January 18, 2007

For those of you in the Travel and Hospitality sector -- a vertical that Marqui has had some good success in -- I would encourage you to take a stroll over to Chris Clarke's blog at  Chrispitality.com ... and I'm not just saying that because he wrote this piece about us recently and our relationship that we're building with Best Western Hotels. [Promotional note for all Best Westerns: Call us...We can help!]

I like Chris' style. He seems to have developed a slightly irreverent tone and touches on many themes that seem to be resonating in Hotel and Hospitality marketing (Travel 2.0 I think he calls it). In his words:

"Although there is much trade talk about the value of social media as a whole, the hospitality trade has been fairly slow to embrace it.

Organizations that leverage these tactics to create brand dialogue with consumers and industry stakeholders are creating a more transparent, integrated community of brand-champions. Increasing transparency and creating dialogue between the guest and the industry helps facilitate relationships and strengthen brand confidence, thus inspiring purchases."

Unfortunately for those hospitality marketing managers who are struggling to get corporate buy-in for innovative, next-gen marketing ideas via the Web, this sector is a little naive and slow to embrace the web at an individual property level. It amazes me still that with 2-year old stats indicating that 70 percent of online users use the Web for travel planning, a significant number of hotel and tourism destinations aren't taking advantage of the tools at their disposal.

Here's a quick exercise: take a Tier 2 destination or hotel in your favourite city, do a quick web search with the proper name and see where they show up. By my completely unscientific counts, about one in four weren't on the front page. Many weren't even in the top couple of pages. What's the big deal you say ... I can find the hotel referenced close to the top via TripAdvisor or Hotels.com? The big deal is that when you or I click on these sites as opposed to the site directly, the property loses 5 to 20 percent on the cost of sale between travel agent commissions and GDS fees.

[Hint to those that don't know the trick. If you find a hotel you want to stay at, call it up directly even though it is so old fashioned and say you want a room discount that takes into account the percent that they would be paying the GDS or agent. You often get a better rate than you can find online anywhere else... and you save significant research time looking for the best deal].

Consider it another way and apply it to your industry ... In order to recoup the money you are losing, you would have to boost your marketing budget by the comparable percentage ... just to get back on even ground.

Posted by at January 18, 2007

Comments

Balustrade email - www.hitechconstruct.com

I prefer use internet for travel planning because here I can also listen to the feelings of same tourists like me. What impressed them, what they advice to pass through etc.

Boiler email - www.highgradebuild.com

But in internet information isn't guaranteed to be true. That's why I choose real discussions with my friends or travel agency. Of course they lie a lot, but you can get a bit information from them

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