Internet Marketing in Hospitality Industry

Audience who take this presentation are

expected to be experienced in Social

media(Facebook, Twitter,blog etc),Internet,

LAN,O/S (Windows) & general P.C

troubleshooting. They are expected to

understand I.T. Security problems like

Virus, Spyware, Malware & Botnet and

their Remedies

1Dr.Syed Gous

• Role of Internet in Present Day Hotel Industry

Technology impacts and assists the growth of

practically every industry in the present age.

Hotel industry too isn’t insulated from its effects.

With local and international hotel establishments

working overtime to tap into the power of

internet, in order to catalyze their sales and to

improve customer relations, it is only evident

how internet is playing a key role in development

of hotel industry today.

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• Hospitality industry trends for 2012• The

hospitality landscape is evolving quickly as new

technology demands that hotels become more

social and engaging in their marketing efforts,

travelers are looking for the best value

propositions, and consumer demand is pushing

for hotels to make concerted efforts on property

upgrades and improvements.

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• Online booking will continue to (modestly) grow.

• • The number of U.S. travelers booking and

researching online is still growing. More than 114

million people will research travel online this

year, while 94 million will actually book

reservations. While more than 50 percent of

travel bookings are made on the Internet, the

online travel market has matured and I expect

modest growth and stabilization

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• There will be more mobile bookings andresearch

• • More and more travelers will be turning to theirmobile devices to not only research lodging andtravel options, but to book and communicateroom preferences directly with the hotel. Mobilechannel booking has increased four-foldbetween 2008 and 2010 according to ForresterResearch. Plus, Google is projecting that mobilewill overtake PCs as the most common Web-access device by 2013. With travelers adoptingsmart phones and tablets at such a rapid pace,its crucial for hoteliers to optimize their websitefor mobile usage to capture potential mobiletransactions.

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• Brands will put more money into deals to expand

market share.

• • The brands are at war for the development

deals that have a chance to get financed.

Starwood, Hyatt, and Intercontinental are

aggressively pursuing the Hilton and Marriott

juggernaut• Prepare for growth

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• Social media will continue to transform

connections with travelers.

• • By 2016, half of the travel industry will be using

social media as a way of generating revenue

and bookings. Currently more than one-fifth (22

percent) use social media as a revenue

generating tool with a further 27 percent

planning to do so over the next five years. Plus,

social media will become more of a key

component of Search Engine Results Page

(SERP) algorithms. Facebook posts are already

integrated into Bing search and Google+

emerged with native integration into Google

search.7Dr.Syed Gous

• Social Media Marketing in Tourism Industry A

new communication landscape. Social media,

unlike traditional media channels, represent a

unique way of transmitting information in all

directions, not just ―one-way‖ and ―top-down‖. So

people generate and share their own content,

which is very vital for marketing in tourism

industry.

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• Article Marketing in Tourism Industry

• • Article marketing is vital tool for traffic sourcing and

quite importantly for increasing page rank not only in

tourism industry. Promoting travel destinations, tourism

businesses or travel trade events is an essential

component of any long term online marketing strategy.

Thousands of unique articles submitted and distributed

to hundreds of article directories and e-zine directories

will increase the value of your travel & tourism website

significantly.

• • Tourism Review team is ready to create a unique set of

articles and submit them to tourism related article

directories. As a result hundreds of thematic and highly

relevant one-way back links will dramatically increase

search engine rankings in the leading search engines

such as Google or Yahoo and result in free targeted

traffic to your website. 9Dr.Syed Gous

• Blog marketing in Tourism Industry

• • In addition to article marketing, blogging or

blog marketing considerably help promote

destinations, tourism businesses and travel

trade events in unparallel and efficient way.

Posting of different unique articles to hundreds

of tourism niche blogs market is an incredibly

efficient marketing tool in terms of both

developing free targeted traffic to your website

as well as increasing your search engine

rankings through highly relevant one-way back

links.

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• Social Media Bookmarking in Tourism Industry• Social bookmarking is one of the fastest methods for internet users to organize, share, and manage web resources currently available as a SEO tool. Most of social bookmarking services support internet users to organize their bookmarks with informal tags such as tourism, travel, marketing etc. Such tags in fact promote your travel business and make it much more visible and searchable by search engines. When Tourism Review specialists submit your website to the leading bookmarking sites such as Delicious, Stumble Upon, digg, Yahoo! Buzz etc., you will quickly notice increased traffic to your website from people interested in your services

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• Video Marketing in Tourism Industry• Video on

your tourism or destination website is quite

essential, but what about all the other video sites

where many internet users are already actively

watching video spots online? It is important to

emphasize that with more than 3.7 billion search

queries YouTube can now claim the title of ―The

2nd Largest Search Engine‖. It is almost

unknown that a correctly submitted video is

more than 50-times more likely to push your

tourism website on the first positions among

search engine results than traditional SEO

techniques12Dr.Syed Gous

• The Mobile Era is Here!

• • Why Cell Phones are Replacing the Laptop•

The sharp trajectory of growth for cell phones

and the growing number of PC-like features

being incorporated into their design are fueling

the theory that the cell phone is becoming the

new laptop. Here are the reasons why

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• • It can e-mail.

• • It can Web-browse

• • It is small.

• • It has Windows

• • It has Bluetooth capabilities

• • It is cheaper

• • It can be used for cloud computing

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• Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Web

• • Hotels do not need a mobile app if they are a

single-property, independent hotel. Nor do

franchised hotels and resorts or smaller and

mid-size hotel chains and multi-property

companies. These hotel companies are better

off focusing on building and enhancing their

mobile websites and promoting the mobile site

via mobile

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• Here is why!!!

• • Mobile User Preferences:

• • The most recent eMarketer survey clearly shows that users prefer a mobile app only in the following three categories: social networking, music and games. For everything else they prefer to browse (i.e. search for mobile websites).

16Dr.Syed Gous

• Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Browsing! Appps

Browsing Social Networks (FB, 54% 46%

Twitter) Music 55% 45% Games 61% 39%

Research 19% 81% Product/Services and Price

Comparing Products and 29% 71% Price

Reading Customer 32% 68% Reviews

Purchasing Product via 37% 63% Mobile Device

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• Strong Brand Recognition Needed for

Success

• • In hospitality, the success of a hotel

mobile app is directly correlated to the

strength of the hotel brand. Mobile apps

make sense for a chain of hotels. Smaller

hotel companies’ apps have little chance

of being discovered by mobile user

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• Technological Boundaries between Mobile Apps

and Mobile Browsing Are Disappearing

• • With rapid advancements in mobile technology,

the lines between mobile apps and mobile

websites are disappearing. Newer, more

sophisticated mobile devices, mobile operating

systems and mobile browsers have enhanced

the quality of the mobile web browsing

experience tremendously: touch screen user

experience, GPS and LBS capability, HTML5

rich media, video and audio enhancements, data

storage and interactive functionalities

19Dr.Syed Gous

• Cost!!!

• • A good hotel mobile app can cost $15,000 and

up, based on custom design, functionality,

interactivity, handling of heavy graphics etc. At

the same time, a hotel mobile website is a much

cheaper endeavor – a 10-page mobile website

should not cost more than $1,500, including an

integration of the mobile booking engine, Google

maps, etc.

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• . Portability!!!

• • A well-developed mobile website is by default a

cross-platform entity that can be viewed on all

platforms capable of browsing e.g. iPhone, RIM

(BlackBerry), Symbian Android, Windows

Mobile, etc. In contrast, a different app or a

customized version of an app is needed for

every major platform i.e. an app for iPhone, an

app for Blackberry, an app for Google Android,

etc. All of this greatly increases the cost of

developing and maintaining the hotel mobile app

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• Discoverability!!!

• • There are more than 300,000 apps in the Apple

App Store alone. Hundreds of apps are available

for Google Andoid, BlackBerry, and now

Windows Mobile. How do you promote your new

hotel app? You need a very well defined strategy

and special budget to promote your hotel app

and break into the top list for your category• A

mobile website needs good mobile SEO and

SEM (Search Engine Marketing) such as Google

Mobile AdWords in order to reach potential

customers looking for accommodations in your

location.

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• Reach!!!

• • Mobile apps can be viewed only on smart

phones, which comprise roughly 50% of the

mobile device marketplace today. In other

words, after you develop expensive apps for

iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Android smart

phones, you will be reaching only half of

potential mobile customers. A cross-platform

mobile website will reach 100% of Internet-

enabled mobile devices

23Dr.Syed Gous

• Recommendation

• • Creating mobile-friendly textual and visual content that presents the hotel product well

• • Enhancing the mobile user-experience via well-thought out mobile site navigation, a mobile booking engine widget, mobile calendar of events, etc.

• • Increasing website ―discoverability‖ via mobile SEO and mobile SEM (e.g. Google mobile AdWords) and online media initiatives.

• • Making the mobile website more interactive via mobile-social media initiatives, interactive sweepstakes and contests.

• • Soliciting sign-ups to the mobile opt-in list via the traditional hotel website and the mobile website, via hotel email marketing campaigns and various sweepstakes and contests, such as interactive scavenger hunts, QR Code promotions, etc.

• • Tracking conversions and user behavior via mobile analytics and special tracking phone functionality.

24Dr.Syed Gous

• Beware on web!!!

• • Brand jacking Index®: How Brands Are UsedAs Competitive Weapons Hotel brands face aunique brand jacking challenge. Due to thefierce competition for travelers via paid searchand other online marketing tactics, major hotelbrands are losing more than two billion dollars ayear in unnecessary commission payments andonline traffic lost to competitors. The travelindustry is well- established online, with a robustmix of channels, so these findings serve as acautionary tale to other industries. Protectingyour companys brand online means more thanthwarting abuses and attacks--it meansmonitoring cyber-savvy competitors andpartners, too.

25Dr.Syed Gous

• When’s the best time to Tweet? How often to pro

Facebook? Timing your Facebook

• :• Most Facebook shares occur on Saturday.

• • These shares tend to spike around noon, and a

little after 7PM.

• • Posting once every two days will result in the

most ―likes”.

26Dr.Syed Gous

• Best time to Tweet

• • When the most traffic happens and when

actually the most tweets go out is also the best

time for you to tweet, which is sometimes

counter-intuitive

27Dr.Syed Gous

• Social Media Risks for Companies•

• 1) Viruses and malware — Data leakage/theft.

• • Prevention: Make sure antivirus and anti-

malware controls are installed and updated daily.

Create updating policies, standards, and training.•

• 2) Brand hijacking — Customer gets exposed to

hijacked and fraudulent presence.

• • Prevention: Find a firm that can protect your

brand. Update customers on potential fraud.•

• 3) Lack of control over corporate content —

When employees post wrong or improper

information on social media sites.

• .28Dr.Syed Gous

• • Prevention: Establish clear policies that dictate

what can and cannot be shared. Create the

capability to capture and log all communications.

• • 4) Unrealistic expectations of customer service

at Internet-speed.

• • Prevention: Make sure staff can handle traffic

associated with social media presence. Create

notice with clear timeline for responses.

• • 5) Mismanagement of electronic

communications that may be impacted by

retention regulations or e-discovery.

• • Prevention: Establish policies and processes

that ensure all communications are tracked 29Dr.Syed Gous

• Social Media Risks for Employees• • 1) Using personal accounts to communicate work related

information.• • Prevention: Have HR establish policies and awareness

training so employees do not share company info.• • 2) Posting pictures or information that might damage a

company’s brand.• • Prevention: Again, work with HR to develop policies that

explain what can and cannot be shared.• • 3) Excessive employee use of social media in the

workplace.• • Prevention: Create content filtering or limit access to

sites.• • 4) Employee access to social media via mobile, which may

result in data theft or leakage.• • Prevention: More policies, more training, more controls

30Dr.Syed Gous

• How Often Should You Email Your List?

• • When you’re putting together your email marketing

campaign, there is one very important factor you need to

think about: How often you should email your list. Email

marketing can be a powerful promotional tool, but if you

do it wrong it can do more harm then good to your

business. Email your subscribers too much with

uninteresting information and they will swiftly

unsubscribe from your list. Finding The Right Email

Frequency Honestly, there is no one right answer for this

question. Different businesses will be able to get away

with emailing their mailing list subscribers at different

rates, it just depends on the type of emails you are

providing. My suggestion, Email your mailing list once a

week

31Dr.Syed Gous

• UPDATES!!!

32Dr.Syed Gous

• Google Hotel Finder gets top position The

Google hotel finder is a very interesting

development that has the potential to shake up

the online market for hotels. As a service, it aims

to allow you to search, compare and book hotels

from all over the world. It can be accessed at:

www.google.com/hotelfinder

33Dr.Syed Gous

• Appearing on the Google Hotel Finder. The

majority of hotels are already included in the

hotel finder but some hotels are currently

missing and some hotels that are included are

only shown if you use the shape tool on the map

to include the area where the hotel is physically

located. If your hotel is not currently listed please

be aware that Google are constantly adding

hotels to their database

34Dr.Syed Gous

• Analysis & OpinionKey positives

• ● Clean, uncluttered design.

• ● Shape tool is useful but only beneficial if you

know the area you are visiting.

• ● Filtering options are useful and easy to use.

• ● Prices are listed clearly.

• ● The hotel website link is included automatically

and is free.

• ● Hotels can now compete directly with OTAs

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• Challenges

• • A user cannot search by hotel name, specific

address or landmark.

• ● Prices are currently displayed in US dollars

only.

• ● English is the only available language.

• ● Only reviews from Google are listed.

• ● Some hotels are missing from the finder.

• ● Not all hotels can show their own prices yet.

• ● As of mid December, Google is placing its

hotel finder as the first sponsored link in search

results for hotels in the USA, causing

considerable controversy in the PPC market.36Dr.Syed Gous

• . Google panda!!!How fresh is your website ?

Every year, Google makes more than 500

updates to its search algorithm. The most

significant update in 2011 was the Google

Panda Update, now in version 2.5, which made

most hotel websites obsolete by introducing very

strict requirements for content , interactivity, and

page download speeds. This required sites to

generate engaging and unique website content

(as opposed to bland, old and tired content) that

would intrigue users and increasethe site’s

stickiness.

37Dr.Syed Gous

• Google announced that they had rolled out an updatenow known as the ―Freshness‖ update, which was saidto affect 35% of total searches and would allow formore relevant, current information to be displayed fora bevy of high-volume search queries .Why are theseupdates important for the hospitality industry?Between 50%-70%of hotel website visitors andwebsite bookings originate as leads from the majorsearch engines How does this latest Google algorithmupdate apply to hotel queries Traditionally, hotelwebsites are content rich vs. news rich, withdescriptions and information featuring and explainingin detail every facet of the hotel business and service,from the bed linens to the capacity of a meeting room.The ―static‖ content is there, but the ―fresh‖ content iscertainly lacking, and this is the main issue withcurrent hotel websites after the latest Google algorithmupdates.

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• So if hotel websites aren’t basically fresh, then how do

hoteliers respond to the latest Google ―Freshness‖ Update?

• • Promotional landing pages for timely specials and

packages (e.g. a March weekend package as opposed to an

Advanced Purchase package valid for all of 2012)

• • Event landing pages for events and happenings at the

property and in the destination

• • Promo tiles and banners on the website for featured

specials and events

• • Marketing and sales messages in the main image window

on every page focusing on various aspects of the hotel

product: room and dining promotions, complete meeting

packages, wedding promotions, etc.

• • New content pages on various topics: from seasonal and

sports events, to local festivals and customer segment-

specific content (family travel, seniors, weekend travel,

romantic getaways, etc. 39Dr.Syed Gous

• Conclusion!

• • The Google Panda Update made most hotel websites

obsolete. Bare, sparse copy stuffed with keywords can

no longer sustain a respectable SERP ranking.

• • The latest Freshness Update created the need to add

fresh content to the website on an ongoing basis.

• • In order to react to these two algorithmic updates,

hoteliers need to re-evaluate their website re-design

strategies and budget for website re-design or an

optimization overhaul in early 2012.

• • Be proactive when dealing with your content and the

various assets you own. Highlight what’s great about you

and make sure that whatever you’re proud of is reflected

on the back end of your website, on social media, and

within blogs and press releases. Success will continue to

come, especially if you stay ahead of the curve 40Dr.Syed Gous

• Q & A

• THANK YOU

41Dr.Syed Gous