Just experimenting with the newly added feature on Google Hotel Finder that allows you to specify maximum travel time from an attraction or landmark... this would've come super handy when I was looking for hotel options near school a couple of years ago!
Must say that this approach is far superior to the standard OTA method...guessing Google's dominance in the local search space combined with tons of great underlying data will make this an invaluable feature to the fast evolving Google Hotel Finder "experiment"!
There's a lot of buzz in the industry about the new meta search engine launched by 6 hotel giants...there's clearly a great value proposition here for hoteliers... but what about the customers? I still don't see any clear differentiators that would have customers used to popular OTAs switch over to using this site (no packaging options and limited choice are just two simple hurdles).
Launching this new brand in a cluttered distribution space and competiting head-on with OTAs on search at sustainable / advantageous costs is another story altogether.
It's still early days of course...but what do YOU think? "Hit" or "miss"?
Kudos to IMI for continuing to innovate and push the boundaries. A great story shared by dear friend and fellow tech enthusiast, Lukas Ritzel.
For the past few months some 80 international students of more than 20 different nationalities who currently study at IMI University Centre in Luzern, Switzerland have collected data to create the the world's first crowd-sourced student guide. The iPhone App is a collaboration with Luzern Tourism which also has its own tourism city guide and covers much more than just the best places to have your pizza or beer. It’s about Swiss culture, stories about Heidi and even answers questions like: "Do Swiss people really eat most chocolate of all nationalities?". The Student iPhone App also collects many of those insider tips which only international students currently living in Switzerland can know about, having lived abroad for such a long time.
The app is now a free download on the Apple App store from: http://bit.ly/e8byM6 (Direct Link). Alternatively search for “Luzern” and you will easily find the IMI University Centre iStudent Luzern app on the Apple iPhone Store.
The free app can be used and downloaded from everywhere and all participant students are listed in the app itself.
What's so unique about this iPhone App?
The world’s first international student guide with many different categories
The first cityguide / international student guide which is totally crowdsourced, which means students provided all the content
The guide covers all aspects related to international student life in Luzern, Switzerland but can also be of interest for somebody who is simply interested in Switzerland and its cultural aspects
The IMI guide officially partners with the Luzern Tourism city guide which is as well a free download from the apple app store
The guide currently has 7 categories:
Top Info - all that is essential for international students
Top Rumours - what might be perceived but not always true about Switzerland/ Swiss people
Why Luzern? the top 10 reasons why Luzern is one of the best places to be and to study
Do's and Don'ts - important to know if new to Swiss culture
Education - Luzern is known to the world as a tourism hub is as well a university town and hosts thousands of international students
Food - In different categories the best and cheapest food places that are available in Luzern
Student Gems - special tips and selections of all the students participating at version 1.0
Google recently presented their vision for how display advertising is likely to evolve by 2015...these seven predictions are something all marketers worth their salt absolutely MUST be informed and aware about.
To summarize, here are the broad predictions:
50% of ad campaigns will include video ads bought on a cost-per-view basis
50% of ads will be bought using this real-time bidding technology to tailor experiences for different viewers
Smartphones / mobile is going be the number one screen for digital brands to engage users
There will be at least five metrics that advertisers will regard as more important than the "click"
75% of web ads will be “social” in nature i.e. Ads will be shared, discussed, subscribed to and recommended
Rich media formats enable great creativity and interaction - these will grow from 6% of display ad impressions to 50%, especially for brand building campaigns
Digital display advertising is going to grow to a $50 billion industry
Watch the excellent keynote address by Neal Mohan (VP Product Management) and Barry Salzman (MD Media & Platforms - America) at the Interactive Advertising Bureau’s MIXX Conference in New York, entitled “Display 2015: Smart and Sexy.” The video is about 39 mins long but worth a patient watch - it takes you through these predictions individually and with some demos of existing and coming tech from Google to make all this happen.
So this obviously raises some important questions for the hotel industry. Hotel companies have usually belonged to the late majority of tech adopters or where resources and internal "will" allow for it...in the early majority. But are we ready for the searing pace of development in the digital space?
The hospitality industry shares many of the same data security vulnerabilities as the retail industry — accepting and storing cardholder information and personal information collected through participation in loyalty and rewards programs — yet lags in the adoption of data security practices, which makes it an attractive target for cybercriminals. We talk to Gary Palgon to understand the basics surrounding the key data security issues and what hotels can do to secure valuable information. Though many of these issues fall in the realm of IT, knowing the basics are a must for all digital hotel marketing professionals too.[Hotelemarketer.com]What are the most common problems associated with data security and how do payment cards feature here?[Gary] The most common problem is that data is not secure; rather, it generally resides in applications and databases as unsecured, clear-text data in most cases … whether it’s payment card information or other sensitive consumer or employee information.
[Hotelemarketer.com]Your recent press release stated that 38% of all data security attacks were against hotels and resorts last year, making the hospitality industry the #1 target for breaches - what is the source of this information and how is this usually evaluated? (Global vs US-centric, methodology?)[Gary] Trustwave's Global Security Report 2010: Based on data collected by Trustwave's SpiderLabs, this report includes analyses of investigations of data compromised in 2009, detailed technical information on top vulnerabilities, and an actionable global remediation plan.
[Hotelemarketer.com]The release also stated that 98% of all 2009 breaches involved credit card numbers - why is this data particularly at risk and how do these breaches usually occur? [Gary] It’s important to understand the context of the report, as well, in that as much as credit cards were involved in the majority of the breaches, they only represented 6 percent of sensitive data being stolen last year (see http://datalossdb.org/statistics). The bulk of stolen data centered on social security numbers, and names and addresses.
The reason why credit card numbers were involved to such a high extent is that they require the least amount of effort to convert into dollars. When it becomes too difficult to steal credit card numbers, criminals will look to the other types of sensitive data that will still yield conversion into dollars, but perhaps require a little more work. With social security numbers, for example, you’d have to first create a fake identity … then follow this additional effort by obtaining a credit card in order to make purchases.
[Hotelemarketer.com]If you were to list the top 3 data breach scenarios at hotels, what would they be? How does the hospitality industry differ from most other retailers in this respect?[Gary] With regard to data breaches, hotels are not unlike other industries, in that typical data-breach scenarios include:
Lost laptops with unencrypted sensitive information on them,
Lost backup tape drives with unencrypted sensitive information on them, and
Attacks on core data repositories within the enterprise, like applications or databases, through a website or a direct database attack.
So, the nature of the attack scenarios is not that much different. What is different, however, is the fact that the retail industry in general has taken a more aggressive approach in addressing these issues. As a result, criminals have sought other, “softer” targets. To this end, the hospitality industry has become a bigger target in recent years because of its lack of focus regarding data security.
An email Q & A with Expedia's Alex Gisbert - We talk to Alex about the recent announcement about the Yahoo! - Expedia partnership that introduces Expedia's travel booking & packaging engine on Yahoo! sites across Europe.
[Hotelemarketer.com] It's great to hear about the recent partnership between Yahoo! and Expedia in Europe - could you tell us a little more about the deal and how this impacts the consumer in particular?[Alex] Expedia is providing a travel booking engine on Yahoo! Travel sites across Europe (UK, Ireland, France, Germany, Italy and Spain) in addition to a deals module which will be updated in real-time with the latest offers from Expedia.Through this deal, consumers will benefit from the rich editorial content provided by Yahoo! along with our sophisticated search technology and inventory of over 127 000 hotels and more than 450 airlines. We know that all travellers have very different priorities and these can change depending on the occasion, their schedule and their general travel preferences so we are constantly expanding the range of filters we offer so users can find exactly the right accommodation offering for them - in the last couple of months for example we have added both a green/sustainable hotel filter and an LGBT (Lesbian, gay, bi-sexual and transgender) friendly filter. The combined strength of the partnership brings users both inspiration of Yahoo!’s content and the ability to refine this choice according to their preferences and book with assurance that you are making the right choice by checking their choice with a variety of mapping options, reviews from previous Expedia customers and photos.
We understand that consumers use a variety of tools and sites when planning and researching their travel online and we want to make that process as simple as possible for travellers so we believe it’s important to work with sites like Yahoo! where we can offer relevant complementary services to save travellers time in their research. It’s very much about bringing our service to the user wherever they are to save them time. To take another example, earlier this year we launched a specialist IE8 travel browser with Microsoft in the UK offering the user ready access to a number of Expedia’s services such as hotel deals, lastminute deals, currency tracking and a co-branded weather tracking so that users can keep up to date with the latest deals, currency and weather changes whilst carrying on with their normal browsing activities.
[Hotelemarketer.com] We believe Expedia has quite an extensive affiliate network - what sets this particular partnership apart from the usual affiliate relationship?[Alex] The main difference here is the fact that this is co-branded integration rather than a link from Yahoo! to Expedia. In addition, both Yahoo! and Expedia have larger plans to leverage each other’s content and ability to inspire travel.
It's interesting to see how the buzz around social media and related developments has gradually grown over the past two years in the hotel industry. In 2008 social media was still considered a fad and made the odd appearance here and there in hospitality news media...now in 2010 you hardly find any hotel news publication, hotel blog or newsletter worth their salt without the token social media piece.
Looking at the wide variety of hotel social media articles, however, it appears very clear that the technology adoption curve (or diffusion of innovation) is alive and well. Every hospitality blogger and hotel news company is talking about social media...but the articles (and authors) clearly follow the curve. I thought it'd be fun to list some of the types of social media articles and blogs currently making the rounds atop the diffusion of innovation curve...here goes:
As you can see, we've got the technology Laggards, who still claim social media and hotels just don't mix...the late majority have at least woken up to the benefits of hotel reputation management using social media.
The Early majority tend to blog / write about how hoteliers can move beyond pure hotel reputation management and tackle the big scary world of social media by aligning with business and hotel marketing strategy.
Early social media adopters have moved on to publishing detailed hotel social media case studies and recommendations to hoteliers (and other tourism sectors) on how to go about squeezing the best Return on their Social Media "Involvement" (ROI redefined)...particularly refreshing are the pieces about integration, in relation to both hotel operations/processes and hotel technology.
The Innovators, meanwhile, are busy preparing for the next big thing in social media...but these articles are the rarer finds, because they're either doing great work behind the scenes to gain an edge...or actually driving the change.
Where do YOU fall on the social media adoption curve?
A recent blog post and case study shared by Mirai, on TripAdvisor's Business Listings option introduced earlier this year. Many hotels have jumped onboard and many others have held off till better information is available about the Return on Investment on these (often pricey) listings.
TripAdvisor Business Listing – not for everyone
On May 6th 2010 in its press release Tripadvisor announced that over 12 000 hotels around the world had subscribed to its Business Listings service and added their urls, emails and telephone numbers. Five months after the launch Paris has taken the leader position wih 13% slice of the total listings with urls, followed by Rome, Florence and Venice.
It looks like a great business for Tripadvisor! According to cautious estimates, the above numbers can mean at least 5 million euros in revenue generated by the new feature. But is it really worth for a hotelier to pay from 400 up to 10 000 Euros per year? Since TripAdvisor launched the service we have received many enquiries from numerous hoteliers, keen to boost their direct sales by placing a link, asking whether it pays off. We decided to check it.
So what is exactly a Business Listing on TripAdvisor?
It is a service that enables a hotelier to place a simple link containing hotel’s telephone number, URL and email on a search results page (Screen 1) and on a hotel’s sub-page on TripAdvisor (Screen 2).
I want to share two very simple but powerful ideas that could radically transform the way the hotel industry utilizes measures like the hotel guest satisfaction index, web analytics, etc.
1. Taking 'measurement' beyond just numbers
We all know that to be truly hospitable, one must go beyond just providing the necessary physical comforts that hotel guests and travellers demand. More often than not, what keeps guests coming back again and again are not the features and amenities...but the relationships and memories (after all, human beings ARE 80% emotion and 20% intellect). So perhaps it is time to step beyond the easily quantifiable attributes of a stay and start measuring actual guest 'happiness'. When was the last time you asked a hotel guest about what made them really happy? Guest satisfaction scores and indexes often fail to consider the true value that employee-guest relationships bring to the table. Plus, since guest satisfaction depends on your employees being happy...how many hotels do you know that actually go beyond the typical corporate HR mumbo-jumbo and actually understand what makes their people tick? Why do they come to work? What makes them happy? What would they like to achieve...and can we help them get there?
A great video to watch for some inspiration is Joie de Vivre Hotels CEO Chip Conley's TED talk. He touches on a variety of great points... from the move by countries towards measuring National Happiness...rather than stale old GDP numbers...to what he learnt from a housekeeper that has worked for him for over 2 decades.
Measuring happiness may sound like a pipe dream...but we're already on the way. Social media is a great way for the hotel guests to let brands and companies know really what they think. Already here, analytics companies are scrambling to perfect the art of sentiment measurement. I'm sure that given enough time, semantics and creativity we'll get there with the technology to measure the 'unmeasurable'...but what's really needed to make this happen though, is a shift in thinking and underlying corporate culture at hotels.
2. Gaming your way to better analytics
Games are more powerful that one would imagine. They have a remarkable way of drawing us in, teaching us and entertaining us. Gaming is also increasingly creeping into everything we do... from traditional console & PC gaming to the world of social networks and even the offline world. Games tend to bring out the competitive streak in most of us - I'm inclined to think Frequent Flier and Hotel Loyalty Program Junkies will testify that the thrill of getting to their 'million' points (or similar goal) is just as satisfying (if not more) than the actual accompanying benefits.
Though a bit on the extreme side, I loved the idea shared by game designer Jesse Schell (in his DICE summit talk) that games will eventually permeate into every aspect of real life - from scoring points for seemingly mundane everyday actions (like brushing your teeth) to point subsidies for making the right choices everyday (like using the bus to be more ecological) and even gaining direct benefits from allowing marketers to reach out to you with their messages. Watch the video below (a little long so you may want to skip ahead):
I think we can also apply the gaming idea to the way we deploy and utilize web analytics (and various other things, for that matter!). Instead of purely focusing on clickstream analysis and traffic stats for your hotel websites, why not try to figure out the actual value of those who visit your site? The act of simply assigning points to the actions users perform on your site can dramatically change the way you identify user engagement levels and the types of users based on behaviour. For example - assign a score to your hotel website actions or success metrics like viewing hotel details, making a booking, filling a hotel loyalty program subscription form, refer a friend function, etc in the order of their importance. Then, as users visit your hotel website, they accumulate points for their actions...the higher the score, the higher the desired engagement. You can then match these user segments to valuable insights like Average Room Rate Booked (are high engagement site visitors also big spenders?), Geo-Source (how does engagement vary by country or city), etc... these are all things that can ultimately help you understand your customer better and improve your hotel website and internet offering.
There we go... two very simple ideas, but ones that can be re-purposed and applied at will (preferably creatively!) for happier employees, happier guests and higher profits for hotel owners.
Here's a great presentation by a good friend (and extraordinary hotel educator), Lukas Ritzel. Lukas presented on the topic of the sensory web (Web 3.0) at the second ever TEDx event in Switzerland (Zug - May 27, 2010).
Explore Lukas' presentation below using Prezi, a superb presentation tool:
