The keynote was very well received. The part that struck me as interesting is that Hilton is focused on ensuring their properties are properly represented and merchandised across all relevant channels, including OTAs. This seems to be contrary to many other brands whose disdain for OTAs has been well documented in the travel media news.

Even more insightful is Hilton’s focus shifting from..

“Where do guest book?”

to

“Where are they making their decisions?”

I have always said that we as marketers spend way too much time trying to change/modify/support behaviour at point of purchase…at the expense of engaging with consumers throughout the shopping journey.

The decision to choose a specific hotel does not always happen at the same time as the booking itself. Hotels would be wise to invest time and money in the following:

• Better understanding how consumers come to their decisions
• Developing strategies and tactics to influence these decisions

This is why VFM Leonardo’s VBrochure product is so relevant to hotels. It provides them with the ability to create, publish and syndicate a compelling multi-media driven story to the channels consumers use to research, shop, buy and share travel online… across the platforms and devices they choose to access these channels.

It ensures that the hotel’s story is available to consumers where and when they’re making their booking decisions.

Engaging consumers in this way, from start to finish, improves the sales process and results in stronger conversions.

Mobile has become progressively dominant when researching and/or booking a trip. Almost 1 in 3 mobile owners have used their smartphone to browse for holidays, while 11% actually moved through the funnel and completed the purchase on the device. In the hotly debated topic of Apps vs. Sites this study found that 70% of smartphone owners prefer to browse for hotels, travel tickets or holidays using a mobile optimized site rather than a mobile app. This all points back to the fact that consumers want to use online resources whenever and wherever they want and with the device most appropriate at the time. Hoteliers that present their hotels story in a consistent manner throughout all channels and across all devices are more likely to benefit.

In conclusion, hotel marketers need to ensure that they offer a consistent engaging story throughout all of their channels, online, mobile sites and web apps. Consumers are expecting this engaging experience no matter which way they chose to browse, shop and purchase their vacation.

Your hotel’s online presence can make or break you… in less than a second. In our fast paced, low attention span world, we lose interest quickly. Some of us quicker than others. As Graham Jones, internet psychologist shared, you just have one second to make an impact on introverts and even less than that on extroverts.

Travel shoppers tend to look at 20 different sites because their attention has not yet been grabbed. New channels are evolving fast and it needs to be a company’s priority to stay on top of online networks. Being there with targeted, compelling content will help you market your hotel to a broader audience and catch more attention and bookings.

“Doing mobile and doing it well, is no longer a ‘nice to have’ offering. It is now absolutely critical.” This quote from Geoff Galat (vice president for worldwide marketing at Tealeaf) really sums up the urgency of mobile. Having a mobile website and web app makes it easier to cross-channel market your hotel. Each channel should demonstrate the same message and have the same main features.

Creating a seamless multi-channel customer experience is critical for hotel marketers to succeed today. Staying on top of all channels and creating engaging experiences will help drive more and more traffic and conversions for your hotel. Thanks again Tnooz and Tealeaf for shedding light on this topic!

Darlene Rondeau

Vice President, Best Practices, Online Merchandising

VFM Leonardo

Gabor Fenyves, Director of Sales, heats up the Charltons Cedar Court’s online presentation by adding another level of interactivity. He uses the HotSpots feature of VBrochure to enable travel shoppers to explore the hotel by zooming in to see images and detail shots from floorplans. Click on the floorplans in their Multi-Media Player to see how they heat it up with HotSpots! This way, guests are in the loop of what to expect when arriving at the hotel!

Think you have what it takes to become a merchandising hero? Contact us to see how we can help you rise to the top.

Monica Goldstein, Marketing Services Manager, ensures that online travel shoppers worldwide can understand the first class experience that the Lancaster House offers, make sure to click on the language selector in their multimedia player. She has added descriptive text descriptions to the media in her VPowered Multi-Media Player in six different languages – ensuring the hotel’s story isn’t lost in translation.

Rupesh Patel, Vice President of Central Valley Hotels is recognized for his mastery in merchandising the Holiday Inn Express & Suites Modesto on mobile devices. Patel uses the VPowered Mobile Website included with VBrochure to provide an engaging and very user friendly experience for mobile hotel shoppers. They can easily explore the great features the hotel offers, call the hotel directly, share the visuals with their social networks and even book a room from any mobile device. Make sure to visit www.hiesmodesto.com from your smartphone to experience their mobile site!

Adele Gutman, VP of Sales and Marketing, brought Facebook to the forefront of her merchandising strategy. HK Hotels’ New York City properties, Elysee Hotel, Hotel Giraffe and Casablanca Hotel, are now flaunting their features on Facebook. Using the VBrochure Facebook Apps Suite, they show photos and virtual tours right on their main page and additional apps allow travel shoppers to view their guestrooms, meeting spaces, and special offers – each with a booking widgets so that it is easy for visitors to book.

Check out Hotel Giraffe’s Facebook page here.

Many visual merchandising superstars emerged throughout the year. We call them our Merchandising Heroes. But a select group of hoteliers have risen above and been selected as winners of Hotel Visual Merchandising Awards. Congratulations winners!

Category: Social Media Superstardom
Winner: Best Western PLUS Rockville Hotel & Suites

Ron Wallach, Director of Sales, has given the Best Western PLUS Rockville Hotel & Suites a rockin’ Facebook page. In addition to regular posts on their wall, Wallach uses VBrochure Facebook Apps to show off what makes the hotel unique and invites their fans to comment using the built-in comments plug-in. Facebook isn’t all this hotel rocks at though. They extend the hotel’s personality and charm to Twitter as well. Check out their Facebook Page.

We will be announcing the next four winners next week!

Recent TripAdvisor research proves that consumers are 150 times more engaged when a page has photos and/or video. Visuals keep consumers engaged and paint a picture for what they can expect to experience at the hotel.

Tips to Maximize the Visual Impact of Your Hotel Page on TripAdvisor teaches you how to enhance your e-commerce activity and extract more value out of your online presence by maximizing your TripAdvisor hotel page.

Watch it now!

Milestone Internet Marketing hosted a Webinar last week about hotel marketing resolutions for 2012.  Keeping your online content fresh, generating conversations and having a strong communications plan are a few key points from the presentation that are valuable marketing strategies.

Keep your online Content Fresh

Fresh content and up-to-date information are now favored in all Google search results. Meaning, marketers need to keep their website full of fresh information. There are a lot of ways to keep your website fresh; make sure to integrate related social profiles. Leading travel consumers to social media networks with consistent fresh content updates and information will keep them intrigued.

Reviews and other user generated content like photos, videos and so on naturally keep content fresh. In this case, quantity is more important than quality because we want to allow consumers to comment and start a conversation. Inviting and encouraging reviews and user generate content creates more opportunities for constant conversation and new information about your hotel to circulate the web.

Promoting special offers and contests on your hotel website as well as social media networks and beyond is important because of the amount of shopping and comparing hotel shoppers are doing online.

Generate Conversation

A good way to keep up to date information on your site is to create and maintain a blog. A blog is also a good way to generate flow to your website and create a strong visual representation. Social media platforms will engage travel consumers and can lead them to more information on either Facebook or YouTube. Both of these social media platforms are beneficial because of their strong visual aspects and ability to create conversation. This is an important factor no matter how well your hotel’s interaction is doing. It is important to stay ahead of the game and continue to succeed.

Have a plan

Before creating public profiles on social media channels such as, Twitter and Facebook it is important to do your research.

• Who do you need to connect with?
• What are your consumers looking for?
• What kind of reputation do we want to portray?

After effectively answering these questions create a social calendar that will demonstrate when updates will be distributed to the web and which social media channel will be used. It is also important to keep all information consistent. Blog posts, Tweets and Facebook posts should consist of the same updated information and all lead back to one main goal of the company, initially showing the brand of the hotel and giving online travel shoppers the confidence they need to choose your hotel.

Overall, staying up to date within the market and keeping your information relevant and interactive will create a strong presence within the travel community and lead to more bookings for your hotel.

Tell us, what is on your hotel marketing “must-do” list this year?