DDIH Think Tank

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DDIH Think Tank

DDIH Think Tank

Last Friday and Saturday I had the opportunity to participate to the “Digital Developpements in Hospitality” think tank, organised in Paris on 23^rd and 24^th of April, 2010. This was a great opportunity for all the participants to discover the different tools that are currently used in different industries and that will be developed in the hospitality industry through the next years.

Basically, the goal wasn’t only to discover the different tools but also to understand how the industry will evolve and how we can apply the different possibilities we have to this sector and to the clients’ needs. To explain the different progress, the conference mainly covered four topics:

- Luxury reframed - how do online affluent and ultra affluent consumers relate to the Net? How can they be influenced?

- Reviews and revenue - what is the impact of online reviews on hotel bookings? What does a hotelier need to 'manage'?

- Augmented Reality + location based services - will concierge services be replaced by smart apps?

- Mobile Outlook - how are mobile apps changing customer service expectations?

The four topics were very interesting since they covered very actual and trendy subjects that “wowed” everyone!

“Reviews and revenues” presented by Mr Friedlander from ReviewPro was very interesting because it made us realise the importance of the reviews in the hospitality and how they can be used and analysed. My biggest surprise was to understand that it’s not something that is only to be scared of. First of all, I was really surprised to see that most of the reviews about hospitality are actually positive and only a minority of them is negative. Then, it was incredible to see the amount of people who actually post comments about places where they’ve been but most all, actually near 70% of people who travel CHECK thoses reviews! Reviews can actually be used in a very intelligent way so they can bring revenues! ReviewPro developed an analytical software that permits to analyse millions of the reviews by topics so Hotels for example can use the results to improve their efficiency. This seems to be a great step forward since it could let small hotel compete with really big ones on all kind of review sites! Online reputation is something crucial nowadays and no business can’t survive anymore if it doesn’t take care of it especially because those business multiply web-platforms and this makes the online reputation bigger.

The Augmented Reality topic was also amazing. Most of all it made me realize how tourism offices but also and especially Concierge are not up to date anymore. Augmented Reality and different apps that now exist transform an ordinary tourist in a guide. By using a very simple smartphone one can visit a city in a very original way, not only because augmented reality would offer a tourist an instant information about anything he wants and surrounds him (such as nearest museums or restaurants only by “scanning” it through its mobile phone) but also because this tourist actually becomes the concierge him-self. Any Hotel could actually develop an app through which it recommends the places or businesses to visit! What else would a tourist need? One absolutely FANTASTIC and hilarious video from the TED CONFERENCES illustrates the different possibilities with the augmented reality. I really recommend you to check it out!

One other topic was about Mobile Outlook and Sarah from Smartsay showed us an amazing presentation of an Iphone app designed for hotels. It was incredible to understand how easily a hotel can put in touch his clients with the different facilities surrounding the hotel only through an App! This is probably that fastest way for a client to get promos or any info that currently exists. It’s also very sad how only a few hotel use those tools…whereas more and more people use smartphones and try to save time. It actually could also provide more revenue to the hotels! A client can get an instant update or info or offer about the hotel he’s interested in through devices and tools he loves! Isn’t it silly not to take advantage of that?

One last topic was about “Luxury reframed” and the presentation was some kind of introduction to the entire think tank. My conclusion from this presentation was that luxury can not be perceived anymore in a traditional way. Nowadays people are looking for more than “more services” or “traditional values” and it’s really interesting to see how it can be applied to the hospitality industry. Hotels’ websites are all very similar and basically most of them are only some kind of mirror of the products they sell. Let’s think about what we as clients want to find in a hotel? It’s not only a good bed or a nice towel but it’s more about experiences and atmospheres. From my point of view one of the biggest problems that Hotels have is to understand how they position/differentiate their products and how they manage their brands. With the digital developments competition gets harder and harder and clients become more and more exigent. They want unique experiences and special attention to their needs and habits. They need to “feel” the brand and not only to see it. Basically, I would say that clients become more and more emotional…and we all know how easy it is to play on/with emotions…shouldn’t a hotel take advantage of that? One very bad example of what I say can be checked on this video…if one you can make a difference between the different hotels that are shown on this video, I owe you a drink! Let’s agree on the fact that luxury in hospitality is nowadays probably more about this!

To conclude, I would say that it is impossible to choose which subject during this think tank was the most important since all of them relate to each other and actually each of them could bring more revenue to the one hotel that would use them! It is very important to understand that the world evolves much more faster than we think… let’s apply it to our favourite industry! And let’s see how the Digital Developpments in Hospitality think tank will surprise us next time…;-)

This reveiw has also been published on:

- Twitter

- Facebook

- http://digitaldevelopmentsinhospitality.ning.com

- http://issuu.com/macha/docs/ddih?viewMode=presentation

- http://www.slideshare.net/Machab/ddih-think-tank

DDIH Think Tank

http://ning.it/avfeol

DDIH

DDIH

SixthSense Augmented Reality Device Goes Open Source

Great!

http://bit.ly/aXD3w

Crowdsourcing in Hospitality

Comment choisir son réseau social sur Internet?

Comment choisir son réseau social sur Internet

Google étoffe encore son offre de publicités

Google vient de lancer une fonctionnalité (l'option de "remarketing") dans son service de publicité (les fameux Google Ads). Ce n'est visiblement que la première amélioration d'une liste de nouveautés à venir.

Google vient en effet d'ouvrir une nouvelle section dans son laboratoire d'innovations (les Google Labs). Baptisée Ads Innovation, elle vient compléter les autres sections dédiées aux services de Moutain View (Gmail, Calendar, Maps, YouTube, etc).

Ads Innovation est "un endroit où vous pourrez découvrir de nouvelles technologies liées au marketing. Regarder des démos, essayez les derniers outils et partager votre opinion pour construire l'avenir de la publicité [en-ligne]".

Le premier outil proposé est d'ores et déjà disponible. Il s'agit de Search Funnels, un outil d'analyse qui permet au annonceur de consulter l'historique des différents types d'interactions ayant mené à une transformation (clic, achat, visite, téléchargement d'un catalogue, etc.). Le but est de montrer que même des annonces qui n'ont pas été cliquées peuvent aboutir à l'objectif fixé par l'annonceur.

A venir également, à en croire la nouvelle page des Google Labs, des publicités "click-to-call" pour mobiles - une publicité cliquée déclanche un appel direct vers un call-center - ou des annonces d'un nouveau type pour Youtube (lire également "Google introduit la publicité dans les vidéos de Youtube : bonne idée pour les annonceurs ou pollution du contenu ?").

Bref, pour ceux qui en doutait encore, Google n'oublie pas que son cœur de métier est la publicité.

Source : Ad Innovations dans les Google Labs et la page du nouveau service Search Funnels

Links are SEO fuel!

RT @seo_tv: Video: The Next Digital Marketing Frontier

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Mal Maison Hotels - SMO

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Mal Maison Hotels

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5 Rules of Social Media Optimization (SMO)

http://tinyurl.com/ulyqm

Les îles des Bahamas s’invitent sur les Medias Sociaux !

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Mal Maison Hotels

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Mal Maison Hotels

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Ping!!!!

Survey Results: Impact of Blogging on Search Engine Optimization

Survey Results: Impact of Blogging on Search Engine Optimization

Google Buzz recule face à la grogne des internautes

Google Buzz suggérera désormais une liste de contacts à suivre.
Google a apporté samedi une seconde série de modifications à son nouveau réseau social, dont les lacunes en terme de confidentialité sont l'objet d'une controverse.

Si Google souhaitait s'inspirer de Facebook avec Google Buzz, c'est d'ores-et-déjà réussi. Depuis le lancement de ce nouveau service en début de semaine dernière, le groupe Internet américain est confronté à des cris d'alarme sur ses lacunes en matière de protection des informations personnelles, et à des critiques dont le populaire réseau social est habituellement la cible. Pour la deuxième fois en quelques jours, il a donc tenté d'y remédier, en annonçant samedi soir sur un blog officiel une nouvelle série de modifications.

La principale nouveauté sera visible dès les premières utilisations de Google Buzz. Intégré à la messagerie Gmail, ce service doit permettre de partager publiquement des messages de statuts avec un cercle d'amis, à la manière de Facebook et de Twitter. Jusqu'alors, Google piochait automatiquement dans les listes de contacts de Gmail pour bâtir immédiatement le réseau «Buzz» de ses internautes, et affichait le résultat dans des profils publics. Des membres se retrouvaient ainsi connectés par défaut avec des personnes avec lesquelles ils ne souhaitaient pas avoir de contact.

Admettant n'avoir pas tout fait comme il fallait, Google a abandonné en urgence ce principe de suivi automatique. Il se contente désormais de suggérer une liste de contacts, y compris à ceux qui utilisent déjà le service. Jeudi, une option plus visible, «pour ne pas montrer sur votre profil qui vous suivez et qui vous suit», était déjà apparue. «Dans ma profession, où l'anonymat des sources est un outil essentiel, c'est terrifiant, mais [...] imaginez une femme qui découvre que son mari correspond énormément avec une ex, ou un patron qui découvre que son subordonné envoie des courriels à des dirigeants d'un concurrent», avait réagi le blogueur Nicholas Carlson, sur Business Insider.

Mieux protéger la vie privée des internautes
Les autres modifications répondent au même souhait de mieux protéger la vie privée des internautes. Ainsi, Google Buzz ne créera plus automatiquement de lien avec les profils de la galerie de photos Picasa et du lecteur de flux RSS Google Reader. Auparavant, Google avait aussi décidé de masquer les adresses email dans les messages, pour limiter les risques de spam, et donné la possibilité de bloquer individuellement certaines personnes dans sa liste de contacts. Enfin, le lien pour désactiver Buzz, caché à l'origine tout en bas de la page sur Gmail, a été mis nettement plus en évidence.

Si Google explique qu'il continuera à œuvrer pour répondre aux attentes de ses utilisateurs, ces quelques jours peuvent laisser des traces. La polémique autour de la confidentialité de Google Buzz a en effet été omniprésente dans les discussions consacrées à ce service, qui cherche à gagner une place aux côtés de Twitter et Facebook. Jeff Jarvis, auteur du livre La Méthode Google, évoque ainsi un lancement précipité, tandis que Jason Kincaid, sur TechCrunch, s'interroge sur l'utilité des tests menés en interne.

Tout n'est pas perdu pour autant. Les critiques répétées sur les réglages de Facebook, qui a lui aussi pour habitude de vite corriger sa copie et d'admettre ses erreurs, n'ont pas empêché le réseau social de dépasser dernièrement les 400 millions de membres.

Hotel Direct Booking

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Hotel Direct Booking

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Hotel social media perspective

The social media world is commercializing overnight. The number of hotels on Facebook and Twitter is growing every day. The challenge facing all hotels is how to engage consumers so they become guests or share their praise for your hotel with their network followers and fans.

by Richard Walsh

Social Media engagement techniques and benefits are all about creating interest and engaging with people online that share a common interest with what you talk about on your social media pages. As a hotelier, you need to talk about more than just your hotel. It’s about your location, events, guest reviews and questions and so much more. An occasional special promotion or a holiday promotion is good, talk it up, but consider a special offer just for your followers. Try to get feedback so you know what actions you can generate to get the results you want.

The social media world is commercializing overnight. The number of hotels on Facebook and Twitter is growing every day. The challenge facing all hotels is how to engage consumers so they become guests or share their praise for your hotel with their network followers and fans. It’s really about knowing all your hotel’s market segments and how to reach out to each segment with a provocative message, survey, specials exclusive to your followers and follower contests.

It is important for every one of the hotel’s management and staff to know about your social websites and to follow what your followers contribute. You need to make your social media pages are public and invite guests, business associates and suppliers to follow you. A neglected social media page will do more damage than good, so keeping it current and fresh is essential. An active social media presence will also help the hotel’s search rankings and exposure.

Here again, just like search marketing over the years, the question is to outsource or try to do it in-house. Most hotels have learned their staff is not up to the task of creating and managing effective search and social marketing. These are important marketing elements today and they will be even more important in the days and months ahead. Search marketing will deliver short-term results while social marketing is an investment in long-term results, but when done right returns will materialize from an effective viral network.
Social media is not a fade and it will not go away. The social networks will find ways to generate income and grow their services. Going forward, we can expect to see more social networks and segmentation of the current social networks into sub-networks, along with more blogging relationships. This one-on-one supplier to buyer relationship will put more pressure on the suppliers to deliver. We all know that you can’t satisfy everyone all the time, but if we don’t know how to engage consumers online, we are unable to join the conversation and add two new customers for the one we’ve lost.

For the hospitality industry, it is all about providing the best service possible because if you don’t, over time it will affect your business. Social media is a tremendous opportunity for independent hotels to challenge the cookie cutter standards of the brands and it is an opportunity for the brands to reach their loyal followers with more cookies.
As the Internet has evolved over the past 15 years and the search engines took control of website traffic over the past ten years, those businesses that get onboard with social media early are the ones that will build their relationships and viral networks that will pay off. With social media, it’s about what all-good service businesses do best; know who your customers are, what they want and deliver.

Richard Walsh is Vice President, Business Development at Lodging Interactive. For information on how Lodging Interactive’s CoMMingle Social Media Marketing Service can help your hotel, please visit http://www.CoMMIngle.me

My New Website! (in construction)

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Tweetdeck

Google Alerts

Travel Industry Leans On Email During Recovery

Email marketing firm Silverpop said that as the travel and tourism industry looks toward a recovery -- albeit gradual -- its clients are increasingly turning to interactive marketing, including email, to stand out.

One Silverpop client is fellow agency eBrains, which has a core competency in tourism marketing. EBrains says about 60% of its clients in the industry expect to boost email marketing budgets in 2010 (a similar number to 2009, so increases may be on top of those). EBrains, which lists clients that include the groups behind the "I Heart New York" and "Virginia is For Lovers" campaigns, has employed e-newsletters and targeted special offers to generate interest via inboxes.

EBrains executive Matthew Gordon stated that email marketing is "a versatile channel that can be used strategically for brand building and tactically" for promotions.

Silverpop said it is also working with the Georgia Aquarium and two United Kingdom entities (a rail company and trade association for London theater operators) to use email to boost traffic during the downturn. The Atlanta-based aquarium employs email to drive online ticket sales, Silverpop said, and the attraction has an email list of some 620,000 addresses.

For East Coast, the British rail company, there was an emphasis on share-to-social links in emails, Silverpop said. The firm has offices in the U.K. as well as Germany and Australia.

Sara Borland, brand and communications controller at East Coast, stated: "In a recent 'one-way fares' campaign, hundreds of customers shared the offer on their social networking pages on Digg, Facebook and MySpace. Seventeen percent of posted links garnered at least one open, and 33 percent who opened a post, then clicked. These are people we may never have reached otherwise."

Aggregators & Jing!

Aggregators & Jing!

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Booking a holiday: online or travel agent?

Which way? ... one of the first decisions about a big trip is how to book it.
Mark Juddery reports on the latest trends in flight and holiday bookings.

Worldwide, a quarter of all travel bookings last year were made online. And in the US, the number of main-street travel agencies has halved in the past decade as travellers go straight to the web. In Australia, traditional travel agents are still popular but the future may not be so bright. Business information analyst IBISWorld predicts a difficult year for these agents, following the further decline in international tourism and the growth in online booking sites.

But before you mourn the impending doom of the shopfront travel agent, note that the projected losses are not as bad as expected: a 1.9 per cent fall in revenue for this year (to $2.71 billion), and a 1.3 per cent decrease in employment.

Meanwhile, online travel is growing rapidly.

A recent Jigsaw Research-Google Travel Study suggests that, however they are reserved, 77 per cent of all trips booked in Australia are at least researched online.

But another study by the US-based Forrester Research sends another message: a small but growing number of travellers are losing interest in travel sites. The study surveyed 4634 adults, all of whom use travel sites. Only 46 per cent of respondents say they enjoy booking travel online - down from 53 per cent in 2007.

The change was significant enough for some media to investigate. Toronto's Globe and Mail spoke to Lea Pawloski, a Canadian woman who used a major online agency to book flights for her honeymoon - and found $C900 ($942) debited from her credit card but no reservation.

This was followed by 10 days of phone calls and hours left on hold. "After that," she said, "I decided to go with a travel agency in my neighbourhood."

Online travel doesn't have an exclusive on horror travel stories. Yet the convenience of internet bookings still can't compare with talking to an expert travel agent - as Sharon Ireland, of Turramurra, 25, recently discovered.

Like many people her age, she has travelled extensively without ever setting foot in a travel agency. But recently, she was converted when friends used a shopfront travel agency to book a trip to Thailand.

"The personal knowledge, hints and assistance with adjusted travel plans ensured their travel was seamless," she says. "This has prompted me to do the same for the future."

Despite some industry concern when websites such as Travelocity and Zuji first entered the Australian market, our neighbourhood travel agents have not suffered as they have in the US. "Americans travel differently," Flight Centre spokesman Haydn Long says.

"They go to the Caribbean or the other side of the country. They aren't very adventurous travellers. Australians are going to the UK or Asia. It's much more complicated."

According to Long, Flight Centre still conducts 95 per cent of its business over the counter.

The global recession of last year, however, saw an increase in online travel, as Australians chose to stay closer to home, taking simpler, easy-to-book options such as New Zealand and Singapore.

"Customer inquiry [in shopfronts] was as good as it's ever been," Long says. "But people sat back and waited to see if they still had a job."

Expedia.com rebrands: “Where You Book Matters”
January 07, 2010 | Online Travel

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Expedia seeks to change the mindset of many travelers that it doesn't really matter where you actually book your travel. Its new campaign will communicate the reasons why booking with Expedia.com makes all the difference.

As reported earlier, Expedia.com unveiled changes to its brand built around a simple yet powerful premise: “Where you book matters.” The new tagline summarizes the strategy behind the new brand campaign launched over the holidays, which includes the new tagline, a redesigned brand logo, and an integrated advertising campaign initially featuring TV, print, outdoor, and online executions. The company’s signature “dot.com” chorus will remain in place.

“We seek to change the mindset of many travelers that it doesn’t really matter where you actually book your travel. Our new campaign will communicate the reasons why booking with Expedia.com makes all the difference, namely because of the superior value, ease and convenience Expedia.com offers,” said Paul Leonard, vice president of brand marketing at Expedia.com. “We’re also choosing to strike a different tone in our advertising than the rest of the industry, one that recognizes that our travelers are confident people looking for a terrific partner to get them the trip that they want, and are not helpless people in need of a protector.”

The launch of Expedia.com’s new brand campaign marks the midpoint of a process that began in early 2009, when the company began a rigorous search for a new advertising agency. That process culminated in July, when Expedia.com announced that The Martin Agency had bested a field of more than 100 top firms to be its creative agency of record.

Expedia.com is rolling out a series of nationally broadcast television ads in 2010. The first TV spot, “Girls’ Weekend,” introduces a visual metaphor of “building blocks” that represent the unique and personal way in which travelers interact with Expedia.com to plan and book their travel. “Girls’ Weekend” was directed by acclaimed director Sophie Gateau, as were each of Expedia.com’s first three TV spots in the campaign.

Expedia.com’s new logo, featuring a more classic and timeless design while maintaining the visual expression of the globe and a plane, was designed by LPK, a leading international design agency headquartered in Cincinnati, Ohio.

“If consumers continue to get bombarded with messages that imply that they have no control over their travel fate, they’ll start to believe it,” said Halle Hutchison, director, brand marketing, Expedia.com. “And when the moment arrives when their research is complete and they click to book, they’ll experience worry rather than excitement. And that’s a shame. Because travelers who book with Expedia.com can be confident that they got the right trip at a great price.”

Aggregators' travel sites - Entire presentation

http://www.screencast.com/t/MmM5YWUy - Entire presentation

Question by question
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TripWolf vs Boo

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TripWolf vs Boo

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2010: The Year Marketing Dies... poor ned better off deadImage by yewenyivia Flickr ...(Subtitled) Or at Least Marketing as We Know It!

http://www.hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/2010_the_year_marketing_dies/