Today we have a guest post from Marco Saio from EyeForTravel and Angela Schwartz from TravelPort – who will be presenting at next month’s event in Atlanta.

Customer centricity slices across a number of key functional areas: marketing, sales, IT, distribution, operations, all the touch-points, etc.

Because of the complexity involved with all the functional areas, it is critical for the CEOs to endorse the concept and drive adoption across their leadership team.

“The best way to ensure accountability is to tie it to metrics and bonuses. This infers that you need a way to measure results and measure how senior leadership drives evangelism, execution and (most importantly) results through their individual organisations,” says Angela Schwartz, VP & Head of Product Management & Strategy, Travelport.

Implementing shared KPIs (key performance indicators) that are consistent and mutually supporting across the enterprise are one step towards breaking down organisational silos, says Schwartz, who is scheduled to speak at the EyeforTravel’s Customer Centric Strategies in Travel conference, to be held in Atlanta next year (Jan 26-27, 2011). KPIs that measure how the organisation is delivering on its brand promise is another step that must be taken.

“Lastly, I think that developing strategic, value-based customer segmentation and understanding who your core engaged customers are, is another important step in breaking down organisational silos. When the entire enterprise is aligned to a customer strategy, knows who the valuable customers are and how to engage them appropriately, and the enterprise is measured on how they perform against that customer strategy, then they will experience enterprise-wide strategic change,” Schwartz said.

“I spent a fair amount of my career driving transformational change through F500 organisations and want to caution that the journey takes awhile and will experience set-backs along the way. But, this shouldn’t discourage the commitment. Understanding failures are part of the process, evangelizing small successes, and developing a strategic communication plan that spans every stakeholder category from top to bottom are all elements to mitigate risk,” Schwartz told EyeforTravel’s Ritesh Gupta in an interview. Excerpts:

Which, according to you, are critical factors when it comes to working on a multi-dimensional CRM strategy to maximise long term customer engagement?

I see the following as critical factors designing, developing and sustaining a successful CRM strategy:

The first is a customer-centric data warehouse – the existence of a 360o view of a customer with the ability to hone in on what information is relevant from all that you cultivate

Second, value-based customer segmentation – developing an understanding of who are your engaged, core customers and developing an enterprise strategy to engage them and cultivate other customers like them. Let’s look at a couple of examples:

o Airline: Number of miles flown may not be your top customer segment! An airline’s top mileage customer segment could be government employees. However, government workers typically get deeply discounted tickets. So, there could be another segment which actually drives higher profitability.

o Hotel: Can you recognise and react when a high-value, premium member from a competitor is at your hotel? Do you respond differently because this customer could be a highly valuable convert for you if they have a better experience?

Third, two-way customer dialogue – (a) the ability to apply customer treatments consistently across channels that are aligned with the company’s brand promise, customer value, and customer needs; and (b) measure the performance of those customer treatments

o In this industry, the easiest way to think about this is around how you proactively treat customers during an irregular operations (IROP) event. I think IROPs are the lowest hanging fruit for improving the customer experience when customer dissatisfaction is at its highest. Further, do you track “cumulative” collateral damage to your highest value customer segments and proactively “make it right” for them? To do that, you have to understand who your highest value segments are (and it may have nothing to do with number of miles flown or nights stayed!), understand what they’ve experienced across any touch-point, proactively operationalise through business rules how you treat them, and then ask them how the experience was – did they like it or not? Lastly, continuously improve your approach by incorporating the intelligence back into the operation execution. This is how you begin to differentiate amongst competitors.

A company like IBM says the inability to identify the customer at the point of sale and service leads to an inability to provide better service to the most-valuable customers. How do you assess the situation when it comes to making most of the customer-centric strategies in the travel industry?

I think IBM is absolutely correct. At some level, there is a standard of service that is aligned to the company’s brand promise. But, there is a lot of competition for the customer’s attention and a company’s ability to differentiate itself in the market will be determined by its ability to maximise the value of every customer interaction. This means you need to know who that customer is and understand their value to your business. The travel industry is getting better at this, but there is still a mass-market approach to interacting with customers.

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I think the Pareto rule (80/20 rule) applies here. A lot of investment is made in systems and software and processes that support customer interactions. The value from the CRM investment comes primarily through the customer insight generated. When you are engaged, you are involved, and being involved means that you need to understand something meaningful about the customer. This, I think, is customer insight.

The travel industry has certainly made some positive strides making my travel experience easier, but it can be spotty as to whether it translates into better service. In the last couple of years, I’ve seen some good improvements such as being compensated with extra miles for having to sit in the middle airline seat and free room upgrades. But, these are still mass market approaches for the most part. I would really like the airline to know that I only like lie-flat seats on International flights and bias my searches in that manner. Alternately, I’d like to see hoteliers recognise that I prefer corner rooms which are quiet. They are getting better at letting me tell them this, but I’m looking for insight at a level where they know this intuitively about me through predictive analytics and pattern recognition. The bottom line is that industry suppliers need to know when to take action, what the action should be, and the value the action creates for them. Conversely, they should know the cost of not taking action as well.

I think one thing we can’t ignore in this industry is the lack of integrated systems which is creating many of the challenges. You can have the best customer data warehouse, the best analytics and segmentation strategy and the finest tailored experiences but it all falls down when antiquated or fragmented systems cannot make best use of these things.

How do you think travel companies are today developing their CRM and loyalty programme from the ground up based on integrating customer interactions— including social media—and delivering timely and relevant offers and communications that are appreciated by the customer?

Travel companies are making incremental improvements but they are making those improvements discretely in each channel of interaction. I think they are just learning how to tap into social media to drive results. I continue to believe that “timely and relevant” offers primarily come from a travel supplier’s point of view rather than the customer’s point of view. The exciting thing is that travel suppliers have a rich amount of data about their customers. They know when and where they are going, how long they are staying, how much they are spending, etc. Harnessing this data to develop knowledge and insight about a customer’s value and needs means that travel suppliers have a unique opportunity to deliver truly differentiated experiences and make travel not just more convenient, but more enjoyable. For those struggling with the perception that they are competing in a commodity industry, customer centricity provides the secret weapon to break out from the pack and differentiate themselves.

Angela Schwartz, VP & Head of Product Management & Strategy, Travelport is scheduled to speak at the EyeforTravel’s Customer Centric Strategies in Travel conference to be held in Atlanta next year (Jan 26-27, 2011).

Bowen Payson, Online Marketing Manager at Virgin America

I run the online marketing team, responsible for all digital communications from Virgin America
There’s four of us working on social media: 2 from marketing, 2 from corporate communications
My workday is 50% managing content development, 50% on promotional activities generating direct revenue
We’re focused on fare promotions, and also on telling people about our unique amenities
People may say something online, but do something else. On our recent Facebook promotions, for every person that complains, 5 are buying a ticket
We have a matrix approach to promotions: if we only did one type (discount, giveaway, etc) it would burn out the audience. It’s all about creating a mix.
Twitter a year ago was totally different than Twitter today. Facebook is the same way.
Early adopters used be the only ones on some social media; now it’s more mainstream
For me, Twitter is a newsfeed; for others it may be something else
We plan some social media promotions months ahead of time
Our editorial calendar is pretty lose and open, so we can change and update as needed
Our most successful channel in terms of views, clicks, and sales is Twitter
Facebook is growing, but user behavior is different. Facebook can bring a very engaged audience.
Nick Schwartz is our voice on Twitter
If there’s a basic question, Nick takes care of it. If it’s bigger, we work closely with our guest services team to resolve issues.
A big project for us right now is finding the right buzz channels. Last week we launched a promotion around “awkward family photos,” where people send in photos for a chance to win prizes.
It’s great because the photos are viral and funny, but it’s also a good offer for our customers.
Our website is intended to be fun and user-friendly. It’s meant to be relevant and intuitive. We’re using big photos and less text to quickly get the message across.
If I could start over, I would have focused more on search optimization. I’d work on deeper integration of the social media into the website.
One of the best things we ever did was in emails to our Elevate members: including a “tweet this” button in our emails. Different people at different times need different things from email. Sometimes people aren’t buying, but want to share an offer with their friends.
Social media takes a lot of work. What you invest, you get out. You need to invest in people, thought, time and strategy. It’s not like buying traditional media.

See Bowen next week at EyeforTravel’s Travel Distribution Summit North America 2010.

In today’s interview, I talk with Steve Lambert, General Manager of the Radisson Nashua Hotel. We discussed the practical details and day-to-day skills for using Twitter successfully, including:

1. How they took advantage of a renovation and rebranding to launch their social media activity
2. What types of content work best with Twitter
3. How to gather stories for sharing online
4. The system Steve built on his iPhone for capturing ideas as he finds them
5. Does syncing Twitter and Facebook updates automatically work well?
6. The metrics important to Steve
7. How he attracts new followers
8. Criteria for deciding who you should follow and interact with
9. How to stay on topic while at the same time maintaining diversity in your updates
10. Who in the hotel should be managing Twitter and your social media marketing
11. How Steve involves his whole team in the process
12. What’s next in social media

Listen here:

Bonus: The Twitter tools that Steve uses

Steve mentioned some of these tools in the interview – you may want to check them out for your own use:

• Itweet.net
• Twittearth
• Twinfluence
• Tweetmeme
• Futuretweets
• Song.ly
• Twiturm.com
• Tweetvisor
• Tweetvolume
• Asktwitr
• Backtweets
• Tweetbeep
• Friendorfollow

Qype Logo

Qype is a local review website especially popular in Europe, but with reviews in cities around the world. While TripAdvisor may have more worldwide reviews at the moment, it’s important not to underestimate networks like these. While living in Europe, I found Qype more useful and informative for my own travels.

In this interview, I talk with community manager Rob Hinchcliffe on how hotels should promote themselves on the site, and use the power of guest reviews.

—

Josiah: As hotel marketing professionals, we often have to improve our position on guest review sites like yours. What are some ethical ways we can do this – that you approve of? Also, are there any promotional activities you want us to avoid?

Rob: We try very hard to make it easy for any business owner to use Qype in order to promote their business. Really it should be just as intuitive for a business owner to arrive on Qype and know what the ‘right’ and ‘wrong’ ways to go about things are as it is for a user who’s there to review something.

The first thing to know is: you can’t get away reviewing yourself in glowing terms (and you definitely shouldn’t start submitting bad reviews on your competitor’s listings!). Social networks are self-policing in that the community is acutely aware of the balance between a genuine piece of content and something that’s spam or self-promotion. And once you submit disingenuous content to a user-generated site you are asking for your honesty to be brought into question. No business owner wants that, so we’ve made it very easy for people to ‘claim’ their business on Qype. Putting your name next to your business and submitting an objective and balanced description of what you do is the best way to start a dialogue with any online community. People respect transparency and they will respond to it in a similarly objective and thoughtful way.

It’s easy to be cautious and petition your friends and colleagues to review your business with five stars and a handful of adjectives like ‘amazing’ and ‘spectacular’, but be aware that users are looking for information, not hype. A genuinely informative and balanced four star review is much more likely to bring in a new customer than a five star review that reads “The best hotel in town. Why would you stay anywhere else? I loved it!!!” So don’t be afraid to ask your customers to review you. Put your Qype URL on your promotional material, send follow up emails asking for feedback, and encourage people to talk about their experiences.

Business owners ask: but what if people are nasty? And I tell them that people are very rarely nasty, and they’re much less likely to be negative if you proactively ask them for their opinion. And wouldn’t you rather find out what the things that are annoying people are now, rather than six months down the line when it’s annoyed hundreds of other people?

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

To quote Douglas Adams: “Don’t panic!” Occasionally a business owners will see a bad review and go into damage limitation mode. That normally means an irate email to our customer support team threatening legal action and nasty comments on the user’s profile. That isn’t reputation management, it’s fanning the flames. Of course if you find defamatory content about your business online then you need to deal with that, but it’s far more likely that, if a customer has taken the time to compose a balanced review of his or her experiences, then they are not out to defame or damage that business, they are trying to express an opinion on a forum that has been provided for them. Luckily that platform also has space for you to respond, a mechanism which didn’t really exist a few years ago. In the past that customer would have gone away, moaned to their family and friends and never come back again. Now you have the ability to take that complaint, deal with it, and potentially win back the customer (and attract new customers into the bargain).

Qype provides a messaging service for business owners to reply privately to reviewers or you can leave a public comment on a review. We encourage people to respond publicly as it shows how willing you are to be up front and transparent about the issue. If the user has a genuine complaint then thank them for bringing it to your attention, apologise, and let them know what you’re doing to fix that problem. Ask them to come back so you can make it up to them, offer them an incentive. That one customer can turn from a detractor into your biggest fan and that two or three star review can turn into five stars with one or two emails.

We’ve spoken to our users, and they’ve told us over and over again that they are more likely to be attracted to a business by an open and friendly owner, than they are by any number of glossy photos or special offers. Once you know that, then it’s just a matter of common sense.

Read more…

Last week I caught up with Fairmont’s Public Relations manager, Mike Taylor, to discuss how Fairmont uses Twitter to communicate with their community:

Josiah: What’s your overall goal or strategy for Twitter?

Mike: On Twitter it’s about two things: developing awareness and understanding of what our brand is and what we represent. The second part of it is the engagement factor. We are interested in having a dialogue with the people that follow us — be it guests, media, travel planners, travel agents — we have a wide variety of people that follow us. So I tried to drill down and have a dialogue with all of these individuals that want to know more about us and want to speak with us.

The type of content do you try to share through Twitter?

Again, it’s a wide variety. We push out news and information; we think that’s valuable. We include package and rate offers. We don’t see Twitter primarily as a distribution tool. But if we have something that’s a great deal we’re going to let people know about it.

We are really trying to provide “behind the curtain” type of insider details that you may not know about either.

And we’ve also created specific hash tags that are audience specific. So we have one for our environmental news, and another for our travel agents when we’re speaking to that community. So we’re trying to use hash takes to funnel information down to a very specific focus and reach a certain audience.

Do you publish all of this yourself? I know you have hotels around the world — how do you work with individual properties — and how do you manage all of that?

At a brand level, I am the guy that does it all! I’m coming up with content — I don’t want to say we develop a publishing calendar, because that seems much too formal — but I definitely have information that isn’t time sensitive. That will be sitting at the ready for when there may not be much to talk about. I would say a high percentage of our content is either things that land on my desk that day, or else a result of what someone else has posted.

So at a brand level, I would say I’m the person that is responsible for all the content. But we definitely do have a number of our hotels at local levels that have Twitter pages. Their focus really tends to be on a local or regional market, trying to develop a presence there. They’re posting more on things that would be of interest to that local market. For example, maybe there’s a drink special at one of the properties they want to promote. So the content is a little more focused on the local, regional market.

I would probably say we have about half of our hotels on Twitter. The rest just leverage our brand level account.

How do you gain followers? You currently have around 6,000 people receiving your updates…

Our focus really isn’t on follower count. It’s certainly one metric we look at, but that’s not where our focus is. I don’t just randomly follow back anyone who follows us. We really try to follow people that are influencers, people that are interested — genuinely interested — in our brand and that we want to have discussion with. And of course we follow media.

But we definitely don’t just go out and start randomly following as many people as we can…just to bump that number up. That’s not natural, and that’s not why we’re on there.

Finally, give us a success story — what’s the best thing that’s happened as a result of your participation on Twitter?

Narrowing it down to one is a pretty big challenge! There’s been a few things. Twitter has introduced us to people we otherwise wouldn’t have a relationship with. So it’s sort of that global neighborhood concept where these people wouldn’t have reached out to us or vice versa if we were not participating. We wouldn’t have been able to develop relationships with other brands and other individuals which have been very beneficial for us.

We’ve had a lot of fun, but that’s a hard question to answer — there has been so much value we have received.

You can follow Mike’s updates for Fairmont @FairmontHotels

Today we’re going to talk with Micheal Rosney, and discover how the Killeen House Hotel consistently receives excellent reviews from their guests online…and how they received the TripAdvisor Travelers’ Choice 2009 award.

Josiah: Tell us a little bit about your hotel.

Michael: The Killeen House is a 23 bedroom Country House style of Hotel, located just outside of the town of Killarney: Ireland’s premier Tourist destination. It has been owned and personally managed by Michael and Geraldine Rosney since 1992. Mainly targeted towards the upper end of the International Leisure Market, it is a uniquely Irish property, with the emphasis firmly placed on good friendship, good food and good water pressure in the showers! As much as 70 percent of all of our business is either direct repeat business or direct referral from past Guests. This is a major plus for us, because it means that our Guests know exactly what we can offer them, and we know exactly what it takes to meet – and hopefully exceed – their vacation expectations.

How have you achieved the success you have on TripAdvisor?

We became hyper conscious – to the extent of being almost paranoid -  of it! When we first became aware of TripAdvisor a couple of years back, we immediately identified it as a tool that had tremendous potential for us to get the message and the ethos of our property out into a Marketplace that we otherwise had no hope of reaching. We made all of the great people working with us aware if it, and explained to them that this was an opportunity that we felt would have very tangible and positive long term benefits for the Killeen House.

We have always operated our business on the basis of treating our Guests firstly as individuals to be welcomed and looked after in a personal and individual way, and secondly as new friends, who we want to show a great time to while they’re visiting with us. And anyone glancing through the reviews we have garnered on TripAdvisor will be clearly struck by the big number of them that specifically mention the PEOPLE rather than the PLACE. Its not within our power to make the bedrooms bigger, or to order up 80 degrees of sunshine, but it is very certainly within our power to ensure that all of our Guests receive a uniquely warm and Irish welcome from all of us here in the Killeen House…..

How are you encouraging guests at your hotel to talk about their stay online – and share their experience with others?

Given that we are a small operation, we have ample opportunity here in the Killeen House to meet most of our guests on a personal level, If we find our for example that they have heard of us via TripAdvisor, than that is a natural opportunity for us to ask them to keep on spreading the word!

Thankfully, we frequently receive notes and e-mails from our Guests after they have departed, telling us how much they have enjoyed their stay with us. Again, a great opportunity to ask them to post a TripAdvior review of their experience. We have found that after the initial first number of reviews, that it almost becomes a self-perpetuating thing

Read more…

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.

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.