Hotel Industry Online Marketing Blog

Digital Marketing Solutions for the Hospitality Industry.

 

  • TripAdvisor Price Comparison Search for Hotels

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    Travel Reviews have become an integral part of the management of a hotel brand online and more recently have extended to social media and search engines as well as more traditional review websites, such as TripAdvisor. Tripadvisor price comparison searchMore information on how Facebook and their Graph Search will influence hotel reviews can be found in the Blog, Facebook Home and How it will Affect Hotels. 

    The recently launched price comparison search display means that the promotion of OTA rates for hotels is no longer only viewable through pop-ups but will feature clearly and prominently on each of their pages. To date the TripAdvisor site has not fully realised the online booking potential of its site and remained primarily a review site, however, this move clearly demonstrates their move into the online booking market.

    TripAdvisor have been in operation since 2000 and have amassed an estimated 100 million user reviews, making it a very powerful player in the online market. The fact that they have enhanced their hotel booking capabilities, highlights their intentions to take their cut from hotel sales online by actively promoting their booking engine partners on the hotel review pages. This will mean that an increasing number of visitors to the hotel review pages will book on the TripAdvisor page rather than clicking through to the hotel’s own site, meaning an increase in OTA bookings and ultimately a higher cost of distribution. All being helped by the individual hotels actively promoting TripAdvisor on their own sites with direct links from prominent locations with their various awards.

  • Facebook Home & How It Will Affect Hotels

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    The Facebook Home option allows users to replace their mobile screen with a Cover Feed from Facebook, with up-dates, photos and status up-dates from friends. Depending on the up-take of this option it means that hoteliers will have to ensure that they factor in a Facebook strategy as part of their mobile strategy and ensure that both elements work to increase conversions. Facebook Home Marketing StrategyOnce Facebook have integrated other recent developments such as, Local Search and Graph Search with Facebook Home, then traditional review sites may be replaced by Graph Search, with friends influencing search decisions on a more local and personalised level. Whenever these elements are integrated and if Facebook Home is adapted by a large number of mobile users, then management of hotel reviews online will take on a more individual relevance, with each persons individual perception or views on a hotel influencing a potentially wide network of friends.Requiring hoteliers to adapt their online reputation management strategy. Read more about this topic at Revinate.

  • To Be or not to Be Responsive?

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    The latest buzz in Website design has been Responsive sites and how they will enable companies to ensure that their sites display optimally regardless of the device or browser being used, without the hassle and cost of maintaining and up-dating different websites for different devices. Responsive site design In1 Solutions are already providing Responsive Websites for a number of clients.

    With the dramatic growth in the use of tablet and mobile devices, a solution needed to be found that ensured that websites were being effectively managed and marketed for all devices. In essence it is the automatic resizing and re-arranging of the layout of the site to ensure that the page is readable on all sizes and shapes of devices using a form of CSS.

    Because the website needs to be in essence “elastic” there can be limitations on the content and the size and placing of particular elements so that they can adapt to a mobile view from a 1024 x 768 typical desktop layout. Key elements, for example a Search Box, should be placed in particular locations and should not be too large to ensure that they appear in a prominent position and fully readable on the smallest mobile version. There can also be some limitations on various promotional plugins, however, this technology is being up-dated and adapted at a rapid rate and the pros outweigh the cons as an solutions for website design in a multi-device environment.

  • Recommendation for Hotels to use Integrated Technology

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    A recent Cornell study in the US urged hotels to strategically integrate technology – Cornell Technology Integration Review. The report highlights how, although hotels are making use of industry developments in IT and technology, there has been no significant implementation of strategic integrated solutions that would yield results with regard to greater efficiencies and effectiveness of both resources and revenue.Integrated Online Distribution Solutions

    In1 Solutions has developed a number of integrated solutions which, when implemented by hotels have delivered significant results.  They include integrations to support effective online distribution of rates and availability through our Channel and GDS integrated offerings and also effective management of bookings, availability, reporting etc with our integrated PMS offering. When they are combined in out “All In1″ Solution it provides significant improvements in the management and growth of revenue online. In addition to providing integrated solutions for individual hotels and groups, In1 also provide integrated technology solutions combined with online marketing for a number of partners, including Sulcus Solutions in Spain.

    For more information on our Integrated Technology Solutions call us on T: +353 1 870 6350 or E: support@in1solutions.com.

  • What impact is the emphasis on Encrypted Search having on SEO

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    In January Google up-dated their algorithms for SEO and in addition to the recent up-dates another element which has got search marketers talking is the emphasis placed on encrypted search and how that affects SEO. Part of the reason for Google changing the focus could be due to the growing emphasis they have placed on local or personalised search (Search Plus Your World – SPYW) and by taking users that are signed in to Google to a secure page they can protect their personalised search history.

    From a basic level for hoteliers and marketers it means that when evaluating organic search history in Google Analytics, you will not be able to see the entrance keyword that Google Encrypted search brought that user to the site and will instead see – “not provided”. So it will be harder to determine which campaign worked in organic terms and will instead have to to use paid search to test the effectiveness of specific keywords and campaigns with regards to conversions.

    Also as mentioned in a number of previous content marketing blogs, the importance of content marketing on SEO is starting to have a greater impact meaning for many that this has become another cost area and makes it easier for larger brands with bigger budgets to dominate.

    Between recent search algorithm up-dates, growing emphasis on content marketing and the increased use of encrypted search – Google is making it more costly and time consuming to manage your websites and with other developments, such as Hotel Finder, there is even less space on the page for organic search results with more space being given to paid advertising of one form or another. With Google the future is to some extent uncertain for basic search marketing, but one thing is certain it will definitely get more costly!

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