Tuesday Twitter announced the release of a new tool: Twitter Web Analytics.  Simply, the tools will allow website owners to understand:

- How much their content is being shared on Twitter

- How much traffic Twitter is sending to their website

- How well Tweet Buttons are performing

Twitter is the fastest growing of the major social media sites, gaining on average 460,000 new accounts per DAY.  Twitter has also been getting significant press for its ability to actually generate traffic to a site as part of a campaign.  This tool, available to all users in the coming weeks, will provide better measurement of current Twitter campaigns and provides hoteliers with the information to craft even better campaigns in the future.

Screen Shot Courtesy of Mashable

For more information read the full release on Mashable:
http://mashable.com/2011/09/13/twitter-web-analtyics/ 

In the hotel industry, unhappy guests are a fact of life.  They are a part of any general manager’s daily routine and every hotelier is armed with a variety of tactics to deal with them.  In the past it was known that one unhappy guest would tell 10 people about their experience.  However, in today’s digital age, one unhappy guest can influence thousands of potential customers.

What can a hotel do to avoid the effects of a negative review online?  Noted local marketer Mike Blumenthal published: Review Management: 7 Tips on Avoiding Bad Reviews.  Here are a few of his tips most applicable for hotels.

1. Follow Up With Customers Immediately After Their Stay
Send a simple email to a guest thanking them for their business and asking them for feedback about their stay.  This builds goodwill with the guest and effectively encourages them to contact you with any complaints rather than going directly online.

2. Make The Complaint Process Obvious
When someone is physically in your hotel it is obvious how to lodge a complaint.  How about when someone is on your website?  There should be a clear and easy place on your website where a guest can register a complaint.  Create a simple page with an easy form and add a prominent link on every page of your site.  Make it simple for someone to enter a complaint and visible to potential guests that you are interested in guest feedback.

3. Follow Up Quickly and Try To Resolve The Issue
Collecting this feedback is no good unless you follow up.  Some of the worst, most passionate, online reviews are from guests who feel that they were wronged and their voice was not heard.  You certainly can’t please all of the people all of the time, but following up quickly can take much of the emotion out of their situation and maybe even prevent them from going online with their complaints.

4. Respond Online to Negative Reviews
When negative reviews are posted online it is important to respond.  Simply, it shows potential guests that you care.  No one expects perfection, and seeing a hotel take the time to address and thoughtfully respond to complaints gives that guest confidence that they will have a good experience at your hotel.

An effective review strategy is a critical part of a hotel’s marketing. These steps will help you avoid negative reviews, improving your presentation to potential guests.  To read Mike’s full article visit:
http://blumenthals.com/blog/2011/08/11/review-management-7-tips-on-avoiding-bad-reviews/

Why would you pay for a website that doesn’t book room nights? Pay for Performance, offered by eMax Hotel Internet Marketing, is an innovative program that guarantees you only pay for the consumed room nights booked through your website. This performance based program ensures that eMax remains focused on your hotel’s primary goal: increased revenue. eMax only makes money when your hotel makes money.

Pay for Performance is the only program of its kind in the hotel industry. In the past year, it has generated incremental revenue for hundreds of hotel properties by gaining traffic from potential customers’ searched for activities and locations in the local area. The results can be dramatic. For example, in the first six months of 2011, the Crowne Plaza Houston near Reliant Park experienced more than 31,000 visits to their website, more than 75% of which came from search engines. “Choosing eMax for our hotel’s online marketing endeavors was certainly a smart business decision for the hotel,” said Jerry Mathers, Vice President of Operations and General Manager. “eMax has proven to be a valuable eCommerce partner.”

eMax hotel websites leverage market drivers from the hotel’s local area to capture traffic and drive revenues. Numerous landing pages are developed around unique market drivers, including tourist attractions, universities, hospitals and annual festivals, to provide broad visibility on search engines. A vanity website enhances a hotel’s web presence, maximizes traffic, drives conversions, and increases reservations.

“The Pay for Performance model that eMax offers is yet another innovative idea that allows operators to drive incremental revenue into their hotels. With no upfront costs, operators instantly increase their online exposure without having to consider ROI consequences”, said Tim Berg, Director of Operations Campbell Lodging. “eMax took care of us throughout the entire process starting with their professionalism at setup, regularly scheduled update meetings and requested changes made when we need them. The value received through the Pay for Performance websites are simply amazing and we continue to benefit from these websites every day at our hotels.”

The Pay for Performance program requires no upfront payment and there is no monthly commitment. There is no charge for web hosting, plus unlimited maintenance and updates to your website are included. Ready to explore this? Does your property need a revenue boost? Contact eMax at 407-998-8007 to learn more about how the Pay for Performance program can work for you.

As Google continues to experiment with local search, they have once again made major changes to their premier local product: Google Places. Essentially, Google has stopped displaying 3rd party information on all of their local listings.  This includes reviews from non-Google websites and citations, or mentions of a business on a website.

In the hotel industry this has quickly changed the appearance of hotel search results.  In the past you would routinely see listings with 2,000 or more review based on information from sites like Trip Advisor and Hotels.com.  Now, with only Google reviews being displayed, you are lucky to see 40 reviews on a hotel listing.  A quick look at the search for “Orlando Hotels” illustrates the changes.

Places Results for "Orlando Hotels"

There is much speculation over the motivation for the changes.  A pending FTC investigation certainly may have contributed to the move.  For almost a year, review websites like Trip Advisor have vocally opposed their content being displayed on Google Places listings.  For better or worse, they have gotten what they asked for.

When it comes to these changes, there are two things hotelier’s need to understand:

1. This is not an algorithm change
Just because Google stopped displaying 3rd party reviews does not mean they do not consider them for ranking purposes.  In fact, everything points to the fact that Google has NOT changed their local search algorithm and that reviews, including ones on 3rd party sites, are a significant factor in local rankings.  To improve your local ranking a hotel must have an effective strategy for generating reviews.

2. Diversify your review strategy
This is not a new idea.  Encouraging guests to write reviews on a variety of websites has long been a best practice for hotels.  Now the importance of reviews on Google is increased significantly.  Although Google reviews may not influence rankings more than reviews on sites like Trip Advisor, Google reviews will clearly influence Click-Through-Rates.  Within the 7-pack, a hotel with numerous, positive reviews on Google will get more clicks than another property with a low number of reviews or negative ones.  To adapt, a hotel must incorporate Google into their review strategy.

Local search continues to evolve quickly and the only certain thing is that this will not be the last major change we see.  However, the fundamentals of local SEO remain the same and any hotel who does the basics well puts themselves in a position to capture significant exposure and traffic.

With the economic recovery underway, more hotels are turning to online marketing to increase their reservations and generate more room nights. The importance of the internet continues to increase, and the savvy hotelier sees opportunities for a property to drive revenue beyond the brand’s efforts.  The Crowne Plaza Houston near Reliant Park launched their vanity website www.cphoustonhotel.com to capitalize on these opportunities.

“Our vanity website has contributed over 1,000 room nights in 2011, giving us a much needed boost in revenue,” said Jerry Mathers, Vice President of Operations and General Manager at the Crowne Plaza Houston near Reliant Park. In 2010, Mathers considered several online marketing companies before selecting eMax Hotel Internet Marketing to develop their vanity website. “eMax represents the professional, progressive eCommerce partner our hotel needed. Once I learned of their guaranteed 10X ROI, the decision to work with eMax was easy.” Mathers said.

The Crowne Plaza’s website showcases a clean layout with easy navigation. The engaging site provides an effective presentation of the hotel and everything it offers it’s guests.  Mathers opted to include a mobile website, using the same URL, as a source of additional revenue and convenience to guests. Mobile websites offer an experience customized specifically for the unique needs of the smartphone user.

eMax hotel websites are designed to leverage market drivers in the local area to capture traffic and drive revenues.  Multiple landing pages are developed around unique market drivers to provide broad visibility on the search engines.  Crowne Plaza Houston near Reliant Park chose eMax to enhance their web presence, maximize traffic, drive conversions, and increase reservations. eMax’s cost-efficient services made them stand out. There is no charge for web hosting, plus they provide unlimited maintenance and updates to the websites. The eMax team takes responsibility to ensure the website is performing at its optimal level.

In the first four months of 2011, the Crowne Plaza Houston near Reliant Park has seen 24,000 visits to their website, more than 75% of which came from search engines.  “Choosing eMax for our hotel’s online marketing endeavors was certainly a smart business decision for the hotel,” said Mathers. “eMax has proven to be a valuable eCommerce partner.”

To learn how eMax can help your hotel, contact us for a free evaluation.

There has been a lot of talk about buzz about Location Based Services and “check-ins”.  Foursquare and Gowalla are mentioned most frequently, but Facebook introduced a check-in feature in 2010 called Places.  Despite the buzz there had been concerns about how many people actually used these services and what their demographics were.

This week ComScore released numbers that indicate the check-in phenomena is for real.  Their research shows that nearly 17 million mobile users are engaged with check-in services.  This is more than double the number of users reported late last year.

More surprising is the demographics.  Bucking concerns about privacy, women are actually utilizing check-in services more than men.

More and more people are utilizing Check-In based social media platforms to interact with businesses and share information with their social networks.  The savvy hotel marketer understands how these location based services are different from traditional social media and is implementing strategies to leverage check-ins for social media engagement.  What are you doing?

Read more about the ComScore report at Internet2Go.

Quietly last week, Google rolled out a significant change to their local search results for hotels. It all started a little more than a year ago when Google introduced unique Pay-Per-Click (PPC) ads on hotel listings within Google Maps. Mostly Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s) participated in the program feeding their rates for each property. The OTA’s room rates for that hotel were displayed in a drop down box within the hotel’s listing.

Earlier this year there was a lot of buzz about hotel pricing on Google Maps, but little had changed since the program was first introduced in 2010.  The impressions within Maps were too low for an individual property to worry about how this might effect them.

This week Google changed everything by rolling out the OTA PPC Pricing Ads on their main Search Engine Results.  Here is an example from the search “Orlando Hotels”

When you click on the price you get a drop down of pricing options that looks like this…

This is still very early so expect Google to make additional changes.  However, there are some immediate observations:

1. The main Search Engine Results Page (SERP’s) is a much different ball game than Google Maps.  The main SERP’s represent significantly more impressions and clicks than what the program was generating previously.  For those properties ranking well on Google this means loosing margin as some bookings shift to the OTA’s.

2. Expect the brands to participate in this program.  In the near future we will see Hilton.com as an option for all Hilton properties.  The brands must invest modestly in pay-per-click to protect the revenue booked directly through the brand.com site.

3. More properties will look into including PPC pricing on their own listing.  Expect Google to make it easier to participate too.  Just as it has been a proven strategy to bid on your own name in PPC Campaigns, now it will be equally effective to bid on your own listing.  The click price is worth maintaining the higher margins of direct booking.

The true impact of this change will be demonstrated over time.  However, the savvy hotelier will pay attention to these changes to protect and increase revenue and margins.