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The importance of a modern online presence

December 14, 2010 2 min read

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The importance of a modern online presence

Reading Time: 2 minutes

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 interview 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

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