HSMAI Curacao

Source: Hotelmarketing.com

IT isn’t easy to astonish Kathleen Ameche, who is usually on the road five days a week as a speaker, and who literally wrote the book on women and business travel.

But the result of a recent Web seminar on travel safety that she helped organize among 500 female business travelers did just that.

“Ninety-eight percent of them said they had their personal safety compromised on a business trip within the last 45 days,” said Ms. Ameche, the author of “The Woman Road Warrior: A Woman’s Guide to Business Travel” (Agate, 2005). “Ninety-eight percent! That number is staggering. In 2007 we still have that issue?”

It has been noted, here and elsewhere, that the growing number of female business travelers has had significant effects on the travel experience. Women are a big part of the reason that a typical hotel room, whether midlevel or luxury, has better bedding, lighting, room service, closets, work spaces and overall design.

Unlike men, women tend to notice the details and share them with friends and colleagues. So hotels are going to be hearing more about safety. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: hotelmarketing.com

NEARLY every morning, over his second cup of coffee, Tom Brady, general manager at the Affinia Chicago, logs onto his computer and surfs over to TripAdvisor.com to see if there are any new postings about his hotel.

“It’s an obsession,” he said. If the review is positive he moves on. If it’s unfavorable — like the complaint posted in March from a guest who had received a $90 parking ticket because of a valet’s error — he’s on it immediately. In that case, he marched straight out to the valet to find out what had happened. After identifying the guest, he made sure that the company issued an apology and a reimbursement for the ticket.

“This is all over the world,” he said, describing his concern about any negative comment on TripAdvisor. “Everyone is looking at this. I’ve got to make sure it’s solved quickly, so God forbid someone else doesn’t have the same problem.” Read the rest of this entry »

Source: www.hsmai.org

LAS VEGAS — “Travelers get the control they want to buy exactly what they value,” according to Henry Harteveldt of Forrester Research, who delivered the keynote address at the Travel Industry Association’s TravelCom Res-Expo conference and trade show in

In the future, will your computer plan the perfect trip? 

By Rob Lovitt, Travel writer MSNBC contributor

Way back in the Dark Ages (circa 1999), the folks at HotBot ran a very clever ad campaign likening Internet search to a room full of befuddled old men. Regardless of the query at hand, they’d pop up with the most ridiculous results, including, in one memorable case, a bow-tied geezer with a whip who would beckon: “Enter my dungeon of delight.”

“Why is he here?” asks a cohort, to which another replies in exasperation, “He comes up for everything.”

If you’ve ever researched a vacation online, you probably know the feeling. From choosing a destination to finding good deals, the typical search can lead to some wildly inappropriate results. A few weeks ago, I started asking various analysts and entrepreneurs what the explosion of online travel resources means for the rest of us. Can airfares be predicted? Are user reviews trustworthy? And, perhaps most important, is there any way to take the ever-expanding trove of travel-related data and make it less of a catalog and more of a guide? Read the rest of this entry »

Source: HSMAI.org- By Brenda Fields

For hotel staff working on Christmas morning, either behind the front desk or in the housekeeping department, a rooms sales position may look like a pretty cushy job! Sales people usually don’t have to work holidays or weekends and seem to have the freedom to come and go as they please. But, in reality, a sales position bears it own challenge and responsibilities to the property.

Sales has the primary responsibility to generate room revenues for the property i.e. building occupancy in low demand periods and increasing average rates in peak times. But, in order to do this successfully, it is important that a sales person is at the top of his/her game.
An effective sales person should be able to produce results despite market conditions and product drawbacks and to develop existing business by taking one meeting and turning it into four.

It is also important to understand that “sales” is a skill, not a personality trait. Expert sales skills can produce business despite product deficiencies, rate structure, or market conditions. Since most owners and operators do not have perfect properties and supply/demand dynamics can change, it is even more critical to ensure that each sales person is highly skilled to generate business and to deal with client objections and problems effectively.
A dedication to expert sales skills, thru a formal training program, is the best insurance for market share and profitability.
Although formal sales training is necessary, it is not the entire solution to ensure that each sales person is effective. This article will address some important “habits” that are demonstrated by the most effective sales people, to assist owners and managers in developing a highly effective sales department. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Marketingprofs.com

In the beginning, your company created a Web site. And it was good. But then it grew. And grew. And grew. Until it encompassed the heavens and the earth in content. Something for everyone. Everything for someone. And it ceased to be a coherent presentation to anyone. It became Encyclopedia Corporatica—a massive tome of information that includes press releases from five years ago. An impressive body of work, to be sure. But as a sales tool, as a marketing vehicle, it sags under its own weight. In the lightening-paced world of online marketing, your Web site has actually become less nimble. Before you can run with a daring new idea, you now have to make sure it fits with your existing information architecture, look-and-feel, and IT feature set. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: E-marketer.com

What’s the latest thing in online marketing for hotels?
Site design. Hotels have awakened to the challenge from online travel agencies, and they are shifting money into online marketing to meet it, according to a new study by Hospitality eBusiness Strategies (HeBS).
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The worldwide study of hospitality executives found that 68% of hoteliers plan to shift their budgets from offline to online marketing in 2007. Emerging media will not be part of the mix for most hotels, based on respondent opinions about what produces the best return on investment (ROI).
Web site optimization was listed most often (72%) by hotel execs, followed by search optimization and organic search (68%) and Web site redesign/design (62%). Only 17% of respondents named consumer-generated media, blogs and their ilk as bringing high ROI.
This is particularly relevant for online video, because individual hotel videos are a competitive advantage that many online travel agencies do not have. Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Hotelmarketing.com

Hilton Hotels relaunched two of the brand’s online channels – HiltonJourneys.com and HiltonToHome.com. I
in addition, the brand recently completed the translation of its Hilton.com booking portal into Spanish, and is in the process of completing a French version of the site. Hilton Hotels announced today the re-launch of two of the brand’s online channels – HiltonJourneys.com and HiltonToHome.com.

In addition to the two refreshed sites, the brand recently completed the translation of its Hilton.com booking portal into Spanish, and is in the process of completing a French version of the site. “The explosive and global growth of the Hilton brand has led us to rethink the way we use the internet to connect with our guests,” said Jeff Diskin, senior vice president, brand marketing and management – Hilton Hotels. “With these refreshed sites we have three unique touch points that allow our guests to connect with Hilton in ways that are most relevant to them.” Read the rest of this entry »

Source: HSMAI.org

NEEDHAM, Mass., TripAdvisor(R), the largest travel community in the world, now allows travelers to quickly and easily post their vacation videos. TripAdvisor also allows travel marketers to showcase their wares by uploading their videos. Thousands of TripAdvisor travelers already uploaded their videos and hundreds of thousands more viewed them, revealing a strong demand for ever more descriptive ways to tell a story or research a trip.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million. Video can convey so much emotion so quickly,” said Christine Petersen, senior vice president of marketing for TripAdvisor. “We’re thrilled to offer the elegance of the written word, the power of candid photos and now the punch of video, so that whatever the experience, our travelers and the hospitality industry alike can share their information most effectively.”

Read the rest of this entry »

Source: Entireweb.com

Search engine optimization (SEO) is a set of methods aimed at improving the ranking of a website in search engine listings. (Wikipedia)

This definition of SEO sounds simple, but beware! Search engine optimization is a minefield, even for professionals, and although necessary to a business, should not be undertaken lightly. Below, is a brief look at the top 10 mistakes and how to correct them.
1. Non-Relevant Linkage.

External links to your site play a large part in most of the major search engine algorithms and can be considered an endorsement of your site. But if you are being linked to from sites that have no relevance to your content, then that is now considered a negative endorsement and will not raise your ranking in the search engines. Ensure all links to your pages are from relevant sites. Be wary of link builders who acquire links from gambling, pharmaceutical or adult themed sites, especially if your site is not of the same theme. Link building is as much a science as it is an art, one we take very seriously.
2. Untargeted Keywords.

The people who use search engines are ‘normal’ people who are not likely to use words used in advertising brochures. Get to know how your customers ask for your services/products and use these in your content. Often times, actual keyword research will surprise you.

3. Excessive Graphics and Flash Content.

This looks good on a web page, but to search engine crawlers it means little. Search engines are looking for content, keywords, and relevancy to the search terms. By all means have some graphics, but don’t forget the meat. This doesn’t mean Flash designed websites are bad necessarily. In fact, some big businesses do use it. For most webmasters though, Flash sites are best avoided. Unless your Flash designer does high-end websites and knows how to integrate the content and keywords within the Flash, hybrid sites combining Flash headers with HTML content will be a good option.

4. Believing all search engines are the same.

What pleases Yahoo might not necessarily please MSN or Google. Optimize your content, keywords, inbound links, and internal linking structure so that there is something for at least one of the three top search engines.

5. Multiple Search Engine Submissions.

In the very early days of search engines, this technique may have had some success, but now it can lead to slower indexing and rankings. A site with inbound links from other sites will get indexed naturally and search engine submission is not necessary. In fact, multiple submissions may be construed as an attempt to spam the search engines. The top 5 engines account for more than 90% of all activity so it is wise not to ruin your chances of ranking naturally in the search results. (comScore Media Metrix qSearch data, August 2005)

6. Incorrect Use of Title Tags.

Most people consider the title to be for their company name or product. Not so. You must include your most important search phrases within your title tag and if you do want your company name there, keep it for the end. Keep the title tag to less than 65 characters long to avoid the appearance of title tag keyword-stuffing.

7. Use of ‘Black Hat’ techniques.

Techniques such as doorway pages, hidden text, and overstuffing keywords may have had success in the past but now they will earn you penalties and could even get you banned. Avoid them altogether if you are seeking long term success. Some black hat techniques can work on a short term basis, but in the long run prove very costly.

8. Expecting Immediate Results.

SEO is an ongoing process and should be treated as such by your SEO company. Good optimization will involve building good links with quality sites and this takes time.

9. Use of Unethical SEO Consultants.

Beware the consultant that guarantees rankings with no past clients to back it up with or claims of special relationships with search engines. Many such “consultants” or “experts” will probably take your money and run. Choose a reputable SEO consultant, one who will keep in regular contact with progress reports and updates.

10. Decide to do optimization in-house.

Probably possible in the past, but now with ever increasing sophistication of search engine algorithms, this is an area best left to an expert. Furthermore, the good SEO experts usually have other income streams from their online marketing activities and a regular paycheck to work full-time simply doesn’t justify their time invested. We’ve yet to meet a good SEO who doesn’t have virtual real estate bringing in a nice chunk of cash.