Santa Clara, CA – September 20, 2007 – Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc., (Santa Clara, CA) announced today that its Grand Velas Resort Website (www.grandvelas.com) won the Web Marketing Association’s 2007 International WebAward for Standard of Excellence in the Hotel and Lodging industry.

The WebAwards sets the standard of excellence for website development worldwide and selects from several entries in the different industry categories. Over 2,400 sites from 40 countries were submitted for the WebAwards this year. Judging of entries is based on design, innovation, content, interactivity, ease of use, navigation, and use of technology. Milestone Internet Marketing outperformed its category and industry average in all of these criteria. A judge from the WebAwards said that Milestone Internet Marketing’s site was “well laid out” and “pleasing to the eye.”

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Why do we need to make our video searchable? Yes, the same old videos that we have been using for ages! Having a video is no longer useful unless it is created with search engine optimization in mind. According to emarketer, Online Videos are considered the third most effective online advertising media by US advertising executives today.

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Milestone is pleased to announce that we have become a Corporate Friend of the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research. A unit of the Cornell School of Hotel Administration, The Center for Hospitality Research (CHR) sponsors research designed to improve practices in the hospitality industry. We expect that over the course of the next year, we will share mutually beneficial research to further progress in the field of Hospitality Internet Marketing.

Experts are projecting that 60% of all business will be booked online next year. Are you prepared to get your fair share?

It’s not big news that the internet has changed the landscape of travel. A few years ago you would have called your travel agent to help make your travel plans, and that agent would probably have offered you one or maybe two hotel options. Today the choices are seemingly limitless and a bit overwhelming for your potential guests. And overwhelming for hotels too - how much of your marketing budget should you spend on the internet? Where should you spend it? An independent website? Pay per click advertising? What is your best opportunity to capture your fair share of that ever growing population of internet shoppers?

Our research has told us there are four tools potential guests use to find their hotels.

Brand Loyalists
They only stay at Hilton’s or Best Westerns and the first place they go online is to the brand.com website. A few might go to a search engine and type in Hilton Mclean for example. If you are a brand affiliated hotel, your franchise fees are paying for your hotel to show up on those searches. What can you do to make sure you’re getting your fair share? Make sure your brand.com website is up to date with all of your current information about the hotel, things to do in your local area. Pay as much attention to the information (and photos) on your brand website as if you were writing a $20,000 check to produce it, because you probably are.

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1. Visibility on Search Engines—Search engine optimization (SEO) entails writing keyword-rich meta tags and enhanced content for your website to rank high on search engines for keywords relevant to your market. Based on our historical surveys, hotels report the highest ROI result from SEO efforts and hence should be the highest priority for e-commerce budget allocation.
2. Link Building/Directory Enrollments—Strategic Link Building is one of the key elements of securing relevance for a website and driving higher placements organically. Make sure to budget for a professional search engine optimization firm to secure links from relevant high quality directories that are pertinent to your market and target audience.
3. Design — Primary goal of a hotel website is to convert lookers to bookers. It’s imperative that there are strong calls to action incorporated throughout the website, and that the design facilitates a quick and easy reservation process. Make sure that your website is compelling and is done in latest search engine friendly technology.
4. Pay Per Click—By bidding on relevant keywords to ensure visibility on the Sponsored Links, you’ll be well positioned to capture the attention of travelers during strategic need times. Allocate some budget for pay-per-click marketing, especially during the times when you need to drive short term business.
5. Email Marketing— Email marketing is one of the most effective communication and promotion vehicles in the internet marketplace, due to its fast, direct, and cost-effective method of building relationships. If you collect a permission based email marketing database and send out value added offers, you can track the significant ROI which the campaigns generate.
6. Consumer Generated Content—Search engines reward sites with consumer generated content by ranking them higher and providing better visibility. By placing a “Customer Review” section on your site, you can create a forum for guests to share experiences, and consequently you’re able to build credibility with the guest.
7. Online Video—By optimizing your online video, you will be rewarded with better visibility on video sites such as YouTube, Myspace.com, Google Video Search, iFilm.com, etc. In our experience, we have found that optimized online videos result in higher traffic to your website.
8. Blogs—Destination blogs provide you with the platform for sharing information about local dining, transportation, things to do, events, etc. Each post to the blog pings the search engines to crawl the new content, which ultimately results in better visibility and a credible forum for destination specific discussions.
9. Mobile Website—We recommend creating a mobile compatible website for your hotels site to help drive corporate traffic at a higher ADR. If your site is not mobile friendly, you may be missing out on that critical high rated business.
10. Tracking—If you are simply measuring traffic to your site, you’re missing out on a lot of the analytical web statistics tools available. Some important metrics to look at include top referring domains, top search terms, entrance pages, exit pages and phone call statistics as a direct result of travelers visiting your website.

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Contributed by: Kimberly Ehrlich

When you travel, how do you determine where you stay?  If you are like most consumers, you are likely to turn to friends, family, and acquaintances.  More and more travelers are heading to virtual strangers for recommendations.  According to a 2007 Bridge Ratings Survey, consumers are much more likely to turn to strangers with experience for information than they were ten years ago.  No longer does the rule of “make a customer unhappy and they tell 7 acquaintances” apply.  Today a consumer can share their experience with 7 million people on sites such as Trip Advisor, on their personal blog, and/or on third party travel sites. 

One way to allow consumers to share experiences with other “strangers” is to offer a customer reviews page on your hotel website.  A review page allows consumers to generate content for your site and share opinions about your property with other potential travelers.  Not only does user generated content help your search engine optimization efforts, but having unbiased reviews on your site can help sway on the fence consumers from lookers into bookers.

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Article contributed by Tammie Carlisle, Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc.

Google, the online search leader, is expanding the number of advertisements it delivers to mobile devices. On Monday, September 17th, Google announced that any web site accessible through a mobile Web browser, will automatically display.

An announcement posted by Google on Adwords account reads:

“We have begun showing eligible ads on Google Mobile Search pages - making it easier for you to reach additional qualified customers. Clicks on these ads will be free through November 18. You may opt out of this feature at any time.”

What this means is that if the text ads are eligible to appear on Google Mobile Search pages, they will automatically run on Mobile Search Pages for free through November 18, 2007.  After which, you’ll start getting charged for the Ads running on Mobile Search on a cost-per-click basis, if you do not opt out. If you wish your ads to not show up on Google Mobile Search network, you can opt out anytime by logging into your Adwords account and following the instruction listed there to opt out.

Ad displays with more than 70 characters are adapted so that only the Headline and URL shows up on a mobile browser. Also, the website’s landing page may be adapted so that it is better displayed on mobile phones that do not have rich internet browsers.

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Article contributed by Kchitiz Regmi