hotelengage-blog

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Loyalty members are far from loyalty

Membership does not equal loyalty. Of course, membership alone does not mean loyalty program members actually stay at a competitors hotel. However, the threat to the preferred brand represented by multiplecard-holding behavior among hotel loyalty members can be substantial. More on Deloitte: "A restoration in Hotel Loyalty"

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A recent survey we conducted (2nd quarter 2012) of almost 20,000 hotel guest asking them how they heard about the hotel gave us some interesting insight into what’s stimulating hotel guests to book their hotel.

We did a similar survey last year and while the differences aren’t huge they are interesting.

The biggest change is TripAdvisor which increased by 2.2% and is in third position compared to last year (4th position).

Interestingly Travel Agents are moving up, which indicates lower rate parity between GDS and hotel websites.

Social Media isn’t winning at this race which points to the low level of ROI on social media marketing. As we have indicated several times there are two aspects to this. First off Social Media isn’t a good marketing tool, but it’s a great public relations tool and hotels must use it as a channel to communicate to guests and potential guests. Secondly while Friends and Family lost a fair share of its influence as a stimulus it is also very likely that sharing one’s stay on social media is being recorded in the guests minds as Friends and Family and not social media. Just like nobody is saying they heard about the hotel from emails.

We hope this helps hoteliers and marketers around the world to hone their marketing tools and help hotels increase their bookings by being more relevant. If you have further questions drop a note in the comments below and we’ll try to reply as quickly as we can.

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Can an independent hotel booking site survive and thrive?

The online hotel booking market is relatively packed, and standing out from the pack is difficult for any brand. The leadership at thirteen-year old Tablet Hotels, takes the position that each new entrant that may promise something new or unique is actually either a validation of its model or an opportunity to further evolve.

Tablet Hotels features a limited number of hotels in nearly 900 destinations around the world. In a market like London, for instance, you’ll find fewer than 60 properties, as opposed to over a thousand on Booking.com. The promise of Tablet is a specialty property at the lowest possible cost, and it has a history of delivering.

In addition to the listings, Tablet’s site also offers a magazine and a series of travel guides that offer a mix of inspiration and information that it hopes will help guests make smarter decisions before and after booking.

Skift sat down earlier this month with Tablet Hotels CEO and co-founder Laurent Vernhes in the company’s New York office.

Read more

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APPS DOMINATE MOBILE TIME SPENT ACCESSING TRAVEL

As the summer travel season comes to a close, Nielsen looked at the usage of travel-related mobile apps and websites during June 2012. Findings showed that U.S. Android and iOS users spent 95 percent of their time accessing travel information from travel apps, versus only 5 percent from the mobile Web. This discrepancy was largely driven by Google Maps—the top Travel category app and mobile website during June—which accounted for 78 percent of all mobile time spent on Travel.

Americans’ decision on whether to open an app or their mobile Web browser depends on the type of travel information they seek. The Cruise Lines category was exclusively accessed through the mobile Web, while 98 percent of time spent browsing map/navigation information was through an app. The Travel Destinations/Theme Parks category seemed to have the most balanced usage among smartphone owners, as 54 percent of time spent was through an app and 46 percent via mobile Web.

“The variation in time spent across the different travel categories shows that there’s significant room for app development and growth,” said Nichole Henderson, a senior research executive at Nielsen.

more

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Overpaid CEOs Out, Motivated Employees In

Companies are struggling to improve profitability by cutting expenses, copying competitors, replacing CEOs, and hiring expensive consultants. Unfortunately, most of these efforts have failed to pay off.  But a number of hospitality leaders have found a source of competitive advantage.  They are leveraging their own employees to find new opportunities for growth.

The notion is simple. ‘Regular’ employees are an important source of innovative ideas due to their knowledge of operations and their own creativity.  Employees are psychologically and physically close to customers and research has shown they can be very helpful in identifying customer needs and opportunities for innovation.

Two of the ways hospitality leaders are driving top-line growth with their employees are employee crowd sourcing and employee engagement programs. The first of this two-part post explores employee crowd sourcing.

Four Seasons Hotels and Resorts’ new company-wide innovation program, BLUEWATER, equips 35,000 employees with tools and behaviors needed to ideate, pilot, and refine guest experiences. BLUEWATER sources and pilots ideas through general managers, while also soliciting fresh solutions from elsewhere within the company.  They have incorporated this program into all general meetings and staff training.  It’s working.  In a video presentation to staff, a Four Seasons housekeeper in Hong Kong said: “Before BLUEWATER I would go into rooms to make sure they’re clean. Now I look for opportunities to wow.”

Involving employees in service innovation and design also increases the likelihood of new service success because employees can identify the organizational issues that need to be addressed to support the delivery of the service to customers.  And when employees feel that management is interested in their opinions, they’ll be more likely take a personal stake in the business. They’ll go from feeling like they’re working for the man to feeling like they’re a part of the team.

Innovation and change puts companies on the offensive.  While other brands can add products and services simply to match competitors, hospitality companies that seek out employee input to develop effective new products and services often lead their respective markets.  To remain competitive in the hospitality industry requires both innovation in processes to improve service productivity and innovation in offerings to increase revenue.  Employees can assist businesses to find innovative ways to accomplish both of these objectives. BY: Market Metrix

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3 Things You Can Do Now To Grow Your Independent Hotel Or Travel Business

Compared to large travel companies, many independent hotels and travel businesses have low marketing budgets. But if you run an independent travel business, there are plenty of things you can do to make your company stand out — and boost your bookings in the process.

Here are 3 things you can do right now to ensure growth and become a true contender. And while this advice is primarily for travel businesses, the lessons apply to any small business trying to get some market share:

1. Truly value your customers and their (emotional) experiences.

Small businesses in the travel industry have a leg up in that they can provide personalized experiences for their customers. Therefore, it’s important to find your unique selling point. This could be your location, specialized tour packages, or even something unusual like rooms that cater to dogs and their owners. Whatever it is, focus on the special capabilities you have as a small business to make guests’ experiences truly personal and sell it. Your business has the potential to make an impact on the memories your guests have of a particular trip or even geographical area.

Then, take a page from major brands who constantly utilize emotion to evoke consumers’ feelings in advertising. See: Google’s recent advertising shift, which was created to “make you cry,” according to remarks made by Lorraine Twohill, VP for global marketing at Google, in a New York Times interview. This emotional tug is embodied in their popular commercial “Parisian Love”. Although these large brands can be emotional, the good news for your small company is that they often fail to be personal. You, on the other hand, have the power to create nostalgia — which will guarantee great guest reviews and more bookings.

Finally, speaking of reviews, there is another reason for ensuring positive customer experiences: word of mouth. Follow this age-old advice: “It’s easier to keep a client than find a new one.” Travelers going to new places are more likely to rely on reviews and recommendations from friends or family. At the same time, consumers are more likely than ever to share negative experiences. In fact, 41 percent admitted they are more likely to share a negative experience via Twitter or by writing a review.

2. Start using social media well.

At a minimum, you should have a Facebook page and a Twitter account that clearly displays your brand logo and name. When competing with major brands that are well recognized in traveler’s minds, a small business must take every opportunity to bolster their credibility. A 2010 study by Chadwick Martin Bailey found that consumers are 67 percent more likely to buy from the brands they follow on Twitter, and 51 percent more likely to buy from a brand they follow on Facebook.

But don’t just let the accounts sit there. Use Facebook and Twitter to keep past and potential customers updated on changes in a very simple way. It might be very time-consuming and expensive to change or update an official website, but with social media accounts, an event calendar, photos, and other travel news can be shared with a large audience effortlessly.

3. Make booking/buying seamless.

If you run a small hotel — or any other business — and you don’t have online booking or buying capabilities on your site, you’re losing tons of business. Period.

Small businesses need to be able to convert website visitors into paying guests (or customers). But there are many factors that go into customer decisions, so to increase conversions, it’s critical that your business decrease the number of boundaries between the customer and the sale.

In other words, make it easy for your website visitors to act on their first impulse! If they visit your website and have to book a reservation via phone or email, they are less likely to book. My team developed a reservation system and widget for exactly this purpose called Dashbell; there are others out there as well. Bottom line? You need to find a seamless way to decrease the time you spend playing phone tag and increase your bookings. If you’re not doing it already, I think you’ll see conversions increase quickly with a good online system.

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How Guests Select Hotels Around the World – Global Results by: MarketMetrix

We recently finished a study that looked at the reasons why people all around the world select a particular hotel or casino.  The results offer insight into current guest behavior, and suggest ways to appeal to them. In this and subsequent posts we’ll pull out some of the highlights.

The study was based on results from the Market Metrix Hospitality Index (MMHI), and includes data from 40,000 American, European, and Asian travelers during 2012.  We focused on several questions that ask guests why they selected a particular hotel or casino on their most recent trip (visit MMHI product page for more detail on methodology).

GLOBAL RESULTS

Location still reigns as the primary factor that determines hotel choice.  Location generally matters more to leisure guests.  Location also tends to be more important to older travelers (over 50 years old), with a high income (USD $100,001 – 150,000), who prefer staying in an upper midscale or upscale hotel.

“Price” and “Past Experience” are the next most important factors in hotel selection.  Interestingly, the importance of “Past Experience” has climbed over the past few years while emphasis given to “Location” and “Price” has remained constant.  Perhaps guests have become more demanding with the diversity of hotel choices available, especially at the higher end of the market.

Globally, “Past Experience” (11.9%) plays a much bigger role in hotel selection than the influence of a friend’s recommendation (6.8%), the brand’s reputation (5.5%), the role of promotions (5.0%), the power of loyalty programs (3.8%), and the impact that online reviews have on hotel selection (2.9%).

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The Most Expensive Problems

Problems cost money. But some problems cost a LOT of money. Not because they occur frequently, but because they have a much bigger impact on guest loyalty. Specifically, that means when guests experience a problem, fewer of them come back, and fewer of them pass along referrals to others. That means less revenue.

So this begs an obvious question. Which problems cost the most money? We dug into nine million guest surveys to look for an answer. Here’s what we found:

Guests are a lot more understanding about product problems than they are service problems. Guest room problems, although they make up the biggest problem category at nearly 42% of reported problems, have the lowest impact on guest loyalty. That’s interesting since ultimately what guests are paying for is a place to sleep.

Service problems, on the other hand, make up a much smaller portion of reported problems, but have a much more dramatic impact on guest loyalty. Just look at staff-related problems in the table below. They are only 4.7% of reported problems. But staff problems punch way above their weight causing loyalty to plummet by over 26 points when they do occur.

There is a lot of good news here. Service problems can often be very inexpensive to fix. One of our clients was recently trying to decide where to invest to improve guest loyalty and revenue. Based on our cost-of-problems analysis, they had two big opportunities to reduce problem-related losses. Both were worth over $2,000,000. One was a product-related improvement they estimated would cost $1.8 million. The other was a service-related problem they estimated would cost just $20 thousand to fix. That’s easy math!

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A cold snap in the European Hotel Industry in January

The year 2013 began on a dive of almost all indicators of the hotel sector across Europe, with a few islands of positive developments, confirming the strong resistance of the German and Austrian markets. General tension on occupancy for eighteen months eventually weighing on price changes means that ground was ceded everywhere. RevPAR of the European Union collectively displayed a decrease of 1.2%. Growth engine for indicators in 2012, the upscale segment came to its maximum strength and starts to weaken. The downward trend in average prices is appearing in many markets. Luckily, January is traditionally the one where the activity is lower and weight is not significant on annual performance. However, visibility of the coming months is low and 2013 is already shaping up as a less favorable year in terms of timing, without major events like the London Olympics, Euro 2012 Football.

Of the three major countries of the European Union, Germany alone continues riding on the success of its business events and of the continuous improvements on average rates. It caught up on other Western countries. With lower volumes, but also well oriented, Austria maintains a strong MICE activities that are boosting its average prices too. Belgium and Luxembourg have stabilized their levels of activity, but the Netherlands, as well as the UK, are seeing reductions in the two indicators. Another European heavyweight in the hospitality industry, France, is still holding in terms of average prices, but the margin of maneuver becomes weaker and weaker. While Denmark is resistant thanks to business activity in its capital, Copenhagen, Sweden is facing a sharp drop in attendance.

Southern Europe is sinking deeper into the gloom. If Portugal falls greatly, it focuses on small volumes in its upscale hotels, less frequented in winter. Spain and Italy have very low levels of activity below 48% of OR which is addressed by aggressive pricing policies.

In Central Europe, attendance is down in comparison to already low volumes, especially in Hungary which was particularly quiet early this year. The comparison with 2012 is naturally unfavorable to Poland, which no longer enjoys the preparation and the dynamics of the Euro Football.

«One should remain careful regarding the significance of this cold snap in the European hotel industry, because the low levels of activity are a usual situation at the beginning of the year and a simple variation is magnified,» explains Georges Panayotis, president of MKG. «However, it could not be ignored that the economic difficulties are worsening in most of the European countries. 2013 will a be a year of transition before the measures taken by the gouverments produce any benefic effects in 2014. One could expect a defavourable evolution on the national domestic markets. The strength of international tourism will certainely give a premium to the capital metropolis, widening the gap with secondary cities».

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How to Maximize the Impact of Your Loyalty Program

How can you get the most bang out of your customer loyalty program? The Booth study provides a few smart tips:

Give customers a sense they’re making progress. We’ve already seen how bonus points can jump-start a customer into feeling they’re making progress. Many merchants launch their program with a signup special: get a small freebie just for signing up. Immediate gratification doesn’t have to cost much, but if it gives your customers the glow of achievement, it can accelerate their purchase frequency and amounts.

Remind customers where they’re stand – particularly when they’re nearing a reward. Here’s where  mobile offers shine compared to paper punchcards. You may not dig out that wrinkled, torn punchcard to check your progress, but a well-timed ping on your mobile phone may prompt you to head back to a store you like but haven’t visited lately. Consider bundling bonus points with a  special offer: you’ll not only drive in-store traffic, you’ll also reignite a customer’s motivation to earn enough punches for that next freebie.

Even less-motivated customers can be goosed into action. Not every customer will be raring to participate in a loyalty program. But if you’ve managed to sign them up at all, don’t give up on them with the first sign of flagging enthusiasm. Even less motivated customers changed their behavior – according to the Booth study – and accelerated purchases when a reward seems within reach.

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Using a social approach to acquire direct hotel bookings

These are qualities that OTAs cannot deliver as effectively as your hotel’s website, social media presence or reservations team. Once they become paramount priorities at your hotel, acquiring more direct bookings will follow.

While J.D Power reports that customers who booked via an OTA such as Expedia were 45 points less satisfied than those who booked directly through a hotel’s site, hotels continue to make it difficult to book direct is exacerbated by the fact that OTAs make it so easy to book and spend so much more money on advertising and technology. As they continue to capture bookings and grow their loyal customer bases, hotels remain laggers and are missing a crucial opportunity for acquiring more business.

Whether your guest is preparing for their stay, checking-in at the front desk or engaging on your hotel’s Facebook page, he/she wants the same things:

- To be consulted about changes to your business, which makes them feel invested - To learn information about your local area, which makes them feel prepared - To experience personal contact with management, which makes them feel empowered - To feel like an insider, which makes them feel special - To have a valuable online experience, which makes them want to follow you

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Mobile strategies to drive direct online hotel bookings

It is vital for hotel marketers to make SoLoMo a priority in 2012 and beyond. A new whitepaper discusses strategies hotels and resorts can implement to drive direct online bookings from local and mobile efforts, key components in today’s complex world of online marketing.

As the search engines continuously evolve their ability to personalize results – in the interest of presenting individual users with information most relevant to their own needs – location is one of the key factors that plays into this equation. With respect to hotels, the importance of responding to local search tendencies cannot be overstated. A property that localizes its marketing efforts to a specific geographic target – by optimizing its website for locally searched terms, claiming listings on the top search engines’ local directories and providing geo-specific visual and textual content that is of value to users – stands a distinctly better chance of converting local searches into paying guests.

While mobile channels are expanding at an aggressive rate, it wouldn’t be unthinkable to suggest that desktop and laptop computers are headed in the direction of the payphone. Fifty percent of U.S. adults and eighty percent of business travelers have smartphones and tablets like the iPad, with Google projecting that the use of these mobile devices as a means for accessing the Web will surpass traditional PCs by 2013.

This paradigm shift has been felt in the hospitality industry:

- According to Forrester Research, mobile bookings have quadrupled between 2008 and 2010, and Google reports that hotel mobile searches have increased by 3,000 percent from 2010 to 2011. - IHG recently reported $148 million in mobile bookings for 2011, a greater than ten-fold increase over 2010. - More than 15 million people are projected to book hotel rooms via their mobile device in 2012, according to eMarketer.

In addition to researching and reserving accommodations via their mobile gadgets, travelers are communicating their personal preferences with regard to lodging and ancillary hotel services like restaurant reservations, spa treatments and conference planning directly to hotels. New behaviors – enhanced and enabled by increasingly sophisticated technologies – demand that hotels become more engaging in both their marketing efforts and the manner in which they service guests.

By: HotelMarketing.com

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The Old Course Hotel Golf Resort & Spa