Karen Escalera – President and Chief Strategist for KWE Partners – shared with us how social media helped a food bloggers camp generate sales, introduce the public to Grand Velas Riviera Maya resort’s exceptional food and beverage offerings and set the resort apart from its competitors.

How did you decide a food blogger’s camp was right for The Grand Velas?

The Grand Velas properties stand out for the exceptional quality of their food and beverage offerings, so we wanted to highlight this competitive advantage. In December, we partnered with the Mexico and Riviera Maya Tourist Boards and spearheaded a lunch with our visiting chefs for top national and New York media, primarily offline. We wanted to build on that momentum and reach out to social media who would also drive the “buzz” for F&B and to further build relationships with these influencers.

What role did you play, and how did you work with Velas Resorts’ ecommerce department?

Team KWE, together with Kate Moeller of Prose & Co who handled the event for the past couple years at other resorts in the Caribbean, brought the concept to the resort, invited the bloggers, developed the agenda, did all the PR, and initiated and handled the post camp contest. Pre-event buzz was built via twitter and press releases to targeted audiences, as well as through blog posts from the seminar leaders to their followers. We led live coverage on Twitter with seminar leaders and shared videos and images during the camp on Facebook and Twitter to keep the buzz going throughout the event week.

The resort’s ecommerce department created a dedicated Food Blog Camp landing page, wrote the pre-event blog posts on the resorts’ destination blogs, coordinated the live streaming of FBC’s events to the online community, interacted with attendees on all social media channels and promoted the event on Velas Resorts’ Facebook and Twitter pages. It was a seamless integration.

Was the camp for promotional purposes only, or were you trying to generate revenue?

A key objective was to have the camp not only pay for itself (since we had to pay airfares for our seminar leaders and since we’re an all inclusive, we had food and beverage costs as well associated with their stay), but also, to make money. And we did. The camp was the second of two social media events we’ve had for Velas Resorts. The first was the first ever remote #TNI (Travelers’ Night In) Tweet Up which we had at the Grand Velas Riviera Nayarit. What we did was offer a girls getaway package that included the Tweet up. We followed that lead with the food bloggers camp.

Instead of just having a food bloggers press trip, we made this into a professional development event to attract other bloggers and aspiring bloggers and foodies. With this educational content and fun events such as cooking demonstrations and wine tastings, we had a compelling package. We sold the package at a slightly reduced rate for other bloggers and media and at the rack rate for all others. We sold close to $60,000 worth of packages for the 5 day/4 night event.

Were there any surprising benefits or setbacks?

The immediate response of participants was fantastic. The second the  camp started, more and more images, blog posts, and tweets were  published. We were able to brainstorm with the seminar leaders on  ideas for food and beverage offerings, events and packages to be  offered at other Velas resorts.  The challenge was in the bloggers’ (non-seminar leaders) booking  arrangement. Bookings go to through sales contract center but they  were not able to evaluate bloggers credentials. So what we had to do  was have the requesting participants send a link to their blog so we  could confirm and send to reservations for booking.

What were the results for The Grand Velas?

This was a success by several standards:

• Sold over 46 packages, generating nearly $60,000 in sales
• Generated more than 25 articles on the Camp to over 2.5 million unique visitors per month
• Event coverage received over 5.1 million impressions on Twitter to over 354,000 unique users
• Event coverage received 3.497 million views on Facebook
• Over 775 user generated photos of the event, resort and its food and beverage offerings were circulated

Exceptional reviews of the resorts restaurants were received from seminar leaders and industry authorities. The success generated new events for other Velas Resorts for the coming year (e.g. family cooking and crafting week, Chocolate Festival, TV appearances, recipe releases, etc.)

What would be your advice for hotels planning something similar?

Providing the opportunity for professional development is a powerful lure and definitely the way to go on events such as these. It’s also critical to get participation from the influencers and opinion makers in the category, and then the rest follows.

Thanks, Karen!

[Photos courtesy of Diana Johnson, publisher of Dianasaur Dishes and Eating Richly.]

Social technologies are rapidly changing the way companies communicate and operate, and I believe we’ll look back on 2011 as the point this trend quickly accelerated. Because of this, I’m focusing all my time right now studying and championing this “social” approach to management.

In our Introduction to Social CRM for Travel, we defined the concept as:

“A way in which to conduct your business through new communication channels while keeping the customer needs, wants and expectations as your focal point.”

I encourage you to create a document on how this will look in your hotels. To get you started, here are some suggestions to expand on the idea:

We will have guest feedback guide everything we do

Everything from big-picture strategy to day-to-day tactical decisions will be made with guest feedback in mind.

The social web will act as a giant focus group to do research in and gather feedback from.

We will obsess over experience design

We know that that our guest experience is directly correlated to the feedback we receive, and the story others will tell about us. We will use all the resources we have to design and deliver a remarkable experience to every single person, every single time.

We will spend time on personal connections, not data collection

The value to participation is in relationship building, not data mining. We’ll use technology to make the best use of our time in this area.

We will create very specific social reporting to cut through noise

There is a lot of chatter on the social web, and not all of it is feedback we can use.

We will avoid this pitfall by creating position-specific reporting that executives, managers, and frontline staff can use immediately in their day-to-day jobs. Insights need to be simple and there must be no confusion on what action should be taken. It should not require a “guru” to interpret. 2011 will become the year of the practitioner, not the guru. If we are going to make social media analysis something everyone takes part in, then we need to simplify it so non-specialists can understand the action steps.

Additionally, we will decide how to leverage additional analytics such as influence scoring into our reporting systems for highly-targeted communication and service.

We will actively use social intelligence in every area of our organization

Insights from the social web are useful for more than just our marketing and PR people.

Applications can be made for everything from pricing and revenue management to strategic investment decisions. We must start seeing social media as more than just a peripheral activity and spend more time integrating it with the rest of our business operations.

We will use social feedback scores for performance accountability

To measure the quality of our guest experience and level of service, we’ll use guest reviews and ratings as a barometer of success.

We’ll even look at making customer feedback scoring a factor in our bonus incentive packages for management.

We will see customer service as the new marketing

Service is not a cost center but a way to generate additional profits through taking great care of our customers in a way that builds loyalty and creates brand evangelists.

Word of mouth is playing an increasingly important role in travel decisions, and investing in delivering an extraordinary experience is the single most effective way we can promote our hotels today.

We will use social technologies internally

Social technologies can make our organization stronger from the inside. Rather than just viewing social tech as an outside activity, we’ll use it within the business as well.

We’ll implement communications tools to make our team more  productive and internal workflow more efficient.

It seems Klout is receiving a lot of attention and buzz recently, and for good reason. If you’re not familiar with their concept yet, they provide a way to measure a person’s influence on the social web. The explanation from their website is probably best:

The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence. Klout uses over 35 variables on Facebook and Twitter to measure True Reach, Amplification Probability, and Network Score.

True Reach is the size of your engaged audience and is based on those of your followers and friends who actively listen and react to your messages. Amplification Score is the likelihood that your messages will generate actions (retweets, @messages, likes and comments) and is on a scale of 1 to 100. Network score indicates how influential your engage audience is and is also on a scale from 1 to 100. The Klout score is highly correlated to clicks, comments and retweets.

I’m not a celebrity….

…but apparently I’m a niche specialist:

I’ll take that.

How you should use influence scoring when providing service

The value of using influence scoring measurements such as Klout when managing a social media campaign is not to provide different quality levels of service. The consumer of today is clearly more empowered than ever before. Discriminating on how well you solve problems for people is short-sighted, if not downright stupid.

However, I believe it’s useful to provide different kinds of service in different situations.

For example: Influence scoring is useful in determining who in your organization should be involved in the response and followup action. Do you need to bring in the PR director or another department manager? Who needs to be involved to provide the best resolution for the consumer and your company?

I’d like to hear your thoughts in the comments below:

How are you using Klout? What role do you think influence scoring should play in social media service and online reputation management?

ReviewPro announces Klout integration

Today ReviewPro announced integration of Klout influence scores with their social media monitoring tool. [Tnooz story] I think any hotel looking to increase their online visibility should monitor as many (relevant) metrics as possible in planning big-picture strategy and also day-to-day actions. Klout scoring gives us one more reference point for these decisions.

Doug O’Reilly, Oliver Sohn and their Seventh Art Media team reviewed about 2,500 Facebook page posts by 75 hotel brands and identified six key elements that influence success. The following is a summary of their recently-released white paper, available in its entirety below.

1. Understand that not all content performs equally.

Content that conveys a unique sense of brand/place and makes a personal connection with followers performs the best.

Photos are the clear winner. Facebook users like the quick-hit satisfaction of a witty post or a beautiful or clever picture. Some of the highest performing photo content was not necessarily professional level quality but at a minimum connected on a personal level. A quick snapshot of the first snow of the season and a giant pumpkin are examples of connective content that required little effort.

Unfortunately, what we see occuring is that the second lowest performing content – links – are also the most commonly posted. The most common links by far have tenuous relationships to a brand or property and do little to create a connection, incent sharing or extend a brand experience. In short, most of it is filler.

2. Understand your guests and goals.

Facebook requires upfront planning, programming, and goals. The goals hotels set for the page will define their content, processes and the people who choose to follow them. If hotels want a specific type of customer ‘liking’ their page, they need to program to that customer’s specific needs.

If you don’t plan out your growth strategy for the long-term you might find you’ve built a community of the wrong target market.

3. Facebook pages are best for amplification – not engagement.

Building engagement is not Facebook’s strong suit. Creating amplification (impressions) is easier and returns a brand’s bottom-line benefits much more quickly.

The push to get 100K followers in a short amount of time and then figure out what to do with them is a losing strategy. It’s better to have one thousand advocates who love your brand and interact with your content than twenty-five thousand discount-seekers. Focus on quality followers who value the brand beyond discounts.

4. Get your content right.

A simple question to ask about any content is, “Why would any of my guests share this?” If the author cannot answer without hesitation, the content should not be posted.

You may find that the best content often already exists. Most of the top performing content in terms of engagement and amplification was not manufactured or contrived. Instead, it was generally a highlight of existing activity or content brought forward on Facebook.

While video is a booming engagement tool for other sectors, hospitality is lagging due to poor quality content, subject matter and execution. This is a huge missed opportunity.

Don’t expect your fan page to increase or to sustain amplification rates as it grows, without maintaining a steady flow of the right type of content.

5. Measure ROI on amplification and direct response.

Facebook has some handy tools for measuring impressions, and these should be leveraged in developing an assessment of the channel’s contribution to cost saving vs. comparable CPM rates of more standard online advertising.

Content should be set up to track views beyond the channel and generated click-throughs. Back-end systems (such as Google Analytics) should be structured to capture the contribution of the channel to referrals and conversions.

Most hotel brands show little discipline in reviewing the performance of their pages by repeatedly posting the same under-performing content types.

6. Look to other channels for one-to-one engagement.

Hotels should not look at Facebook as their primary point of engagement but as a channel to amplify engagements that happen elsewhere. Facebook is a powerful but also specific tool that does not elegantly transition to the gentler aspects of one-to-one customer service required in a hospitality setting.

Read the full report here:

Seventh Art Media – Hospitality Brands and Facebook – Identifying the Opportunities

Thank you – Doug and Oliver – for sharing your excellent work with us!

How did Hotel Le Seven build their Facebook community so quickly? Today I got on the phone with Vice PresidentMartin Soler to learn about the strategy he used to attract nearly 12,000 fans through Facebook. Martin’s company, World Independent Hotel Promotion, works exclusively with independent hotels, with a focus on hotel openings. (Martin is also a talented HDR photographer.)

The Background Story (In Martin’s words)

Seven months before opening we started the campaign. It was an ambitious project – great to work on, because the hotel concept was very unusual. We built a strategy where we would be creating some mystery, and leaking ideas on what every suite would look like.

We were lucky because we had a test room to work with for imagery – the rest were just sketches. We started by talking about the owners, and the other projects they did – like Hotel Five. We talked about all the gadgets and special things there were.

We coordinated with our PR agency to make sure there was no communication with the press. We only wanted to talk directly with the consumer.

Josiah: What communications channels did you use?

Facebook Only

Facebook was our exclusive communications channel.

I haven’t found Twitter to be very reliable for promotions. I feel it’s a bit more of a flash in the pan.

And of course we made a website with very dramatic music and imagery of what guests could expect. Facebook pointed to the website, and the website was very high-production – lots of rich media.

No Press Releases

If people wanted to know anything about the hotel, they had to follow us through Facebook. No press releases went out, and we did not take any questions from the media.

What Caused Rapid Growth

We tried some contests through Facebook, but the results were not impressive as we thought. We tried sending offers to our fanbase from Hotel Five – since the design concepts were similar. If they liked the Five, they’ll love the Seven. So cross marketing was possible there.

So a lot was just telling people about it. Pushing traffic from the website. We also wrote some bloggers, telling them to check out the page since we were going to do something interesting.

It was a bit of a risk because not many hotels have filled their rooms through Facebook yet. But it worked for us!

After Opening

We’ve continued our strategy after opening, and made it clear to our colleagues that it was Facebook that attracted our fans initially. It helped us achieve 80% occupancy on the soft opening – and that was in low season.

The owner was amazed – he didn’t expect that at all.

So we had to remember that our Facebook fans helped us achieve this success. We give them an exclusive room rate – the fans-only rate is the best rate you’ll get – better than our own website or any distributor.

We also reward our Facebook community by notifying them of anything that’s going to happen before we tell anyone else. (Even before we post to our website).

Martin’s Top Five Facebook Tips

1. Treat your Facebook “Likers” like an artist treats their fans. That is, realize they make you important and therefore you need to make them important. Special treatments etc. when they arrive at the hotel is a minimum.

2. Keep your Facebook page as personal as you can. This is an information communication channel to friends. Try to involve them as much as you can.

3. Find out what people want to know about the hotel and give them more of that. It’s not about what you “think” is important; you may be totally off the mark. Listen to them and your page will be a success.

4. Use all the media of Facebook, write articles, post photo albums etc.

5. Treat every post like a “news story;” don’t give it all at once. Give it to them bit by bit and maximize the yield from your stories.

Thanks, Martin!

More and more hotel executives and marketing managers are relying on social media reputation management software to help them profit from the social web. Rather then attempting to visit every single social media network to check for new mentions, savvy operators use a tool for data collection and save their valuable time for trend analysis and responding directly to customers.

Using the right software can be very helpful in managing your online reputation, but what criteria should you use for choosing a tool?

Here are some questions to consider when evaluating the range of products on the market.

Ask: What data types does it aggregate and index?

Reputation software is all about the data: both qualitative and quantitative. The best tools are designed to continually collect and index information from a wide range of sources. And there are many more sources out there than would appear at first glance.

Collecting reviews from just a handful of the top review sites results in missed opportunities. The web is all about the “long tail” of information – and a lot of travel discussion happens on niche sites catering to people in specific regions or with similar interests. These smaller travel review communities may be very influential in someone’s buying decision, and cannot be ignored.

You must be quickly aware of any mention of your hotel, regardless of where it is posted. Does the tool you’re considering enable that?

Ask: What is the international coverage?

It’s not enough to be limited to a few countries. What websites, languages, and countries does the software collect data from?

Travel is by definition highly international and is only becoming more so. Whether you’re managing a single property or a large portfolio of hotels, true international support is crucial.

There is a vast number of regional OTAs and hotel review sites that are major sources of information for millions of travelers. These are both country-specific like Hotels.de or Atrapalo in Spain – and also region-specific like Venere, Laterooms, Holidaycheck, Zoover, and Minube in Europe.

Will the tool you’re considering support data collection from all relevant sources?

Ask: Does the company have the right development team in place?

A focus on engineering and development will ensure the tool will grow with you and adapt to market changes.

When considering a partnership with a hotel reputation management software provider, try to determine what their development philosophy is – as well as their product roadmap for the future. How do they decide on new product features? Will they continue to innovate quickly?

Too many products I see out on the market were designed more or less with “build it once, collect the cash” philosophy, and the managers are not really committed to evolving the product over time.

Because this industry is evolving so rapidly, you need a partner development team that can keep up and keep you ahead of the curve.

Also ask if their developers work from the company headquarters or if product development is outsourced. Outsourcing works in some cases, but better results are usually obtained through an in-house team. Close communication between developers, account managers, executives and people from your organization is important for providing you with the best possible product.

Ask: What type of training and support is offered?

As with any new tool or technology, getting your whole team to adopt and benefit from it may require a substantial amount of training. Make sure that the software company you partner up with offers a strong training program – providing support and assistance along the way.

Try to find a tool that allows you to generate usage reports by user – so you can identify which of your team members might need more training to get the most possible benefit from the software.

The best companies will have a strong focus on education. Not only during the customer onboarding process, but consistently as the months go by. They’ll teach you how to use new media and the social web to succeed in the market.

Things change so rapidly in this area that you need someone to stay on the forefront of innovation and teach you how to profit from changes in travel behavior.

Ask: Does the tool enable communication and collaboration among staff members?

Effective digital communications today requires involvement from all departments. You need a tool that encourages this, and makes the process simple and straightforward.

Participating on the social web is much more than just a function of the marketing or PR department. Insights you gather from guest feedback online can be used among the management team and can also help front-line staff do their jobs more effectively.

But for this to work, you need software that can share insights and reports among team members. Make sure the tool you select provides position and role-specific reporting functionality – and the ability to share these insights with colleagues.

Ask: What workflow systems are in place to encourage rapid resolution?

In keeping with the point above, it’s very helpful if the tool provides powerful workflow functionality. When a general manager receives an online review, she needs to be able to assign it to the appropriate team member for resolution, pass along any additional information, and then track the progress of that issue to completion.

Ideally, this will be more than just an “e-mail review” feature. It’s easiest if you can work within a dashboard that tracks progress of each item.

Ask: Will it keep my team engaged?

Does the tool you’re considering offer the ability to export reports in an attractive fashion? Can you print out data for your weekly meetings that instantly communicates the online status of your hotels? Can you schedule email notifications to everyone – from general management to quality and operations to sales and marketing to revenue and distribution?

Make sure you can share information with staff members that need to be aware of results but are unlikely to enter the application to look for the data themselves.

For some of your managers, these reports may be all they need. Maybe they don’t need to be checking a dashboard daily to see what online reviews have been received, but they do need to see the overall trends and actions that must be taken in their departments.

Ease of accessing the data is important to keep everyone using the tool. If something is too complicated, people will avoid it, and the tool will be useless. The user interface of the tool itself plays a role in keeping everyone engaged, but especially important is the ability to provide reporting for people who don’t have the time or desire to login to the program.

Ask: Does it support semantic analysis?

Semantic analysis is becoming increasingly important in the field of online reputation management. You need a tool that can gauge guest sentiment and allow you to act accordingly.

Semantic analysis is more than just a tool for reputation – it can also be used for marketing and investment decisions. For marketing, you can determine which parts of the guest experience are most attractive to your guests, and highlight those.

For investment decisions, you can understand which parts of your hotel experience are most important to guests and make sure that investment goes into enhancing those areas. You can also identify any trouble spots and improve quality in the areas that need it most.

Ask: Will it help me attract new customers?

A big part of online reputation management is the opportunity to create a great experience that gets guests to talk about your hotel – encouraging their friends to stay with you as well.

But you can be more proactive when it comes to attracting business. Try to find a tool that helps you use the reviews it collects to attract more reservations. This can be done easily for individual sources (eg, TripAdvisor), but the way to stand out is to collect reviews from multiple sources and post the overall aggregate guest opinion of your hotel.

Customer confidence is increased by social proof. Posting a review summary like this on your website helps verify the hotel’s quality, and makes visitors feel it’s not risky to make a booking.

Special considerations for large hotel groups

Selecting the right tool to monitor and manage social media communication for a large group of hotels requires some additional special considerations:

Ask: Can it organize and analyze data by groups and brands?

In managing a large portfolio of hotels, you need to be able to compare individual hotels, specific groups, and brands with each other and make assessments regarding their performance. This affects a number of areas.

1. Quality improvement – Will you be able to establish specific improvement goals for online reputation by property and track performance towards achieving these goals?
2. Accountability – Will you have a way to link a hotel’s online reputation performance to the hotel directors’ bonuses to align corporate objectives with guest satisfaction?
3. Competitive insights – Will you have the ability to gather competitive insights for each of these levels?

Especially for ownership companies and larger organizations, the ability to track hotels within a group is important for many management and investment decisions.

Ask: Does the workflow system support the needs of large organizations?

Large organizations face unique challenges when it comes to operations management.

If a simplistic workflow system may work at a small property, it can be exponentially more complicated when dealing with a large portfolio of hotels.

As mentioned earlier in this article, you need to look for the ability to delegate items, pass along support information, and then track the progress in resolution of each issue. Ensure the tool you choose is robust enough to support the simultaneous management of hundreds or thousands of issues at once.

Ask: Does it support the needs of each department manager?

Department reports combined with detailed competitive benchmarking can help to identify areas of improvement, set progress objectives and measure whether your goals are being achieved.

Make sure the reports generated are not too generic, and instead focus on relevant information that each department manager can use and succeed with.

Ask: Does it integrate well with my existing systems and technology?

If you’re a large organization, chances are good that you’ve invested quite a bit in technology infrastructure already. You need a social media reputation tool that syncs well with these existing systems.

Tools on the forefront of innovation in this area offer the ability to import and export data between their tool and your existing software systems. This is important, as it can help you make pricing decisions that affect your profitability. You can cross-compare guest satisfaction scores with your pricing strategies and maximize profitability.

Ask: Does its semantic analysis support my needs?

For large groups of hotels, semantic analysis is especially important to provide detailed insight into what guests think about your brand and where you are positioned in the marketplace. It’s not always what you’re marketing people might think!

Being able to gather insights through semantic analysis can help guide the overall strategic direction of your organization. It helps you allocate resources in a way that maximizes impact.

In closing…

I strongly recommend you use some type of online reputation management tool, and select one that meets all the criteria above. I advocate use of a tool for this part of your marketing because I want you to spend less time looking for the reviews, and more time interpreting, analyzing, and acting on them.

Remember the whole purpose of our efforts here is to listen to guests and take actions necessary for improving their experience. By operating in this way, you will achieve higher profitability and market share. It’s the only sustainable way to get ahead and stay ahead of your competition.

—

A number of people have asked me for a recommendation – you should read about my decision to work with ReviewPro hotel reputation software.

As has become my tradition at the end of each year and beginning of a new one, here’s my summary of 111 marketing ideas to consider as we enter 2011.

Planning & strategy

• The #1 purpose of marketing is retaining your customers. Focus on that before pursuing new markets.
• Read The Concierge Approach to Content Marketing
• Why you? Why now?
• Personalization is a growing trend - use it wherever you can
  
• Make a stop-doing list
• Make sure you’re signed up for fresh new ideas from me each week (if you haven’t already)
• Talent is everything. Spend all you can (and then some) recruiting, retaining, rewarding the best people.
• Do you have a list of allstars you want to hire? Always be casting. (Good Seth Godin post)
• Recruit from clubs
• Offer new hires $2,000 to quit before they begin
• Are you prepared to let 75% of your new initiatives fail?
• “The most important trait for innovation today isn’t creativity, but curiosity.” – Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi
• Consistency is everything
• We’re all stock traders now
• Post a list of customer suggestions in action
• Read Peak by Chip Conley

Social Media

• Appoint a social media ambassador to “own” your efforts in this area
• When building your social media team, include person from every department: management, marketing, PR, product development, customer service, etc. ““Employees can take brand message, localize it, and put their personality behind it.” – Claire Elias/STA Travel
• Read my free report – Beyond Account Setup: 29 Ways to Optimize Your Social Media Profiles
• Don’t try to buy social media fans. Avoid the “campaign” mindset, and understand that forming the relationships for a great online community will take years.
• The one-line recipe for success in social media: An inside story from a real person that loves what they do
• Turn guests into content producers
• Turn your loyal fans into celebrities
• Put a Flip camera on every property
• Make sure to have a human identity behind your corporate social media profile
• Don’t outsource Twitter
• Retweet your own important content (people could miss it otherwise)
• Try using Twitter to collect testimonials. Save positive tweet mentions as favorites you can refer back to.
• Use TwitterSheep to find what your followers care about
• Create a Twitter background with contact/sales information
• You don’t always have to make sales offers in social media to make a lot of money – go 0ff-topic every once in a while
• Try some of these Facebook plugins from Involver
• Think twice about advertising your Facebook page URL – it only builds their brand, makes you even more reliant on them. Instead, send traffic to a landing page hosted on your site.
• Get creative in the way you share photos on Facebook
• Used LinkedIn to generate sales leads
• If you’re opening a new hotel, consider using a Flickr group to build pre-opening buzz
• Social media is the richest focus group that ever existed
• Learn from Fairmont and have social media followers create your next promotional package
• Social ROI is from insights, not necessarily sales
• Google and Bing have confirmed that Twitter/Facebook postings do help with search engine placements
• Understand the basics of social CRM
• Start observing the best hotels on Facebook, like Joie de Vivre
• Start following the best hotels on Twitter, like @FairmontHotels @Kimpton @ApexHotels
• Learn from Fierro Hotel on how to use Tumblr: InsideBuenosAires.com and WeLoveFierro.com

Website

• Don’t celebrate the launch
• Be compatible with Google’s Instant Previews
• Build content through partnerships
• Buy a .TV domain name and create a video channel there
• Look at these 15 well-designed websites – and see why they work so well
• Try optimizing landing pages around ‘who’ you know, not ‘what’ you know. (Including connections from networks like Facebook gives a personal connection to the company.)
• Drive traffic by reaching out to past guests
• Make sure you do 3 things in 3 seconds: 1) load the page quickly 2) Visually WOW them 3) Get them involved
• Use this checklist of 43 questions if you’re going through a re-design
• Take advantage of “white hot” online touch points when asking for action
• Use video creatively throughout the revenue cycle
• Think about using travel webcams like Starwood is doing with RoomWithAView.com
• Search optimization is more important than ever, but the rules have changed. Learn and adapt.
• Know how Google instant affects your marketing
• Use live chat on your website to close more sales
• Maintain consistency (in everything) across all booking channels
• Encourage direct bookings by verifying website security, offering multiple language and currency support
• Read Speak Human by Eric Karjaluoto

Mobile

• Create a mobile-friendly website to avoid platform issues
• Know that 81% (to 19%) prefer mobile websites to mobile apps for researching products and prices (eMarketer 2010 survey)
• Make sure you don’t run a mobile ad, and then send traffic to a page on your site that’s not mobile-friendly
• Use QR codes to bridge the online/offline gap (Example from Tailor Made Hotel)
• 4 important things to do with mobile for customers: learn, recognize, reward and personalize
• You’re not going to succeed in mobile on your first try. Experiment now – learn by doing.
• A big opportunity for mobile is rewarding loyalty.
• Look at TopGuest
• Creating great mobile experiences requires you to get out in the world and interact with your environment. Don’t design in a cubicle.

Reputation Management

• Tracking online reputation should not just be aggregating reviews. Use a tool that gives you insight into trends and patterns.
• I recommend you start using ReviewPro (Why I am)
• Begin tying online reputation to your staff bonuses
• Know that 86% of consumers are using reviews as a deciding factor in their purchasing decision
• An unhappy customer used to tell 3 people, now they tell 3 million. This highlights the importance of quickly catching and resolving issues.
• On the brighter side, the majority – two-thirds, actually – of online reviews are positive [research from Keller Fay Group]
• Increase customer confidence by monitoring, collecting, and re-publishing positive reviews
• Monitoring for online mentions sometimes provides you with some great promotional material
• Write better post-stay “thank you” emails to encourage online reviews
• Get creative in how you ask for reviews. Like a banner on your WiFi network login page.
• “It takes 20 years to build a reputation and 5 minutes to ruin it. If you think about that you will do things differently.” – Warren Buffett

Advertising

• Run a brand ambassador campaign in social media (Mashable examples)
• Let a customer write your next ad
• Experiment with strong risk-reversal messages in your copy
• Embrace behavioral ad targeting in PPC and elsewhere
• Banner ads are quickly evolving
• Partner with websites that attract people already decided to visit your destination
• Barter unsold rooms for advertising

Email

• Social media use has not replaced email for sales (Just look at Groupon)
• Make sure to use good landing pages
• Add some security indicators (like a sample email screenshot) to increase email subscription rates
• Segment your email list by personas (not just purchase history)
• Build a preferences center to help subscribers receive more relevant emails
• Permission isn’t forever

Service

• Customer service is the new marketing
• Understand the “Brand Butler” trend
• Ask your guests if they would recommend you to a friend
• Create a buying experience centered around the customer
• Re-think your guest check-in process
• Real-time responses are crucial on the social web. Have systems and processes to deliver timely information and support to your guests.
• Try a service like CoTweet to share support responsibilities among staff
• Read Experience Economy by Joseph Pine and James Gilmore

Amenities & Technology

• A poor hotel Wi-Fi experience influences 36 percent of business travelers on whether they re-book that specific hotel in the future [more research on hotel WiFi]
• iPads are the #1 most-wanted tech amenity guests want from a hotel [USA Today poll]
• Consider virtual meeting technology as a way to profit from lower business travel volume

Press & Media

• Send out social media news releases
• Try PitchEngine – a social media PR builder
• Start offering more unique hotel amenities that get people talking
• Listen to the PR 2.0 chat

Measurement & Analytics

• Understand travel booking isn’t usually a linear process
• Learn how Barbara Pezzi improves her marketing with analytics segmentation
• Run these 10 reports in Google Analytics
• Social media should shorten your sales cycle. Watch your number of sales leads, cost per lead, sales closing ratio, channel conversion rate, and time to closing to measure improvement.

For over 1,000 hotel marketing ideas and strategies for implementing these concepts, I encourage you to get the Savvy Hotelier’s Guide to Hotel Marketing Ideas

If you found this list helpful, please share it with your colleagues via email or through Twitter. Thanks!

Trend #1: Integration increasingly important

Example: Gowalla

Integration and compatibility is the most important trend I see as we move into 2011. In many ways, it’s what ties together the rest of the items in this story.

Gowalla is a great example of this. For a long time, I didn’t really get involved in the whole social “check-in” scene. Too many networks, and my friends were scattered across each. But version 3.0 of their application introduced check-in capability with arch-rival Foursquare, and I started using it much more often.

Integration is what pushes many people to try a new technology. It’s hard to convince someone to invest a lot of time to switch and try yet another network, but if you can integrate with existing platforms, it’s easier to gain adoption.

Trend #2: Photos as lifestreaming

Example: Instagram

Possibly my favorite app of 2010, Instagram exploded in popularity because it allows users to share vintage-looking photos easily with their friends. The service captured over 100,000 users in less than a week, and passed one million registered users a few days ago (12/21/2010).

I know a number of people who have very negative opinions of Instagram, but all great products are usually polarizing. I think the community aspect is what made this app succeed so quickly. I paid for a very similar app – Hipstamatic – but ended up discarding it after the first day. The cross-publishing capabilities were not powerful enough.

Personally, I find Instagram most useful when integrated with another service – like Tumblr – as part of a richer lifestream.

Trend #3: The evolution of blogging

Example: Tumblr

Tumblr saw rapid growth in 2010 because it gives the time-starved blogger an opportunity to share a little more than what fits into a 140-character tweet. An elegant mobile application lets their users quickly and conveniently update on the go.

This focus on rapid publishing, combined with a wide selection of free design themes, make it an attractive option for many.

Examples: InsideBuenosAires.com and WeLoveFierro.com

Trend #4: The Social Graph on your website

Example: Facebook & TripAdvisor

Again, integration is the key. I’m seeing more websites experimenting with bringing your social graph – your network of contacts – onto the websites that you use. Doing this helps provide a more personalized experience and should lead to you discovering more relevant information.

TripAdvisor has been gradually increasing its integration with Facebook over the past year. This instantly personalizes the site for each visitor – displaying trusted reviews from friends, sharing most popular destinations among friends, and showing an interactive social map.

Trend #5: Geo-location for city exploration

Social networks such as Foursquare and Gowalla have offered the opportunity to “check in” to physical spaces for a while now.

This year, we’ve seen these tools move from just a way to tell friends where you are to becoming a way for people to explore a city. Gowalla introduced a “trips” feature in January 2010, allowing any user to create a list of places for people to visit. “Foursquare 2.0″ announced September 2010 enabled users to create to-do lists.

Businesses are starting to use this functionality to create branded trips, which leads to the next trend….

Trend #6: Check-ins as part of a larger business strategy

Example: Topguest

As mentioned above, geolocation services allowing users to check in to local business have been around for a few years with tools like Foursquare and Gowalla. Facebook joined the game in August with Facebook Places. What we’re seeing now is business owners put a little more thought into how to use this to drive revenue and loyalty.

Topguest is now offering one opportunity for this - providing real hotel loyalty points for people checking in via Foursquare and Facebook places. I predict we’ll see this continue to evolve as owners start taking this more seriously.

Trend #7: Bridging the online/offline gap with mobile

More and more business owners are using QR codes and other mobile technologies to bridge the online/offline gap.

Google Places began giving out QR code stickers last December – though many establishments didn’t begin posting these until earlier this year. According to Google, the benefits include allowing shoppers to:

• Read reviews to see what other users think about the business
• Find an offer that the business has posted to their Place Page
• Star the business to remember to check it out later, or to remember to visit again
• Leave a review right after they leave the business.

But this is not limited to Google places. QR codes can be used to send traffic to any location, as I’ve covered before with Tailor Made Hotels promoting their Facebook page to people walking by:

Trend #8: Closed social networks

Example: Path

Perhaps in reaction to more open platforms like Facebook and the (perceived or real) privacy problems that go along with that, tools like Path enable small, closed networks you can share your life with.

I like Mike Isaac’s explanation of the service for Forbes.

“Because your personal network is limited to your 50 closest friends and family, you can always trust that you can post any moment, no matter how personal. Path is a place where you can be yourself.”

Trend #9: Group discount buying and Private sales sites

Example: Groupon & Jetsetter

When I opened my inbox earlier this month to find an ad for The Economist – one of the most traditional, conservative publications I respect, I knew Groupon had gone mainstream.

2010 was a great year for Groupon. Since its launch, Groupon has grown to an estimated $350 million in estimated revenue for this year. On November 30, 2010 Google offered a reported $5.3 billion to acquire Groupon, but was rejected. After this, Groupon was identified for an initial public offering in 2013.

The site is most popular with young, educated, female consumers. (Nice infographics here)  In this USA Today interview with Barb De Lollis, Andrew Mason says

“More and more, we hear of people using it for planning vacations. If I live in D.C., I will check out the Chicago daily deal for a few weeks in advance of my trip. I might see hotels, restaurants or a Segway tour. Then you can plan a lot of your vacation around things to do with your Groupon. I look at Groupon as a really interesting city guide that points out one really cool thing to do in a city every day,” he said. The discount serves as a nudge to get people to try it.”

But the success of Groupon doesn’t necessarily mean you should use it at your hotel. I’ve heard first-hand reports of Groupon buyers only coming for the discount prices and showing very little loyalty after the initial stay.

Private sales sites like Jetsetter offer a more exclusive twist on the limited-time-sale model.

I’ve heard passionate arguments on both sides for both of these sales models. Some complain of brand damage, others enjoy the market exposure it brings. Regardless of your opinion, group buying and private sales are two trends that you cannot ignore.

….

Additional trend #1: Sophisticated review management

Example: ReviewPro

Customer review analysis software has existed for years – ever since online reviews started gaining popularity – but now I’m seeing a lot more sophistication in this area.

Rather than being limited to one department or one person, savvy organizations are using info from the social web throughout their organization:

• Identifying opportunities for improvement in operations
• Knowing which parts of the hotel experience is most appreciated by guests with semantic analysis (useful for marketing and management)
• Cross-comparing pricing data with reputation to maximize rates (helpful for revenue management)

Using a tool like ReviewPro helps hotels manage all this from one web-based platform. And I think as an industry we’re just beginning to understand the power of the social web for increasing profitability. I expect to see a lot more innovation in this area in the coming year.

(Disclaimer: I’m currently doing some industry research and market analysis work for ReviewPro)

Additional trend #2: Social CRM

Social CRM continues to evolve, but I saw it brought up in more and more management discussions over the past year. Organizations are wanting to supplement their traditional CRM systems with the vast amount of customer information available on the social web.

Jacob Morgan of Chess Media Group put together a nice intro to social CRM here, and Adam Metz is another thought leader on this topic that I recommend following.

And of course, I’ll be speaking about social CRM at EyeForTravel’s Customer Centric Strategies in Travel conference.

….

Alright, that was one long post. Tell me in the comments section below:

What are your top travel tech trends for 2011?

We often talk about online monitoring in the context of reputation management, but there are other benefits as well. A big opportunity is discovering content created guests that you can use in your digital communications. (A concept I call “guestsourcing“)

That’s exactly what HMS Insider’s Circle partner Martin Rosberg did at the Fierro Hotel this week.

Through a Google Alert he set up, he discovered these beautiful photos on Flickr that were taken by a guest at their breakfast:

Martin then wisely passed the photos along to his other followers on Twitter and their Facebook page:

Are you monitoring online activity so that you could catch opportunities like this for your hotel? I recommend starting by setting up Google alerts, and then using a tool like ReviewPro to run a more sophisticated listening program.

Remember: Make your guests part of your sales & marketing team through guestsourcing!

Today, I’ll begin working with ReviewPro hotel reputation management to help hotels profit from listening to their guests and customers. My role will be to analyze the industry and educate through writing guides on how to use the social web.

This collaboration builds on my mission here at Hotel Marketing Strategies, which is to assist you in using technology to better serve your guests and create better travel experiences for them. This new arrangement should allow me to serve you even better. I’ll have access to more case studies and examples of what hotels are doing to leverage the best new technology. And even more exciting, I’ll be able to provide you with some original market research using one of the most extensive data libraries in the world on this sector.

I originally met founding CEO RJ Friedlander at an EyeForTravel event in San Francisco last March, and then spent quite a bit of time with the ReviewPro team in Barcelona this week – getting a good understanding of what they’re doing. It seems the goal of ReviewPro is similar to my own mission: they are building the best monitoring software to help you improve your online reputation through service.

Here’s the top reasons I chose to work with ReviewPro, and why I feel you would benefit from working with them as well:

1) A team driven (and positioned) to be #1 in the world. The founding team is comprised of world class technologists, and they have assembled a great team of specialists to surround them. Having a string of successes behind them means they’re bound to repeat it in this sector.
How this benefits you: A company is only as good as its people. The investment ReviewPro makes in its people has a direct benefit to how well they can serve you. Also, it’s important to partner with best-of-class industry leaders, and ReviewPro is well positioned to become this.

2) A focus on the data. This is a product that takes analytics beyond any other product I’ve seen in the market. I’ve had the opportunity to see a bit down the product development pipeline, and ReviewPro is moving to a whole other level above what currently exists in the market. The core technology that powers the system is fundamentally more advanced, and that will help us bring you some very cool features in the weeks and months ahead.
How this benefits you: The right information leads to more sales, more profits, and better service. Better data gives you the competitive advantage.

3) A tool built by the customers. Every new direction the company takes with the product and service seems to be a direct result of real life usage feedback. This is the way great products are built, and I was encouraged to see this development philosophy
How this benefits you: You have a say in how this tool get developed, and can recommend features or functionality that is important for your business.

4) Customer education is a management priority. I suppose this is where I come in, and my collaboration with the team will result in us developing a number of additional marketing guides. But even before now, they’ve published some great material.
How this benefits you: Working with ReviewPro is more than just buying a product. We’re dedicated to showing you how to make money through providing service in the social web.

5) A passion for support. Watching the amount of service this company provides their customers was a deal clincher for me. Support and education is provided at each step of the process. Everyone on the team is putting in the extra work to deliver world class service.
How this benefits you: Again, this isn’t just something you buy and then have to figure out how it works. The ReviewPro team measures their success by how much you profit from the product.

Why reputation and social media monitoring is so important

If you’re not listening, you’re missing out on what your brand could become.

I’ve said this over and over in past articles and presentations. But there are so many websites and opportunities out there that you need a tool to assist you with the listening and measurement of this area.

This is where ReviewPro helps you

ReviewPro makes it easy to track and report on all online activity related to your hotel in one convenient dashboard.

I suggest you request a demo to see how it works for yourself, or start by signing up for a free account for your hotel.