The biggest takeaway for us? Search has gone social. And the more mainstream channels like Facebook and Twitter are only the beginning.

We’re excited to apply what we’ve learned to the hospitality industry and to share some advanced techniques that will help to ensure your online presence is optimized to its fullest potential. Keep an eye on our blog in the coming weeks for some fresh ideas in the areas of social media, keyword research and retargeting. We’ll be sharing case studies from our current hotel clients and offering advice about the best ways to implement the latest SEO strategies.

To learn more about the speakers and sessions offered at Pro SEO Boston, visit www.distilledlive.com.

(June 2, 2010) O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing will be at HITEC 2010, June 21-24, Orlando, Fla., where they will introduce their one-of-a-kind iPhone app for hotels called Smartstay. Visitors to the O’Rourke Booth (#1234) can also enter to win an Apple iPad.

Smartstay is a new ‘white label’ iPhone app that hotels can customize to represent their own brand. Hotels can easily enter their hotel information, images, videos, and news updates with an easy to use content management system that they can access online.

The main benefit of the Smartstay app for hotels is that it opens up a new communication channel where hotels can connect with their guests before, during, and after their stay. Hotel guests also benefit from the app and can make a reservation with their iPhones, access information about a hotel, and use the interactive map.

O’Rourke invites conference attendees to visit booth #1234 and try Smartstay for themselves on the demo iPhones that will be available. Visitors can also learn more about how O’Rourke’s services can enhance their marketing efforts and increase their ROI. O’Rourke focuses exclusively on the hospitality industry and provides hotels with Website Design and Optimization, Internet Marketing, Search Engine Optimization, and Print Design.

Visitors to the O’Rourke booth can enter the Giveaway by filling in a raffle form which can be downloaded from the Smartstay website. Raffle forms will also be available at the booth. The drawing will be held on Thursday, June 24^th at 11:00 at the O’Rourke booth (#1234). The winner must be present at the time of the drawing to claim their prize.

HITEC is the World’s Largest Hospitality Technology Show and offers educational sessions, as well as an unsurpassed expo which showcases the latest industry products and services from over 300 companies. O’Rourke is looking forward to participating in HITEC and welcomes the opportunity to meet hoteliers and introduce them to Smartstay.

O’Rourke recognized the hospitality industry’s need for a mobile solution and has created a high-quality, robust, unique app that will take hotels into the mobile market and allow them to tap into a new source of revenue.

For More Information Contact:

O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing

e-mail:                        info@orourkehospitality.com

phone:                        978-465-5955

website:                     www.orourkehospitality.com

Smartstay – The Mobile Division of O’Rourke Hospitality

e-mail:                        info@smartstayapp.com

phone:                        888-965-5966

website:                     www.smartstayapp.com

HITEC:                      http://www.hftp.org/HITEC

About O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing

Founded in 2001, O’Rourke is an award-winning hospitality marketing firm headquartered in Newburyport, Massachusetts. Serving national and international clients, O’Rourke provides hotels with a complete range of services including Internet marketing, hotel website design and development, mobile marketing, and print design. Clients include major brands as Marriott International, Renaissance Hotels, and Winegardner & Hammons, Inc.

Re-cap of presentation ‘Critical Email Prospecting Strategies for 2010’

Jay Schwedelson, Corporate Vice President of Worldata, focused on the newest trends and lastest developments in prospecting, in his presentation ‘Critical Email Prospecting Strategies for 2010,’ at the Email Evolution Conference 2010 in Miami Beach, Florida. Below are some quick tips your hotel can use to improve your email marketing campaigns:

• Test your e-mail creative on a mobile device to make sure it displays correctly.

• Keep your e-mail campaign on a server so that people can access the message at a later date.

• Don’t use recipients’ names in the subject lines because they can be picked up by spammers.

• Include the offer deadline date in the subject line. This can increase open rates by 39% (i.e. offer ends Jan 31^st).

• Analyze why recipients unsubscribe – why they leave is just as important as why they arrive. Send a follow-up email with a short survey asking why they unsubscribed.

• The top reasons people unsubscribe to a mailing list is because they receive too many emails from a sender (38%), or the emails are not relevant to them (23%).

• Include links that allow recipients to share your email with their own social network. People who use Facebook or Twitter at least once a week are 38% more likely to open a 3^rd party email promotion, and people who use LinkedIn at least once a week are 37% more likely to open a 3^rd party email promotion.

• Send your e-mail at least 2 weeks prior to the event date.

• Send a reminder email 2-3 days prior to event.

• Try sending your emails on different days of the week, and at different times of the day, to see what is most effective for your audience. In the past, many businesses avoided Mondays, but now Mondays are showing the best response rate. Test deploying your emails on Fridays as well.

• Never send an email after 4 pm. Experiment with sending emails at 8 am.

• Test your subject lines. Select 10% of your email address list and divide it into 2 groups. Send a different subject line to each group. Wait 24 hours, and then analyze the data to see which subject line was most effective.

• Include an offer in your subject line. Some offers that work well are Free Shipping, Invitation Only, Discount on Next Purchase, Gift with Next Purchase, or Exclusive Secret Sale.

• When you analyze the metrics on your open rate you may not be seeing the whole picture. Open rates are tracked only when the recipient enables the email images. Many recipients don’t enable the images, so even though they have opened your email, it won’t be tracked as an ‘open.’

• Your click-through-rate is more important than your open rate. Generally speaking, if your open/click through rate is more than 2% you are doing well.

• Use tools to help you manage your overall campaign. Below are some free tools you can start using right away.

Quantcast.com can help you find your audience. They offer a measurement service that allow you to create demographic, geographic, and affinity-based audience profiles.

Compete.com allows you to learn about your competitors’ online marketing strategies. You can see their keywords, traffic metrics, and links.

Browsershots.org generates screenshots of how your website will appear with different resolutions and across various web browsers.

Popuri.us is a tool that allows you to see the link popularity of any site based on its ranking, social bookmarks, and subscribers.

Strive to improve your email campaigns in 2010 and increase your ROI with progressive email tactics. Work to build a solid database and make sure you segment your e-mail campaigns and avoid one-size-fits-all mailings. Email campaigns are a very effective way for hotels to connect with their audience and generate new and repeat business.

For more tips on email marketing please see the following articles from O’Rourke Hospitality:

What’s the Link Between E-Mail Marketing and Social Media?

New Email Marketing Tactics for Hotels to Use in 2010

If you would like to learn more about how these advanced email marketing strategies can increase your revenue, please call us at 978-465-5949 or send an email to info@orourkehospitality.com.

O’Rourke is attending the Email Evolution Conference in Miami Beach, Florida, February 1-3. This conference is sponsored by the Email Experience Council and the DMA, and will focus on how email and digital media drive each other and how businesses can gain the most ROI by utilizing a multichannel strategy. O’Rourke will keep you updated on best practices and new strategies to help your hotel email marketing campaign excel. You can follow the twitter stream of the conference by searching on the hashtag #EEC10 (on a site such as search.twitter.com).

Keynote speakers include:

Brian Harniman
VP of Marketing and Distribution
KAYAK

Lisa Harmon
Director, Creative Services,
Smith-Harmon, a Responsys Company

Don Shula
Pro Football Hall of Famer & Equity Partner in Don Shula’s Hotel & Golf Club and Don Shula’s Steak Houses, LP

Sam White
Creative Director, eROI

Dylan Boyd
Vice President of Sales & Strategy, eROI

Melinda Krueger
Director, Digital Dialog, OgilvyOne

Mike Corak
Director of Interactive Services, Mighty Interactive

Other speakers include:

Kavon Adli
Attorney At Law; Founder, The Internet Law Group
Jay Baer
Founder, Convince & Convert
Angela Barber
Art Director, ThinData
Austin Bliss
President & Co-Founder, FreshAddress, Inc.
Joel Book
Director of eMarketing Education, Exact Target
Pilar Bower
Optimization and Email Strategist, Red Door Interactive
Jordan Cohen
Senior Director of Marketing and Public Relations, Pivotal Veracity
David Daniels
Author and Consultant, Email Marketing An Hour A Day
Dennis Dayman
Chief Privacy Officer, Eloqua
Lawrence DiCapua
Director, Interactive Marketing/CRM, Pepsi North America Beverages
Kip Edwardson
Manager of Interactive Marketing, The Scotts Miracle-Gro Company
Nicholas Einstein
Director of Strategic & Analytic Services, Datran Media
Jeremy Farber
President and Founder, PC Recycler, Inc.
Craig Fontenot
VP, Member Relationship Management, AARP
Tamara Gielen
Independent Email Marketing Consultant
Andy Goldman
SVP, Director of Strategy Integration, RAPP North America
Lucy Hudson
Marketing Manager, eCircle UK
Frank Ioppolo
COO and General (In-House) Counsel to MarketLeverage
Ivo Ivanov
Legal Counsel, DE-CIX Management GmbH
Jeanne S. Jennings
Consultant, Email Marketing Strategy, JeanneJennings.com
Jeanne Jones
Email Marketing Manager, Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air
Katrina Kithene
Email Marketing Manager, Alaska Airlines and Horizon Air
Andrew Kordek
Manager of Optimization, Groupon

Ben Lerer
Co-Founder and CEO, Thrillist.com
Susan Lyon
C.I.P.P., Perkins Coie
Chris Marriott
VP, Global Managing Director, Acxiom Digital
Blaine Mathieu
CMO, Lyris, Inc.
Loren Mcdonald
VP, Industry Relations, Silverpop
Dino Michetti
VP of Client Services, Epsilon Interactive Services
Renee Middleton
Vice President for Marketing, Taco John’s International
Stephanie Miller
VP, Market Development, Return Path
Jeanniey Mullen
Founder, Email Experience Council; Global EVP & CMO, Zinio; Global EVP & CMO, VIVmag
Mark Nylec
Senior Manager, CRM Infrastructure Strategy, Channel Development and Governance, AARP
James O’Brien
Director of Marketing, LashBack LLC
Andrew O’Halloran
Chief Privacy Officer, Cypra Media
Sean O’Neal
Chief Revenue Officer, Datran Media
Kath Pay
Managing Director, Ezemail UK ltd.
Stefan Pollard
Senior Strategic Consultant, Responsys
Justin Premick
Director of Education Marketing, AWeber Communications
Mike Quigley
VP, Email Services Division, Cypra Media
Mike Rogers
Senior VP Sales, Goodmail
Dan Rubin
Director of Strategy & Analysis, Publicis Modem
Julie Rutherford
VP of Marketing and GM for Email, Belief.net
Ryan Sagan
Marketing Automation Manager, InterContinental Hotels Group
Jay Schwedelson
Corporate Vice President, Worldata
Melissa Shaw
Senior Strategic Consultant, WhatCounts
Juan Silvera
SVP of eMerchandising, Bank of America
Rita Smith
North American Email Manager, Hewlett Packard
Michael Straathof
Senior Consultant, Borgers&Straathof, Dutch
Karen Talavera
President, Synchronicity Marketing
Jill Trecker
Manager of Guest Loyalty, Souplantation & Sweet Tomatoes Restaurants
Sal Tripi
Senior Director of Operations and Compliance, Publishers Clearing House
DJ Waldow
Director of Community, Blue Sky Factory
Chris Wheeler
Director of Deliverability, Bronto Software

Dan Siroker, former deputy New Media Director of the Obama Presidential Transition, gave a keynote presentation at SES Chicago in December about how he and his team used Data to win the Obama presidential election, and the lessons they learned along the way. Your hotel can learn from these lessons and apply them in your own internet marketing campaign.

Before joining the campaign, Siroker was a product manager for Google Chrome. He saw Obama speak at a visit to Google¹ and he was inspired to help him with the new media aspect of his campaign. Two weeks later, Dan moved to Chicago for a month where he did whatever he could to help the campaign. He then officially joined the campaign as the director of analytics.

Dan showed us how the campaign structure worked with Barack Obama on the top tier, followed by David Plouffe, the campaign manager, and then the departments of correspondence, field, policy, operations, communications, new media, paid media, and finance. New media was then divided into marketing, e-mail, blog, analytics, design, video and organizing.

Before going into the details of the campaign, Siroker reminded us that Obama won with 365 electoral votes as opposed to 173 electoral votes for McCain. In the popular vote Obama had 53% percent of votes (69,456,897), and McCain had 46% of votes (59,934,814).

As we all saw, the Obama new media campaign triumphed over McCain’s. Below is a screenshot of one of Dan’s slides which reveals the drastic difference in the number of Facebook friends, YouTube video views, and unique website visitors that the Obama campaign attracted as opposed to the McCain campaign.

Through their online efforts, the Obama team dramatically surpassed the McCain team in terms of money raised. The Obama team raised a total of $656 million and $500 million of that came from their online campaign as seen in the slide below.

The online marketing campaign was unprecedented in any other presidential election. You have probably read articles and seen interviews about the innovative process and the talent of the people involved. Barack Obama wrote about it himself in his book, ‘The Audacity of Hope: Thoughts on Reclaiming the American Dream.’ Obama’s campaign manager, David Plouffe, also recently wrote a memoir about the campaign titled, ‘The Audacity to Win.’

Dan Siroker helped mastermind the online efforts and we were eager to hear what he had to say about the campaign. Below is a re-cap of the lessons they learned, and our thoughts on how your hotel can benefit from those lessons.

Lessons Learned

Lesson #1: Define Success

Or rather, Define Quantifiable Success Metrics. Obviously the main goal for the Obama team was for Obama to win the election. For the team managing the online campaign they defined it this way: website > email signup > raise money. They could measure the success by cost-per-click, sign up rate and money per recipient.

What is the definition of success for your hotel’s online efforts? Most likely it is to increase bookings and revenue. Have you set specific goals for your internet marketing campaign? Are you measuring the success of your campaign?  Success can also consist of increasing your online presence, building a brand voice, capturing e-mail addresses, managing your online reputation, or building relationships with your audience through social media.

Lesson #2: Question Assumptions

Dan never just followed assumptions that their online material would be effective in achieving their goal of gaining supporters and raising money. Instead he and his team tested different layouts of the material and used the data to determine what elements motivated people to take action.

As an example, Dan showed us how his team used testing on a splash page they created to encourage people to sign up for the e-mail list. They did not just create a page that thought would be effective, rather they created different versions and used multivariate testing through Google Optimizer to test which button and image proved most effective in getting people to sign up. They tested four different buttons, Sign up, Learn More, Join Us Now, and Sign Up Now. They also tested 3 images and 3 videos.

Before Dan showed us the splash page that was most effective, he tested us to prove his point that assumptions are often wrong. He showed us the variations of the splash page and asked us what we thought would work the best. In the end only 2 people in the audience had assumed correctly. Below is the image of the winning splash page which was most compelling in encouraging visitors to sign up.

The new layout resulted in an increase in conversions from 8.2% to 11.6%, which is an observed improvement of 40%. This means that they went from 1000 conversions to 1500 conversions. Dan explained that it may not seem like much presented that way, but through the life of the campaign it would translate into 4 million more people that signed up.

Does your hotel make decisions based on assumptions about what will appeal to your audience, or do you test to see which layouts of your online material are most effective? You should test everything from website pages, landing pages, e-mail campaigns, and PPC ads. You can also test landing pages for free with Google Optimizer.² Testing helped the Obama team increase conversions, and it can also help your hotel increase bookings.

Lesson #3: Divide and Conquer

Another lesson the team learned is that different elements appeal to different users. This became clear when the team attempted to test a donate button.  The variables included, Donate Now, Please Donate, Why Donate? Donate and Get a Gift, or Contribute. Again Dan conducted a quick test with the conference audience to see what we thought would be most effective. Again, we were wrong.

This time it turned out that there was not just one correct answer because it depended on who you were as a visitor. Through testing they discovered that people who had never signed up before favored the ‘Donate & Get A Gift,’ those who had signed up but didn’t donate preferred the ‘Please Donate’ button, and those who previously donated preferred the ‘Contribute’ button, as seen in the slide below.

Your hotel can also divide and conquer. You must profile your guests which will allow you to send very targeted messaging to individuals. Learn about your guests and record if they are at your hotel for leisure, a wedding, a meeting, or business. Note their interests. Did they use the fitness center or visit the spa? Did they dine at the restaurant or do they prefer room service? It is also important to segment your guests into new guests, return guests or regular guests. Once you have this information you can create e-mail campaigns that will appeal to the individual guest. Again, test your landing pages and e-mail campaigns to learn which combination of design elements will be most effective in encouraging conversions.

Lesson 4: Take Advantage of Circumstances

Dan stressed the importance of taking advantage of circumstances. He gave us an example of a time when Sara Palin specifically mocked Barack’s experience as a community organizer on the South Side of Chicago. David Plouffe and his team then sent out letters to their supporters explaining the situation and asked them to make a donation. This e-mail resulted in 10 million dollars within 24 hours! Below is a screenshot of the letter.

Is your hotel taking advantage of circumstances? Circumstances can include everything from the weather, the economy, holidays, school vacations, your competition, to conferences or special events in your town. Listen in social media to find out what people are saying about your hotel, or your town, or upcoming events. You can use Twitter search or Tweetbeep to listen in. If you see that someone may be looking for a hotel in your city, respond to them. Take advantage of circumstances and you can greatly increase bookings.

Lesson 5: Turn Your Customers Into Evangelists

Dan said they turned their supporters into evangelists everyday through their blog and YouTube channels. Here they focused more on the supporters rather than the candidate. He feels that other campaigns missed the boat here.

For example, the Obama team created videos that motivated others to get involved. One such video, Charles Meets Barack³, focused on one of the volunteers who won a raffle to meet Barack. This video was released only 28 days before the election but generated over ½ million YouTube views. The video also received a lot of press coverage because of the process story of social media transforming politics. Social media made it easy for supporters to share content and recruit new supporters.

Do you have evangelists for your hotel? You probably do have regular guests who recommend your hotel to their friends and family. Encourage them to share your offers and content by placing Share With Your Network icons on your e-mail campaigns. These icons can link to Facebook and Twitter and make it very easy for them to pass your message on to their own contacts. Find out who your evangelists are and encourage them to write a review of your hotel. Encourage guests to create their own photos and videos about your hotel. Again, listen in on social media to learn what people are saying about your hotel and create new relationships that could result in new evangelists.

Create Evangalists for your hotel with Spreadly

Dan took the idea of social media and combined it with affiliate marketing to create a new program called Spreadly⁴.  Spreadly is a social affiliate marketing program any online merchant can use to turn their customers into evangelists. The idea behind Spreadly is that a business can help support a cause and the cause is the reason why people start talking about the business.

Spreadly provides users with a widget that they can place on their purchase confirmation page. Customers can then choose a cause they are interested in and Spreadly creates a referral link where users can easily share the information through Twitter, Facebook, or E-Mail. Your company vows to pay $5 (or amount agreed) for every purchase that their friend makes. If you are interested in using this program you can request an early partner account on the site www.spreadly.com.

In closing, below is a quick re-cap of the Lessons Learned From the Obama Campaign:

Lesson #1: Define Success

Lesson #2: Question Assumptions

Lesson #3: Divide and Conquer

Lesson #4: Take Advantage of Circumstances

Lesson #5: Turn Your Customers Into Evangelists

Try some of these tactics in 2010. If they were effective enough to help win the presidential election there is a high probability they can help your hotel increase bookings.

If you would like to learn more about how Internet Marketing can help your hotel, please call us at 978-465-5955 or write an e-mail to info@orourkehospitality.

* Slides courtesy of Dan Siroker

1 Candidates@Google: Barack Obama Video

2 Google Website Optimizer

3 Charles meets Barack

4 Spreadly

We believe it is time to reinvent the standard hotel website, and we will begin with a quick comparison of a typical hotel website today, and our ideas of how a website should be for 2010.

A Typical Hotel Website Today:

• designed to promote hotel with emphasis on beautiful photos
• difficult to navigate, too many options, user gets lost
• static, no fresh content supplied
• designed from a template
• no links to social media sites such as Twitter or Facebook
• no blog
• no video
• no division between types of travelers (i.e. leisure, business)
• no calls-to-action
• no incentive for user to supply e-mail
• no reason for user to visit your site again
• no personal profiling
• no personal communication with guest
• no reviews
• not optimized for the search engines
• no analytics in place

A Modern Hotel Website for 2010

• designed for the user with emphasis on supplying the information they need
• easy to navigate with no clutter
• dynamic with continually updated content
• created on a content management system that allows hotel to edit content themselves
• links to Twitter and Facebook (or place Twitter stream directly on site)
• a blog to supply useful content to users and help SEO efforts
• videos of hotel and city – videos should be authentic and not glitzy ads
• information should be organized by type of traveler and answer specific questions
• calls-to-action should lead user through the sales funnel
• offer an incentive for users to supply their e-mail (i.e. a downloadable city guide)
• give users a reason to re-visit your site (i.e. ski conditions if your hotel is in the mountains)
• maintain a database of your clients and learn their preferences. This allows for more targeted email campaigns, and a better guest experience at your hotel
• communicate with your guest before, during, and after their stay through email or Twitter
• request reviews from your guests and post them on your website
• make sure your website is optimized for the search engines
• install analytics which will allow you to track user behavior

Your website is at the center of all your internet marketing strategies, and it must be well-designed to provide the guest a positive user experience. If it is ineffective, then all your internet marketing efforts will be in vain. You could be losing guests because of a difficult navigation or reservations page. In today’s market, digital media is growing rapidly and you must grow with it.

We recently attended the Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston created by Chris Brogan, President of New Marketing Labs. Chris is also the co-author of the New York Times Bestseller, ‘Trust Agents,’ with Julien Smith. He is a social media guru and his blog is in the top 10 of the Advertising Age Power150. Chris travels a lot and he sees great opportunities for the hotel industry in social media and online marketing.

Tom O’Rourke founder/CEO of O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing wanted to share Brogan’s insight with the Hospitality Industry in the second part of this video interview. Tom asked Brogan his view on the current hotel website design and navigation structure.

“Don’t make me hate!” was Chris Brogan’s first response to Tom’s question about his view was on the current hotel website design.  He supports our opinion that hotel websites are utterly backwards of what the guests really want. Chris elaborates:

It’s basically these beautiful majestic pictures. No matter how horrible your hotel is, it’s the best possible picture of your venue. It’s great to have pictures, it’s nice to see the layout of the rooms, but take it backwards from the buyer’s experience, because ultimately I’m the buyer.

I have a really strange set of questions when I’m traveling as a dad, or when I’m traveling as a business guy. As a dad I want to know; What’s the biggest room? Can I get a suite? Can I have door-to-door? Basics.

If I’m a business traveler I want to know what the desk is like. What chair do I have? Are there 5 plugs for my stuff? Do you give me free Wi-Fi or should I worry about bringing my card? How late is your business center open?

So what I’m saying when I say all this is that site design now needs to be a bit more dynamic, and it needs to route me through because right now there’s these crazy navigation trees that cascade like rain and have 500 possible ways to go somewhere.

This is not how we buy anything. We don’t buy groceries that way, we don’t buy anything like this – but for some reason hotels think if I offer you 147 things to click on, you might click one.

Tom agrees with Chris that hotel websites should go in a new direction, and he takes it a step further by suggesting that they incorporate social media and interactivity within their website to stay with the guest before, during, and after their stay. Tom believes it would be a different approach for the hotel business, but that it would be giving the guest what the guest really wants.

Chris agrees with Tom and adds some of his ideas:

I concur. Would you like to make seven figures on a business I just don’t have time to start? Here’s my idea, concierge service – it’s not that person at that desk. That’s part of it, but I would like to have someone I could pay an extra $29 dollars a day to keep all of my things in alignment, and tell me the local ‘Staples’ is here, the ‘Target’ is here, do you need me to run out and get you pens and markers? It’s here. I’d pay $29 dollars a day just to know that person was there.

There are so many things we could do. I’m in Manhattan – I’m on 4^th Avenue, I have no idea where I need to eat, and if they ping me right back on Twitter, because I’m a guest, that’s all I have to do, is maintain a little guest registry – they don’t even have to work hard – I can message them, and they can message me back.

There are so many opportunities for hotels to do so much more with these new tools that don’t cost much to launch. They cost time, and they cost a little consideration, and to not do it the way you’ve already been doing it.

So as we approach 2010, it’s time to evaluate your hotel website and internet marketing efforts. Take a look at your current hotel website from a user perspective. Is it easy to navigate or does it confuse the user with too many options? Does it provide the user with the information he or she wants, or does it just show beautiful images? Does it address the needs of individual travelers i.e. business vs. leisure or does it just group all information together? Do you have links to your Twitter and Facebook account on your site?  As Chris says there are so many opportunities for hotels in this space – and we believe 2010 is a great time to start employing these exciting new strategies. Stay tuned to our blog for part II of Innovative Website Ideas for 2010.

You can see the first part of the video interview with Chris Brogan on our blog, Hotels That Listen in Social Media Generate Business.

Below is a list of some of Chris Brogan’s blog posts related to the hotel industry.

Ideas for Hotels and Hospitality

Should Hotels have Social Networks?

Café Shaped Business – The Roger Smith Hotel

Social Media Starter Moves for Tourism

Workflow – Social Media for Marketers

A Hotel Built For Media Makers

We are interested in hearing your thoughts on revolutionizing the standard hotel website. Do you agree with what Tom and Chris suggest? Are you planning to make any changes to your hotel website or internet marketing strategy in 2010? Please comment below.

Rather than produce one television spot, InterContinental Hotels & Resorts chose to produce online videos which showcase more than 150 cities where their hotels are located. Working with TurnHere, they were able to produce more than 700 stunning videos for the same price it would have cost to produce just one television spot.

These intriguing videos are narrated by the concierge of the hotel who takes the viewer on a tour of the city. The videos have been extremely successful and have been used across the brand’s online marketing initiatives. The videos have also been picked up by numerous editorial sites which is free publicity for InterContinental. Below is a video clip where Jared talks about the concept, process, and result of this innovative video project.

Tom O’Rourke, Founder/CEO of O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing, encourages his clients in the Hotel Industry to use online video because it is a very powerful and inexpensive sales tool that can build a hotel brand and attract new business. Tom wanted to share Jared’s insight on internet videos with the hotel industry and asked him to discuss the InterContinental Hotels & Resorts case study.

Jared explained why InterContinental decided to produce the videos instead of a television spot. He said that InterContinental had a marketing budget, for example a million dollars, that they could have spent creating a really nice television spot that touted their 1000 count bed sheets as opposed to Hilton’s 1000 count bed sheets. They could have spent that money on a great spot and put it out on television where everyone would probably TiVo through it and didn’t want to see it in the first place.

InterContinental decided in a really forward thinking way to take the same money and produce videos that created a sense of their local market knowledge. So rather than tout their bed sheets, or the size of their rooms, or the quality of the hotels, they wanted to tout their market knowledge of every city where they have a hotel. The concierge of each hotel narrates the video and takes the viewer on a tour of the city and showcases the best things to do, the best things to see, and the best places to eat.

Jared then explained the production process and said TurnHere created really interesting video content around these tours, and then chopped them up into the various component pieces. So for example they have a video about a restaurant in London, a video about a nightclub in Hong Kong, and a video about a park in Dubai. They then posted the videos broadly throughout the web and meta-tagged them correctly so the videos would be found for multiple keywords in Search.

The result is that InterContinental now has thousands of pieces of content on the web which will be found by travelers searching the internet. For example, if someone is thinking about traveling to Dubai and they conduct a search on Google for great places to eat in Dubai, several results will show up – one of which may be an InterContinental video showcasing restaurants in Dubai.

Jared explains it this way:

It’s super-relevant for me as a consumer, super-relevant for InterContinental, because while they’re not talking about the hotel itself, their concierge is in there, their brand is on that content, they are associated with content that is super-valuable to their consumers without shoving down a brand message, or without selling to any of these consumers and they’ve received a remarkable bang for the buck in doing all this.

Because it’s content, because it’s not viewed as advertising, it’s been picked up on editorial sites from all across the web, it’s shown on some in-flight entertainment systems now. The content is incredible and they didn’t pay for any of that (publicity), they just paid to create the great content.

What their insight was – here’s my consumer, here’s what my consumer wants to know, and obviously if I’m thinking about traveling I want to know about that market. So I am going to create great content to give that consumer what he or she wants to know, and I’m going to associate my brand to it, rather than selling to those consumers.

As Tom said, “That makes so much sense!”  Tom also wanted Jared to speak to the hotelier at a smaller, independent property who doesn’t have a big budget for video. He asked him what he would recommend to this group as far as producing video themselves or having videos professionally shot.

Jared doesn’t promote producing user-generated videos and says for a video to be engaging and compelling it must be produced by professionals. He stressed that you want to make the content very authentic and real, not a glitzy ad spot, but if you want to make it authentic in a high-quality way that takes a talented professional. He advises hotels to figure out what people want to know, figure out a story they’d be interested in hearing, create content around it, and associate your brand with it. He states that any hotel can do that – big or small.

Here at O’Rourke, we agree with Jared that if your videos are a central component of your internet marketing plan, such as the Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts videos, then they should be professionally produced. However, we do encourage hotels to create their own videos about special events at their hotel or guest interviews that can be posted on their blog. This can give the hotel a personal touch and generate more traffic to your website.

You can see the videos at the Intercontinental Hotels & Resorts ‘In The Know’ Website, but be warned, you just may be tempted to take a vacation!

Sir Martin Sorrell finally appeared at Ad Tech NY this year, after turning down the invitations of the last three years. He opened Ad Tech with his keynote presentation on ‘What’s coming in 2010.’ He focused on New Markets, New Media, and Consumer Insights.

Sir Martin Sorrell is the founder of WPP, one of the world’s leading communications services groups and a member of the FTSE-100, FTSE-Eurotop 300, the MSCI and BusinessWeek’s Global 1000 companies. GroupM, JWT, Ogilvy and Mather, Young & Rubicam and Grey are all part of the WPP Group.

Sir Martin holds an MBA from Harvard University Graduate School of Business Administration and an Honorary Doctorate from London Guildhall University. He is on the Board of Dean’s Advisers of Harvard Business School, and on the Board of the Indian School of Business. He is a governor of London Business School, a member of the advisory board of IESE in Spain, and also on the Dean’s Advisory Council for Boston University School of Management, and Deputy Chairman, London Business School.

Sir Martin was under the impression that he would be speaking to a small intimate group ad Ad Tech but that was not the case as the large room was completely filled. He chose not to have a formal presentation on stage, and instead he walked through the crowd as spoke about the future of advertising in today’s changing landscape and how to work with these changes. We have compiled Sir Martin’s thoughts on the topics below and how they are relevant to your hotel.

Sir Martin’s Forecast

Mobile Phones

Sir Martin began his talk with a theme that was repeated throughout the conference, and that is the mobile phone. Mobile phones play an important role in the world today and this will continue in the future.

He stated that China and India have the largest growth rate in mobile and that the corporation China Mobile rated number 5 in the top most powerful valuable brands in the world.

He said that growth in mobile in the more traditional markets of Western Europe are led by the following five countries; The U.K., France, Germany, Italy and Spain.

As far as WWP is concerned, he stated that mobile advertisements have not been as successful as quickly as they would like to see.

Change from Traditional Agencies

Sir Martin stressed that agencies need to change from their traditional structure and adapt to the global markets and digital media.

“People who run agencies tend to be resistant to change. If you spend 10 to 20 years trying to get to the top, you don’t want to change. You want to spend the last 3 years of your time to go around the world and enjoy yourself with some stability. The last thing you want to do, as I do, is get up and deal with massive change every day,” said Sir Martin.

Recession

Sir Martin wasn’t very encouraging about the recession and stated, “I have worked in Advertising for 33 years and I have never known times more focused on cost than there are now.”

However he encouraged companies to invest in brands in times like these and said they will come out stronger when the recession is over.

He stated that corporations are more open to digital media now because it gives them quantitative opportunities to evaluate spending in ways they never have before.

Growth and L-U-V

One of the main points of Sir Martin’s keynote was how the growth of developing countries and new markets are affecting us, and he stated, “100% of the growth in our 2007 – 2008 came from growth in China and growth in India. In 2009 growth in China has been more than 100%.”

In regards to economic recovery Sir Martin stated that the world is operating at different speeds and he referred to the idea of L-U-V, first coined on a blog entry by Stella Dawson, Treasury correspondent of Reuters. L-U-V is meant to represent economic recovery in the following way:

• The L-shape represents the recovery in Western Europe where there is slow recovery after a long drop.

• The U-shape represents the recovery in the U.S. (he included Spain in this category and then noted they have dropped down), where there a feeble recovery that takes a little longer than a V-shaped one.

• The V-shaped recovery represents the countries of Brazil, Russia, India and China (often referred to as the BRIC countries which was first used by Goldman Sachs) where there is a short recession with a quick rebound again.

New Markets, New Media & Consumer Insights

Sorrell said if he had to sum up WWP strategy in one sentence it would be: New Markets, New Media, and Consumer Insight.

• New Markets

The shift in the market is clear with the focus on the fast-growing developing economies of the BRIC countries (Brazil, Russia, India, and China). There is a large population growth in these countries and an increasing percentage is joining the middle class. South America is also an emerging market.

Sorrell said that every single client they deal with is focusing on those parts of the world for growth. He said that 26% of WPP business was in these countries and he predicts that will increase.

• New Media

Sir Martin states that digital and new media are the strongest forces of growth and the majority of his clients spend 12% to 13% of their world-wide budgets in new media in one shape or form. He believes this will increase significantly over the next five years to 20%.  New media accounts for almost 25% of WPP’s revenue.

• Consumer Insights

Sir Martin stated that a large part of WPP’s business is data information. He said they are the fourth largest information service in the world. “If we were starting from scratch we would have tried to bring these three elements more closely together; media planning and buying, digital piece and the data piece,” said Sorrell.

He referred to a market research project his company will be doing with Google on validating the importance of web-based marketing. Sorrell stated that he believed that Google has become even more important in the last 6 months as they have focused more on core products of Search and Mobile Search.

Sorrell also brought up product overcapacity and stated that most industries, such as the auto industry, is working with an overcapacity of products. He also stated that there is an under capacity of talented workers and he expects that this will worsen as a huge part of the population begins to retire.

Growth in Retail

Growth in retail will become a powerful thing. Some of the most fundamental change is in retail. He stated that Walmart controls 8-10% of the US in retail services and Tesco is the leader in the U.K. Companies that have immense power in the domestic market will have stronger buying power as they move to markets around the world.

Doing Good is Doing Good Business

Sorrell states that corporations will embrace environmental friendly policies and fair business practices. Corporations today are becoming more responsible and are working towards creating products that are more environmentally friendly. Consumers would rather buy from companies who are more environmentally conscious than those who aren’t.

Governments Have Become Major Clients

Governments around the globe are taking initiatives to supply financial stimulus packages to accelerate the growth of the sustainable economy globally.  He stated that the governments are spending trillions of dollars on sustainability related spending.

Branding

There are many new opportunities for brands in this new era. A cultural shift means corporations can change their point of view, or how the consumers perceive them. Sir Martin states, “You can have innovation without branding, but you can’t have branding without innovation.”

Internal Communication & Structural Change

Sir Martin said the biggest problem for a chairman is communicating internally strategic and structural change. New Media has given the CEO opportunities to communicate in a quick flexible way like they never have before and that has implications. He used WWP as an example and said that communicating in a corporation that is multi-branded is very difficult.

He said it was true that companies are becoming more global, it is true that we are seeing consolidations, but as companies become larger and become more complicated, at a country level there is still an intriguing role for country managers. We are not going to go back where we were 10, 15, or 20 years ago, but we are going to see country managers almost as ambassadors, or stronger, dealing with governments, dealing with technological change, dealing with CSR (Corporate Social Responsibility), dealing with education, and dealing with research & development at a company level.

See video at end of this article of Sir Martin Sorrell discussing this topic.

What’s the Role of the Agency in the Changing Landscape?

It’s about strategic thinking. We are embracing technology in a way that traditional media hasn’t done before. Agencies must plan, place, and measure media. It’s about creativity in a much broader sense. He also stressed that the lines between advertising and editorial are becoming more blurred.

What Does This Mean for the Hotel Industry?

Much of what Sir Martin discussed is very relevant to the hotel industry. Although he didn’t discuss specific industries let’s look at what his forecasts for the future can mean to your hotel.

Incorporate Mobile Phones in Your Marketing Budget
Many people are now ‘on the go’ and they use mobile devices such as the iPhone, to search the web, send emails, and use the thousands of apps available. Many markets such as Asia Pacific are worlds ahead of the U.S. in mobile usage, but we will catch up.  Hotels must take this into consideration for the future and integrate mobile websites and mobile marketing into their budgets.

Expand to New Markets and The BRIC Countries

The BRIC Countries (Brazil, Russia, India & China) are projected to dominate the global economy by 2050. You may already have properties in these countries or you may be considering acquiring some.

At the Global Travel & Tourism Summit last May, Luiz Barretto, Brazil’s Minister of Tourism stated the following about the travel industry in Brazil:

The flow of international tourism also rose in 2008.  More than 5 million foreigners visited Brazil last year, leaving here almost US$6 billion, or 16.8% more than in 2007 – an historic record.

In addition to the flow of overseas tourists, it is important to point out that Brazil is like a continent, with a potential internal market of 100,000,000 tourists.  Eighty-five per cent of tourist activity in this country is sustained by Brazilians themselves.  It is this great internal consumer market that explains the good results for Brazilian tourism, even in the face of the adverse international scenario and the economic downturn in the most important tourism source markets.

We have shown a robust performance since the beginning of 2009, when Brazil was at the peak of its summer.  The sector has grown by about 20% in comparison with the same period in 2008.  The increase has occurred in almost all segments of the tourist chain: hotels, airline companies, car rental and among tour operators and travel agencies.

I am certain that these results are a reflection of the combined actions of private companies and the Brazilian Government.  In the past six years, the Ministry of Tourism has invested US$2.5 billion in infrastructure for tourism destinations.  And that number does not include the significant contributions of the Brazilian Government in the context of the great national investment plan for infrastructure that is fully underway.

In the next few years, in addition to the resources that are in the budget of the Ministry, we will have another US$1 billion from the Inter-American Development Bank, to be spent exclusively on tourism infrastructure.

Brazil is also preparing for the 2014 FIFA World Cup and it is estimated that it will bring in 500,000 overseas tourists. Then of course there is the 2016 Summer Olympics. According to CNN the games will be held in four zones with varying socioeconomic characteristics; Barra, Copacabana, Maracana, and Deodoro.

Market Your Hotel With New Media
There is unlimited potential to market in Digital Media in the Hospitality Industry, and hotels need to incorporate this in their marketing strategies. This includes Internet Marketing, Videos, Social Media, Organic Search, Paid Search and Reputation Management, just to name a few.

Consumer Insights
Hotels now have an ability as never before to gain insight about their consumers. There are so many inexpensive and effective ways to do so. Collect your guests’ email addresses and create profiles which you can segment into groups (i.e. type of traveler, age, marital status, and personal preferences). You can manage these profiles in your database and send out very targeted email campaigns to the separate groups.

Interact with your guests in social media sites such as Facebook and Twitter. Read their reviews of your hotel on review sites such as Trip Advisor and respond. Find out who they are, what they like, where they spend their time. When you know who your guests are you can target your message to them in the places where they go, online and offline.

Go Green – Go Global
It is a given that corporations should be practicing policies that are environmentally friendly and culturally aware. Your guests will appreciate this as well.

Branding
In this new era you have new opportunities to brand yourself, whether it be to create a new brand or re-invent and existing one. Be creative and create a niche.

Watch Video

Below is a clip from Ad Tech of Sir Martin Sorrell’s presentation.

If you would like to learn more about Internet Marketing for the Hospitality Industry please call at 978-465-5955 or send an e-mail to info@orourkehospitality.com

Chris Brogan was very busy running the show at the 2009 Inbound Marketing Summit in Boston, MA, yet being the cool guy that he is, he took the time to share his own insight with us on how hotels should be using Social Media.

Chris is President of New Marketing Labs, and one of the masterminds behind the Inbound Marketing Summit Conferences. He is also the co-founder of the PodCamp new media conference series. His blog ranks #1 on the Ad Age Power 150, and in the top 100 on Technorati. Chris is the co-author of the New York Times Bestseller, ‘Trust Agents,’ with Julien Smith. Trust Agents is about using the web to build influence, improve reputation, and earn trust, as explained on the cover of the book.

Tom O’Rourke, founder/president of O’Rourke Hospitality Marketing caught up with Chris at the Summit, and asked him his thoughts on how the Hotel Industry should be using Social Media. Tom explained to Chris that many General Managers of hotels are thinking of getting into social media, but they aren’t too sure how to use it, or how to staff it. Many are not sure how it is going to help them in the business. He asked Chris what he would recommend to these general managers.

Chris responded by giving a couple examples of hotels and car services that captured his business and attention, just because they were listening and responding in the social media space when he needed them.

Chris explains:

I travel every 2 days – I’m in a hotel more often than I’m in my own bed. There’s so much you can do in this space.

My repeat study is this – The Roger Smith Hotel. I said on Twitter, just to the general audience, ‘Hey, where are cool kids staying in Manhattan these days?’ As you know Manhattan has 400 hotels, probably more than that even. I received an answer right away from this guy Chris who said, ‘The Roger Smith Hotel.’ The very next guy was Brett Petersel from Mashable, ‘The Roger Smith Hotel – they treat you really nice there.’ The third person was The Roger Smith Hotel. They tell me, ‘You should come by, we have a blogger’s discount.’ I said, ‘well sure.’ I stayed, I had a great time. They are always vigilant, they are always paying attention, they are always bringing in revenue by being kind. They are doing nothing harder than saying we’d love to have you here, there might be a discount.

I’ve seen lots of other hotel chains do it. I mentioned I had to come down to Miami. Three hotels talked to me. I mentioned I’m going to this location and they said, ‘If you’re ever in our area we’d love to have you here.’ So if nothing else, the listening element of the social media tools is business generation. Pure and easy.

Tom agrees with Chris, and emphasizes the importance of listening in the Hotel Industry. Tom states, “A lot of the hotels I see out there today, and the way they are using social media tools like Twitter, it’s kind of taking a social media tool and still using it in a traditional way – in so far as ‘here are my special deals.’ Are they listening or are they speaking too much?”

Chris responds:

They’re just talking, and we don’t care. The difference is, it’s called listening and point of need. Marcell LeBrun from Radian 6 had that term. He said that it only comes when you are at the point of need. For example, I’m in Seattle . . . I mention that I have a problem. I said my cab hasn’t showed up, my town car also hasn’t shown up. I’m waiting. I’m due at Microsoft. A guy with a national footprint of professional car service contacts me right away on Twitter and says, ‘Here’s my number – if you ever have this problem again, call me soon enough and I’ll fix it anywhere in the U.S.’ That’s listening! But if he had asked me 3 weeks ago – I have a car service, you should get my car service, it’s great – I would have paid no attention. I didn’t have the issue then.

So if someone’s saying, ‘We’re heading to Vegas,’ or if someone’s saying, ‘We’re planning to take a beautiful golfing trip to Sanibel Island Florida,’ that’s when you say, ‘I run the Sanibel Harbor Resort, and it’s a beautiful hotel and it’s got a great course right down the road. We’d love to have you here. Come by!’ The minute you get that personalized touch, the minute they act like a person, you are doing business with people. You don’t do business with advertisements. Sometimes a pretty picture helps but if there’s no human behind it, to kind of bring us in and tell a story with us, there’s no value.

Here at O’Rourke, we hope that after having watched this video you begin to think about your own hotel’s reputation management and social media strategy. Are you listening to your guests? They are talking! If you aren’t participating in the social media space yet, we recommend that you start by listening. If you are participating in Social Media, are you listening and responding as much as you could?

It does take some time and commitment to listen, however it has become a necessary task if you want to know who your guests are, what they are saying about you and your competition, what they like and dislike, and how you can improve your hotel. Listening is also imperative in order to stay on top of reputation management. Many companies now have positions such as ‘Chief Listening Officer,’ and that person does nothing but research and listen to what customers say and want.

John Jantsch, creator of Duct Tape Marketing, and a presenter at the 2009 Inbound Marketing Summit, compiled a list of a ‘do it yourself’ tools that help you monitor conversations surrounding your brand or hotel.  The list can be found on his blog, and we have recreated it below:

• Google alerts – Google Alerts allows you set-up customer searches for any phrase and receive email or RSS alerts any time your phrase shows up in online media, blogs, web pages and news.

• Search.twitter – For now, monitoring twitter is a separate stream (Google seems to be adding twitter conversations to SERPs) – using the advanced search function allows you set-up very specific searches, even including geographic details. These searches produce RSS feeds and can then be subscribed to.

• tweetbeep.com – Similar to Google Alerts, but for twitter. Set-up search phrases and receive notification any time your phrases show up in twitter conversations.

• Boardtracker.com – focuses on the most popular bulletin board conversations and can turn up responses that don’t show up anywhere else. Some industries still have very heavy bulletin board use.

• Backtype.com – Backtype is a search engine of sorts that focuses on blog comments. Blog comments don’t often make it into the mainstream search results so this is a way to listen in on this set of content.

• Social Mention – this is a mashup search engine of many of the formats of content such as audio and video – I’ve found it a very nice way to turn up some mentions that don’t occur anywhere else.

There are also many advanced paid services that allow you to organize and filter the data you collect. These services also help you analyze the information which can help you see trends and new opportunities. John has also compiled a list of some popular paid services.

• Radian6 – Robust set of analytics, relates data in some very cool ways

• Trackur – advanced set of tools, well worth the cost

• Buzzlogic – focuses on helping you find key influencers driving conversations.

• Filtrbox – very easy to use, powerful and low cost

These tools and services are very helpful and they can capture many comments about your hotel on Twitter, travel-blogs, and forums. However, they may not be capturing all the user-generated reviews from travel review sites such as TripAdvisor, Expedia, Hotels.com, Travelocity, Orbitz, Travelocity, and Fodor’s. If you are using a reputation management service check to see if they include reviews from these travel review sites.

“Hotels today cannot afford to continue thinking in a traditional marketing format. They need to stop pushing their message through conventional channels that tend to interrupt their audience. It’s time to make a change. Listen, Participate, and Engage through Inbound Marketing,” says Tom O’Rourke.

If you would like to develop a social media and reputation management strategy but don’t know where to start, give us a call at 978-465-5955 or send an e-mail to info@orourkehospitality.com