Hotel Blogs - When Hotel Marketing gets Social

Video Interview with Jerome Touze, Co-Founder of WAYN.com - #leweb

Last interview from me from Le Web held in Paris last week. I was very excited to catch up with Jerome Touze who is the co-founder of WAYN.com, the travel social networking sites who have more than 15M members. In this interview, you will hear from some new features happening on the site, how the site has evolved in the last 3 years and also the re-opening of a paid subscription model where you can access some sort of a "VIP" club with many advantages like upgrade on car rental, discount in hotels and so on. Enjoy the interview and as always feel free to comment.

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!

Video Interview with Marc Ruff, CEO of TvTrip.com - part.2

This is the second part of a new video interview I conducted in Paris in August. It features a one to one conversation with Marc Ruff, CEO of Tvtrip.com which has raised around $14M from venture capitalists in two rounds in 2007 and 2009. Tvtrip.com allows consumers to view videos of hotel rooms, facilities and so on before you book with one of their affiliate partners.

In this interview, you will hear about the business model, how they approach hotels, what TvTrip delivers for hotel chains contracts like Accor and their next steps.

The first part of the interview is available here.

Video Interview with Marc Ruff, CEO of TvTrip.com - part.1

This is new video interview I conducted in Paris in August. It features a one to one conversation with Marc Ruff, CEO of Tvtrip.com which has raised around $14M from venture capitalists in two rounds in 2007 and 2009. Tvtrip.com allows consumers to view videos of hotel rooms, facilities and so on before you book with one of their affiliate partners.

This is the first part of the interview. The second part will be published later this week.

CrunchBase Information

TVtrip

Information provided by CrunchBase

How hotels use (and misuse) Facebook: 5 examples, 14 ideas for you

This is a guest post by Josiah Mackenzie, author of a hotel marketing blog.

To followup on Guillaume's series on hotels using Twitter, I wanted to examine how hotels are using another popular network: Facebook. While Twitter seems to be getting all the press, a traffic comparison chart from Compete.com may surprise you:

A couple big takeaways from this:

• Facebook reaches four times as many people as Twitter
  
• Facebook is growing faster than Twitter (especially over the past 3 months)
• Twitter growth has plateaued over the past month (Quantcast even shows a drop)
  

For these reasons, I wondered how hotels are using Facebook to engage their fans and attract new ones. Let's take a look:

Hilton Hotels

Link: Facebook page
Location: Worldwide brand
Number of fans: 21,486
Wall content: Only fan comments
Info section: website URL
Hotel photos: 1 (only the company logo)
Fan photos: 163
Events: 1 (past event, no upcoming events)

Hilton's Facebook presence is largely driven by their fans. The front page consists mostly of comments like Gabriel wrote: "The best hotel on the world!!!!" I'll let you decide how helpful that is from a marketing standpoint, but I do like the variety and quality of their fan photos:

Encouraging fan photos is a great use of your page. Many people will post photos to Facebook after they return from vacation (holiday), and it is possible to collect more photos here than on Flickr - which has a smaller user base.

Opus Hotels

Link: Facebook page
Location: Vancouver and Montreal, Canada
Number of fans: 2,305
Wall content: mix of hotel-published events and media
Info section: location, phone, website URLs
Hotel photos: 14 albums
Fan photos: 76
Events: no upcoming events, but 53 past events
Boxes: videos, contests, hotel info, guest reviews

I like how Opus Hotels gives an insider access experience with their video interview series. By letting their Facebook fans "meet" the individuals behind the scenes, the Facebook page is providing unique value and a reason to participate.

Grand Hotel

Link: Facebook page
Location: Michigan, USA
Number of fans: 1,525
Wall content: diverse mix of hotel media, special offers, and fan content
Info section: location, phone, website URLs
Hotel photos: 21 albums
Fan photos: 18
Events: 11 upcoming events (plus several past ones)
Boxes: favorite pages (Flickr gallery and Mackinac Island - where they are located)

The Grand Hotel is very close to my summer home, and a popular landmark in the area. The people operating this page seem to be doing a good job of engaging their fanbase: particularly through announcing events and then publishing photo albums of them. Again, this is a good example of adding value by providing exclusive content not available elsewhere.

Also, they include updates from their other social media sites using Facebook applications. If you're publishing elsewhere, this is a good model to follow.

Hotel Olympia

Link: Facebook page
Location: Thessaloniki, Greece
Number of fans: 601
Wall content: 2 (slightly ambiguous) updates from the hotel
Info section: location, phone, website URL, hotel info
Hotel photos: 69 photos in 3 albums
Fan photos: 0
Events: 1 (past event, no upcoming events)
Boxes: 2 discussion threads (nearly a year old) and 5 hotel reviews (mostly positive)

Located in a historic building, Hotel Olympia shares photos of what the property looked like decades ago...and the modern design it now offers. I like when historic hotels can share their heritage using new media like this.

Hotel Olympia has filled out their "Info" section to provide a lot of details about the hotel. But with 600 fans, I think they could be doing more to engage their followers. Remember, having a static page with no interaction doesn't really benefit you or your fans.

Hotel Murano

Link: Facebook page
Location: Washington, USA
Number of fans: 205
Wall content: mostly links to hotel-related content
Info section: location, phone, website URLs (including social media profiles)
Hotel photos: 7 albums
Fan photos: 0
Events: 0
Boxes: blog updates, Twitter updates and YouTube videos

Hotel Murano's Facebook page does a good job of what I call guestsourcing: encouraging their guests to produce online content. In this example, they link to photographers and bloggers who have recently covered the hotel. This is a good way to engage your fans, and ultimately builds a strong web presence.

Promotional ideas for hotels on Facebook

Let's recap the smart marketing actions taken by these hotels:

1. Encourage fan photos
2. Get a username URL (ex: facebook.com/opushotel)
3. Post video interviews with your staff ("behind the scenes access")
4. Provide unique content on your page (not available elsewhere)
   
5. Announce special events...then followup with a photo album for each event
6. Use Facebook applications to include content from other networks you're active in
7. Engage your followers: talk with them, ask them questions
8. Encourage bloggers to write about you by linking to their stories
   

Some more ideas you may want to try:

• Make sure you have a great profile picture (attention grabbing & attractive at a small size)
  
• Create a group, which is different than a hotel profile page (Tip: to be successful, it may have to be around a larger travel concept than just your hotel)
• Experiment with 'social ads' paid advertising (Warning: I don't recommend this in most cases, due to the poor return on investment my colleagues and I have seen over several campaigns)
  
• Start a poll to do real-time market research
• Explore other applications to add (expands the functionality of your page)
  
• Build your own application - which is probably only worthwhile if you're a large brand
  

Is Facebook a good use of your time?

It depends on your property type and goals. Ask yourself:

• Who are we trying to reach? (Quantcast provides useful demographics information)
  
• What do we want from Facebook that we cannot get elsewhere?
• Is there exclusive content we can best offer on Facebook? (video interviews, photos, etc)
• Do we have the time to engage our fans?
• How does Facebook fit into our broader internet marketing strategy?

---
Josiah once denounced Facebook for hotel marketing, but later recanted...sort of.

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

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.

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.

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.)