Welcome to my Hotel Marketing Blog. I am Josiah Mackenzie and I write about how hotels can use the internet to increase direct bookings. You may want to start with the biggest hits page, enroll in the 5-day e-course, or get weekly email updates.
Today we just finished an extensive revision of our core product: the Savvy Hotelier’s Guide to Hotel Marketing Ideas. Since you have supported me so much through the development of this project, I wanted a way to give back to you, my readers.
So each day this week I’ll give away one free copy of the guide to a new lucky winner.
I think you’ll really like this, since it now includes:
- Over 1,000 tested hotel marketing concepts
- Checklists for action steps you can take right now
- Interviews with hotel marketing industry leaders
- Case studies from hotels that tried these ideas
Entering this contest takes 5 seconds. Simply retweet the following:
1001 Hotel Marketing Ideas: http://ow.ly/14UOS (from @HMarketingHelp)
Five winners will be randomly selected in the next 48 hours from the people that retweet this. Good luck!
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Gary Vaynerchuk is often used as a social media success story. Through his video blog show – Wine Library TV – he built his local, family business into a national leader.
As he says in the book, “I write about things after I do them.” I like that. I enjoy learning from people who have tested their ideas in the marketplace.
Here’s some of the most relevant thoughts I took away from reading Crush It! -
Choose your platform carefully
Use something that makes you shine, shows your passion, and connects well with your audience. (The three big platforms: video, audio, and writing)
Use instinct over analytics
Gary recommends avoiding the temptation to keep looking at the numbers when trying to build your community – especially at first.
[I agree with the need to avoid obsessing over follower count. I disagree with abandoning all analytics - in my experience testing website performance is crucial for improving ROI]
[continue reading…]
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Many hotels use Twitter to communicate with their fans, but Fairmont is taking it a step further.
The Fairmont Chateau Whistler (@fairmontwhistlr) asked their Twitter followers for input in building a winter travel package. A poll was created where people could vote for the top activities they wanted included.
The result? A “Twinter Travel Package” that includes a fondue dinner and horse-drawn sleigh ride for two.
I want to see more of this. There’s a lot more we could do to involve our customers in creating new products.
After all, who better to ask than the people that will buy it?
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Bob Regnerus is a smart man. I’ve watched him increase the profitability of many websites, so I know his recommendations come from real world testing. His recent blog post, Don’t Celebrate The Launch, included a very important message:
We all love to celebrate a job being finished, but in online marketing, and in ALL marketing for that matter, the launch is NOT the time to celebrate. Sure, go ahead, high-five each other for nailing the deadline, putting out good-looking work, or figuring out that complex issue, but do not get drunk in this celebration because you’ve only completed about 7% of the task.
If you really want to celebrate, save that for when the sales roll in. I could care less about how a web site looks, reads, or acts until I start to see what it does in terms of sales.
Bob works primarily outside the hospitality industry, but the concepts apply just as well to us working with hotels.
I’ve watched organizations spend hundreds of thousands on a website…and then think their job is done.
It’s not.
The launch of a new website or campaign is just the beginning.
The real value will come from the testing you need to do in the weeks and months that follow.
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