For our next interview, we’re talking with Dave Craig, General Manager of Hotel Teatro in Denver, Colorado, USA. In addition to receiving great rankings on TripAdvisor, the hotel was named one of the Top 50 Large City Hotels in the US by Travel + Leisure magazine, and rated the top Denver hotel in 2009 by Zagat.

Josiah: Tell us a little bit about your hotel

Dave: Hotel Teatro is a boutique hotel located in the heart of downtown Denver. While the property is a registered historic landmark we typically don’t market it as such because virtually every space has been remodeled with state of the art décor and technology. Teatro is Italian for “theater” so the hotel has a theatrical influence in the design and artwork.

How have you achieved your success on TripAdvisor?

Hotel Teatro has an inherent culture of exceptional service. We hire our hospitality professionals very carefully and work diligently to train them to 5 Star & 5 Diamond Standards. We have the ability to involve our associates in many of the global decisions that affect the way the hotel operates so there is a strong sense of ownership. Our team is empowered to make active decisions that will create a successful experience for our guests. We have seasoned operational managers on duty 24 hours per day, 7 days per week so there is always intense scrutiny over our daily operations.

We also spend the first portion of every staff meeting reading our newest TripAdvisor reviews aloud to the group. This establishes a forum for recognizing favorable performance and for developing solutions where we have areas of opportunity.

How do you encourage guests to share their experience on TripAdvisor?

We are blessed with many wonderful guests, a large number of whom have been returning to Hotel Teatro for many years. Every day we receive cards, letters and e-mails of thanks. I make certain to respond to each one personally and whenever I do, I typically finish my correspondence with a phrase like the following:

Thank you for taking the time to relay the details of your experience at Hotel Teatro. I am so glad that you had a wonderful visit. If you’d like to share your experience with others, I encourage you to do so at www.tripadvisor.com.

What other internet marketing tactics is your hotel focusing on right now?

I am continually amazed at the viral nature of social media websites. I don’t think that even Mark Zuckerburg, when he established Facebook, could have foreseen its exponential growth. It appears that business CEOs have learned from their teenagers that the speed and volume of communication has changed forever the way that we do business. The social media sites are becoming business media sites as more business adopt their own pages in these environments. Yelp, Facebook, and Twitter are ultimately where our clients are sharing their experiences, but TripAdvisor is clearly the most highly recognized source for unbiased travel feedback.

What marketing tactics have performed best for you? Which don’t live up to the hype?

Ultimately we recognize that today’s travel consumer is much better educated than the traveler of even 5 years ago. Periodicals such as US Today and the wide variety of internet channels provide exciting new resources that result in a consumer who knows how to book more efficiently, for better value and has developed higher expectations. Consequently we recognize that their travel experience is not just an airline flight, a hotel, a dinner and a trip to the theater, but all of these things combined. In this experience economy we work diligently to provide as many of these services as possible and to involve ourselves in each to ensure a high quality experience. For example, if appropriate, we will have a guest services associate escort our guests to the theater to ensure they find their way, obtain their tickets and are off to a good start.

Because guests will report their first hand experience, without edit, on the internet, the value of that documentary is quite valuable. Due to the increased demand on this kind of information, other sources such as straight advertising carry less value and consequently we have come to shift our dependency accordingly.

Can you give an example of this in action?

We had a couple arriving at the hotel. The husband had left to run an errand and the wife was pulling the car to the curb, while trying to manage two crying babies. Our bell captain could clearly see the frustration on her face and offered to help. Through near tears she said “I just wanted to get settled and go to my favorite Chinese food restaurant, but with these two crying babies, that will never happen!” The bellman, seeing her plight expediently got her settled in her guest room, then went to the Chinese restaurant of her choice, picked out her favorite entrees, brought it back to the hotel and had it plated on beautiful china and silver and had it delivered to her room. The guest was amazed and it began to be her favorite ‘hotel story’ which I heard again and again due to the viral nature of sites like TripAdvisor.

Thanks for your time, Dave.

Our recent article about TripAdvisor’s top London hotel got me excited.What additional hotel marketing and management lessons could we learn from other top guest-rated hotels? I’m going to start a little series interviewing management at these TripAdvisor all-stars to find out.

Today we’re going to talk with Adele Gutman, VP of Sales & Marketing at HKHotels. All four of their Manhattan properties are among TripAdvisor’s top 10 New York City hotels, including the Casablanca Hotel and the Library Hotel.

Let’s begin.

Josiah: Give us a little introduction to your hotels.

Adele: Let me share what I wrote on our website, which I think says it all:

HKHotels & Hospitality is a family owned and operated collection of small luxury hotels in New York City that takes a unique approach to the art of hospitality. Each of our small European-style New York hotels has its own distinctive personality and charm. What they share is a commitment to providing timeless beauty, exceptional value, and an outstanding travel experience for every guest visiting NYC.

HKHoteliers care about people, and we care about building lifelong relationships with our guests.  To achieve that, our philosophy is to hire the kindest, happiest people we can find, people who are naturally inclined to love to help people. Then, we develop their natural talents and train them to become professional hoteliers so that they are more than simply their title, whether it be Bellman, Guest Service Agent or Housekeeper; they are all professional luxury hoteliers dedicated to providing personalized luxurious service to each traveler who crosses their path.

All four of your Manhattan properties are among TripAdvisor’s top 10 New York City hotels. How did you do it?

Several years ago when we first began to notice TripAdvisor, we saw that one of our hotels was number seven, and another was number 56. Because one of our hotels was at the top of the list, it never seemed out of the realm of possibility to have them all up there. So, this may sound very “Oprah” but seriously, several years ago we “set an intention” to have all of our hotels in the top 10%. We started making a big deal out of the reading of every review at our morning meetings, to observe what our guests really responded to and learn what we could do better. We shared ideas between the hotels, and included all our staff, including every bellman and housekeeper in the process. Our staff loved it.

We strive to hire the nicest happiest people so between their good nature and the training they get at the hotels, they take so much pride in the appreciation of the guests, and it is addictive. The result, at least for us, is a team of people who are strongly motivated to make the guests happy.  Happy staff make for happy guests and vise versa. With the right support from the leadership in terms of empowering staff to take initiative, it is self perpetuating.

Sometimes, hotels have a problem bridging the “offline to online gap.” How are you encouraging guests at your hotels to talk about their stay online – and share their positive experiences with others?

We believe that satisfying your guests’ needs and expectations is not going to get you any reviews. If you want your guests to shower your hotel with good word of mouth, both on and offline, you have got to wow them with exceptional service and a unique experience that leaves them with something to talk about. If they get home and their friends, colleagues and  associates ask them how their trip was, you want them to be able to say, “you’ll never believe what an awesome hotel we stayed at. They had this, that and the other thing, and the people there, that was the best part of all.”

Casablanca Hotel

Let’s move beyond TripAdvisor. What other internet marketing tactics are your hotels focusing on right now?

We are a small company, so our time is limited, but we are tinkering with Citysearch, Yelp, Facebook and Twitter.

But TripAdvisor is the powerhouse that brings guests to us from Europe, Asia, Australia, and South America. Nothing else comes close.

Anything online that has little to no cost yet drives visitors to our website, we love to work on. We have about 1,100 fans between the four hotels on facebook, and that is with no financial investment and really, just a small amount of time, so it gives us another way of communicating with our audience and strengthening the bond with our clients.

In the past, which marketing tactics have performed best for you? Which ones don’t quite live up to the hype?

Giving each hotel a bit of a concept, a unique identity, gives the guests and the journalists a hook to rest their story on. The Library concept in particular is so unique, everyone loves to talk about it and write about it. Creating interesting packages at the hotel also gives people something to talk about.  We get a lot more play and exposure from that than anything else we can do.

We really avoid paid advertising, because we feel our resources should all go towards things that enhance the guest experience instead, but we have on rare occasion traded for some print ads. We never felt any big benefit from that as much as we do from the on and offline word of mouth. Free wine and cheese in the evenings makes people happy. That is what performs well for us.

Library Hotel

What has been your biggest obstacle in designing or launching your online marketing campaign? How did you overcome it?

We came to realize that there was no shortcut or easy way out. We had to make the time to learn about internet marketing for ourselves as opposed to relying on outside experts, and test our ideas, evaluate the results, and continually grow to become experts for our own needs. If you have a true entrepreneurial spirit at your business, there is no one outside the company that will care as deeply about the results as you will.

There is so much great advice available on the internet for people who seek it out. People are so generous about sharing ideas. We are still in the learning process, and perhaps always will be, but everyone at our company has begun to embrace the work and we are getting better at it all the time. The thing I feel we really are strongest at is the key to making any business a long term success. We build our business brick by brick by making sure everyone who checks out is delighted enough not just to return but to create more future business through referrals both on and off line.

Do you have any favorite marketing resources you would like to share with our readers?

I have my Google Reader programmed to send me anything that gets written on the internet about Internet marketing particularly with regard to hospitality. That’s how I found you, Josiah!

What’s the most exciting trend you see in hotel marketing? Why?

I guess would have to say that I really have my eye on Twitter. I am not doing much for the hotels on it now, but we just launched a new restaurant in the Broadway Theater District called Montenapo (@Montenapo) so I am experimenting with the joys of Twitter there.

We are just in the baby steps, but already, there is no doubt about it: Twitter has definitely brought new customers to Montenapo who would not have found us otherwise. And it’s free so you’ve got to love that!

Thank you for your time, Adele.

There is a lot of speculation going around the hotel industry on how they should interact with TripAdvisor. Since this site is so important for hospitality & travel marketing, I went right to the source to clarify a few things. Here is my conversation with TripAdvisor Vice President Michele Perry.

Josiah: If a hotel has a poor reputation on TripAdvisor, what steps should they take to improve it?

Michele: When a hotel has a poor ranking on TripAdvisor, it usually reflects problems with the property — grounds, staffing, cleanliness, service, or something else.  The most important step hoteliers can take is to read the feedback they’ve received on TripAdvisor, and take the necessary steps to improve problem areas.

If a new owner has just taken over a property with a poor reputation, they can go to their owners’ page and fill out the change of ownership form with details of the nature of the ownership change, along with documentation that the change occurred, and we can remove reviews from the prior owner’s tenure.

Read more…

This post is by guest expert Rajul Chande.

As of July 2009, The Egerton House Hotel is currently the number one guest-rated London hotel on TripAdvisor.  I recently met Jonathan Raggett, CEO of Red Carnation Hotel Collection, to try to understand how it got there.

This group runs a stunning 4 of TripAdvisor’s top 6 London hotels at present, including the Egerton House.  It’s an enviable position to be in.

But the focus here is on the Egerton House: this is after all the current “number 1″  and was also the venue of our meeting.  How did a relatively unsung and small (30 bedrooms) hotel make it to the top of the charts?

Before revealing some answers, let’s peek at a few recent TripAdvisor guest comments which have lifted the Egerton House to top spot:

The above comments clearly highlight that staff at the Egerton House possess bucketloads of character and charisma.

From what Mr Raggett told me this is not accidental.

They consciously recruit “characters” with personality and flair.  So for example you have Antonio at the hotel’s bar who is famous for his martinis.

Head Barman Antonio struts his stuff at the cosy Egerton House bar

Then there is Alex who not only checks you in but may also sing at your table!  There’s also friendly Murat – one of the managers who cheerfully showed me around the hotel.

All the staff I ran into had a calm and relaxed attitude.  This isn’t always the case in luxury hotels which often have an overbearing formality in the air.

The staff here seem to be driven by an expectation of success rather than a fear of failure.  This frees them to be themselves and excel.

I also noticed that the hotel cultivates a distinctly cosy and intimate atmosphere – helped by its small size.

It’s a place that doesn’t stand on ceremony and is rather a hotel where guests can simply chill out, unwind and feel pampered.

Mr Raggett told me that although great effort is made to recruit the “characters” described above, continuous training is equally critical.

There is a focus on “TNTs” (“Tiny Noticeable Touches”).  So for example, guests’ favourite drinks and newspapers are remembered, their favourite music arranged in advance in their rooms and so on.

Training is also tailored to the hotel’s specific needs and driven by continuous “mystery shopping” rather than generic standards.

This – as well as the emphasis on personalisation – echoes the approach taken by Claridge’s.  And to the extent that you can usually stay at the Egerton House for a few quid less than Claridge’s, it offers good value.

Rooms at the Egerton House have a comfy, traditional style

When I walked around to see some rooms, I found them nice but fairly standard fare for a luxury hotel.  They were immaculately presented but I don’t think you’d choose this hotel on the strength of its rooms alone.

For me the hotel’s main asset is the intimacy and warmth conveyed by the surroundings and above all the staff.  It’s a unique establishment run by a talented team with great attention to detail.

With only 30-odd rooms to supervise they know the hotel inside out and obviously feel comfortable and confident within its walls.

The manageable size also makes it easier to deliver unusually consistent performance.  And I think that this consistency and the hotel’s special intimacy are what make it a deserved number 1 on TripAdvisor.

Location-wise, Knightsbridge is one of London’s upscale neighbourhoods and very close to Harrod’s, so it is perfect for shopping trips. You’ll come back to the hotel bar with your pile of shopping bags to be greeted by one of Antonio’s G&Ts or martinis!

Rajul Chande writes about London hotels on his blog, LondonHotelsInsight.com

Josiah’s update 30 July 2009: At the time of the article’s writing, the Egerton House was #1 in London. TripAdvisor rankings change weekly, and the hotel is now at position #3. However, the two hotels that overtook it are sister properties under the same management – which makes this article’s lessons still very important.

Today it’s my pleasure to introduce hotel marketing expert and colleague, Keith West. First we’ll discuss what every director of sales & marketing must know…and then we have an exciting announcement at the end. Let’s get started.

Josiah: Can you tell us a little bit about your background in hotel marketing?

Keith: I’ve been marketing hotels online since 1996. When I first started it was rare to find a hotel that had its own domain name. Since then I’ve completed sites and marketing for over 200 independent and branded properties. The consistent theme over those years is a rising bar. When you’re the only hotel in town with a website, you’re the winner. Now to be the winner you need a site that connects with your visitors, that converts at a high rate, that plays nice with search engines. You need to know how to bring people to the site using free and paid methods. And you need to understand how your site fits in with your overall marketing strategy.

What’s the most common misconception about hotel internet marketing?

That it is something computer people do or is something can be completely outsourced. Much of it can be, but if you don’t understand the fundamentals, you’re being a poor partner to your vendor. It is not really possible for a vendor to have a full understanding of who your customers are. To be effective you need to be able to match up the range of Internet marketing techniques with the behaviors of your customers. Then consult with the vendor on the details of how to implement the strategy that works for you.

Are there core areas of internet marketing knowledge every Director of Sales & Marketing should know?

Increasing demands are being placed on DoSM’s to have a solid grasp of the full range of Internet Marketing strategies. That’s a hard place from some directors to get to because most of them are people oriented and quite a few have a fear of “technology.” That will change. It wasn’t long ago that most executives couldn’t type- that was a secretary’s job. Now most of us realize that a computer is a tool, and using it doesn’t make you a technologist. Internet marketing isn’t about technologies, it’s about understanding how people interact and make decisions online. You don’t have to be a programmer understand that. I’m not a programmer myself.

Without a doubt, DoSM’s need to control the message. You can have someone design a banner ad for you, but you have to tell them what it should say and what it’s supposed to accomplish. You can’t ask a technician to do a marketer’s job.

Perhaps there are topics a Marketing Director does NOT need to know…either because it can be delegated or is irrelevant?

All site design should be outsourced. It’s deceptively easy to build a site, but there are many places to make big mistakes without realizing it. Most anything that is tedious, repetitive or time consuming should be automated or outsourced. Pay per click advertising for example. I think everyone should set up a campaign and operate it for a while to understand the process. But once you know what you’re doing, it could make perfect sense to turn over the daily operation to someone else. Most hotel managers need to know what to do, not how to do it.

I’ve written before about traits of an effective hotel e-marketer. In your opinion does a Director of Sales & Marketing have to know these technical skills? Does it depend on the hotel size and type?

That’s a good post. The fact is any DoSM needs to have a detailed understanding of how things work. That’s different from knowing how to do it. You don’t need to be able to design a website to know that it should have text that is accessible by search engines, that just because it looks one way on your screen doesn’t mean everyone sees it that way, and that your preference for a particular look or color is not as important as what actually results in a reservation. There is definitely a sliding scale. The smaller the property the more likely it is for any particular function to be in house.

Typically, what are the biggest obstacles facing DoSM when starting an internet strategy?

Jeff Bezos says Amazon is confronted with “insurmountable opportunities.” That describes the feeling of anyone working an Internet marketing campaign. There are too many options. The media doesn’t help with the endless parade of the fad of the day. Without some handholding, it’s easy for a GM or DoSM to get pulled off on interesting but unproductive tangents.

How do you recommend they avoid this?

Study. Test small. Learn. Repeat.

What’s the most exciting trend you see in hotel marketing? Why?

This is the most exciting time yet in hotel marketing. Quite honestly, a few years ago it had become boring. Build an optimized site, get some links, walk away. Now a site/campaign needs to be actively managed. Marketing is becoming more conversation than monologue. Hotels have to hold up their end of the dialogue. The website now is the primary public face of a hotel and not an afterthought. That places more demands on the staff, but ultimately the benefits to the customer and the hotel are huge for the hotels that figure it out.

Speaking of exciting, I think now is a good time for our announcement. This summer we’ll be offering two hotel marketing workshops together in Las Vegas, Nevada (July 23&24) and Orlando, Florida (August 13&14). These 2-day training sessions will be intensive and very practical – designed to show you how to use the internet to attract more guests.

Tell our readers a little bit about these events: who it’s for, who it’s not for, and what the benefits are.

“Internet Boot Camp for Hotels” is designed to get more online reservations for hotels. It’s straight to the point- clearly identifying what you need to know and what you don’t. It’s important to me that Boot Camp deliver actual results and not simply be a theoretical exercise. Graduates will walk away with a systematic step by step plan for turning their Internet marketing into a selling machine.

The program is intended for General Managers, Directors of Sales and Marketing, and Sales Managers with a good overall understanding of their hotel’s marketing. No technical knowledge is assumed or required, but attendees should have a good overall grasp of how to use (not program) the Internet.

I asked a few hotel bloggers for their best tip for attracting readers. Their replies….

Adam from the Roger Smith Life website in New York City:

We have seen great success in attracting readers to our blog by building a strong network on Twitter and then telling stories about the culture around our boutique art hotel.  Twitter provides a great audience for us and leads people in to the larger stories on our blog.

Chris from the Whale Cottage blog in South Africa:

I edit a month’s worth of blog posts and create a newsletter out of it, which goes to my address book of 20 000 past guests, colleagues, and past enquirers.   I refer to my blog in most editions, hoping they’ll activate the RSS feed.

Also, I have added a fun post to my blog once a week, on a  Friday, by awarding a Sweet & Sour Service Award, for excellent and poor service received.  People love reading this post in particular.

The Deluxe Hotel blog in Portland, Oregon:

Search engine optimization is the best tactic we use for attracting blog readers. Ranking for top keywords is essential.

Dina from the Murano Hotel blog in Tacoma, Washington

Our participation in social media sites, such as Facebook and Twitter, greatly help awareness to our blogs. Our blog discusses news about Tacoma and things to do around the city. Guests find our blog to be full of ideas and activities and social media helps to promote the content.

In addition, SEO efforts have greatly helped guests find our blog.

Sarah from The Citizen Hotel blog in Sacramento, California

Use Twitter and Facebook as vehicles to drive blog traffic. I post a few sentences about an event or new promotion and include a link to our hotel blog for more information. This strategy gives consumers a call to action and improves blog visibility.

Twitter seems to be a recurring theme here, which is not surprising. It’s the #1 referral website to this blog, and I suspect for many other blogs as well. Perhaps I’ll put together a guide for effective Blog-Twitter cross-promotion in the future…

Anyway, what’s your best tip for attracting blog readers?

Today we’re joined by Dina Nishioka, a blogger for Hotel Preston in Nashville. Though she is Director of PR at Provenance Hotels – which also owns designer hotels in Seattle and Portland – she regularly communicates with staff at their Nashville location to give the blog a local flavor.

Josiah: How long have you been blogging?

Dina: Since September 2007 when the Preston blog went live.

What topics do you write about and how do you get content ideas?

We write about anything that’s happening around Nashville – events, attractions & happenings around the hotel. We try to provide guests with additional info about Nashville, and even provide some recommendations on our favorite restaurants, bars, and so on. We want guests to “know” Nashville before they arrive.

I like your blogging voice. Do you consciously try to be personable (instead of ‘corporate’)?

I think readers relate better when we write in a real human voice. So, I keep it light-hearted and conversational. We wanted the voice to fall in line with our relaxed, boutique atmosphere.

Who are your readers?

Current and potential guests. The blog has actually been the first touch-point for some of our guests, which is great. They get to see our fun side first.

What results have you seen from blogging?

We see about 800 visits per month, which isn’t bad considering I’m not able to spend as much time as I’d like blogging. Guests have commented on the blog when they stay, and we’ve been written up in the Tennessean a few times as well.

How do you promote your blog?

We promote the blog through our Twitter & Facebook accounts. We also include a link to the blog on our website.

Do you have any advice or recommendations for other hotels on blogging?

Be yourself and include activities, advice, and content that you would be interested in!

Thanks, Dina. You can read her writing at the Hotel Preston blog, or review our hotel blogging best practices series.

Tuncel Toprak

In just one year, Tuncel Toprak has turned his new boutique hotel, Witt Istanbul Suites, into one of Istanbul’s most acclaimed hotels (currently #2 of 545 hotels in the city according to TripAdvisor). In the interest of full disclosure, Tuncel has hired Gradigio to enhance their digital media marketing campaign. But Tuncel has an fascinating story, and I think many of you would be interested in hearing how he did it. Let’s get started….

Josiah: Seth Godin talks a lot about product design being the foundation of marketing. You’ve focused on that from day one, studying design in New York, then hiring Autoban to design the hotel. Are you seeing a link from your emphasis on design to the press and referrals you’ve received?

Tuncel: Yes. When we were starting we didn’t have a set budget for different categories – we just wanted to create things we liked. So everything from the linens (commissioned from Denizli) to the bathroom fixtures (part of Ross Lovegrove’s Istanbul Collection) – are things I would want in my house. I would love to live in a house like my hotel. That was the concept of the design process.

Image courtesy of WittIstanbul.com

Nothing is ‘hotel furniture’. There is a whole industry of hotel furniture, and I hate it! All our furniture is designed for us and built for us by Autoban. When we were renovating the former Ogilvy & Mather offices, we could have installed 30 rooms. But we wanted the suites to be large, so we ended up creating 17 60-square-meter suites. Now we’re able to offer a spacious luxury suite for the same price as a standard 5-star hotel room.

People are sick of staying in chain hotels that are the same everywhere. For example if you’re staying in the Hilton Dubai you probably wouldn’t notice the difference from Hilton Tokyo – it’s the same concept. People like our large, home atmosphere with a unique design.

Image courtesy of WittIstanbul.com

We were the first hotel project for our architects. They are very young, but have won many awards from international magazines. There are a group of journalists that are following their work, and so when they did this project, they came to us to see what the result was. We didn’t pay these people…it was word of mouth buzz. One journalist would write a story about our hotel, then a few more would, and so on.

What other marketing tactics have performed well for you?

My aim has always been simple: try to get good online reviews. I know word of mouth is very important, so I never want a guest to leave unhappy. I don’t want to pressure our guests into writing a review, but I do try to talk with all our guests. If they say something positive, I try to refer them to TripAdvisor (or a similar site).

Image courtesy of WittIstanbul.com

So you’ve only focused on online reviews so far for your marketing?

Yes, we have a guestbook at our reception desk. If someone writes something in there, we encourage them to post a review to TripAdvisor or the online booking site they used to make their reservation.

It’s not easy for someone to write a review online. They have to go to the site, log in, and then write their thoughts. Typically people that have negative experiences at a hotel are far more likely to do this than people who have a good experience. This makes earning positive reviews harder.

Is there anything special you do for the Turkish market?

No, we actually don’t focus our marketing here. Some big local corporations find us online, and contact us after reading our online reviews. So they are coming to us, we don’t market to them.

I think we’re going to see more and more of that in the future. Improving ‘findability’ will give a better return on investment than outbound sales efforts. Having an impressive online presence pre-sells potential guests before they even contact you.

If they believe the reviews are authentic and true, and it contains a good third-party endorsement, then it’s more reliable information than self-puffery by the hotel.

We find our visitors are very informed when they arrive at our hotel…they even know the names of some of our staff. There are some reviews on TripAdvisor saying [name] was great, and so they arrive feeling like they know us a bit already.

What type of information do people want to find about (or from) you online?

Our guests don’t want to be tourists here in Istanbul. They want to know insider tips and information. So providing that to potential guests is a good way for us to help them. When I go to a new restaurant, I want to write my own review and take pictures so I can share that with my guests.

Do you know what method your guests want to access this information?

I believe blogs will be the platform of the future for hotel websites…continuously being updated with information. I don’t like the old, static web page format. It’s boring for the website visitor.

Finally, employees play an important role in any hospitality business, but your people are one of the biggest reasons people give you positive feedback. What’s your secret to finding and recruiting a great staff?

I look for people who love finding new things to do here in Istanbul, and can then share their first-hand findings with our guests. I want people on my staff that are travelers at heart, and can live the lifestyle that we try to provide for our guests.

Great! Thank you for your time, Tuncel. For more information, visit WittIstanbul.com or see their photos on Flickr.

Yesterday I met with Steve Stollerman of TVTrip at their offices in Paris. Below is an excerpt from our conversation:

What does TVTrip do?

TVTrip provides professionally produced videos of hotels. Travel planners can use the site to see what a hotel is really like before booking a room. Hoteliers can benefit from direct bookings and increased exposure. We operate in 15 markets, and are expanding to 25 next month.

What is your competitive advantage over other video review sites?

Consumers want professionally produced content. They like the videos shot the same way around the world. They dislike videos created by hotels that look like infomercials. We shoot a minute-long overview of the hotel, then separate videos of different rooms or hotel amenities. The viewer can access all information (rooms, rates) all in one place.

You say you’re independent, and the site is free to use for consumers. How do you make money?

We make money through CPC generated leads to merchant sites (hotel direct sites and online travel agencies). We also earn money through advertising and licensing our video catalog.

Does the hotel have an option which payment arrangement to use with you?

Yes, they can be part of the check-rate (on a CPC basis) or take part in TVtrip’s preferred partners program – which is a flat monthly fee.

Okay, if I’m a hotel owner, why should I use you?

It’s an affordable way to get into video. We’re doing well in this climate because we are a middle-ground solution: not really expensive like a high-end video production company or low end like user-generated content. TVTrip is high quality, low cost solution.

You get filming of your hotel in HD by professional cameramen, editing, hosting of the video (bandwidth costs are taken care of), and you get the video on your site in multiple languages. The content of your hotel is translated into 24 languages, and distributed around the world.

Explain the video production process

First you contact us through our website. We have cameramen ready in all the key cities, which gives us the flexibility to respond quickly. For hotels that are in secondary markets or remote places, there may be travel costs involved. The reason the setup cost is so cheap is that we finance most of the video…we absorb costs for filming, editing, encoding, translation. That’s the added value we’re providing consumers and hotels. The setup fee is a fraction of the total cost, more of a security deposit.

Now the videos have no voice-overs, right?

No they don’t. The reason is that we decided early on that video is the universal language. We did, however, translate titles and information into 24 different languages. So users in each country will be able to navigate the video player in their own language. Our player also shows rates, photos, a description of the hotel, and a map of the area – which the view can access without leaving.

Can the hotel place the video you produce on their own website?

They can’t place the exact player we use on our website, but they can have the video embedded on their website. Your website visitors will then be able to view the video, but it won’t have all the features as on our website.

How would you recommend hotels use the video for best results?

The video needs to be in the website’s hotel description or on the “about us” page. It should accompany the website visitor as they view the room descriptions. Doing this typically helps conversions.

Do you have any plans for mobile distribution in the future?

Great question! We’re still waiting to see how this will play out with all the operators. I think committing to mobile now would be a little premature just because things are still so much in the air with all the providers. But I think it’s not a question of if, but when. For the guy who just landed and doesn’t have a hotel…being able to view and book a hotel room on his Blackberry or iPhone makes a lot of sense.

Thank you for your time, Steve. Visit the TVTrip website to learn more, or watch a sample video of Ku’Damm 101 in Berlin.

As I alluded to earlier, Emma Johnson interviewed me for a piece on crowdsourcing she wrote for Entrepreneur.

An excerpt:

Nearly every retailer and service provider has an internet presence whether they promote a website or not, thanks to the ballooning popularity of sites like Yelp, Citysearch, TripAdvisor, and Angie’s List where customers rate and comment on businesses. If you don’t harness these sites, they’ll lasso you instead, says Josiah Mackenzie, managing director of the San Francisco-based marketing firm Gradigio, which advises its hospitality clients on how to make the most of this seemingly unwieldy force.

“Companies don’t have a choice whether or not to be involved in crowdsourcing,” Mackenzie says. “People are going to be talking about them and creating content about their firms–whether they like it or not.”

You can read the whole article here: Crowdsourcing: Free Problem-Solving for Your Biz

See also:

• Can hotels use crowdsourcing?
• Crowdsourcing example: bmi uses Flickr photos in web design