Hotel Blogs - When Hotel Marketing gets Social

Let's experience something else elsewhere

As you already know, I am becoming very selective when it comes to publish articles about all the press releases I receive on my inbox. However some drive my attention (probably 5% to be honest) and recently I came across a great story.

Meet Barry Frangipane who decided to pack his bag from the USA and decided to live in Venice (Italy) for 18 months while keeping his job as a software engineer. Barry tells his story about how valuable and relatively easy it was for him to "telecommute" himself from his home country to Venice and maintaining his same job.

98% of visitors recommend Ireland

Failte Ireland's 2009 visitor survey results have bolstered the tourism sector. Ireland has been given a clear 'thumbs up' by holiday makers with 98% recommending Ireland as a holiday destination.

The number one spot in the reasons category is 'friendly, hospitable people'.

#2 Beautiful scenery

#3 Safe and secure destination

How do they choose?

Word of mouth is top one, with the internet cited as a growing influence.

When planning, 67% turn to the internet and 46% to guidebooks.

Unique advantage

It seems that the people are what matter as the Irish people themselves were mentioned at the unique advantage Ireland has.

Post written by Christina Giliberti @CG_OnlineM

GTMC admits failure when using LinkedIN, really?

A week has passed since my last blog post and here I am, still talking about LinkedIN.

Unless this time, the best business social networking tool with 40M members worldwide gets some publicity from travel agents. But not traditional travel agents. Martin Ferguson from TTG recently wrote an article about how the Guild of Travel Management Companies (GTMC) failed to created a dynamic and engaging group on LinkedIN. The group was initiated by Danny Price, Operations Manager at Travel by Appointment. Unfortunately after 3 months, only 2 discussions and 4 comments were submitted through the dedicated group. 

So where the failure comes from? If you can call this a failure after only 3 months...

In my opinion, it doesn't come from LinkedIN, neither the idea of creating a group dedicated to the Travel Management Companies frontline middle managers.

First of all, the GTMC is quite a small group compared to the business travel market worldwide. Not in terms of turnover, but in terms of members that represent the association. If you search "GTMC" on LinkedIN, you will find no more than 37 results (according to my network which is very much UK based and travel industry related). If I drill down to relevant results, maybe a dozen of people are definitely working for GTMC members such as Ian Allan, Capita Business Travel, CWT or Travel Management Group. It doesn't mean that more LinkedIN members don't work with these companies. It is because people don't put GTMC in their profile.

If I search "GTMC" in companies, I get no results. Same thing if I search in groups. The group has probably already been deleted from the most useful business social networking site. I am surprised this intitiative hasn't been further continued with more incentive for members to interact.

Not so long ago, I was launching the Hotel-Blogs.com LinkedIN group and within days I got about 100 requests to join the group. Based on 2 convsersations I have initiated, I have received about 20 comments in one week. One fact: I have less connections and business history than the whole community within the GTMC. But for some reasons, the group does work for me and more importantly for the community who is happy to share experience and thoughts about ongoing issue within the hospitality industry.

So here's my advice to Danny who leads this initiative:

1. Don't blame LinkedIN but more how the tool was used in the last 3 months. Maybe a 5 pages "LinkedIN for dummies" submitted to GTMC members would have helped.

2. Need to open the group to more than GTMC members. Remember: only 1% of the audience creates content, 10% engage and 90% are passive (never submit a comment).

3. Identify at least 5 evangelists within the group who can easily creates content and initiate conversation with other members (after working parties for instance)

4. Make sure GTMC is searchable on LinkedIN

5. Have a look at similar groups and see how people connect to eath others. HBAA group is good example and it is only 6 months old.

Social Networking and Travel Agents: a winning combination

In the last ten years, we have seen the emergence of low cost airlines, online travel agents and the globalization of content offering. All of these makes the work of an offline travel agent much harder that what it used to be. Can the agent on the streets survive?

The 20th century traveller has progressed into the 21st century to search information on the web in real time and is able to converse with his peers with different communities available to him like TripAdvisor, Vinivi or blogs like TravellersPoint. The behavior of the traveller has changed dramatically. She can make her mind quickly and cannot be predictable anymore. Access to exotic destinations is greater with competitive airlines fares available and no more does she have second thoughts about staying in cheap accommodation as long as she  has checked recently the latest reviews of the hotel thanks to travellers like her.

Even better, the words do not dominate the content she's after. She can preview a video of the room she will stay at, thanks to different sites like TvTrip.com, Trivop,  YouTube or Dailymotion. She can view the pictures on Flickr or Picassa that other travellers have taken at her next holiday destination. So she knows that this is the right destination for her. She can't wait to see for herself what it's like to be in front of the Great Pyramid of Giza. She can also download free audio guides from iAudioguides in her own language so she won't be lost whilst visiting cultural sites.

So professional agents almost compete with these Internet information savvy travellers. How can he re-gain trust from them?

A common thought is that short haul city breaks (below 3 days) are no longer in the hands of offline travel agents. Travellers can make their mind up and book on online travel agents like Expedia or Lastminute without spending too much time on the decision making process.

Long haul and long stays are still better to be booked with offline travel agents. Especially if you have a complex itinerary in your head. And this is where offline travel agent can add value and innovate.

They have access to real time fares, hotel rates and can generate in minutes different itineraries for you with different pricing options. Try to do this yourself online and you will see how painful the process is. Travel Agents also have their own online community thanks to sites like Vinivi customized portal GalileoOpinions or AgentStream where agents can report problems at properties, flights, transfers. They can also exchange tips about destinations thanks to TripShake and asks the question "What is the faster route to go from Bangkok to Chang Rai" and so on. The offline agent has also a name, a face and a personal experience that you can read by yourself. You can relate to this person and even contact him or her during your trip. In fact, you should be able to email him or her and if the offine agent is innovative enough, you can correspond with him via Skype or Facebook or Twitter.

The reach of travellers is 100% easier for offline agents. You just need to be geared up with the right tools and be keen to be adventurous. When I hear offlline agents in their office can't access these social networking tools because their IT director decided to, I feel sorry for them. Why take away the places where travellers exchange? Ok I hear the reason. It is to control work productivity. Really? What about phones, mobile phones where you can download Facebook applications, emails.

So here's the innovation. An offline agent can engage online with travellers and offer advice on their next trip and guess what, I am sure some will probably pay a visit to this travel agent who took the initiative to help him. And if the traveler is happy, he would probably tells his friends and family about this travel agent and why not sharing this on Twitter or Facebook. The benefit is free publicity for an offline agency employee who dared to interact online by using 21st century communication tools.

Happy agents! Happy customers!

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.

Why Hotel Chains has integrated an Agents access on their website?

While today’s time is about efficiency and maximization of your workforce, I find it strange that hotel chains like Four Pillars still believe in Travel Agents microsite embedded in their website (usually targeted at consumers).

The UK hotel chain has launched what they call the Four Pillars Agent’s Lounge aiming at attracting travel agents with special offers, incentives competition and other goodies. For some reason, I have never really believed into this web marketing initiative. Agents need to access inventory across the board in a city or region and would rarely browse different hotel chains websites to see what’s best for their customers.

They need to compare rates, hotel room offerings and location on a dynamic mapping solution like Google Maps or Microsoft Virtual Earth. Even though it’s great that hotel chains communicate directly to agents, I believe their should concentrate on loading special rates on international booking systems like the GDS or Bedbanks and leave their website for consumers willing to know more about their properties and eventually book direct.

Does that make more sense?

 

Travelzoo compliant with showing all inclusive fares?

As every week, I receive the top20 newsletter from Travelzoo with their best offers they found on the web. If you look at the first offer, RyanAir advertises seats from £0.02 but forget to list hidden additional costs like Airport checkin and baggage handling charges. I believe this (again) misleads the consumer and the purpose of showing these super low fares is to attract the candid traveller to look further.

When looking deeper into Travelzoo site, you can find this page where they say "Unless otherwise indicated, companies listing deals on Travelzoo may not include all applicable taxes, charges and government-imposed fees in the price you see"...

I think there is no excuse today for not displaying these taxes. This is deliberate and some lessons haven't been learnt here. Any thoughts?

Paper brochures are still useful in travel agencies but

In the last 4 weeks, I have been searching for where we should go next on holidays. As usual, we have some key criteria: hot and sunny weather, regions to explore, trendy boutique design hotels available and the sea. As every year, we spent a bit of time in several brick and mortar travel agencies in London Hight St Kensington. For the third year runnning, Trailfinders is in my opinion the best option to organize your trip, give you advices and quote you a reasonable price for the whole package. And also, they are flexible enough to book you hotels that are not necessarly in their brochures.

But back to my point. For this research, having several destinations paper brochures from Trailfinders or Kuoni definetely helped us to  rull out certain destinations (weather conditions, too expensive...) and have a broad idea about where we wanted to stay (destinations and hotels). Usually paper brochures give you an idea of the hotel prices and room types options. They also give you indication about extras (honeymoon packages, upgrade). So when you come to the travel agent, you have a good idea about how much you will be paying and you don't waste too much time looking at several options with the agent checking his computer. You usually have some good pictures of each hotel (Trailfinders dedicate half a page for each hotel).

When we came to Trailfinders, we knew which hotels we wanted to stay, which dates we wanted to fly (away and return) and airlines we would fly with.

Then come the dilemna of which room types you should book in each hotel. This is something that a paper brochure has difficulties to answer. What's the diffence between a superior room, a luxury room, a deluxe room, a suite, an ocean view, a garden view...You end up looking for too many options and you are lost. And you can't expect the travel agent to know every single room type of all hotels they work with. This is where the online review world helps a lot. I explored TripAdvisor, VibeAgent and Vinivi to check the hotels latest reviews and more importantly the pictures or videos loaded by consumers. There are plenty of them that could help you in your choice. And you can check the latest stays as well. A picture taken 2 years ago at hotel might not be relevant if the hotel went through a renovation phase.

Now we know which room types we would like to go for. Next ideal step would be to book a room number. The new venture TripKick is trying this in several cities in the US.

Another airline casualty

In the last 3 months, the airline industry has seen 4 players going into receivership and have ceased to operate.  After Oasis, Silverjet, Eos, Zoom Airlines has closed their doors on Thursday and all flights have been cancelled and their fleet condemned to stay on the ground. This airline was operating with 600 staff members. The increase of price in the oil and the current economic climate are the main reasons for this operations suspension, says their management team.

We wonder where all this is going to end. We are hearing that AirFrance/KLM is resuming negotiations with Iberia. Virgin Atlantic tries to protect itself from a possible merger between British Airways and American Airlines or Continental Airlines.

Does that also mean we are going to see more casualties in low cost airlines? Probably.

How to find cheap airfares