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DealAngel Offers Hotel Pricing Intelligence to Other Sites

DealAngel Offers Data for B2B

DealAngel may be best known for allowing consumers to search for hotels and compare the prices to hotels with similar market value to ensure they are really getting the best deal before buying. They are now causing quite a buzz over their recently launched new API that adds an interesting B2B element that Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) and “daily deal” websites will love. While still in beta and private, social trip planner Gogobot has already integrated DealAngel’s new API, but it should go fully public by April.

What Does it Do?

While many hotels often offer “30% off today, what a deal!,” no one really knows the true value if compared to similar hotels or what you would normally pay on any given day. It may not even be a deal at all when compared to its true market value. With this new option, sites can build DealAngel’s technology into their own, letting consumers know if it is actually a deal they are seeing, or just your regular ‘ol “always discounted” rate.

  • OTAs can actually rank their hotel offers by how good the deal really is
  • “Daily Deal” sites will be able to check that “30% off, what a deal” out to verify if it actually is a good deal before adding it to the day’s list
  • Hotel wholesalers or bulk rate negotiators could compare their offer from a particular hotel with historical data

It’s certainly an interesting move for DealAngel, but potentially a very lucrative one. In the age of “deal fatigue,” consumers are going to want to know just how good their deal is compared to all the others and this new API could offer that solution.

Source: TechCrunch originally published “DealAngel Launching API to Let Other Sites Build Hotel Pricing Intelligence into their Wares” – Please see their article for more detailed information on this topic.

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5 Best Practices for Managing Online Feedback

What a difference a few years make in your reputation

When I started working at Revinate in 2010, I spent a lot of time speaking to hoteliers about why it is so important to monitor online feedback and proactively engage with guests over social media. At the time, less than 4% of hotels were responding to online reviews and many hotels weren’t even reading their public guest feedback, let alone using social media in a business capacity. At the time, the research didn’t exist to show the impact that reviews make on booking decisions but over the last couple of years many studies have been published that leave very little doubt as to the importance of online reputation management.

In 2010, TripAdvisor and Forrester began polling consumers about the impact of management responses. The results showed that for the majority of consumers, a management response to a bad review is reassuring and that all things being equal consumers would book with a hotel that responds to reviews versus one that remains silent. TripAdvisor now reports that hoteliers now respond to 25% of new reviews. And, in 2012, Cornell Center for Hospitality Research published a study that put the impact of great ratings into perspective for revenue managers – – hotels with great reviews can charge more than those that don’t rate as high. While intuitive, the study was a big wake-up call for many who have been waiting for a serious ROI study before dedicating time and resources.

Today, the conversation has shifted from why it is so important to manage online feedback to the best ways to operationalize this data and measure it. Working with more than 15,000 clients across 120 countries, I see a lot of different practices around online reputation management. Following are my top 5 best practices, most of which were rarely seen a few years ago.

1. Get serious about measurement

In 2012 I saw many hotels getting serious about understanding the impact of online reputation management to their own bottom line. I saw tremendous presentations by clients, such as qualia in Australia, who used the multi-channel funnel in Google Analytics to measure the direct traffic and assisted conversions from TripAdvisor. In the case of qualia, with dedication to responding to reviews and focusing on improving quality ratings, the team drove 7% more revenue in 2012 than in 2010 and 2011 combined.

2. Show me the money

We all know that what gets measured gets done and what gets compensated gets done the quickest. Many management groups are now including online reputation metrics in employee and management compensation plans. Traditionally, management compensation packages have been based on factors such as market share, financial performance, traditional comment cards or guest satisfaction surveys and staff satisfaction. But what these measurements fail to account for are the factors that are driving real booking decisions today such as TripAdvisor’s Popularity Index, online review ratings, management response rates and social media engagement.  If you’re not already doing it, start setting goals and rewarding your hotels that do a great job. Then invite me to your next GM’s gala and I will happily give out the online reputation award for 2013.

3. Involve the right people

This best practice may sound obvious, but for a long time, many hotels had one or two people responsible for reading and responding to online reviews and they largely acted in a vacuum. Today, many hotels involve all teams in the process of monitoring feedback, responding to reviews, engaging guests and ensuring that feedback is used to improve the operation of the hotel. Many hotels and portfolios are forming committees to review feedback or ensuring that the leading issues from online reviews are presented during weekly stand-ups and action items are assigned to the people empowered to resolve the issues.

4. Use social media for service recovery

The press still likes to cover stories about Twitter being used at hotels for service recovery, so it’s clear that these types of engagement are still few and far between. Given the real-time nature of Twitter, actively monitoring your account gives you the best chance of nipping an issue in the bud, before it becomes a full-blown PR nightmare. The New York Times covered the story of basketball star, Chipper Jones, who was unhappy with his room at a large hotel in New York and took to Twitter to complain. Luckily, the hotel, a Revinate client, was monitoring Twitter and saw the complaints in real time. With a process in place to deal with guest complaints, they dispatched an engineer who went right up to his room to take care of the issues.

Another best practice for Twitter is to monitor the Twitter hash tag of any group meetings or conferences taking place in your hotel.  Doing so will allow you to monitor the comfort of your guests, and as a result, the satisfaction of your clients. Manchester Grand Hyatt San Diego has made this a practice at the hotel and has caught issues around temperature and wi-fi in real time, leaving the clients floored by the hotel’s responsiveness.

5. Surprise and Delight

While engaging on Twitter and Facebook provides many ways to forge tighter bonds with your guests, there is nothing like merging the virtual world with the real-world by sending an old-fashioned amenity to the rooms of guests that check-in on foursquare, tweet positively about the hotel, or post photos to your Facebook page while they are on site. These surprise and delight tactics go a long way towards driving loyalty and word-of-mouth about the great service at your hotel. I have been the recipient of many fruit plates, cupcakes and bottles of wine as a result of my tweets and I never fail to take a picture to share with my network, praising the hotel for its great hospitality.

As we move deeper in 2013, I am looking forward to seeing these programs put into practice by more hotels. With real-benefits and hard ROI to back you up, we wish you good luck as you delve deeper into a new frontier.

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What’s in Store for Hotels in 2013

Recently, the team at Web in Travel asked Sabre Hospitality President and General Manager, Felix Laboy, for his 2013 reflections and predictions. Felix has also appeared in eCornell’s Ask the Expert segments for our Free New Media Course for Hospitality Professionals.

What are the three things you think will happen in the hotel space in 2013?

• RevPar will continue to grow, driven primarily by continued demand and decelerating supply. Price pressure created by the unprecedented shopping capability of consumers will direct hotel investment towards converged and interfaced technology solutions that support micro adjustments to ARI and cascade to all electronic channels seamlessly. Channel connectivity will continue to be critical.

• Mobile device activity for hotels will approach 50% of all electronic shopping activity (think all mobile devices or non-desktop  and not just mobile phones).

• Hoteliers will require integrated distribution and marketing technology in order to support the increasing convergence of these disciplines and rise of ancillary selling strategies.

What are the three things hotels should invest in for the new year?

Invest in solutions that will:

  1. Increase profitability;
  2. Maximize efficiency;
  3. Enable the personalization of your guest’s complete experience.

In our space that certainly means investing in better booking solutions, including a device responsive solution as a brand standard. The ability to engage and serve consumers consistently across all devices globally will be paramount.

Also, consider investing in attribution modeling to supplement current tracking and measurement tools.  The key to managing a constantly evolving digital media space is the ability to truly understand contribution of each media channel or touch point vs. just costs or outcomes.

What are your predictions for hotel distribution and marketing next year?

The continued shift towards convergence of Revenue Management, Demand Creation (marketing) and Distribution will be the biggest trend to watch in 2013.

Non-room inventory will become more important to hotel brands.

Innovation around points of sale will encourage Hoteliers to adapt distribution and marketing strategies

Which hotel groups are the ones to watch next year, and why?

Hotel groups to watch are those that continue to focus on customer service and use technology (pre-stay/during the booking process, during the stay and post-stay) to help them provide a better all around experience for the guest.  The web and social media facilitate greater transparency and consumer empowerment. Personalization and recognition delivered in the travel experience has become an (consumer) expectation.

Three important events that happened this year that you think will have significant impact on travel in the future.

• Apple’s increased level of interest in the travel market.
• Continued Political Unrest in the Middle East.
• Fast-growing middle and upper class in BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India and China) who are embracing (far) travel.

Most over-used word/s of 2012?

Mobile, Social Media, SoLoMo: There has been too much focus on the new buzz topics – these tend to get over-discussed and explored, often times leading us to neglect the basics of distribution and digital marketing.

Google: We’ve all heard continual concerns from the hotel industry on Google’s intent to become a travel merchant. Google will continue to provide consumers with the best search results and try to monetize advertising, remaining a referral partner to the hotel industry and not a merchant of record

Most under-estimated word/s of 2012?

SEO: A well-optimized hotel should be seeing 50%+ in organic search traffic – too little time is being spent discussing and leveraging this channel. There is a lot of potential in a strong SEO strategy and it deserves the continued buzz in the marketing world.

Ancillary: The airlines have established their approach to ancillary revenue with consumers and smart hoteliers will embrace this opportunity in a manner that will support their brand position and profitability. All inventory sets (hotel restaurant seats, spa beds and retail) will find their way into the broader distribution and marketing landscape.

What word/s will disappear from the hotel vocabulary?

“OTAs are the enemy” – OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) have a critical place in any hotel distribution and marketing strategy – what is critical is to manage them with a holistic view of all true costs by channel and also impact they have on other channels and vice versa.

As the year winds to an end, what will you remember most about 2012?

2012 was the year that hotels started to question whether technology should be a core competency internally or a service that can be successfully outsourced.

What are you most looking forward to in 2013?

Taking a holiday with my family.

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Communicating in Circles: Why This is Good for You

Within the last ten to fifteen years, new media channels have exploded into the daily lives of the hospitality consumer. There are now dozens upon dozens of new ways in which we can communicate with our customers, not just market to them.

It’s no longer that you as the hospitality marketer come up with a brand, come up with a way in which to symbolize or communicate that brand, choose media channels, and send that message out to our target customers. That’s a very linear approach, or presentation-based marketing communications. With new media, in particular social media, the nature of that communication has really evolved, and it’s now something where the consumer has much greater control over that message and of the brand itself. We call this consumer-generated influence or consumer-generated media.

In other words, marketing communications now is much more circular. You have to think not only about how you can influence the consumers’ perceptions of your brand, but also how they’ll influence others by interacting with your brand in their own social channels. Will they tag their location while on your property? Will they mention what a great time, what a beautiful lobby, what great food, etc. while they are there? Upload photos of your property to their friends? This is where the opportunity for dialogue between the brand and your customers comes alive.

Responding to Twitter, Facebook, TripAdvisor posts and the like gives you an opportunity to directly communicate your brand to your customers as well as learn more about how they perceive your brand and what they expect from it.

 

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Is New Media Even Relevant to the Hospitality Industry?

New media in hospitality marketing is not evolutionary; it’s revolutionary. And its growth hasn’t been linear; it’s been exponential.

In the year 2000, less than 5% of hotel room revenue was booked online in the United States. By 2015, that number will balloon to over 35%, more if you include bookings by business travellers using mobile devices or their own PCs and even event attendees using software provided by the event organizers or the venues themselves.

In addition, Google became a publicly traded company in 2004 and today it represents more than 90% of search activities by users. Then in 2010, Facebook actually overtook Google in the number of weekly U.S. visitors. And finally, I’ll bet you have a mobile device in your pocket or on your desk right now, and a tablet in your possession or at least on your wish list.

New media (social, mobile, and search) is everywhere. It’s in the pockets, purses, desks, and living rooms of your potential consumers, helping them make decisions about their next purchase.

By leveraging these new connections to the target market, you are offering potential consumers the opportunity to engage with your brand in a more complete way than was previously available.  You are allowing customers to essentially “try” your product or property before even buying. For example: hotel web sites have evolved from kind of of the Web 1.0 version of online brochures to much more interactive sites where visitors can take virtual tours to explore property, they can play games, they can engage in virtual activities such as taking the participant’s view as they go down a water slide, or even watch short movies. Because there are so many new ways to connect with customers, creativity and uniqueness can be strong tools to set you apart from your competition.

New media is indeed relevant to the hospitality marketing industry. It is how you are going to project, promote, and protect your brand. And it is how you are going to capture more than your fair share of the desired target market.

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Starwood Hotels & Resorts and eCornell Sign a Two-Year Partnership

Global hotel group continues long standing relationship to offer online learning with eCornell

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc. has entered into a two-year agreement to continue its partnership with eCornell to deliver online courses in hospitality management, leadership, strategic management, supervisory skills and human resource management to its worldwide employees.

eCornell offers Starwood access to courses developed by Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration that align closely with their talent-management approach.  Offering these and other courses helps Starwood achieve its learning goals on a global scale at both the property and corporate levels.

eCornell’s unique approach to elearning combines the most effective elements of a world-class, Ivy League classroom with the flexibility of an online learning environment. eCornell courses—self-paced and 100 percent online—are “instructor-facilitated” to help guide a cohort of 20 to 30 participants through challenging, real-world exercises with practical on-the-job application. Classes enable learners to be immersed in learning that also fosters collaboration, interaction, and networking.

“Starwood continues to be a great partner of eCornell, and we’re approaching almost 10 years of success together,” said Tom Abogabal, vice president of global sales at eCornell.  “We are thrilled to continue our partnership to be able to help Starwood reach thousands of employees across its worldwide portfolio of owned, managed, and franchised properties, and to help develop all levels of employees including individual contributors, supervisors, managers, GMs, and senior leaders.

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About eCornell

eCornell, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cornell University, provides many of the world’s leading organizations with online professional and executive development in the areas of leadership and management, human resources, financial management, healthcare, marketing, and hospitality management. eCornell’s proven course development model and asynchronous instructor-led course delivery provide for engaging, rigorous, and interactive learning. The company has delivered online courses to more than 50,000 students in over 200 countries. For more information visit ecornell.cornell.edu/enterprise (enterprise buyers) or ecornell.cornell.edu (small groups and individual students).

 

About Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc.

Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worldwide, Inc., is one of the leading hotel and leisure companies in the world, with 1,128 properties in nearly 100 countries and 171,000 employees at its owned and managed properties. Starwood is a fully integrated owner, operator and franchisor of hotels, resorts, and residences with the following internationally renowned brands: St. Regis®, The Luxury Collection®, W®, Westin®, Le Méridien®, Sheraton®, Four Points® by Sheraton, Aloft®, and ElementSM. The company boasts one of the industry’s leading loyalty programs, Starwood Preferred Guest (SPG), allowing members to earn and redeem points for room stays, room upgrades, and flights, with no blackout dates. Starwood also owns Starwood Vacation Ownership, Inc., a premier provider of world-class vacation experiences through villa-style resorts and privileged access to Starwood brands. For more information, please visit www.starwoodhotels.com.

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InterContinental Hotels Group Starts Year Two of Its Partnership with eCornell

Global hotel brand offers hospitality-specific online learning

InterContinental Hotels Group (IHG), one of the worlds largest hotel companies, has started year two of its partnership with eCornell.

Offering courses in hospitality management developed by Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration, eCornell has helped IHG successfully cultivate its global audience to become leaders in their industry. With more than 4,000 properties throughout the world, it is important that IHG offer a learning solution that is consistent and accessible for all its employees.

One of the many attractive aspects of eCornell is that it offers employees hospitality courses and also a wide range of business and leadership courses on topics ranging from management to finance to change management. The flexible schedule and ease of access is important for the IHG audience, because their schedules fluctuate and they can be in remote locations.  eCornell’s Ivy League-caliber courses continue to be recognized as valuable to IHG’s learning and development strategy, and have been since 2004.

eCornell’s unique approach to elearning combines the most effective elements of a world-class, Ivy League classroom with the flexibility of an online learning environment. eCornell courses—self-paced and 100 percent online—are “instructor-facilitated” to help guide a cohort of 20 to 30 participants through challenging, real-world exercises with practical on-the-job application. Classes enable learners to be immersed in learning that also fosters collaboration, interaction, and networking.

“IHG has been a great partner of eCornell,” said Tom Abogabal, vice president of global sales for eCornell.  “Their global audience takes advantage of the collaborative nature of our courses.  We are happy to help make the world flat for IHG’s talent across seven continents.  eCornell allows them to connect with each other and learn with and from peers across all industries, all while developing their skills they can apply wherever they are in IHG’s operations.”

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About eCornell

eCornell, a wholly-owned subsidiary of Cornell University, provides many of the world’s leading organizations with online professional and executive development in the areas of leadership and management, human resources, financial management, healthcare, marketing, and hospitality management. eCornell’s proven course development model and asynchronous instructor-led course delivery provide for engaging, rigorous, and interactive learning. The company has delivered online courses to more than 50,000 students in over 200 countries. For more information visit ecornell.cornell.edu/enterprise (enterprise buyers) or www.ecornell.com (small groups and individual students).

 

About InterContinental Hotels Group

IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) [LON:IHG, NYSE:IHG (ADRs)] is a global organization with nine hotel brands, including InterContinental® Hotels & Resorts, Hotel Indigo®, Crowne Plaza® Hotels & Resorts, Holiday Inn® Hotels and Resorts, Holiday Inn Express®, Staybridge Suites®, Candlewood Suites®, EVEN™ Hotels, and HUALUXE™ Hotels & Resorts. IHG also manages Priority Club® Rewards, the world’s first and largest hotel loyalty program with over 69 million members worldwide.

IHG franchises, leases, manages, or owns over 4,500 hotels and more than 672,000 guest rooms in nearly 100 countries and territories. With more than 1,000 hotels in its development pipeline, IHG expects to recruit around 90,000 people into additional roles across its estate over the next few years.

InterContinental Hotels Group, PLC, is the group’s holding company and is incorporated in Great Britain and registered in England and Wales.

Visit www.ihg.com for hotel information and reservations and www.priorityclub.com for more on Priority Club Rewards. For our latest news, visit www.ihg.com/media, www.twitter.com/ihg, www.facebook.com/ihg or www.youtube.com/ihgplc.

 

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How Tech and Social Media Now Drive the Travel/Hotel Industry

I was in NYC last week, along with Hotel Administration Dean Michael Johnson, to present my new research on how travel review web sites and hotel-industry elasticity are forming a tidal wave of change in 2013.

We were at the Westin New York at Times Square in Manhattan, as part of the Inside Cornell series, a monthly series featuring researchers and experts working at Cornell University’s centers in Ithaca, Manhattan and around the world. Click here to view the video.

 

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The Billboard Effect

In this interview with VTV, I discuss the results of a research study called “The Billboard Effect”, conducted in partnership with JHM Hotels and Expedia. In the study, four properties were cycled on and off Expedia over a period of three months.

Our findings:

– Hotel placement on Expedia results in a 20% increase in bookings on other channels
– Reservations made on other channels (call center, brand.com, other sites) offset reservations made on OTAs
– Rates attained while being listed on Expedia were about 2-3% higher

The bottom line: Hoteliers need to think of OTAs as marketing vehicles versus reservation engines.

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What you need to know about new media right now

This article, written by eCornell CEO Christopher Proulx, was originally published in HotelsMag.com.

As the marketing landscape explodes with new media channels, hospitality marketers have an increased number of methods by which to raise the visibility of their brands. Gone are the days of relying solely on static print ads or run-of-the-mill television commercials. Instead, in the world of new media, hotels can reach customers in a more dynamic and engaging way. Finding the ways in which to maximize this opportunity starts with an in-depth understanding of the new media landscape.

Here are the top three things every hotel marketer needs to know right now:

Evolving media brings more opportunity for creativity

As dollars continue to shift away from traditional media to new media channels, there is a world of opportunity for marketers to shine from a creative perspective. By leveraging new media tools, hotels can offer guests a chance to more fully engage with a brand before making a decision to book travel. For example, some hotels provide virtual tours of rooms and unique property features (such as world class pools, water slides, spas). This allows customers to try before they buy in a way that’s much more meaningful than a static marketing piece. Video has also become an integral part of new media marketing as we see premium brands create professional pieces in an effort to convey what a guest might experience during a hotel stay. (The Ritz Carlton does this very well). Because there are now so many new ways to connect with customers, creative elements can go a long way in a new media campaign. Now more than ever, generating creative social media content needs to be built into a hotel’s marketing strategy.

Consistent messaging is key

With the increase in marketing channels comes the increased need for hotels to monitor their marketing message. One major change as it relates to communication is the consumer’s ability to influence the brand. Consumers routinely recommend hotels online, and reviews, both positive and negative are widely accessible online. That means that variation in the way that a hotel is discussed online should both be anticipated and addressed. In addition, the way a hotel is described through social media channels can differ from the rest of the messaging if the social media strategist is not working closely with the brand team. The result? A diluted message about what a customer can expect from a particular hotel experience. Now more than ever, hospitality marketers must be mindful of all marketing communication, including monitoring online reviews and discussion, responding where appropriate, and develop a tight messaging to be used throughout all channels.

The importance of search will continue to grow

Over the last several years, search engine optimization (SEO) has become critical to the hospitality industry. According to a recent Google study, 78 percent of all hotel transactions involved search at some stage of travel selection by the consumer, and 61 percent of people making online hotel transactions were directly referred to a hotel website by a search engine. With the migration fromhorizontal search (i.e looking at options a thousand miles wide but one inch deep) to vertical search (i.e. looking more narrowly at one particular point in the search process), the specific focus on the travel industry and the introduction of social filtering through search, today’s hospitality marketers must understand how to leverage search marketing in order to stay competitive.

The bottom line is this. In the fast-paced world of new media, hospitality marketers must stay informed and nimble. Each day is a new opportunity to reach potential customers in a meaningful way, which is why a deep understanding of new media tools is a must for hospitality marketers.