco travel, etc.

Hence, we will see many hotels repositioning into experience brands and boutique offerings, redesigning their websites to be inline with a modern look and boutique-type consumers. Rich media and video will play a distinct role in communicating the boutique experience.

5- Buyer-driven marketplaces are going to emerge in 2012.

From basic social marketing, hotels will need to evolve to guest-centric marketing. Personalized marketing will be the key to a successful 2013 and beyond. Destination marketplaces where consumers can post their needs will emerge much like taskrabbit.com that has become the local bazaar that brings together consumer needs with willing service providers.

The challenge is that customer acquisition for hotels will need to be more personalized and expect tools that address the multi-channel market to gain importance in 2012.

An important note

In conclusion, what is important in 2012 is to not be intimidated by the apparent complexity of hotel digital marketing and to embrace the challenge. While the digital marketing space is indeed complex (with many time-sucking activities that do not improve brand positioning or bring in extra revenue), there are also an increasing number of digital marketing tools and specialized agencies that help hoteliers separate the wheat from the chaff.

Google announced that Buzz is being shutdown and focusing on Google Plus. Hence, we migrated our Google Buzz share button to Google Plus and continue to lead in integrating consumer’s social graph into the booking process.

As you know, we regularly run usability tests to ensure that you have quick and easy access to the most powerful digital marketing features in the industry. This latest update to the promotions area has made it significantly faster and easier to create promotions, especially promotions that represent a percentage discount over the Best Available Rate for the day.

Hotel distribution changes every 10 years. In the 1980s it was the GDS, in the 1990s the emergence of tour operators like TUI and Thomas Cook and in the 2000s the adoption of the Internet and Online Travel Agents. At the beginning of the decade of the 2010s, we can already see a shift happening to digital marketing.

Hotel digital marketing is the response to consumer changes – consumers are much more “educated” in travel search, and they use “multi-channel”: OTAs, direct website, review sites, social media, mobile.

Never before were there so many search products: OTAs, meta-search like kayak.com, the new Google Flight Search and Hotel Finder and hipmunk.com, the “cool” new search interface on top of Orbitz’s inventory. In addition, the planning tools market is exploding. TripIt and TripCase are more traditional travel planners, but a whole slew of new social tools is emerging with Gogobot leading the pack, but also with new competitors like gtrot, flymuch and others. Lastly, new products are now transactional online: restaurants at OpenTable, tours and activities using Viator and even derivative accommodation products using AirBnB, a new darling of Silicon Valley VCs.

So, against this backdrop of exploding choices, how does a hotel manager make its brand visible online?

Mass marketing vs. Niche strategy

Hotel managers need to be realistic. Large OTAs spend tens of millions per MONTH on SEO/SEM, and advertise on hundreds of thousands of keywords. So, becoming the #1 on “hotels in New York” is probably not an option.

But a niche strategy may work. Let’s consider New York City, one of the most competitive hotel markets in the World.

When searching for “Cheap Hotel in New York” the results are dominated by advertising from booking.com, hotels.com, kayak.com, airbnb.com and organic search results from hotels.com, hotelclub.com, etc.

However, just by focusing on the brand identify and location provides immediate differentiation. Let’s look at three examples:

1- “boutique hotel in New York close to the Jacob Javits Center”
2- “economy hotel in New York in soho”
3- “corporate hotel in New York in chelsea”

Boutique hotels near the Jacob Javits Center

When searching more specifically for “boutique hotel in New York close to the Jacob Javits Center” the results are very different as can be seen from the screen capture below.

By focusing on brand and location, four things happen:

• While there is still some advertising, it is now dominated by specific brands (in our example morganshotel.com, royaltonhotel.com, thetimeny.com).
• The pay-per-click costs are lower
• The organic search results are now dominated by independents (#2 and #3 are ink48.com and indigochelsea.com)
• You have a good chance of showing up on the map

Let’s now try the other two searches and see if the same results apply:

Economy hotels in SOHO

Advertising is still very competitive with booking.com, hotels.com and kayak.com. But by focusing on brand and location, three of the four things happen once again:

• The pay-per-click costs are lower
• The organic search results are now dominated by independents (#2 is thesohotel.com)
• You have a good chance of showing up on the map

Corporate hotels in Chelsea

In this last scenario, advertising is again very competitive with booking.com, hotels.com and kayak.com. But by focusing on brand and location, three of the four things happen once more:

• The pay-per-click costs are lower
• The organic search results are now dominated by independents (#1 is hotelchelsea.com)
• You have a good chance of showing up on the map

Experience tags differentiate further

Another element to differentiate your hotel is to associate experience tags with it. Let’s take a look at two examples: golf and wine for hotels in california.

When searching for “golf hotel california” we expect to see high levels of competition:

And, as expected, golf is a pretty wide term, and highly competitive with golf-oriented tour operators bidding no the keyword.

Surprisingly, the results for “wine hotel california” are quite different:

There is almost no competition, therefore an SEM/SEO strategy will work well for a hotel that is located in california and tied to the california wine experience. So, a quick search on the experience terms you can associate with your destination will probably provide a good benchmark of which keywords you should be optimizing for.

Conclusion

In conclusion, whether you are in a highly competitive market, or in a secondary market, three simple items will provide in-destination differentiation for you search optimization strategy:

• Your brand identity: economy, corporate, boutique, budget…
• The location of the property: landmarks around your hotel
• Experience tags relevant for your destination: gourmet, horses, relax, nightlife, wine, museums…

Using these three items will not necessarily make your hotel #1 on Google in your market, but you will have a good chance of having great occupation rates with guests that are going to enjoy the experience at your property.

When we first introduced mobile and Facebook optimization we used the QuickLinks menu for expediency purposes. Early feedback showed us that customers want to control what to show on each channel, hence we are announcing today the ability to manage menu settings individually for each channel.