Travel Marketing in the Age of Web 2.0 & Beyond

Surprising, after all these years......

of online travel, to find that Independent Hotels’ Online Presence Lagging according to this recent study by GuestCentric. The gap between the larger chains and smaller independent hotels is significant when it comes to an effective presence online and the use of web based marketing and distribution tools.

The web was supposed to have leveled the playing field for large and small players but it seems that hasn't entirely happened in the accommodation sector yet, although according to the latest PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey Hotel stays were the most popular component with U.S. online leisure travel buyers in 2007.

This is proof of the growth opportunity for the accommodation sector and poses a challenge to those who haven't yet focused on how to best use the web as a key tool to assure their future success and do so fast or very likely continue to decline and eventually disappear. No supplier in the travel industry can any longer afford to stay on the sidelines when it comes to the effective use of the web.

Technorati Tags: hotels, accommodation,

Are you an enabler or a bystander?

Social Influence Marketing: The New Way to Win Customers contains a number of very useful suggestions of how to be actively engaged in the conversation about your brand rather than just a passive bystander. While these ideas are certainly useful, I just wonder how many organizations have the right marketing structure in place to implement these activities. Looking at the large majority of travel sites out there, I haven't noticed anyone in particular being at the leading edge of what's called here social influence marketing. It will require a change in mindset that allows this happen and it can't come too soon.

Technorati Tags: chief marketer, social influence marketing, social media

Social Applications dominate the web

according to this presentation by Morgan Stanley analyst Mary Meeker, reported in Tech Crunch

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Here are some more figures that show the rapid growth rates of he major social sites:

* YouTube + Facebook page views > Google or Yahoo page views (and may be bigger than both combined)
* 6/10 top internet sites are social (youtube, live.com, facebook, hi5, wikipedia, orkut); none were on the list in 2005
* YouTube has 258 million users, 50% visit weekly or more
* >50% of Facebook users log in daily, 95% of Facebook users have used at least one third party application
* Skype revenue is $1.67/user/year, up 9% Y/Y
* 14 million photos uploaded daily on Facebook
* Google + Yahoo = 61% of U.S. Online Ad Revenue
* Google: $4.4b ad revenue in Q4, paid out $1.4 billion to partners
* Yahoo: $1.6 billion in ad revenue in Q4, paid out $429 million to partners

The impact this has on overall media consumption, social interaction on the web as well as consumer buying behavior seems evident and another clear indicator how important it is for organizations in any industry to pay attention to what is being said about them on these sites. The challenge is to be able to separate the wheat from the chaff, break through the clutter to get to the essential stuff impacting their business.

Co-opting the YouTube generation

is my alternative title for this latest effort by major companies to get their message noticed in a marketplace that is increasingly tone deaf to their traditional one-way marketing speak. To counter that trend PR Giant Edelman Ventures Into Branded Content as reported in Advertising Age - Madison+Vine. It remains to be seen how effective this type of "enhanced" user-generated content will be and how many aspiring producers will participate to sell more burgers to their peers.

Interesting to note, is the participation of Expedia in this initiative. My question here is: Why not enter into a direct dialog with their thousands of customers and TripAdvisor users to provide them with content that they are most likely already posting on the web instead of going the "managed" route by working with their PR company? Looks to me like some kind of an American Idol inspired contest to sponsor consumer produced content rather than having it delivered by ad agencies. Will people buy it? Remains to be seen.



Technorati Tags: marketing, PR, UGC, edelman

Does anyone still need more proof....?

I doubt it, after analyzing the results of the study Consumers Use Social Media to Vent about Customer Service reported in MarketingVOX. Key comment:

"These most savvy and sought-after consumers will not support companies with poor customer care reputations, and they will talk about all of this openly with others via multiple online vehicles. This research should serve as a wake-up call to companies: listen, respond, and improve."

What's also important is the following:

Search engines are the most valuable online tools for this research. Those rated of no value include micro-blogging sites like Twitter or Pownce (39%), YouTube (27%) and social-networking sites like Facebook and MySpace (22%).

Reputations are made at any customer touch-point with your brand but are amplified exponentially online with the tools available to consumers today and the behavior they clearly exhibit. Ignore them at your own peril!
Technorati Tags: eMarketer, marketing, social media, social networks

A "Revolutionary" Campaign with wings

This award winning case study of a campaign to build viral buzz on MarketingSherpa caught my attention as not too many are from the travel industry. It explains in detail how Germanwings used web 2.0 tools to involve their audience with their brand while at the same time grow their database of new customers. A key element of the campaign was a specific micro-site. This is what I have proposed a number of years ago to DMOs to build rather than drive traffic to their main website where interaction is limited. The added benefit is that such a site can be deployed more quickly and in many cases reused, at least in part, for future similar campaigns at lower cost.

The results are an indicator of how well this campaign was received with a 26% open rate. 7.2% click-through, 45,000 profiles and 15,000 groups created. In addition their 1.4 million email list grew by 0.5%. What's equally positive is the 9.5 minutes people spent on the micro-site, longer than the average time spent per visitor on their mainsite. Looks to me like a well deserved award winner and a model that DMOs should emulate in their own campaigns, especially those that integrate off- and online elements, where a micro-site would be best suited as the core fulfillment mechanism.

Distinction Between Bloggers, Journalists Blurring More Than Ever

MediaShift Digging Deeper::PBS deals with the topic the panel I'm on at the PhoCusWright Blogger Summit at the ITB in Berlin will address.

The title is journalists vs. bloggers, by itself a misnomer, as the lines have blurred between what used to be until quite recently very different categories as the article makes very clear. Like so much else, the role of journalists has been affected by how the web develops and this will very likely continue to be the case. The conversation continues......

Here's the one you want to be on!

the TravelersChoiceAwards2008 list of top hotels which I'm sure is full of hotels that not only deliver on their promise but very likely over deliver and are rewarded for it. They probably also are aware of how they are perceived in the marketplace by participating in the conversation that happens about them and take corrective action quickly if needed to avoid the fate of those who take things for granted and probably don't care.

TripAdvisor's 2008 Top 10 Dirtiest Hotels

This is the list you definitely do not want to be on!

It's a great - and for some scary! - example of the radical transparency businesses are facing today. There is no place to hide and anyone would be advised to manage their online brand reputation way before they end up on a list like this. I'm convinced that these establishments must have received negative feedback directly over a period of time that would have allowed them to improve the situation. More likely they just didn't pay attention or care.

Facebook fatigue?

Facebook Falling Off? asks Marketing Pilgrim and shows us a neat graph to visualize what might be the answer to the question

and Kevin on Travolution asks if "the social networking boom is losing momentum"First off, I'm not blaming the messengers here for reporting about this and granted, the figures show some drop off in traffic but let's remember, the first reports about the meteoric rise of Facebook outside the college crowd appeared less than about a year ago. For some of the other social networking sites it might be a bit longer, but by and large about one year. Then everyone was worried that without a Facebook application or even own social networking site their business would nosedive, now it's "well, we don't have to worry about all this social web thing after all"  This somehow reminds me of the much predicted total demise of travel agents when the web 1.0 wave hit the shore and then the recent opposite claim by Forrester about a travel agent resurgence.  I can't help but think that we're jumping on and off bandwagons far too quickly here and need to take a collective breath before embracing developments and proclaim them the latest and greatest thing on the web. It's in the very nature of web developments that some are permanent and others short lived and that's likely to continue to be the case in future.