how travel and hospitality brands protect their traffic ... · how travel and hospitality brands...
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Step-by-Step Guide:How Travel and Hospitality Brands Protect Their Traffic and Revenues in the Digital World
W H I T E PA P E R
Table of Contents
Executive Summary ..................................................................................... 3
How Consumers Are Led Astray in the Digital Travel World ........................................................................... 4
Brand Misuse Erodes the Bottom Line .................................................... 6
Protecting Your Brand in a Complex Digital Ecosystem ...................... 7
A Brand Protection Strategy that Maximises Traffic and Revenues .. 9
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Executive Summary
Perhaps no industry has been more impacted by the digital revolution than
the travel and hospitality business. Rapidly changing Internet technology
and constantly evolving online business models have transformed the travel
ecosystem and the consumer experience of booking and managing travel.
New travel “intermediaries,” including online travel agencies, aggregators
and meta-search engines, have created a fiercely competitive landscape for
travel and hospitality brands. To stay relevant, hospitality brands have had to
partner with intermediaries and participate in this new travel eco-system. This
can negatively impact the way in which brands are portrayed and used online,
frequently resulting in lost revenue, higher costs in commissions, less effective
marketing spend and erosion of brand image.
Travel and hospitality brands need to consider a comprehensive partner
compliance program that combines brand protection technology with
expertise and guidance. This kind of program, supported by strong contract
terms that make it possible to enforce against infringements, is an effective
way to protect brands online — while maintaining positive relationships with
partners and a viable role in the digital economy.
This white paper illustrates the challenges and risks travel and hospitality
brands face and recommends some industry-specific best practices for
adopting and implementing a brand protection strategy today.
Travel and Hospitality | WHITEPAPER
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How Consumers Are Led Astray in the Digital Travel World
As new intermediaries — such as online travel agencies, aggregators and travel
meta-search engines — have sprung up, established travel and hospitality
brands have had to become more competitive, transparent and open to
working with these partners on new terms in the digital world.
Consumers have adapted to these changes in intriguing ways. On one hand,
they are more price-sensitive than ever and more empowered to find the most
convenient itinerary for the best price. Consumers visit an average of 38 different
websites before booking a flight, hotel or vacation package; they also spend an
average of 45 days researching optimal options before committing to a booking.1
Yet at the same time that they’ve grown savvier and more discerning, travel
consumers have also become increasingly brand-loyal. This is largely thanks to
the robust rewards and loyalty programs built by travel brands over the years, so
that even as consumers compare prices, features and schedules, they show a
preference for specific brands. This often triggers consumers to use preferred,
branded terms as they search the Internet for travel deals.
Brand loyalty is good news for travel brands. Unfortunately, marketing
practices by online travel intermediaries and franchisees can negatively impact
consumer brand relationships and intercept potential revenues for travel and
hospitality brands.
Hotel chains, airlines and other kinds of travel and hospitality brands that
partner with online search engines and travel booking sites typically pay fees to
the companies based on their ability to drive traffic and reservations. Guidelines
regarding use of brand trademarks govern these relationships, but online travel
intermediaries don’t always comply with these guidelines. Many use travel
brand trademarks in paid search listings, site URLs and online ads — often
despite brand guidelines that prohibit them from doing so.
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Franchisees can add to the challenge. While well intentioned,
franchisees also use digital channels to promote their own businesses.
If not monitored, franchisees may use brand assets that are out of
compliance with the parent brand, or they may compete with the
parent brand for traffic and search engine results.
These practices pose several risks for travel brands:
Online traffic intended for the travel brand is intercepted.
Non-compliant brand use by partners — such as misuse of trademarks,
logos, copyrighted images, domain names and branded keywords
— intercept and divert traffic from its intended destination: the
travel brand’s website. This negatively impacts revenues and leads
to escalated costs, as travel brands must pay commissions to online
partners when they book reservations on the brands’ behalf. Traffic
diversion by these non-compliant partner practices reduces the ROI of
marketing efforts and a company’s bottom line.
Brand misuse hinders brand loyalty and confuses customers.
Inappropriate or incorrect usage of brand trademarks, either visual or
as content, causes an inconsistent brand experience for consumers,
impedes a travel brand’s control over its brand image and damages
brand reputation. This misuse might range from a franchisee that posts
a non-compliant logo design on its website to an online travel site that
uses the brand name in a domain name to divert traffic to its booking
engine. The strength of a brand — especially in a hyper-competitive
industry like travel — depends on continuity at every touchpoint, and
each off-brand experience hurts the brand’s integrity.
Brand loyalty is good news for travel brands
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Brand Misuse Erodes the Bottom Line
As travel and hospitality brands strive to maximize revenues in a fiercely
competitive space, the ROI of every marketing dollar is critical to
driving maximum occupancy rates, higher average daily rates and
reducing partner commissions where possible. Traffic diversion and
brand misuse have a direct impact on a brand’s ability to achieve its
marketing goals and conversion rates.
Digital marketing costs escalate: Paid search costs increase for
brands because partners are competing with them for the same
keywords and driving up the costs of branded keyword purchases.
A small increase in the cost per ad has the potential to translate up to
tens of thousands of dollars in additional advertising spend.
Increased commissions: Travel and hospitality brands typically pay
15 to 25 percent in commissions to travel intermediaries for bookings
made through those websites. When consumers search for a brand
term, their primary option should be to book directly with the brand.
Instead, partners using those brand terms in their own marketing
redirect traffic to their own sites, which not only makes the brands’
marketing ineffective, but also increases the commission costs paid
to partners.
Decrease in direct bookings: Brands depend on their websites
to manage the digital brand experience as well as direct bookings.
Marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) include traffic to the site
from online advertising, conversion rate per visit and average booking
fees. When brand abuse and misuse by partners diverts traffic intended
for the brand website to the partner’s site, these KPIs as well as
additional booking revenue is negatively impacted.
Travel and Hospitality | WHITEPAPER
. . . the ROI of every marketing
dollar is critical to driving
maximum occupancy rates,
higher average daily rates and
reducing partner commissions
where possible.
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Best Practices for Protecting Your Brand in a Complex Digital Ecosystem
To enforce against infringements, brands first must have strong partner
agreements in place. Building on this foundation, leading travel and
hospitality brands have found success with comprehensive partner
compliance programs, which combine brand protection technology
with expertise and guidance in implementing best practices. Brands
can protect their bottom lines by taking a systematic approach to
defending their brands online, using technology to monitor partners
for policy violations and defining processes to categorize, prioritize and
educate them about partner compliance issues occurring across all
digital channels.
Travel brands that have been successful at protecting their brand
integrity and revenues online have established a brand protection
strategy and a structured program that employs a multi-step
enforcement process. Consider these best practices for adopting
and implementing a brand protection strategy for your travel or
hospitality brand.
1. Consistently monitor for brand misuse. Travel or hospitality
brands should consider adopting technology that can automatically
monitor online travel intermediaries and franchisees on their behalf.
This technology scours multiple Internet channels each day for brand
misuse and inconsistencies by partners as well as competitive use and
abuse of brand trademarks and keywords.
Monitoring trademark violations manually demands many hours and
resources and is impossible given the dynamics of the Internet. A
technology solution can automate the process and produce daily
reports of all trouble areas.
BRAND PROTECTION AND PARTNER COMPLIANCE MONITORING Use state-of-the-art technology that can detect and continuosly monitor for brand misues and non-compliance across multiple digital channels.
Domain/website n Domain registration violations
n Logo misuse
n Typo domain redirection
n Sales outside brand owner’s sites
n Incorrect/missing disclosures Paid Search
n Landing page violations
n Unauthorized promotions
n Ad rank violations
n Branded keyword bidding
n Paid ad direct linking
n Paid ad URL hijacking Social Media
n Social media username violations
n Logo misuse
n Sales outside brand owner’s sites Marketplaces
n Unauthorized sales in B2C marketplaces
n Unauthorized travel packages and timeshare offers
n Seller username violations Mobile App Stores
n Unauthorized bookings
n Loss of brand equity
n Trademark and logo misuse
n Copyright violations
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2. Prioritize your compliance efforts. A brand protection strategy will
help you focus your compliance efforts on the activities and companies
causing the most harm to your brand. Policing every violation would
place undue demands on marketing and legal teams. Your strategy
should help guide your team in making intelligent decisions about
identifying, communicating with and reigning in the most egregious
violations and the most frequent offenders.
3. Enforce your brand policies. A brand protection program enables
travel and hospitality brands to systematically contact, educate and get
results from non-compliant partners. A successful program uses
communication and education to work closely with well-meaning
franchisees and partners to bring them into compliance and ensure
ongoing consistency and adherence, while delivering firm messages of
intolerance to trademark violations (such as cease-and-desist notices
or other legal communications) to deliberate violators.
4. Partner with brand protection experts. Defining, monitoring
and enforcing partner non-compliance can be daunting, which is
why working with experienced experts is so vital to ensuring you
have the right processes, resources and technology in place. Brand
protection experts help you develop comprehensive and easy-to-follow
guidelines, implement a structured methodology for policing and
enforcement, and design processes to efficiently roll out and maintain
that methodology. In addition, to ensure your partner contracts remain
strong enough to enable enforcement, brand protection experts can
help you develop and refine your guidelines over time.
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A Brand Protection Strategy thatMaximises Traffic and Revenues
In the complex and rapidly changing world of online travel, there are countless
opportunities for other companies to leverage your strong, valuable brand to
their own advantage — intentionally or not — to the detriment of your own brand
integrity and bottom line. With so many travel sites, directories, search listings,
online ads and social media posts appearing each day, your brand is quite
likely being misused and misrepresented — deterring potential customers from
your own website and eroding consumer loyalty. Only with a comprehensive
brand protection strategy and a program that combines technology, actionable
intelligence and expertise can travel and hospitality companies protect marketing
investments and the equity of brands to maximize revenues.
1 Press release. “Retail and Travel Site Visitation Aligns As Consumers Plan and Book Vacation Packages.” Expedia Media
Solutions. N.p. Web. 13 August 2013. http://www.advertising.expedia.com/about/press-releases/retail-and-travel-sitevisitation-
aligns-consumers-plan-and-book-vacation-packages/
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