Flickr is perhaps the web’s most active community of photographers, currently hosting around 3.5 billion photos viewed by over 76 million visitors last month. The site was started in Vancouver in early 2004, and bought by Yahoo a year later in March 2005.

It’s interesting to note that Flickr is not the largest photo sharing site – ImageShack, Facebook, and PhotoBucket all host more photos. But those services do not provide the same level of exposure for photos, and are largely used as online storage or for sharing with a few friends. Flickr, on the other hand, is an online photography community, and is built to share photos with as many people as possible. Photographers such as Trey Ratcliff, James Neeley, and Kris Kros regularly get thousands of views for each image they post. This focus on sharing and distribution makes it ideal for hotel marketers looking to build their web media presence.

Photo by Stuck in Customs on Flickr

Before I dive into the “how” of promoting your photos on this site, let’s go over the “why”…

The 5 most compelling reasons for hotels to use Flickr in their web marketing

1. Flickr increases your web presence, building awareness among potential guests and travel planners
2. Flickr can link back to your hotel website, encouraging direct bookings and helping your search engine position
3. Flickr hosts your images for free
4. Flickr syndicates your photos across other websites (important in Google’s universal search – which includes media)
5. Flickr provides the opportunity to build relationships in your online community

As a bonus, Flickr has a large international following…particularly as a percentage of its users. Many social media networks are heavily weighted in one country, so this diversity is helpful if you’re trying to reach an international market. Art really does cross the language barrier:

Search data from Google Trends

Registering your Hotel Flickr Account

Registration is easy. Since it’s part of the Yahoo network, an existing account there will speed the process.  I recommend you use your hotel name as your Flickr username for search optimization purposes.

Customizing your Flickr Profile

One of the first things you want to do is change the URL of your photos. By default, it will look something like http://flickr.com/photos/96576897@N00345/. That’s not very friendly to search engines or regular people. Change it to include your hotel name or important keywords. You want your permanent URL to be something like http://flickr.com/photos/yourhotel/

The rest of pretty straightforward. You can upload a small image for your hotel’s avatar. You’ll probably want to fill out the “about” section with a brief description of your hotel, and then enter your website URL.

Ideas for your Flickr Photostream

• Professionally shot photographs of your hotel’s interior and exterior (example: Tiara Hotels)
• Professionally staged theme photos (see Witt Istanbul’s vintage travel-themed photos for a good example of this)
• Photos of your neighborhood
• Photos of your city (landmarks, little-known attractions, etc)
• Directions to your location in photos (guests arriving by foot from a nearby train station may want to know which landmarks to orient themselves by, for example)

Photo by Josiah Mackenzie on Flickr

Optimizing Flickr Photos for Increased Exposure

Just as there are adjustments for making your website appear higher in search results, there are steps you can take to optimize your Flickr photos so more people see them. As with any search optimization project, it involves putting your important keywords in prominent places:

• Put keywords in your image title (instead of the ugly camera-generated DCGW100322…or whatever)
• Include keywords in your image description
• Place a keyword-rich link back to a specific, related page on your website
• Tag your photo with relevant keywords

Here’s an example of an image from Lawrence Travel Center that is doing a pretty good job with image optimization. They have keywords in the right places and have a keyword-rich link in the description back to their website. I feel they could add a few more relevant keywords to the image, but they have the basic idea.

Power Tips 95% of Flickr Users Don’t Know About

Shhh…here are techniques that few people share, but that Flickr’s most effective users have been using to generate massive profile views and gain huge followings. I’ve noticed them by being a Flickr user myself and working with several other top accounts. If you just create an account, upload some photos, and leave you can’t expect to gain huge traffic. You have to do a little extra.

• Be smart with your licensing. “All rights reserved” is an old mindset that doesn’t work well in new media. Creative Commons offers a great alternative – select a license that meets your needs best. Allow anyone to download or republish your photos on their site with attribution. This spreads your brand much faster than if you reserved all rights and prohibited republishing. (See David Meerman Scott’s free ebook on ‘losing control’ for more on this topic.)
• Embed Flickr photos on your website whenever possible. Embedding increases your view count, and ‘interestingness‘ according to Flickr’s algorithm. This is why you want to use the open licensing described above.
• Use conceptual tag themes creatively. Don’t just tag photos with obvious hotel terms. Use as many relevant keywords as possible…describing the room, your property, and so on. Top photos will also have seemingly abstract terms like “light,” “design,” and “relaxing”…because those conceptual terms are what people search for.
• Participate in lots of groups. Groups focused around a subject like hotels or your city can be a great platform for boosting the popularity of your images. But don’t just dump your photos in the group pool and leave: get to know the other members and interact with their photos. Participation in the community is true in any social media situation, and applies here as well.
• Create varied content. This is seldom practiced by organizations on Flickr, but very important. For example, with Witt Istanbul Suites we included a great image of the Istanbul Skyline. Not everyone will be searching for ‘Istanbul Hotel’ on the site, but quite a few searches take place for ‘Istanbul Night Skyline.’ Having a hotel-produced image of that phrase enables them to capture some traffic there.
• Geo-tag your photos. Quite simply, this is placing your photos on a map showing visitors where the pictures were taken. It’s important for reaching people looking for photos in the area your hotel is located. (There’s a tutorial from Flickr describing the process.)
• Create great content. That should go without saying, but developing fascinating images will make your promotional efforts much easier. If you’re taking the pictures yourself, learn how to use different lenses, lighting, and processing techniques to create captivating images. Great photography will spread organically and virally.

Photo by Josiah Mackenzie on Flickr

Examples of Hotels on Flickr

I’ve linked to several photostreams earlier in this post, but here are a couple more examples of hotels and hospitality companies on Flickr:

• Happy Hotelier (Guido has a set with photos of his Haagsche Suites, but is a good example of someone who publishes a diverse range of interesting content)
• Royal Ramblas Hotel
• St. Martenslane’s
• Domes of Elounda (suites in Crete)
• Hyatt Hotels (they have decided to put all their properties under one account)

Hotel Groups on Flickr

• Hotel Design <- My group
• Hotels
• Hotel Rooms
• Great Hotels of the World
• Hotels & Resorts – Around the World
• Luxury Hotels
• Hotel Chatter

Helpful Tools for Hoteliers Using Flickr

• Flickr uploading tool (free) – a must if you’re uploading lots of pictures
• Flickr badges allow you to automatically update your hotel website with new photos
• Flickr plugin for WordPress
• Big Huge Labs produces a few very helpful tools (along with many fun ones)

Further Resources about Flickr

• Killr Flickr Tips Blog
• Top 10 Tips for Getting Attention on Flickr
• How to Rock Flickr Like a Champ
• 100+ Tools for Flickr Addicts
• 60+ Tools to Enhance Your Flickr Experience
• FlickrLeech (my favorite tool for creative inspiration)

I hope you’ve enjoyed this article. If you’ve found it helpful, please consider bookmarking or stumbling it. For more hotel marketing ideas, you can subscribe to this blog via RSS.

As a hotel manager or marketer, what social media networks should you monitor on a regular basis? It may be helpful for you to create a checklist of sites to visit and tasks to complete as part of your daily routine. Below is a list of components you may consider adding, but first here’s a mind map to help you visualize everything:

Social media maintenance (click for large version)

Note: For simplicity, I use a popular example for each category instead of listing all sites there. For example “TripAdvisor” could also include the other travel review sites you’re listed on.

Because your priorities will be different than that of other readers, it would be difficult for me to tell you how often to perform each task. That will depend on your needs and priorities, and may change over time.

Here are those core tasks from the mindmap above in list format:

• TripAdvisor – Check for new reviews & content
• TripAdvisor – Respond to all reviews (positive & negative)
• TripAdvisor – Encourage happy guests to review
• Blog – Post new entries
• Blog – Check statistics (Feedburner & Analytics) for growth and traffic spikes
• Blog – Moderate comments
• Blog – Respond to comments
• Blog – Review other industry blogs
• Twitter – Post messages
• Twitter – Reply to other users
• Twitter – Respond to direct messages
• Twitter – Monitor search terms for leads & reputation
• Flickr – Post new photos
• Flickr – Monitor & respond to comments
• Flickr – Review group submissions
• Flickr – Submit your photos to other relevant groups
• Flickr – Monitor the Explore page for creative ideas
• Digg & Delicious – Submit important posts
• Digg & Delicious – Check popularity of your content
• Digg & Delicious – Browse popular stories for ideas & trends

(Just browsing the popular stories pages of Delicious as I wrote this post turned up a related article that discusses the technical trends here: The Future of Social Media Monitoring)

Again, it’s difficult for me to specify a social media routine that fits your situation. But the tasks listed above are important, and you should perform each of them at least occasionally. Experiment a little bit and find what works best for you.

I’d like your input on this: what other sites do you – or should you – check on a regular basis?

I love Facebook…for personal use. It’s a great way for me to stay in touch with friends and family around the world. Its media sharing tools have greatly improved over the last few years, and it has taken the place of the majority of my personal email.

So why don’t I like Facebook for hotel marketing? Because I look at the numbers, and it’s not effective in generating new bookings. Most hotels we’ve worked with at Gradigio achieve much higher ROI from other social media networks.

With that in mind, there are a couple cases when Facebook may be a viable marketing option for your organization.

1) If you’re a hostel or targeting the under-30 crowd. In social media marketing, it’s all about demographics. You need to know who your target audience is, and then build a presence on those networks. Facebook has grown from the days when you needed an academic email address to join, but it remains a younger network. Quantcast shows 78% of the sites’ users are under 34 years old. If you are a luxury leisure property, this probably isn’t the place to be.

Chart courtesy of Quantcast.com

2) If you’re a larger hotel chain looking to build an application. Several travel companies have built very successful apps for the Facebook platform that spread quickly virally. But due to development cost and market size, this would only work well if you have a number of properties over a large geographic area. Users won’t install an app from one hotel unless it helped them elsewhere.

Recent updates in the Facebook interface have made the platform more conducive to the real-time sharing of information and media. This is a positive development for hotel marketers, but the platform still remains not the best time investment for most properties.

Hotels can achieve higher ROI by focusing on social media networks that reach potential guests in the decision making stage of the buying cycle. Not many travel planners use Facebook in their research process. They do check guest-written hotel reviews and user-produced media. Efforts to cultivate those are much more effective.

#10 – The best business leaders don’t look at overall market averages, but rather how they can break the trends and grow market share. Number of customers lost by recession is less than the number of potential new customers out there. Global travel will grow 3% in the year ahead.

#9 – Companies that only seek to cut costs now will emerge from this recession with an uncompetitive, outdated organization.

#8 – This economy is accelerating the rate people are moving from offline to online for travel bookings. There is a perception of better value from booking online.

#7 – Everyone in your hotel must be involved in your new media strategy – not just one person. Think holistically, and avoid thinking: “That staff person does internet stuff.”

#6 – Context – not just content – is king. Offer the right information to the right people at the right time.

#5 – Twitter is either the latest time wasting fad or an important tool for research and communicating with your guests. Make sure to determine its use for your hotel before jumping on the bandwagon.

#4 – Maps combined with location-specific photos and videos is the new interface of choice for travel research.

#3 – There will be major growth in video: both guest-created and professionally produced. It gives the viewer a richer perspective into the real hotel experience – more than standard hotel photos. For hoteliers, video is an opportunity to differentiate their properties and move away from price wars.

#2 – Mobile services will become strategically important in 2009. Smart mobile devices are now in the hands of many, and data connections are faster and cheaper. To benefit from this trend, hotels need to create platform-specific content that is simple and fast to use in any country.

#1 – The future will belong to companies that innovate boldy now, before the economy fully recovers. When recovery comes, it’s going to happen fast.

A Google search for “hotel near san francisco, ca” returns these results:

How do you get your hotel into that all-important top 10 listing? That’s what I want to share with you – tips for ranking higher in local business searches. I’ve already described the process for on-site hotel SEO, so this post will focus on other, off-site influences.

Factor #1: A profile in Google’s Local Business Center. Setting one up is not only important, it’s quick and easy. (GetListed.org is a useful starting point if you’re beginning local search optimization.)

Factor #2: Keywords in your business listing title. During setup, put your hotel name, the word “hotel” or “resort” (if needed), and your city name.

Factor #3: Keywords in your business description. Be compelling and accurate, while including important phrases.

Factor #4: Appearing in the right category. Understand – this is not just about business categories. One hotel I’m working with was incorrectly placed in the wrong city – which of course is reduces the number of people they get searching for hotels in their area. Make sure to check this.

(Being close to the city center usually helps rankings, but there is probably not much you can do about this one.)

Factor #5: Your presence in travel directories. Search engines will usually reference this data in their listings:

Factor #6: Appearing in business databases such as infoUSA, Citysearch, and Open List. Again, this gives 3rd-party validation of your information.

Factor #7: Your phone number & address on all website pages. This helps to establish your local presence.

Factor #8: Number (and quality) of local links. Try to obtain location keywords in inbound anchor text. (Eg, San Francisco hotel rather than “[Name of hotel]“)

Factor #9: Number of guest reviews. From a search standpoint, the number of reviews is usually more important than the contents of the reviews. Of course, you want to encourage positive reviews, but don’t hesitate to ask for reviews because you’re afraid they will be negative. As Justin points out, reviewers will often include important keywords:

Factor #10: Photos and videos associated with your listing. Yet another reason to build your social media presence.  Involve your guests in creating a wide range of media types.

Using these tools will help build your local search position, which in turn increases direct sales.  Good luck, and let us know if you need any help.

Today I’m joined by Bill Quiseng, General Manager of The Inn at Bay Harbor and a highly sought after speaker on customer service leadership. Under Bill’s oversight, The Inn has received the Renaissance Hotels & Resorts Savvy Service Award, and has been named one of the Top 500 World’s Best Hotels by Travel+Leisure magazine.

Is customer service the key to succeeding in this economy?

Absolutely! No matter the economic situation, people will continue to pay a premium for quality. In our luxury segment, people buy with emotion. So we create an experience that will emotionally bond our customers to us.

Our customer’s perception is not driven by the tangible product. Our competitors can replicate our product. The king bed at The Inn is no bigger than the king bed at the Super 8 across the street. What they can’t replicate is our people. If we can get our people delivering consistently on our customer service message, we will continue to build market share despite this economy. We keep that message simple, say it often and make it burn in our people.

The message: WWWBLL. WWWBLL. (pronounced “Weeble, Weeble”). What would World’s Best look like? Then we go about to deliver that experience. Remember Weebles? “Weebles wobble but they don’t fall down.” If we can deliver a World’s Best experience as our customers perceive it, we may wobble but we won’t fall down. Has our focus on WWWBLL, WWWBLL paid off? All I can tell you is that our booking pace for social room nights is up 20%+ over last year.

Service has always been important in the hospitality industry. Do we just need to be reminded of its importance, or are there new tactics we can use?

I am always looking for new tactics using the CASE Method – Copy and Steal Everything from within and outside our industry. The late Charlie “Tremendous” Jones said “Five years from now, you’ll be the same person you are today except for the people you meet and the books you read.” John DiJulius, author of Secret Service, gave us CASE ideas about customer service in John Roberts salons that we have put into our Spa. John Michelli, author of The New Gold Standard, gave us CASE ideas from Ritz Carlton. Danny Meyer’s Setting the Table gave us restaurant ideas. And Dale Carnegie’s How to Win Friends gave us CASE principles that we use in our new hire orientation.

In addition, we continually practice the service mantra, “You cannot begin to satisfy Guests, until you remove all the dissatisfiers.” We take every single Guest negative comment or complaint and define a Best Practice to eliminate the possibility of reoccurrence.

How do you facilitate people telling stories about your hotel?

I continually tell our team to “Think like the customer.” Our Guests are on vacation. When we think like the customer, we know that when our Guests return back home they, as we would when we return from a vacation, will tell stories of their destination. It is up to us to drive what kinds of stories our Guests tell.

So we make sure that we create a bunch of small wows that culminate to a large “Wow” when they think of the collective experience such as Apple caramel cookies and hot apple cider during this time of year at check-in, personalized menu and digital picture taken and presented prior to departure for anniversary couples dining in the dining room, and rose petal turndown for those couples staying in The Inn.

How are you using the internet to build customer relationships?

We recognize that new customers are migrating from travel agents to the internet to get information about our property. We also recognize that our present customers can be referrals and advocates for us. When we receive a very complimentary comment card, we request their permission to post their comments on our testimonial page on our website. At the same time, we are encouraging people to sign up as a fan of The Inn on Facebook.

Thank you for your insights, Bill.

To learn more about Bill, visit his website at BillQuiseng.com.

Photo by Rashley on Flickr

If you’re in the process of redesigning your hotel website, it’s important to do so with search marketing in mind. Search engines bring potential guests to your website for free, and play an important role in driving direct sales.

Why is search optimization so important?

3 statistics:

1. The top result on a search page gets clicked 42% of the time (compared to 3% for result #10)
2. The top 3 results get 79% of the total clicks
3. The top 5 get 88% of clicks

Alright, so how do you build a search-friendly website?

First, understand which keywords you need to target

Keywords are the words people use in web searches to find you. Which ones are most popular in your market? Which ones apply best to your hotel?

Keep in mind that phrasing is very important. Use keyword research tools to avoid getting mislead by industry terms. For example, according to Google…

• 37,200,000 searches where performed in January for cheap hotel vs. just 60,500 for budget hotel
• 11,100,000 people searched for luxury hotels vs. 74,000 for luxury resorts

Don’t rely on brainstorming a list of terms for “building your brand.” Use historical data for real insight on customer behavior.

Remember: Focus on the words your potential guests actually use, not what you want them to use.

Second, develop keyword themes for each page

Group your top keywords into sets of two or three related terms. Each page on your website should be focused around a different, unique set. As you structure your page, you’ll use these phrases extensively.

Remember: Search engines love pages with singular themes.

Third, place the terms in your keyword themes prominently throughout the page

1. Page title: 8-10 words, specific to general, with your brand name last
2. Description META tag: this is what people see in web searches, so sell specifics in 25-30 words
3. H1 and H2 headings:include the keywords as part of attention-grabbing headlines

Remember: Keyword position is far more important than keyword density.

Fourth, develop useful, content-rich pages

On each page, include relevant text content. Search engines only read words, so weave your keyword themes into the copy. But don’t overdo it. Of course, write for your customers first and speak to their needs.

Remember: On the web, people don’t read – they scan.

Fifth (and finally), understand structural best practices

The way your pages are built plays a part in your web rankings. This can be pretty technical, so you may want to ask your web designer to ensure this happens:

• Create a site map with text links to all pages
• Look into developing XML site maps as well
• Use a flat directory structure if possible (less sub-directories is better)
• Use keywords in the anchor text for internal links (not “click here”)
• Avoid flash & javascript navigation
• Place keywords in your file and directory names (You’ll notice this post is at /seo-for-hotel-websites – an important phrase for this article)

Remember: Your site architecture is important for your rankings.

Invest time now, receive ongoing benefits

Most studies show organic website search optimization provides the highest ROI of any marketing tactic. Spend some extra time now to make sure your site is built around search-friendly standards, and you’ll be repaid many times over in the future.

1. You can start small
It’s possible to start with just $50 (though raising this will accelerate testing and help you get a better feel of the market).

2. Success is instantly measurable
Within 48 hours of campaign launch, you should be able to determine if the campaign is a success. Either it works or it doesn’t. Conversion tracking is easy, so you can see how much you pay for each new booking. This rapid feedback is not possible for many other types of media.

3. Ad delivery is very targeted
Search engines provide a wide variety of distribution options for your ads, so you can appear to your target markets. Depending on the tactics you use, you can show ads for relevant keywords, on selected websites, or to a group with similar demographics.

4. You reach people actively searching for your product
By showing your ads to people as they search the web, you reach them at the decision making stage of the buying cycle and dramatically improve the quality of the impressions.

5. Message testing is easy
Using split testing, you can perform accurate market tests to see which headlines and ad copy pulls the best. After just a few days, you can take this knowledge, and apply it to other promotional material.

6. Instant changes are possible
Is something not working? Want to change the direction of your ad copy? This can be done with a couple clicks, and your campaign is instantly updated. There is not need to wait until the next issue or ad cycle.

7. International advertising is simplified
With a globalized world, your potential guests could be coming from 10,000 miles away. PPC makes it easier to reach people searching for hotels in your area.

8. Branding exposure is free
Even when people aren’t clicking on your ads, you still get brand exposure. And unlike traditional ad campaigns, these impressions don’t cost you a thing.

9. You only pay for results
By definition, you’re only paying for actual website visitors – but when you begin using conversion tracking, you can make sure your ad spend is actually tied to new guest reservations. This eliminates all the risk you face when considering other types of media.

10. High ROI is typical
The combination of all the reasons above usually results in highly profitable pay per click campaigns for hoteliers.

If you’re still wondering whether to try PPC marketing, I encourage you to give it a try. There’s not much you can lose.

Most hotel websites look the same: Home, Rooms, Amenities, Reservations, Contact us.  Maybe even an dynamic flash intro or photo gallery thrown in for good measure.

“Look at us!  Aren’t we beautiful?”

BORING!!!

Here’s the hard truth: Potential guests don’t care about you.

They want to know if you have what they are looking for.
They want to know how you are going to meet their needs.
They want to know what their experience will be like.

So here’s my advice: Develop separate pages on your site for each of your target guest personas. Share your unique selling points with each group in a different way.

Without splitting up your website into separate sections, you can’t deliver this personalized, relevant information.

Focus on potential guests and their needs, not on your property.  You’ll probably end up covering the same material – but it’s how you present it that matters.

So let me ask you this: How does your hotel website provide unique content to each type of guest?

Everyone loves a good list.  To help you plan for the upcoming year, I’ve put together some of the best new marketing ideas for 2009.  Enjoy!

Note: This list has been updated as 130 Hotel Marketing Ideas for 2010

Website

Organic Search Marketing (SEO)

Paid Search Marketing (PPC)

Social Media

Measurement & Analytics

Customer Service

Technology

Miscellaneous