Hotel Blogs by Guillaume Thevenot

Build a relationship online

Most would agree that Ireland is a friendly nation, a social-happy country, which makes hospitality such a naturally compelling business here. This social happy vibe however is most apparent on a one-to-one basis, ie when the guest has arrived. But what about before they arrive, when they are making a booking, researching or chatting online? How can hoteliers or businesses in general for that matter, make that all important fist 'digital' step?
Those in the 'know' know that social media, blogs and customer reviews are qualitative social sources that build virtual relationships. The question is - are hotels using them?

After a recent training session with a popular hotel in Kerry, it came to light that whilst these mediums have been heard of, there isn't the staff time, confidence or opportunity to make social marketing a part of their strategy. To make things worse, traditional-minded owners are wary of venturing into newer technologies and channels and find the whole concept quite daunting.

I urge all hotels and businesses to give these mediums a go. It's free, fun and could be a valuable profit source.
Take 10 minutes out of every day to type a note or link to a promotion on your website.....who knows, you might become addicted!

Popular social media and review sites
Twitter.com
LinkedIn.com
Facebook.com
Tripadvisor

By Christina Giliberti

Outside (5)

It's time for Outside. Why Outside? Because I will post here some very interesting articles, videos or any other findings that are totally Outside the travel and hospitality industry. I have always tried to stay focused on what I know best (Hotels, online distribution, Technology in case you haven't figured out yet) but I thought I should share with you the best bits of what I find on the web in terms of inspiration, entrepreneurship, creativity and so on.

Today is about an extract of an inspiring talk from marketing guru Seth Godin. I could have picked many others available on YouTube (just type Seth Godin on the search engine).

Hotel chains new worldwide ranking

The American publication Hotels Magazine has revealed the new 2008 ranking of hotel companies and what they call Sales & Marketing Consortia. The listing is ordered by number of rooms available per hotel group.

The analysis confirms the number 1 position for Intercontinental Hotel Group with 4,186 hotels and 619,851 rooms. The group includes brands like Holiday Inn, Intercontinental Hotels or Indigo. In terms of hotel brands, Best Western maintains it number 1 position with 305,000 rooms.

The Sales & Marketing Consortia list is an interesting one because it reflects how independent hotels have joined consortia. These companies are also called representation companies. They are helping independant hotels to be represented in the online and offline distribution and also be more powerful against hotel brands. For instance, hotels who apply to be part of the Design Hotels brands will have a clear advantage to attract the exclusive travelers generation who aims to find a special hotel whether on holidays or on business. Unirez/Utell (part of Pegasus) is clearly ahead of the game against competitors with 11,282 hotels and 1,381,379. Supranational comes second with 1662 hotels only. It's interesting to note that a lot of these representation companies are European, probably because 80% of hotels in Europe are not branded (the opposite scenario in the USA).

Viral Campaign for dummies (Hotelicopter)

As you probably know, VibeAgent became Hotelicopter in the beginning of April. Their CEO Adam Healey did a superb job to fool most of us and created a very efficient viral marketing campaign in order to get traffic to his newly named venture.

If you want to know the details of how he did it, that's here. I am sure you will appreciate the transparency of his post and this is probably a good example about how you can get high level of traffic with little investment.

Tribute to MJ (R.I.P.)

Outside (4)

It's time for Outside. Why Outside? Because I will post here some very interesting articles, videos or any other findings that are totally Outside the travel and hospitality industry. I have always tried to stay focused on what I know best (Hotels, online distribution, Technology in case you haven't figured out yet) but I thought I should share with you the best bits of what I find on the web in terms of inspiration, entrepreneurship, creativity and so on.

Today is about the story of Twitter narrated by their founder Evan Williams who is addressing at the TED conference. Enjoy.

How to advertize your indirect channels on Twitter

Whilst checking out the Twitter updates from my network, I have noticed that MacDonald Hotels promotes and ask their audience to book their hotels on .....Expedia. Why on Earth would you do this? I thought Twitter could be used to improve your sales on direct channels. eg your website.

 

Does Oyster.com have the mussels to compete with the big boys?

Something you should know is that I love seafood. One of my "food sins" when I go back to my home country is to have a full "plateau de fruits de mer" or just a dozen of oysters (Gillardeau usually). 

So when I heard that a new website was launching this week called Oyster.com...I was somewhat intrigued by it. 
Could it be a website about oyster delivery? My dream finally comes true - especially in England where oysters are not so popular and very hard to find in fishmongers. Or could it be a website about this blue Oyster card we have to use on the London Underground?
My instinct was wrong. Oyster.com is another player who decided to battle against TripAdvisor to bring more "relevant" reviews written by independent journalists experts reviewers. The site claims that every hotel has been visited and their room paid for. 
So it there such a thing already in the marketplace? Well, we do have hotels reviewed in paper newspapers like The Sunday Times. We also have hotels reviewed in lifestyle magazines like CondeNast Concierge. Online, we have websites like The Hotel Guru in partnership with Worldreviewer (founded by James who I interviewed last year). or TravelIntelligence who found a niche in boutique, design and original hotels around the world. Finally, you can argue that everyone is an expert - once you stayed in a hotel - to review your hotel stay. You don't need to be a professional writer. You just need to be honest.
So what Oyster can bring more that we don't already have?
Better structure of reviews, more pictures (meaning hundreds) and professional writing. 
In a way this seems to me the alternative of reading a 2 pages review of a hotel in a travel specialist magazine. Surely, there is a share of the population who gets inspired and take decision on where they are going to spend their holidays by reading these professional reviews (I am not one of them). 
Yes the website is very nice and pages are well structured. For instance, it's very easy to find what the reviewer thought about the food, the scenery or even better whether it is family friendly.

The pictures tab is divided into sections where you can flick through pictures about the bathroom, reception, bedroom, swimming pool and so on. Look how many pictures are available for the Fontainebleau. Reviewers are also asked to take pictures when they stay at the hotel. Hence why you have some many. It's true they look like professional pictures but these days with the high quality camera material you can get for nothing, I am not surprised pictures come this well. For the Fontainebleau, there are 110 pictures of the Deluxe Guestroom...

Now, if we look at the scalability of this business, I am thinking how long will it take to Oyster dedicated writers team to cover enough hotel content around the world? Or is it actually we don't really need 400,000 hotels + these days. Maybe a few here and there with professional reviews are sufficient. How long this content can be reliable for the consumer in the long run? 1 day ? 3 months ? 1 year? When I browse review sites like TripAdvisor or Vinivi or Trivago, I more likely to see the 5 more recent reviews rather than the one reviewed a year ago. Same thing applied to restaurant review sites like TopTable or London Eating.  I don't base a judgement whether I should try a restaurant on a Gilles Coren review written a year ago. I would take advice from 5 reviews posted in the last 2 weeks. What is more relevant?

2 questions come to my mind.

1/ What makes me a professional reviewer? On which criteria Oyster select their writers?

2/ Do I get paid by review submitted? If yes, how much?

As you can read, I am divided by the relevancy of the content in the long run. It looks to me that Oyster is trying to do a better job than what hotels publish on their website in terms of description/pictures. They just orgarnize the information much much better. Is that sufficient to make this venture a profitable business in the long run? Time will tell.

The World's 50 Best Restaurants

San Pellegrino has announced the latest results of their top 50 world best restaurants. As you know, I love discovering new restaurants and this list just confirms that I still have a lot to try. I wish the list would be more "wallet friendly". All these restaurants are not reachable to everyone. 

Do we need a meta meta search engine called Tripeedo...seriously

My favorite online travel trade publication Travolution has  announced the launch of another "Trip" company called Tripeedo.

Something that amazes me (still) these days is the lack of innovation or bright new ideas that come up in the online travel space.

I mean Tripeedo aims not to be another meta search engine but wants to sit above that ...meaning the start up founded by Andrew Dudly  aims to - I quote -  "allow for quick comparisons of metasearch sites, airlines and OTAs - so it’s metasearch on top of that. It’s a single point to launch searches to different sites, reducing a process that takes a long time to a few minutes."

I just don't see what problem Tripeedo is trying to solve. Meta search engines facilitate the search of multiple travel websites in one user interface. A site that compares meta search engines and OTAs is just nonsense. I mean who wants dozens of windows open in your browser.

I was doing a search in New York on Firefox with all OTAs and Hotel Chains websites. When Firefox discovered that 30 windows will be opened, it just declined it (Thank You Firefox by the way, you are brilliant!)). Also how could you really compare results if you need to navigate between different windows?

Anyway, another flawed idea that would never take off (again my opinion only). If I had $100,000 in the bank, I wouldn't touch this search problem, I would do something else. You can't keep up with innovation coming from big guys like Kayak with such a small investment.

As Julie Meyer said in the title of her article at City A.M. "Entrepreneurs must show an appetite for risk", I just don't see the risk in this new venture...

 

When consumer reviews can be risque on TravelPost (Updated)

You've probably read in these pages the re-launch of TravelPost by Kayak when they realized last year there was something to do with it to make it as an alternative to TripAdvisor.

Some people find the site useful and better structured than its direct competitor and others can't be bothered.

Whilst trying to find what people are saying about the re branded Pullman Hotel in Paris, this is what I could find on TravelPost (). The story doesn't say where this number leads to. I couldn't  find it whether it was attached to an existing hotel unfortunately.

Update: Kayak contacted me after this post and removed the 2 pictures you can see on the screen shot below. They also said "At Kayak/TravelPost, we have a general policy of not editing or censoring user content as it relates to a bona-fide hotel review.  In the cases you pointed out, these were obviously not serious hotel reviews (eg: the play on "Paris Hilton") and have been marked for removal."

When Hotels Chains use Twitter (part 3 and final)

For the study conducted, I selected only 15 hotel brands Twitter users but I could have picked some more. Sorry if I didn't select yours, it wasn't deliberate from me. I will follow up with another analysis about how independent hotels use Twitter. So let's have a look at the last 5 other hotel chains.
Read Part 1 of this study here and Part 2 there.

The UK hotel chain MacDonald is very active on Twitter. They have more updates than followers. Their dedicated page is simple and sticks to their brand upper class audience. They allow their followers to get special promo offers at their hotels. In fact most of their updates is about pushing the sale of their hotels to Twitter audience. To reinforce their value one of their Tweet says "With over 40 luxury hotels to choose from - exclusive spas, Championship golf courses, AA Rosette dining, we will be sure to please all."

Morgans Hotels has a good readership of more than 2,000 followers with only 31 people they follow. They are engaging with their customers by giving some direct messages to Twitter other users. They also send some links about music preview of what you can hear in some of their hotels. Quite a few DJs are performing in the evening like at The Sanderson in London.  Their homepage is quite funky and reflects the brand image of the hotels.

Omni Hotels is only available in the US with 43 luxury hotels. You can notice that they advertise their Twitter dedicated email address on the left side. Again, you can follow their updates and see how they engage well with their audience "@XXX  - Let us know if we can help you further..." proves again that hotels can use Twitter as an extension of their customer service desk. They recently added 4 people pictures as members of their Omni Twitter account team (more personalized that the screen shot above).

By naming their account MilleniumPR, the hotel chain makes it clear. They are here to push PR on Twitter.Nothing wrong with that. They do engage with people talking about their hotels. Not many updates yet, they probably just started to use the tool. On the left side they list their hotels but you can see only American hotels. This account is indeed only to promote hotels in North America. So what about other continents? 

Ritz Carlton, one of the most respected hotel brand in the industry has also taken a name with PR on it. But the account is more personnalized because it is handled by their Senior Corporate Director of Public Relations - Allison Sitch. She even discloses her email address (quite a brave move knowing how many emails she must deals with everyday...). Updates gives their audience links to interesting articles mentionning Ritz Carlon, pictures on Twitpic.

Check out another article by Christine Kirk on Luxury Hotel Brands on Twitter.

Outside (3)

It's time for Outside. Why Outside? Because I will post here some very interesting articles, videos or any other findings that are totally Outside the travel and hospitality industry. I have always tried to stay focused on what I know best (Hotels, online distribution, Technology in case you haven't figured out yet) but I thought I should share with you the best bits of what I find on the web in terms of inspiration, entrepreneurship, creativity and so on.

Today is about what we have done with Planet Earth. It's an easy one but really worth to watch and think afterward what we can to save this beautiful planet. So have a look at Home.

When Hotels Chains use Twitter (part 2)

For the study conducted, I selected only 15 hotel brands Twitter users but I could have picked some more. Sorry if I didn't select yours, it wasn't deliberate from me. I will follow up with another analysis about how independent hotels use Twitter. So let's have a look at 5 other hotel chains.
Read Part 1 of this study here.

Choice Hotels is very much focused on brands exposures and you can clearly see this on their Twitter homepage with all logos listed.  Again, this is another example of how one way marketing works (or doesn't work) meaning Choice Hotels use Twitter to only push information online. They don't seem really interested to follow any body (note 0 following on their page). Twitter is used for Direct Marketing. Also you can see they are still in early stage (only 8 updates).

 
Hyatt does things differently. First of all, their Twitter account is HyattConcierge, so this activity has a purpose on its own rather than being the "Corporate" Twitter page. As you scroll down all the activity going on, you notice they do manage very well the direct messages "DM" with their community. All updates are directly targeted at individual Twitter users. It's a shame we can't follow through what's happening after the DM to the customer, but this looks to me very innovative about how you approach customer service before, during and after your stay. In terms of stats, they have more than 2,000 followers and follow about 1,800 users.

Again, another example of great interaction between the hotel chain and the Twitter users crowd. By using TweetDeck (a Twitter 3rd party application), Joie De Vivre manages more effectively what people are saying about their brand or their hotel property. Also they use the tool to promote their offers from different participating hotels like the $84 rate at the Citizen hotel. They have nearly managed to get 2,000 followers and follow even more Twitter accounts.

The representation company Luxe hotels has always been synonym of trendy, modern, design and boutique hotels. Unfortunately, their Twitter page lacks of imagination and doesn't even respond to brand awareness (you can't read properly their brand name on the left side). However, they have some interaction with other Twitter users and also push some interesting facts and promos on their updates. Again another decent figure of 1,368 followers. They also follow more people.

I was looking forward to see how Marriott was approaching Twitter because of the huge success of their blogging activity with On the Move blog by Bill Marriott. Like Starwood did, they have 2 persons John and Blake who manages Twitter and engage with the audience. Impressively, they have over 9,000 followers and follow 7,600 Twitter accounts. They also sent over 1,900 updates (in one week after this screen shot, they passed the 2,000 mark) on their account!!! With the usage of Twitterfeed, Twhirl, TweetDesk, you can see they have "professionals" managing their Twitter account. Also you can see their updates are not all about promos and responding to customers (example:@GeeEmm The top choice for famous person tweeps most wanted to travel with was....Anthony Bourdain. President Obama was near the top too.)

The Friday Idea (12)

This is a dead simple idea this time and it all needs 7 words:

REGISTER YOUR HOTEL BRAND ON TWITTER NOW!

Forget whether it makes sense to use the social media for your hotel business, you will find out this later. The crucial point today is to protect your brand by avoiding squatters coming to get it before you do.

Outside (2)

It's time for Outside. Why Outside? Because I will post here some very interesting articles, videos or any other findings that are totally Outside the travel and hospitality industry. I have always tried to stay focused on what I know best (Hotels, online distribution, Technology in case you haven't figured out yet) but I thought I should share with you the best bits of what I find on the web in terms of inspiration, entrepreneurship, creativity and so on.

Today is a keynote presentation and conversation between Microsoft founder and CEO Steve Ballmer addressing students at Stanford University.

When Hotels Chains use Twitter (part 1)

No. It's not going to be another article about the pros and cons of Twitter and how you should use it (or not) for your own business or your private life.

Instead, I thought I should give you some heads ups about what I have found so far in terms of hotel brands/chains who embrace the Twitter phenomenon and how each of these chains behave differently with their followers. Also what sort of messages "updates" do they write about about. Is there any interactivity between their followers and them.

For the study conducted, I selected only 15 hotel brands Twitter users but I could have picked some more. Sorry if I didn't select yours, it wasn't delibarate from me. I will follow up with another analysis about how independant hotels use Twitter.

The benchmark study was made with International hotel groups:

Starwood Hotels
Four Seasons
Hyatt
Ritz Carlton
Marriott Hotels
Millenium Hotels
Morgans Hotel Group

but also with hotel "representation" companies / franchisors:

Choice Hotels
Best Western
Luxe Worldwide
Design Hotels

and local hotel chains:

Tiara Hotels (Europe)
MacDonalds Hotels (UK)
Omni Hotels (USA)
Joie de Vivre Hotels (USA

First of all, let's look at what all of them do unanimously.

1. They all have customized their Twitter page to their branding image
2. They all have taken a Twitter account name with their brand name. Some of them I am sure I have been thinking hard about that... when they discovered their name was already taken. More and more we hear that domain squatters have also embraced Twitter as well. One advice, please check and register your brand name on Twitter RIGHT NOW before it's too late. It doesn't matter if you don't use Twitter after. At least you have protected your brand.
3. They all have given a go at "Tweets" meaning they have send Updates (some brands register and then only follow Twitter users)
4. They all have "Open" accounts where anyone can follow their Tweets
5. They all have filled details about their company, their location and more importantly their website URL (nothing beats free traffic)

Let's take a look at individual account now.

 
Starwood Hotels is a bit corporate on that one. They haven't got many updates yet but they have more than 2,000 followers and follow also a lot of users (1,664). All their brands logos are represented on their  page and to make sure consumer don't get duped by squatters, their inform on their bio "Official voice of Starwood Hotels". The account is a bit personnal since we know 2 people (Kevin and Ben) are behind the Tweets. Oh did I also mention that their Twitter name is not Starwood or Starwoodhotels? They preferred StarwoodBuzz. A bit more cool no?

Tiara Hotels, a Portuguese hotel group is very active on Twitter with almost 900 updates, more than 1,700 followers and an outstanding 1,515 Twitter accounts they follow. As you an see, the hotel group manages quite well the "RT" gimmich which is to repeat a Tweet (remember it means an update) that they found on another Twitter account. It is to say, I found this useful Tweet, let's share this with my audience in case they don't follow this user. Also you can clearly see that they interact with their audience. They even thank their 1,800 follower. I still don't understand how they can follow so many users though.

Four Seasons with their very simple page has opted for the "push" strategy in regards of using Twitter. What does that mean is that they only interested to push information to their 2,049 followers. Thet are not really interested to follow anybody (apart from the 5 other Four Seasons accounts created for individual hotels). They sent less than 400 updates and don't have a human person we can relate to if you want to respond to their Tweet.

Best Western, the "world's largest hotel chain" says their bio is taking a similar approach where they seem to follow a lot of their individual hotels Twitter accounts. They only have 677 followers with 139 updates. The best of it is their personnalized page. I really like it. You can see they put some good effort into this.

Design Hotels refer a lot on special deep links of their website if they have any special promo. I believe this is a good way to promote your offers instantly. They have 1,388 followers and follow a good number of peope (272 is a reasonable number to follow in my opinion). I just find their page a bit to dark for me to read. But who cares now? I use Seesmic Desktop !

Who needs emails these days?

I know a large number of people are still wondering what Twitter is for and why so much noise is behind it recently. Anyway, I let you judge for yourself whether Twitter is of good use for you.

While I was browsing the Web to find out who is on Twitter, I discovered that the Design Style Online Magazine for Paris hotels Hoosta has aso a Twitter account and so does the hotel chain Tiara Hotels (2 hotels in France and 2 hotels in Portugal). And what do they do on Twitter? Hoosta asks Tiara Hotels if they can provide some pictures of their new hotel opening soon in Cannes.

Could it be that Twitter become more efficient than emails for such a request?

Looks like it since Hoosta published a nice article about the hotel 3 days later (Note also the quality of pictures and how fast they are displayed on the site...)

So getting more and more proficient with Twitter, I have to say I tend to believe we have seen just the beginning of how people coud use efficiently this new social media tool.

Been there (33) - Arbutus - London

16/20

Arbutus
63 Frith Street, London, W1D 3JW

When I first heard about this restaurant, I forgot completely who was behind the kitchen. A weekend ago, I passed by the restaurant while having a touristy visit of the West End and stopped by the window to see that it was quite a busy restaurant for a Saturday lunch.

My wife and I went for a dinner at Arbutus on Saturday and couldn’t wait to taste the food from the former head chef and owner Anthony Demetre at Putney Bridge restaurant (closed now and replaced by the chain restaurant Thai Square). I guess the menu is changed frequently as we had the date on the menu. We opted both for a squid/mackerel burger as a starter and I have the famous Marseille fish course called “Bouillabaisse”.

The starter was absolutely lovely and full of fragrances coming from different herbs. The burger was rather original and very light. Then the bouillabaisse was served with on my right the pan with 3 different fishes and on my left a pot with the lobster soup + mayonnaise and garlic sauce. Then, there was an empty bowl where I could add the fish and the soup together at my convenience. To top it up, I also had some croutons. I was very impressed with this dish. Fish was cooked to the perfection and the soup so tasty.

We didn’t go for dessert and here’s the reason. The restaurant on Saturday night is so busy that you need to shout to your partner if you want to have a conversation. I had to say I am usually patient with the noise level in restaurant, but this was really unbearable. We had to leave the restaurant after only 1 hour 15 min. I couldn’t wait to get out even though the food was absolutely superb. I guess there is nothing the restaurant can do about. People have to shout when they speak in restaurant. I don’t know why but it’s a fact. The waiter acknowledged my complaint and said Sunday is quieter. Maybe I will return on Sunday then but definitely not on Saturday evening.

The Longest Way

Have a look at this video of a guy walking through China for one year. Another video that inspires. More info on thelongestway.com