Social Media is the future for the travel industry. Plan your marketing for the future with Social Media outlets, and ensure that you do not live in the past.

Email marketing continues to prove itself as an effective way to communicate with your customers—both existing and potential customers. There are several proven best practices in email marketing which can make your campaign increasingly successful.

According to a survey by JPMorgan, US Paid Search and Advertising Revenues have been steadily increasing since 2006 and are expected to rise by 31.9% in 2008. eMarketer is predicting that rich media/video is going to see the biggest growth in spend in 2008 with an increase of 48.9%. The saying goes “a picture is worth a 1000 words,” and this is monumentally important in the world of travel where visuals of your property and destination (or lack thereof) can make or break your conversion rates.

With the advent of Universal Search, your video isn’t just a conversion tool for the visitor who stumbles upon your website. Done right, it can actually increase the visibility of your website and allow for stronger search engine results placement. For more information on how to make your videos search engine friendly, see our article Online Videos – How Old Media, New Technology Is Driving Search!

Though it comes as no surprise that online customer reviews affect online shoppers, it is noteworthy how online customer reviews also affect offline conversion. In a study by Avenue A | Razorfish’s “Digital Consumer Behavior Study,” 55% of the survey group reported checking other people’s opinions online. The study also showed that those who read positive online reviews were more likely to spend additional money than those who did not read the customer reviews.

In another study, by comScore and The Kelsey Group, the research took a look at consumers who ultimately pay for local services such as hotels, restaurants, etc. and found that 24 percent of them read online reviews before making their selection. Whether the purchase takes place online or offline, your online reputation continues to impact both major distribution channels. As a hotelier, it is increasingly important that you allow a credible forum for consumers to provide feedback.

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Article contributed by Kimberly Ehrlich, Milestone Internet Marketing, Inc.

The chart below shows the growth of Online Video Advertising across all industries in the US. We believe that the lodging industry will see a significant adoption of the online video advertising because most consumers want to see, touch, and feel the hotel before booking their lodging online. As search engines move towards Universal Search and start showing results from online videos, it is more critical for hotels to have online searchable videos – the key being “searchable.”

The Online Video developed for Search Engines is vastly different from the standard videos that you can get from companies specializing in video creation. It’s the same parallel as a search engine friendly website vs. a website that is set up as a brochure. Search engine friendly websites can be found for different key words from the search engines; however, to view a brochure style website, you have to know the website address to get to that site. The search engine optimized video and standard videos differ from each other in the same way. A search optimized video can be found by users typing things relevant to your market on main search engines and in video search engines; to find your standard videos, the consumer needs to know the website address for the site where that video is posted.

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Recently Google and other search engines launched a feature called universal search. Universal search shows mixed search results from several online advertising media such as websites, video, mobile, local, images, news, and several others.  Currently this feature is in beta with some of the search engines and the engines show universal results only for select keywords.  We expect that over the next few months, universal search results will start showing up for keywords typed in the internet search engines. 

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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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