With Expedia, Orbitz, and other online travel stocks hovering just above the basement, news of Facebook and Google dancing around the travel niche cannot be thrilling. Online travel is about to take off like a rocket. For some that is.

Google’s announcement of the acquisition of ITA signaled the cocking of the proverbial hammer, if you are in the business of 21st Century online booking that is. Now enter Facebook, a very interesting interjection into travel dollars indeed. Facebook announced the buyout of the social network NextStop, or rather the expertise and data therein. What can they be up to? Well, a piece of $120 billion dollar online travel pie.

According to Forrester Research, last year, online travel bookings represent nearly 40 percent of all booking bucks. Expedia, Orbitz, and a very few others have (so far) pocketed the lion’s share. But, in all honesty, just how long did they foresee such a virtual monopoly going forward? Their problem, from my perspective, is not much different from any other huge and profitable company – complacency – even greed. Why? Let me explain a little.

Expedia has proliferated the web with what you might call “satellites of success” – TripAdvisor being the biggest. The original innovation there, was significant – taking advantage of “the crowd” in as far a travel ratings and the vast network of affiliations – of course. But, like so many traditional thinking companies, Expedia only paid lip service to the social element. And then, for the most part they rested on their laurels – opps. What burns me about companies like Expedia? Their almost unlimited resources to create something far better – for you – and for them.

Get the full story at Everything PR

According to comScore data, TripAdvisor leads now the way with the highest number of unique montly website visitors in the online travel segment – more than 35 million unique visitors from across the globe, a frew million more than the next largest site, Expedia.

TripAdvisor, for long the world’s largest travel community website has now also become simply the largest travel website in the world – of any kind. Worldwide comScore figures for the previous 2 months have confirmed this significant development in the online space.

TripAdvisor now leads the way with the highest number of unique monthly visitors on its website – 35,382,000 unique visitors. The next largest travel website in the world is the world’s leading online travel agent – Expedia – with monthly traffic figures of 2,122,000 visitors less than TripAdvisor.

Nowadays the web has become a powerful search engine tool for travelers. Your website is your best sales representative, therefore it is important for it to provide the proper tools to engage lookers and turn them into bookers.

By Pedro Colaco GuestCentric President and CEO

Nowadays the web has become a powerful search engine tool for travelers. Hence hotels must make sure that their websites transmit quality, professionalism and credibility together with a good design and comfortable look-and-feel.

One of the most important aspects for e-commerce success has to do with the way the business is presented and the services are sold. Creating a sales-focused website is not trivial but there are many important details that must be taken into account.

Attractive graphic design
For obvious reasons the most visible characteristic of a website is the design. Although is not a decisive factor in a sales-oriented website it is the first connection of the person with the brand, therefore it influences their “looking” behavior. When creating your new website make sure you have open conversations with the web designer about the preferences in colors, textures and the experiences that the property offers. And then leave it to them; they are the professionals.

Navigation and usability
Having an easy-to-use and user-friendly the navigation on your website can be a decisive factor for how long your visitors will stay in your website. Bad navigation and usability can lead to visitors abandoning the website within 2 seconds thus not converting into bookings. It is important to keep the navigation of a website simple and to the point, preferably just one level of navigation with a clear menu that feature items that users recognize.  It is not recommendable to try to innovate and distinguish this area of the website from your competitors.

Photo gallery
Studies indicate that images are the second factor right behind pricing in terms of influencing the choice of property to stay in. With today’s technology, taking a good picture is easier than ever. With a good website design any picture can look good and you don’t need to spend money in a professional photo shoot. But you need to make sure your images transmit what you want to sell to your customers.

Promotions and special offers
It is important to provide incentives to website visitors so they choose your property over the competition. Creating special offers on your website can help you sell distress inventory in a way that it doesn’t cannibalize your regular sales and you can optimize your search engine ranking by offering fresh content on the website. Make sure your promotions are visible on every page of the website and promote your special offers in different social channels.

Stimulate visitors to stay on the website
Many hotel websites include links to external sites like tripadvisor.com for users looking for 3rd party information. However, once users leave the website they will be attacked with advertising of competing offers. So, it is critical that once you leverage content syndication technologies like RSS to provide the turnkey package for decision making on your website and turn that looker into a booker.

Provide real time rates and availability
Two factors are always included in the decision of travelers: price and availability. It is critical that the website displays prominently, in every page, the ability for travelers to check rates and availabilities for the travel dates. Moreover, many travelers nowadays have flexible dates and are actively bargain hunting and willing to trade off some convenience for a better price or package.

Make sure your calendar overview displays a longer-term view of the rates and availabilities so travels can choose the perfect vacation or business trip according to their needs and possibilities. One thing to keep in mind: to build the trust necessary for a repeat customer, it is critical that the calendar displays accurate information and not just seasonal rates or availabilities.

Best available rate to ensure rate parity
According to the Cornell Center for Hospitality Research, hotels that are listed on third-party distributors’ websites like online travel agents, or OTAs, can expect to capture additional direct reservations. In order to leverage the full marketing potential of distribution channels, it is extremely important for your website to offer the best available rate always.

Facilitate instant online booking
Having a website that offers instant booking is crucial to decrease the abandon rate and increase online bookings. You must make sure that your website booking engine offers and easy and quick online booking process for guests to reserve a room. Avoid multistep and confusing processes and ensure that you use a usability-tested booking engine.

Provide trust mechanisms
Providing security and privacy to your website visitors is crucial for the success of your online business. You must guarantee visitors that their personal information will always remain private, this will provide them confidence to book a room directly on your website.

Your website is your best sales representative, therefore it is important for it to provide the proper tools to engage lookers and turn them into bookers. But keep in mind that a sales-oriented website will only generate results if it has bookable offers.

Pedro Colaco co-founded GuestCentric Systems in October 2006 and has served as President and CEO since. Guestcentric is a complete, web-based e-commerce management solution that enables independent hotel managers to easily market their properties online and leverage new customer engagement techniques like social commerce. For more information go tohttp://www.guestcentric.com

It’s easy to get swept up in the buzz of social media. Everyday there is another new and exciting social media story to hit the news. The question remains: how are travel companies really using social media to add value?

Here are 5 ways that EyeforTravel recently found travel companies to be succeeding:-

1. Customer engagement and CRM

For P&O Cruises, social media plays an increasingly important role in their customer engagement strategy.

As Elliott Pritchard, New Media Manager highlights, ‘social media should be a key part of any customer-centred approach.  After all, you can’t get to know your customers without talking to them’.

When it comes to customer engagement, relevance is key.  Many social media articles warn of the dangers of giant social media sites capturing such vast amounts of consumer data but Pritchard confirms ‘as consumers we decry the amount of data that sites like Facebook collect about us; as marketeers we see a good opportunity to drive relevance’.

Taking a consumer-centric approach is not all plain sailing though.  There are a few rules to remember.  For example, he warns ‘social media has opened up a new customer communication channel, it must not exist in a silo in the organisation.

2. Crisis communications

Ash clouds, hurricanes, health scares, terrorism.  The travel industry is constantly thrown one curve ball after the next.  The ability of travel companies to deal with crisis situations quickly and efficiently is vital to their success.

In a 2009 case study with EyeforTravel, Southwest revealed how they use social media channels to keep customers informed and avert disasters before they take hold.

Extract from the case study:

‘Last autumn, Southwest had a situation where one of our planes had to make an emergency landing in Charlestown, West Virginia as it had a hole in the side of the fuselage.  The plane landed safely and no passengers were harmed.  [….]

What Southwest did: As soon as we got the call from dispatch that there had been an emergency landing, my counterpart Paula and I (Social Media Manager, Christi Day) logged on and started to watch the conversation (on Twitter) unfold, checking what people were saying.  We had a little message ready to tweet at the drop of a hat.  It was quite quiet on Twitter and we did not want to create a crisis when there wasn’t one. We needed to watch.  Then one media outlet published a story and we sent a message.

The key was that we were prepared with a statement and with the facts (which is the most important thing).  We were able to send out a message to the Twitter audience before they announced it on the evening news. What was crucial is the fact that we did not make a mountain out of a molehill.  Timing was also crucial.  Clarity around social media is very important.’

JetBlue also values social media as an important channel for crisis communications especially in terms of monitoring.  Morgan Johnston, Manager Corporate Communications, states “With social media, things have evolved somewhat to the point where we can do some real-time monitoring which has altered how we approach a lot of these situations.”

3. Discount deals

Farecompare, a US-based airline ticket comparison shopping website uses raw real-time airfare data directly from over 500 airlines.  They find that Twitter offers a great platform to inform customers of real-time price quotes and deals as they happen.

They manage over 180 Twitter accounts, each focusing on deals from particular airports.  At EyeforTravel’s Social Media conference in San Francisco earlier this year, CEO, Rick Seaney said that through using Twitter, Farecompare have achieved a dramatic increase in ticket-sale percentages.

In an earlier interview with travel blogger Dennis Schaal, Seaney said “Using Twitter as a real-time communication backbone that can touch people in a social network with relevant, actionable information instantly—is absolutely the next generation in air travel bargain-finding.”

Launched last autumn, InterContinental Hotel Group have a Twitter account called ‘IHG Deals’.  Deals tweeted include ‘Twedding Gifts Aways’ and opportunities to boost Priority Club rewards.

One of the main reasons behind IHG’s decision for this initiative was the fact that travellers have been on the look-out for hotel deals and value-added packages.  For such a large global brand, 2,690 followers is slow start but no doubt this will continue to grow.

The travel bargain hunters are out there and travel brands are finding Twitter is a great way to find them.

4. Building Communities

Virgin Atlantic’s award winning travel website vtravelled.com links travellers around the world into a bespoke online community.  It uses a special recommendations service to suggest site content from similar users, to provide useful and relevant travel information tailored to each community member.

The site includes real time updates on the top 50 events happening in the destination a traveller is visiting or plans to visit.  It’s a great way for Virgin Atlantic to inspire, engage with and add value for their customers.

British Airways social site Metrotwin.com twins the best of London and New York.  The Metrotwin.com site has successfully grown its loyal user base and is already attracting more than 23,000 unique visits a month. A further 37,000 users have registered on the site and regularly contribute by providing their own recommendations and ratings.  The site has been so successful that BA has launched Metrotwin Mumbai.

Building B2C travel community sites is advantage to travel brands but it is not a decision that should be taken lightly as considerable time, money and resources need to be invested to gain traction on such sites.

In June this year, TripAdvisor has joined forces with Facebook. The logic behind the tie up was that travellers increasingly prefer to seek advice and information about a destination or property from friends, friends of friends, and family.  This tool taps into the fact that many individuals already have a community of friends and family on Facebook.

As Technorati mention however, the beauty of this tool is that one never has to leave TripAdvisor, so all the hot tips and advice from people who lived and loved in the destination in question are shared and saved to a special folder.

5. Real-Time Monitoring and Response Communications

Leading US boutique hotel group, Omni Hotels revealed in a 2009 EyeforTravel case study how they add value by using social media to listen and respond to real time communications about their brand.

Extract from the case study with Kerry Kennedy, Corporate Director e-Commerce:

‘There was a guest who was part of a tweetup group and had a meeting of all their followers at an Omni hotel. Omni saw that they were coming and had the firstround of drinks ready at the bar for their arrival free of charge. Just to say welcome and we heard your tweet. They were impressed. Anything that can be done to create a more memorable stay or a better experience is what Omni are using social media for.’

He also went on to explain how one important conference attendee’s tweet regarding slow internet connection at one of the Omni Hotel properties was quickly dealt with by the hotel team who were immediately alerted to the problem. Additional WiFi capacity was installed and the conference attendee tweeted to his numerous followers how impressed he was.

Related Link: EyeForTravel Online Marketing & Social Media in Travel Summit Europe 2010

In order to evaluate the benefits of using the TripAdvisor’s new Business Listing feature, Spanish web marketing company Mirai Espana asked three of their clients from Madrid to share their data. The result: ROI varied greatly among the three hotels.

Traffic: Expectations were high; after all it is a leading site in the travel industry and an assumption it should largely contribute to the whole traffic pie was reasonable. To Mirai’s surprise it was not the case – TripAdvisor represented less than 1% of total traffic for all three hotels. So if you count on a huge boost of the site traffic, it is just not going to happen.

Conversion: The most appropriate way of measuring traffic quality is via the so called conversion rate (#of reservations / traffic). In other words, the highest conversion rate the better the quality of the traffic. Only in Hotel #1 conversion rate from TripAdvisor is significantly higher than from other sources (caused by high user rating). In general, conversion rate is very much similar across all channels. That busts another myth of highly qualified traffic from TripAdvisor. The truth is that it is not any better or worse than any other source unless you rank flawlessly on user reviews.

ROI: So the traffic is not as expected, neither is conversion rate but the question remains, does it pay off to buy a Business Listing on TripAdvisor?  Let’s take a closer look at the cost and benefits issue. Let’s compare Return of Investment (ROI) of TripAdvisor with other channels like Expedia, Booking, Venere or Paid Search.

Get the full story at Mirai Espana

“What will Expedia do?” has become a key question for many hotel marketers, as the company monitors your every promotion and hauls you onto the carpet whenever you have the audacity to give a rate to anyone else – including private sale sites, according to this article.

Unless your property belongs to a massive chain with considerable clout, you’re probably living with an Expedia agreement with a margin of around 25%.  Now, the mathematicians among us can quickly ascertain that means Expedia receives $1 for every $3 they send us.  But I’m not that swift, so I did the whole spread using one hotel’s data, calculating Expedia revenues per annum, total transient revenues per annum, ADRs, Expedia’s cut, etc.  No big surprise, Expedia’s ADR was 75% of the total transient ADR.  Even I could have figured that out based on a 25% margin.  But that 1 to 3 ratio thing really jumped off the page.  Expedia earns just over $100,000 annually in margins from business sent to the hotel, for which the hotel pockets just over $300,000 in bookings annually.

That’s a payoff to the hotel of $3 for every $1 sacrificed.  In other words, a very low return on investment.  I have to believe we could use that $100,000 Expedia is making off the hotel each year to generate far more than $300,000 in revenue if it was invested in other marketing efforts.

Right off the bat, what would the other OTAs provide in exchange for pulling out of Expedia?  Show me the positioning!  Since other OTAs don’t require both block space and last room availability, nor do they demand parity with non-public rates, I’m thinking we can work together to recoup some of those lost Expedia revenues.  Toss into that all the promotions and pricing strategies we could employ if we weren’t under Expedia’s oppressive thumb, and the ADR lift we could get by reducing the number of rooms sold at a 25% margin, which would mean we don’t even have to recoup the same number of room nights we get from Expedia in order to recoup the same profit….

Get the full story at Dynamic Revenue Management

A Google spokesperson says the experiment is still only being shown to U.S./English searchers. The test has the same functionality as originaly reported and the same partners are involved; but more end users will start to see hotel prices when using Google Maps.

Google enlarges to portion of Google Maps users that see the latest experiment on Google Maps: the addition of hotel prices as part of the business listing information.

The pricing information comes from a “limited number of advertisers” that have agreed to give Google their pricing information – judging from the image, this appears to include travel portals such as Expedia, Priceline, and the like. It’s unclear if any hotels are participating directly.

Google emphasizes that this has no impact on how hotels are ranked in Maps.

Get the full story at Search Engine Land

A Couple of Chicks (that’s their name) pulled together a great list of Twitter does and don’ts for tourism destinations. Lots of action points for both Twitter newbies and pros alike.

The article includes the basics on how to use Twitter for your tourism destinations as well as some don’ts that could hurt your online reputation.

Combined with some examples of destinations tweets, and links to other recommend reads on the same topic, the post will definitely get you ahead with your Twitter strategy. Or alternatively provides you with yet another proof, why you stayed away from Twitter, because you’re missing the resources to do it right.

Get the full story at a Couple of Chicks

Add friends, send messages, look at photos – and now book a hotel. Design Hotels introduces a new hotel search engine to its Facebook page, allowing fans of Design Hotels to check availability and book nights at any of their member properties directly through the fan page.

Visitors to the Facebook fanpage of Design Hotels™ will find a box titled ‘Book with Design Hotels™’. After entering the destination, travel dates and number of guests, users will be given a selection of room types and prices. Fans can access the entire Design Hotels™ portfolio and be directly linked to booking opportunities with just one click.

Bernd Neff, Vice President of Brand, Marketing and Communications at Design Hotels™, says: “We have really enjoyed creating an exciting dialogue with our clients and Design Hotels™ fans all over the world through our social media activities like Facebook and Twitter. However, we noticed there wasn’t a simple connection between the brand flavored content and the actual products that our fans are interested in. To combine the whole experience, we have introduced an innovative hotel search and booking engine for our member properties on Facebook.”

This tool follows on from other developments to the Design Hotels™ website, including the addition of relevant content from the Future Blog, Travel Diaries, and the Event Calendar to the hotel pages. This way, visitors can learn about the latest news and happenings related to a particular hotel. For instance, a guest looking at the Straf in Milan can also read about the latest news from the city’s furniture fair Salone del Mobile and the hot new Marc Jacobs flagship store.

Related Link: Design Hotels on Facebook

Last November’s “free sale” through its Facebook fan page broke two daily records and saved the airline millions of ringgit in advertising spend. Regional head of commercial Kathleen Tan tells Yeoh Siew Hoon about AirAsia’s social media strategy.

Kathleen Tan, AirAsia’s regional head of commercial, herself did not know how massive social media would become when she started dipping her toes into the space last April.

“We started with one staff and it’s been like a tsunami,” she said. “Our aim last year was to build a fan base of 50,000 and now we have 215,000. I think we could hit 500,000 easily this year.”

Its team of one grew to five (three in Malaysia, one in Thailand and one in Indonesia) and soon it will add one each in Hong Kong and London. “You need full-time staff, it’s 24/7.”

Its Facebook fan page has now become a communication and marketing channel in which it posts information such as schedule changes, makes announcements, gathers customer feedback, launches new destinations through contests and other viral means and sells seats.

Basically, what it has created is its own media platform and community. It does not advertise however. “To us, Facebook is free, it’s how you utilize it. They key is to have relevant content and it shouldn’t be too hard sell,” said Tan.

An example: Last November, when it launched what it calls its annual “major schedule extension campaign” in which it typically spends up to RM2 million in full print advertisements in newspapers, it decided to use its Facebook fan page as a test case.

Over three to four days, it rolled out teasers everyday, with some saying, the best things in life are free and asked fans to log in on November 11 at midnight.

“When the sale opened, the system crashed,” said Tan, who said the airline broke Navitaire’s records on two days. On day one, it sold 404,000 seats and on day 2, it sold 489,000 seats.

There was another bonus. Usually, when it ran print campaigns for this sale, it would create havoc at its call centres, preventing staff from servicing other potential sales. “With this viral campaign, only people in the know knew about it. And we could tell people to be patient if the call centre was jammed or if the site was slow.

“The next day, our team also asked our fans to tell us who were the first people to get the seats and we had a lively exchange on the page.”

It still took out print ads in countries where its Facebook fan page’s penetration wasn’t as deep such as China, East Malaysia and Vietnam where it spent between RM200,000 and RM300,000 on offline media.

“That savings goes directly to the bottom line,” said Tan, “and I can also use the money to hire more people in digital media. The beauty of digital is with analytics, I can check where the sales are coming from, something you can’t do with offline media.”

Of its more than 200,000 fans on Facebook, 47% are from Malaysia, 25% from Indonesia, 7% from Thailand, 3% from Hong Kong and 1% from UK. There are slightly more females, 51%, than males and the 18-35 age group accounts for 45% of fans.

Social media also serves as a good customer feedback channel. “We have 250 staff in our call centres,” said Tan, “we can’t keep adding more. This gives us a channel to listen to customers and respond. You have to be careful though, otherwise it could end up as a complaint centre.”

Making social media work takes commitment from management and a desire to understand the channel. “You need a top down culture – all of us in management blog or tweet. Tony (Fernandes’) blog is one of the most-followed CEO blogs. We have 25,000 Twitter followers,” said Tan.

“When we started our interactive division, I called in the staff and asked them to educate me. I told them that if they wanted my support, they’d better teach me everything about it.

“It’s all about people – you have to hire the right people who understand that world and get them to do it. Sometimes my staff tell me the language I use is wrong, that it’s too formal.

“I am learning something everyday about social media. There’s a lot of talk about it and there are lots of experts who tell you they can help you but I believe you really have to get involved in it yourself.”

What social media has done is help AirAsia “build a community of “people who love AirAsia and people who love to travel”, said Tan.

http://www.webintravel.com/