Hotel Blogs by Guillaume Thevenot

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.

Viral Marketing for Fairfield Inn

Nice viral marketing from the (US only) Marriott owned hotel brand Fairfield Inn & Suites with professional players for the DC United soccer (football) team.

The video is part of the new integrated marketing campaign "Staying is Believing" with online banner ads. This campaign focuses on the guest journeys mments at Fairfield Inn - and dramatizes how these moments become "moments of belief" for the guest when they realize that Fairfield Inn provides them with everything they need (free WIFI, free hot breakfast...).

Stein Hotels become Franklyn Hotels

The European small luxury hotel chain goes global and decides to rebrand their group Franklyn Hotels & Resorts. This new brand aims to appeal better to International consumers. The group has an expansion plan into Singapore, China, Indonesia and Thailand.

The KOP Group - a real estate investment company with $2.5B worth of assets around the world - has recently invested in Stein Management Company International and has consequently appointed Michael Sagild to the position of Chief Executive Officer.

Why Franklyn? The group PR agency explains:

"Following intensive research, the company’s name was subsequently developed with ‘Franklyn’ offering a polysyllabic moniker that positions itself alongside other world-class hotel brands such as Morgans, Aman, COMO and Starwood. Franklyn is a bi-syllabic name, consisting of a free morpheme, ‘Frank’, and a suffix, ‘lyn’, and enjoys a rich cultural heritage through its etymology. The historical resonance of the name itself alludes to the notion of classicism – with the classic and contemporary forming core brand values of the company - and it also conjures warm associations of American hospitality. The etymology of Franklyn derives from a broad range of positive concepts: it carries the meaning of a frank or seal, it also denotes sincerity, authenticity and honour. The Franklyn brand will act as a seal of approval, guaranteeing a level of quality and luxury, whether it be in a Franklyn Hotel, Resort, Restaurant or Spa."

12 hotels are part of the group like the Gran Hotel Son Net in Mallorca or The Cadogan in London.

Chateau Eza, Cote d'Azur, France

A good example of an hotelier using Twitter

The Berkeley Hotel has understood well how to use Twitter to their own benefits and most importantly their potential customers. They bring relevant content to the right tool. There is no overused advertising message, just enough teasing that want you to make a click on the link...This is what I called innovative marketing. Ok they may have only hundreds of followers on their Twitter account but this is just the beginning...

Some hotels sell few of their rooms at a loss

As you can see below, some hotels like The Ship Hotel in Chichester are ready to sell few of their rooms at a symbolic price of £1...so basically at a loss. Does it work? Is that some form of PR marketing tactic?

EXCLUSIVE - Ryanair chooses Booking.com as their hotel partner

Before 2007, Ryanair was working with Needahotel, a sister company of GTA (part of Travelport today). With Travelport (Cendant at that time) revising their strategy and also the profits of their distribution deals, Needahotel was almost forced to call it a day with their alliance with the Irish low cost airline Ryanair. The cost of distribution was way too high for GTA. Cendant has to even pay €10M to Ryanair to compensate the loss of hotel bookings while the airline was looking for a new partner.

Then in March 07 arrived Expedia. They replace Needahotel on the hotel tab of Ryanair website by providing their hotel content through their white label product WWTE. The contract is for a 5 year agreement and it is a huge achievement for Expedia. Ryanair at that time was expecting to carry over 50M passengers in their airplanes around Europe. I am not too sure what's the % of Ryanair customers who book their hotel on the Ryanair site, but even 10% seemed some very decent qualified traffic.

Unfortunately, that deal fell through last year in October 2008 when Ryanair was having a dispute with Expedia over payment terms. The contract ended in November 2008 consequently and Ryanair was alone with no hotel partner on their website (apart from Hostelword who has been their hostel, B&B, Guest House partner of the airline company). More info on Travelmole, Travolution.

Since then, different hotel specialists have knocked on Ryanair doors trying to win a slot on their website and replace Expedia. I am sure they were queing when the dispute came public in October 2008. Quite a few of us in the industry have their own bet on who is most likely to win the deal. Would it be a merchant model online player (customer prepay hotel booking) or a commissionable model player(customer pays the hotel at check out)? Would it be an American company or a European company? How much commission will Ryanair require this time? 8%? 10% ? 12% 15%...who knows...

Today, it's becoming clear on Ryanair website who has won the RFP.

Booking.com (part of Priceline.com) has won the partnership deal with Ryanair. You can see the website of Booking.com on the Hotels tab of Ryanair site with a simple co branding site.

This partnership makes sense for Ryanair for different reasons:

1/ Booking.com hotel content is relevant and increasing every month with the army of contractors that Booking.com has recruited over the years - 57,000 unique hotels
2/ Their model is very easy and friendly for the end consumer (pay your hotel bill on departure)
3/ Their booking process is super fast and the user interface is one of the best to create a good look to book convertion ratio

...but at the same time this deal could be a bit costly for Booking.com.

How much commission have they given away to Ryanair? Will this impact on their European P&L? Are those bookings will be incremental enough to justify such a deal? Will other distribution partners think to re-negotiate their commission deal with Booking.com?

The future will tells us but one thing for sure is that Ryanair has probably become less greedy in negotiations than they were in 2006 knowing the current economic climate.

How to compete online in 2009

No doubt people will remember a time when offering a quality product was enough to generate sales, now hotel sales is a primarily price-led market. In today’s competitive market, the slogan ‘sink or swim’ has never held as much meaning. To stay in business, it’s important for hoteliers to recognise online marketing as a prime selling channel.

Online selling is a fast moving, dynamic market, with an abundance of suppliers and technologies. Whether objectives are to improve your online presence, boost revenue or to streamline administration, a grasp of the mechanics of each booking engine is a fundamental element of today’s sales and marketing activities.

The whole aspect of buying has been influenced by online traders, offering consumers the chance to search and buy products from any destination with the click of a mouse. Online buying has fast become the preferred method due to speed, choice and instantly available information. Tapping into the benefits of this medium will undoubtedly benefit any accommodation provider.

With so many global distribution networks and third party suppliers online, it’s a constant challenge for reservations personnel to investigate each ones unique offerings, commission rates and individual settings, while trying to maintain rate parity across all channels.  A greater understanding of internet and global distribution systems is essential to remain competitive. Utilizing these online sales channels will cost effectively market your product globally.

Things to remember for 2009

• Choose booking engines wisely, in terms of commission, coverage and profiling
• Advertise your best available rates and value added packages for optimum results
• Manage your online activity in conjunction with your offline activity to strengthen your advertising efforts
• Be selective and concise with your copy, including your key selling points, visitor attractions, directions and high quality images
• Keep descriptions and promotions fresh and targeted
• And most important : Make rate parity a must across all booking channels

By Christina Giliberti

Enjoy the winter with De Vere hotels

Hotel chains try different things to beat the credit crunch and De Vere came out with a fantastic one week only promotional campaign. 2 days to go so hurry up!

An independant hotel bids on an expensive key word

We all know how expensive PPC campaigns could be on search engines, knowing that the travel industry is one of the biggest advertising revenue generator for Google or Yahoo.

An independant hotel - the Fenbridge Hotel in Gatwick Airport - has decided to bid on the simple word "hotels" on Google. I can't imagine how much this is going to cost him. Also why would you click on the link? If people just type "hotels" on search engines, they probably want to find more than one hotel.

I remember that the cost per click on "hotels" is around £1.5 these days . Ouch !!!

Hotel SO displays customer feedback

Hotel SO is one of those unique hotels where innovation and imagination come together. Their CEO Nick McCaw has decided to display online their customer feedback. Not from an online survey system though but by taking pictures of the guest book and uploading them on the site We Love So. Clever, isnt' it?

Not good for search engines though as robots are not able to read text in pictures yet.