SENSE on Avvio: Next generation of Website conversion

Sense on Avvio delivers a unique web experience for every one of your online customers, immediately presenting the content they most want to see.

Websites are monolithic, hierarchical and give only pieces of information, that means everyone is treated the same! Websites today do not do hosptality.

Avvio is innovative in the sense that they rethink how to manage the customer experience and transform the static content of your website into dynamic conversation!

The principle is the each website deliver a specific content based on key words the customers is looking for. This new and revolutionary technology, increases customer engagement by instantly personalizing personalizing your hotel web pages your hotel web pages for each unique visitor.

Just like mentioned by Franck Reeves, founder of Avvio: "Immediatly, within 4 seconds that the client arrive to landing page, they are convinced that this is the right hotel for them."

Presenting the most relevant content every time, sense increases online conversions, making your
website more effective by:

- Improving click to book ratios
- Shortening the online sales cycle and visitor path
- Increasing customer satisfaction and sales
- Reducing website bounce rates as consumers are immediately engaged
- Increasing your ROI from online marketing budgets
- Recognizing and re-engaging with returning visitors to further increase relevance
- Providing an intuitive online experience for your customer

Dynamically delivered personalized content will help hotels to convert visitors into bookings. This is a delicate balance between capturing the right custome information, using intuitive software and ensuring effective web design. A winning combination for both hotels and Avvio!

ReviewPro reputation Management + Klout

DDiH, Thaink Tank 2011, EMC MBA, Oneglobe

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The Emergence of The Customer Engagement Channel in Hospitality

Hotelier is faced with a big challenge: to capture and retain the attention of consumers who are constantly on-the-go and becoming increasingly aware of their control over the way they receive and interact with your marketing messages.

The Customer Engagement Channel demands a completely new distribution and marketing approach in order to meet the demands of today’s consumer. Consumers must be convinced that your channel is theirs and that they are in full control of the content they receive and consume. They must also feel control over if, when and how they engage with your brand.

This new single customer engagement channel demands a completely new approach to hotel marketing and distribution. Mastering the direct online channel and all of its segments: traditional Web, SEM, SEO, email, social media, mobile Web, etc., is a crucial step in this direction. Hoteliers must find a way to dominate the digital information cloud with their own marketing message and customer interactions, otherwise the OTAs and the competition will “control the conversation.”


To achieve that, hoteliers need to employ multi-channel marketing and distribution strategies, the antidote to the current silo approach. Multi-channel marketing has already become the norm and is the foundation for a smart direct online channel strategy. In this environment, the hotel website, SEM campaigns, email marketing, social media presence, mobile, etc. have a symbiotic relationship. Unleashing a marketing promotional campaign simultaneously across all available marketing channels produces a compounded effect and far greater returns than each individual marketing format.

Hoteliers must develop marketing campaigns that create customer engagement in order to achieve longer lasting results. Instead of a one-way dialogue, where a hotel sends out marketing messages hoping to direct people to the website and toward the reservations process, hoteliers must focus on building relationships through engagements.

Furthermore, hoteliers must start focusing on understanding the combination of marketing initiatives that lead to a customer engagement and potentially, a conversion.

In addition, there is now a need for smart and centralized content delivery. Not only must you reach the travel consumer at multiple touch points, but you must also try to serve the right content in the right format and at the right time. Invest in a new Content Management System for the hotel website that allows all new special offers, promotions and events to be automatically pushed to your social media profiles and mobile website. Engagement requires tailored content via the appropriate medium.

How can hoteliers engage in this two-way conversation with current and potential guests?

• Provide choices for how consumers can hear from you. Consider adding a page on your website where the visitor can choose to hear from you via email, text message, Facebook, Twitter, etc. Give them the option to ‘opt-down’ – if they unsubscribe from one marketing format, give them the option to choose to hear from you in another way.

• Keep your marketing plan dynamic. If your website visitors or social media followers are not responding to a campaign, learn from it and try a different tactic.

• Utilize multi-channel marketing for all campaigns. With the hyper-interactive consumers of today choosing how and when they want to interact with your campaign, it is essential to reach them at multiple touch-points.

• Stimulate website visitors constantly with fresh content, contests and promotions on your website and through social media. If the content on your website is stale, there is no incentive to return. The same goes for your social media profiles. If the only update on your Facebook page concerns the weather, you will not stimulate and engage your fans.

• Use analytics to fully understand the path your website visitors take before making a reservation. The journey to a conversion is often complex. Before you rule out a marketing initiative a failure, analyze whether that campaign was part of the path to a booking, increased the number of Facebook fans, Twitter followers and people on your email, etc.

• Invest in technology needed for centralized content delivery: a good CMS should be able to push your content not only to the hotel website but at the same time to social media channels, the mobile Web and even to your email and mobile opt-in lists.

In 2011, hoteliers need to invest in technologies and expertise needed to better execute these types of multi-platform and multi-format campaigns. Consider partnering with a company that fully understands this convergence of marketing and content distribution channels, is fluent in multi-channel marketing methods, and understands that the Customer Engagement Channel is now a reality.

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The Standard Miami Beach & Gap Mobile Marketing.

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How to manage your hotel’s online reputation?

   Everyone’s got an image to protect. As the hotel industry becomes increasingly subjected to the world of customer reviews, hoteliers have developed a term for protecting that image which is called “online reputation management.”

According to the following article, a 2011 TripAdvisor survey revealed 99% of hotels plan to respond to customer reviews on the various review channels available today. But Daniel Edward Craig, former GM of the Opus Hotel Vancouver and now an independent hotel consultant, doesn’t buy it.

At this time only a few hotels are respinding to negatives reviews. Hoteliers should ramp up their monitoring and response, especially to negative reviews, and develop a startegy to do so. Reviews show travelers hoteliers are listening to what they have to say and that hoteliers are willing to make improvements based on guest feedback.

In the age of social media, it’s all about transparency. Be completely transparent about it so they know what to expect. Keep complaints on property and prevent them from becoming an online complaint.

A few examples:

- When reviews single out a staff member, responses should be managed with the utmost sensitivity. Don’t single out the staff member, but at the same time don’t defend the staff member or assume the guest was mistaken, definitely don’t suggest the guest was the source of the problem.”

- Sometimes negative reviews can be centered on pricing. If guests feel they didn’t get value, the hotel should apologize for that, regardless of the guest.

- Hoteliers are going to get a bad review every now and then that they deserved. Hotels should swallow it and move on and focus on the positive.

  
   Responses should be posted as soon as possible, definitely within 48 hours. Responses should be brief and thanking the guest for taking time to post a review whether it’s positive or negative.
If the claims are particularly harmful, hoteliers can refute the post with the host site, but that process could take a long time and could end up futile.

The new Topguest loyalty program

According to the following article, Topguest announced a major new product update that will allow their users to earn hotel points and other travel perks just for taking and sharing photos via Instagram, the new mobile photo sharing application. TopGuest was already changing the way hotels can recognize and reward loyalty, and this expansion beyond checking in with Gowalla or Foursquare seems to be a logical next step.

Recognizing how brand loyalty is expressed by the consumer is a big opportunity for hotels. We see consumers today leaving useful online digital trails about their travel activities, and savvy hotels are looking for ways to identify and encourage this.

Social Media ROI

1. What is meant by 'Social Media is not free'?

. Everything you put into a social media programm has a cost attached to it.

. You need to spend time by joining the conversation and interacting with your community.

. You should hire someone with specific knowledge to develop your Social Media plan.

. Even if the cost of investment is not that high, the financial impact can become huge after taking many actions on Social Media such as creating a Facebook page, a Twitter account and definitely enlarge tthe community by attracting fans and followers.

 

2. In addition to rooms bookings, what measurements would be effective for hotels?

. By the number of engaged and active followers.

. By the way they share your information.

. By knowing your reputation, your image.

 

3. How should a hotel, with limited resources, decide what SM efforts to make?

. Establish the goals you want to achieve.

. Which target you want to reach.

. The type of communication you will use.

. Depend also on your competitive set.

. The budget they want to spend in their Social Media campaign

 

4. What role does SM play in offering customer services?

. By interacting with your community, you can ask questions, opinions and advices about the current facilities and services offer by your hotel. So customer services can definitely improve.

. Be different from your competitors by posting interesting contents.

. Create engagement and satisfaction.

4 innovative ways to use web video for small business like hotels

Even if we are used to see a lot of videos on Internet, and most of the time bad ones, we will see how small businesses like small hotels can take advantage of web video without blowing their budgets and being original just like this article below.

1. Request User Submissions

Hotels should encourage their clients to send videos of them using hotels' facilities, or videos of them enjoying their holidays in hotels' structures. They could organize a contest where the best video could be used as an advertisement on the hotel website or to represent the hotel brand for example. It’s a good way of invloving your clients and building a community.

2. Replace Content

Try making a video instead of writing out your business updates. It is easier for people to watch a video tahn read a full article. Just like Loic LeMeur told in his videos Build Your Own Brand you can reach your clients and community more easily and more originaly ba sharing videos. Hotels could spread there newsletters by videos posted on their Social Media or sent by email to their community.

3. Teach Them and They Will Come

Product demos are fun, but it results difficult for an hotel to make a demo of it structure. However instead of having photos of rooms, gardens, swimmingpools, etc... hotels could have webcams around to show directly to people what is going on the hotel (weather, number of people, etc...) or even more by making short videos where customers could see themselves directly in the aera where they want to be just like jewellery fitting.

4. Make Some Face Time

Hotels can get even more personal, create a business Skype or Gmail address to let customers know they can call  the guest relations service for example if they have any questions about the hotel or it services. This kind of unusual service will build a strong relationship between the hotel and customers.

Hotels should try to think about innovative ways to provide their services and videos are a very easy, cheap and original way to create a buzz.

Social Influence Marketing analyse

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A possible future for travel deals on Social Media sites

We are talking here about the daily deals websites like Groupon and LivingSocial, which sprinkle hotel, spa and tour discounts in their daily e-mails to subscribers. Then there are the new travel-specific daily-deals sites, including SniqueAway and TripAlertz thanks to which you may never have to pay full price if you can plan things.

Those social media sites are changing the travel-bargain landscape, and giants such as Expedia and Travelzoo have to be part of the game. Hotels, flights, restaurants, tourist attractions and packages are available at a discount.
This seems to be the beginning with more personalized deals based on a traveler's itinerary likely coming soon.

Unfortunately this new kind of travel-bargain hunting is not for everyone. The deals have to be bought on the spot or within several days and are usually non-refundable, a tough sell for all but last-minute travelers and those who already have a vacation in mind.

The deals are not tailored enough to broadly change the way travel is booked. But one day people will receive personalized offers from online travel agencies, local-deals providers, social-media sites and others that team up to send deals to travelers based on their booked itineraries.

People who check in at an airport on Facebook or FourSquare, for example, coule receive an offer for the airport bar if they are headed for a vacation or a Starbucks special if they have an early flight home. That's the type of thing I get really excited about.

How can a hotel use Klout scores to improve customer communications?

The Klout Score is the measurement of your overall online influence. The scores range from 1 to 100 with higher scores representing a wider and stronger sphere of influence.
Hotels found a way to use Klout scores to identify influencers talking about their establishment in order to offer them special treatments.

The example of the Palms Hotel in Las Vegas which is currently developing The Klout Klub, which will “allow high-ranking influencers to experience Palms’ impressive set of amenities in hopes that these influencers will want to communicate their positive experience to their followers.” I still have a doubt on this!!! In fact I am not sure that followers' influencers will be enthusiastic in the way they know they will not have the same treatments as their influencers.

I do agree that hotels should invite influencers to let them know what they are talking about.
As an hotelier, I would use Klout scores to identify my influencers, and then I would give them special information about my structure they can only communicate through there Social Media. It could be for example a free weekend for the opening of a new hotel, or spa, or restaurant.

Moreover once I have indentified my influencers, I can create on my website a "community link", where customers could intercat directly on my influencers' blog, Twitter or Facebook account.
We could also use localised engines like Fousquare or Google Places to show our customer the number of check-in our hotel had per week for example, to show our popularity!

Those are a few ideas but with the quick evolution of Social Media and influencers hotels will have to be more and more reactive if they want to keep improve their customer communications.

What are the most important Facebook marketing metrics?

The most famous metrics on Facebook are propably Fans and "likes" which measure what we can call your followers.
According to the following article there is some Facebook metrics you might not measure.

I think the most important metric is engagement, and "the more engaging content you publish, the more engaging your Facebook page will be." But as logical as it seems, one problem is that marketers do not know fans engagement with their brand because they don't follow and metric this kind of metrics.

You can consider you have a good average engagement rate above 0.1%, and even better, a great engagement rate between 0.3 or 0.5%.  As the article says "the best way to measure engagement is monitor the number of interactions per post, and ideally divide it by the number of fans, that way you get a number that is comparable across multiple Facebook pages with different fan numbers."

Of course there is one thing missing in this article like they don't deals with the fact you can't measure the satisfaction of followers about their online activty. Because as we know brands have the possiblity to "buy" a ceratin number of fake followers you have to be careful with those metrics. Maybe that a good way to improve followers' sentiment would be the addition of a "dislike" button to better understand there real feelings and engagement about our brand.

A funny analysis of Seth Godin's Blog!!!

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What will delight today's customers who are mobile lifestyle travellers? Why not a virtual dressing in your hotel?

D di h, think tank 2011, cmh oneglobe

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Social media influence remains weak in travel

A study by Conrad advertising seems to confirme that travellers remain most influenced by travel websites rather than social media sites. Nowadays social media sites are very popular and trustfull,  travellers still faithfull to other source of holiday recommendations.

Accrording to the study the most important sources of information are:
- television
- newspapers
- travel websites

I think travel industry shoud not underestimate the power of social media. We don't have to forget that a few years ago, travellers could not even imagine to book a travel online, whereas most of 54% of the surveyed people prefer to book their travel online thanks to the ability to compare prices.

Travel industry should use social media as the most important way of sharing information, people experience and not just like advertisement. I believe social media will be a powerfull tool in the travel industry if it is well manage.

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