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INDEX

Chapter 1 How to Market a Hotel

Chapter 2How to Drive Direct Sales

Chapter 3Hotel Marketing Plan And Strategy

Chapter 4Hotel Internet Marketing Plan & Online Strategies

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Chapter 1 How to Market a Hotel

Where to start when implementing a hotel marketing strategy? How to promote a hotel with the internet moving so rapidly with new developments

every day, week and month …

Here is a 10 step plan on how to market a hotel.

Your hotel needs to have something unique, refreshing or innovative. Your hotel needs to have a story to it which people like, and think worthwhile to share with their friends. Good service is at the basics of all of everything, this you have to get 10% right. Being remarkable ( = worth making a remark about) is not that hard either if you think of it. How about handing out an ice cream at check-in during the warm summer days? Or invite all

hotel guests to a delicious fresh French roast coffee when they arrive at the hotel.

PR has and will always be important to reach your domestic market. Make sure you build a good relationship with journalists and editors of regional and national newspaper and

magazine publications. This way if they want to do a travel story, you are the top of their list.

Apollo, Galileo, Worldspan are seen by many as a dying breed. But these Global Distri-bution Systems are reinventing themselves, and are still an important source of busi-ness and leisure travel for many destinations. Moreover mega agencies like Amex, ABC Corporates Services, TQ3 Travel Solutions, World Travel BTI and Carlson Wagonlit are

very effective distribution channel to reach corporate travelers of large corporations.

1 - A Story Worth Telling

2 - Regional and National Press

3 - GDS + Consortia

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The poster boards of the hotel and travel industry in the online age, are among the most important distribution channels. Their commissions and models vary; analyze them well to make sure they add value to your overall strategy. Be certain they aren’t just shift-ing direct business away from your direct sales efforts, but really generate incremental

bookings

Talk to your local tourism office and find out how they can help you to promote your hotel. Make sure you have a representative listing on their website and that you are well promoted in their office when tourists come to town. The Convention Buro should be your other best friend. You should be on the top of their list for group requests for con-

ferences and city wide events in your destination.

You will need an optimized website for your hotel. If you want to generate direct sales through your website think keyword searches and consumer segments, before burying yourself in the design aspect. Your store can be pretty, but you need people passing by and stepping in to have a chance at a sale. SEO is very often heavily neglected. Click on

the button below for more internet marketing tips.

Local Destination Marketing Companies, work hard to attract groups and events. You should approach them and work together with them to attract corporate and leisure groups during low and medium demand periods. It will help you to diversify your hotels’

market mix

Have a sales representative put your hotel on the local map with local businesses near-by. Visit prospective and current clients regularly, bring the gifts, meaning smart and real

gifts. Spoil them rotten, and make them addicted to you.

4 - OTA

6 - Tourist Office + Convention Buro

8 - Website + SEO

5 - DMC

7 - Sales Rep

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Finally, hotels are starting to move beyond their own website into mobile marketing. Don’t think a mobile app is something every independent hotel needs. Let’s start with a basic mobile website which allows you to easily navigate an image gallery of the hotel

and has a simple click to call button.

From there you can work on integrating your booking engine and develop a more ad-vanced mobile hotel website step by step.

A few Warnings

One thing you shouldn’t do, and this is getting on the Flash Sales train. You will only dilute your business and slash your Average Room Rate down to levels , that your hotel

will incur revenue losses instead of generating incremental revenue.

I just noticed we did not mention Tour Operators and Wholesalers. That’s correct, their model is broken, and they are only a necessary evil hotels need to use until they have

redeveloped themselves into OTA / IDS style agencies with dynamic sell rates, respecting the hotels’ distribution needs.

Last but not least, don’t spend too much money on printing brochures etc. We are in the electronic and digital age …

(paper and print should no longer be part of your strategic plans)

Yes we know by now (I hope so at least) we need a FaceBook, Twitter, FourSquare, Gow-alla, YouTube page and profile. We have to manage our presence on these social media actively and create fresh new content every week and month. A blog is great tool for this. Next, manage your online reputation. Encourage your guests to leave reviews on Yelp and TripAdvisor. Incentivize if needed to get guest pics and videos. Your profile on the hotel and travel review websites needs to be active and dynamic. Oh yeah, don’t forget

to respond! You have to be involved…

10 - Mobile

9 - Social Media + Review Website

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Chapter 2How to Drive Direct Sales

It is a balancing act for hoteliers between selling rooms through their own direct chan-nels and using the help of third party websites, wholesalers and online travel agents (OTA’s). Naturally, the best way would be to do everything ourselves. According to the motto ‘if you want something to be done good, do it yourself’. But as an independent hotel will it be enough to rely solely on your own revenue management and hotel mar-keting strategy. In practice however we often reach out for help and alternative distribu-

tion channels.

On one side we want to sell our rooms to a wide audience, so using an OTA (like Book-ings.com or Expedia) seems the best idea, as today they dominate the online travel mar-ket and have access to a large clientele, which we hope to attract to our property with

their ‘’billboard advertising’’. It is a great way to offload unsold inventory.

Fair enough.

Making reservations at hotels via online travel agencies has become insanely popular nowadays. Unfortunately over the last years consumers have developed a behavior they don’t even consider booking on a hotel’s website. Many have become loyal to the OTA,

thinking they offer better rates than on the hotel’s own brand.com website.

So how could hoteliers not want (or have) to cooperate with the OTA’s?

But then there is the other side… Do we really want that ‘help’? Do we want to pay high OTA commissions or give steep wholesaler discounts, and slowly but surely slide into a

position of being (overly) dependent on the conditions the OTA’s dictate us (yes they try to!)?

With the elevated fees hotels have to pay to 3rd party websites for selling their OWN rooms, they are left with substantially reduced profit margins. On the top of that, often hotels are forced to sign agreements with OTA’s stating that they can’t offer lower prices on their hotel website directly (under any circumstance). Especially Independent hotels, which don’t always dispose of the same marketing budgets as the (larger) hotel chains, are tempted to dive into a state of dependency of the OTA’s which are luring them with

their large selling potential.

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Hilton launched a program called ‘Stop Clicking Around’ (see their kick-ass video ad here). IHG calls it ‘Your Rate by IHG Rewards’ and claims to have increased their digital revenues by 7% and the mobile revenues by 32% as a result. Marriott, Starwood, Choice and Best Western have also entered the war against the OTA with a best rate, or rather better rate, guarantee program for

their loyal members

However… There is hope!

The winds have been changing lately and the ‘trend’ is shifting back to divert the business from OTA’s directly to the own hotel website with the aim to win direct clients. Travelers are becoming more aware (also thanks to the ‘buzz’ created by the marketing efforts of the large hotel chains) that direct bookings can offer considerable advantages. Travelers start searching for lower room rates and discounts that are not always available through the OTA’s. The game of driving the bookings away from the OTA’s by converting more on your website has started. The big chains have started a determined counter-offensive

against the OTA, to ensure they get their fair part of the distribution pie.

They are fighting to take what’s theirs …

Are you on the ball with this at your hotel? It’s time to wake up and to react now using the momentum to your advantage!

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Chapter 3Hotel Marketing Plan And Strategy

We have put together a complete hotel internet marketing plan for independent hotels on how to drive direct sales. And take note, these marketing techniques, tips, ideas and

best practices can be implemented in any hotel!

First of all, you have to implement one crucial aspect into your thinking and acting: Your Hotel website is not only your source of pride and your ‘business card’ but also the most

important tool to generate direct bookings.

Your own website is your best friend and you should treat it with care and attention to detail!

Your website needs to have a nice and original design, a style matching the character and DNA of your hotel, and include a user-friendly booking engine, and be well opti-mized to attract natural search engine results. Unfortunately many hotel websites are developed without even the basic concern for SEO and proper keyword research. This can have negative repercussions on the number of visitors and at the same time on the

bookings made via the website (or in that case, the bookings which are not made!).

• Hotel Website best practices• SEO = Search Engine Optimization• Trademark Protection• SEM = Search Engine Marketing• Meta-search Marketing• Discounts & Loyalty Offers• Reputation Management• Booking Engine requirements• Conversion Stimulation

We will be covering the following areas of online marketing for hotels:

Great Hotel Website Design is the First Step to Success

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• The design should be impressive, clean, functional and easy to navigate. A unique us-er-friendly website that makes a clear brand statement, differentiating your hotel from others.

• Explain in great detail everything about your hotel, its services, facilities and outlets. Answer any question a potential guest might have before booking your hotel, or infor-mation that can be helpful to decide to stay with you. Tip: ask your front desk and reser-vation staff to list all the questions they get on a daily basis, i.e. which credit cards you accept.

• Use as many pictures as possible, and include a great video of your hotel and desti-nation. We recommend at least 100 in total, and a minimum of 8 images per room type.

• Use keyword research to determine which consumer searches you should target and develop an elaborate landing page strategy with short-, mid- and long-tail keywords.

• Build well optimized themed landing pages with special offers and local experiences.

• Include guest reviews to show what people who have already stayed with you are saying.

• Implement a streamlined hotel booking engine with a simplified reservation process.

• Mobile phone friendly: Today potential guests are typically on-the-go and more and more people book via the mobile phone. You should develop and optimize the mobile version of your hotel website and especially your booking engine. The content should focus on highlighting the most important information to facilitate the travel planning process and generate a booking. Special offers and last-minute rates should be high-lighted and displayed as an eye catcher. They should be easily bookmarked for transi-tion to desktop.

• It is crucial that your website will load quickly on both, the desktop and mobile de-vices. You can use the Google Page-Speed Insights (linked), a mix of tools and analytics that allow you to understand how well your website is loading and at the same time to correct problems uncovered in the analytics.

So what should a great website look like and what should it feature in order to improve your rankings?

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Hotels should not be shy with investment in websites and online marketing. At the end getting something cheap can turn out quite expensive as you are missing on un-cap-tured business, needing more indirect bookings and paying more commission to OTAs. I highly recommend to work with a company that has experience in the travel e-com-merce industry and has made several successful hotel websites (let them demonstrate how much direct sales these websites are generating). Also make sure they use an open source CMS (content management system) like Wordpress, Joomla or Drupal so you

don’t depend on them, and really own and control your website …

(you would not build a hotel either where the construction company owns the founda-tion and support pillars would you?)

SEO The basis to being found on the world wide web

SEO or search engine optimization can be applied by even the smallest of Independent Hotels to ensure a consistent, professional presence in the Search Engine Result Pages, SERP’s, by applying some basic SEO elements and strategies. The most important to keep in mind when thinking about SEO is: Change is constant! Major search engines (like Google) are changing their algorithms more than 500 times a year, plus introducing new features and functionality. All the changes impact how search results appear on SERP.

You, dear hoteliers must adopt a proactive approach to content creation and SEO.

Content is King! When it comes to high rankings. You need truly engaging and hotel spe-cific content to drive conversions!

Successful hotel websites not only inform, but inspire!

What you want is that potential customers spend longer times on your pages and that they visit more pages of your website. So you will need uniquely engaging content, to achieve this. Also you want to minimize the bounce rate (people leaving your website from the landing page without browsing any further). Those metrics send positive sig-nals to the search engines, which utilize the information in determining where a page

ranks on the SERP Repeating myself again to highlight the importance of mobile search which nowadays takes up a greater share of overall search activity. You need to recognize that your mobile website interface is more important than ever. Google has recognized this and penalizes search rankings for sites that have weak mobile capabilities. Make sure your content is mobile friendly! Check your property’s website on your own mobile device. How does your property look? Is it easy to make a booking? You can use http://quirktools.com/

screenfly to check different screen-sizes and devices.

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Additionally, of course, keep an eye on the behavior of mobile visitors (their level of engagement, where they stand within the purchase funnel etc.) and adjust continuously.

Be prepared for changes! Act quick and effective as a response to shifts in search engine algorithms, user search demands and the competitive landscape. Regular reporting, da-

ta-gathering and action steps on ongoing optimization endeavors are the keys. Be proactive!

Get help from the professionals. Don’t be shy in using technology. Reach out for leading search visibility platforms. As mentioned above, a strong content management system /

CMS (ideally open-source) is crucial for real-time content and SEO updates.

A (good) CMS should offer the ability to make updates (easy and in real-time) to on-page content, metadata, images, promotional tiles and other critical components. Train your

staff on the usage of the CMS.

Control your website and identify high-performing pages, search visibility opportuni-ties, recent successes, top engagement and traffic sources as well as performance anal-ysis against a comp-set. You need a uniform, streamlined and optimized local search presence. Search engines place greater trust in uniform listings across well-established portals and as a result they are more likely to prominently position your hotel on the SERP. Therefore: Reduce duplicate listings within directories, include quick verification and routine maintenance of local profiles across a variety of listing platforms (like Goog-le My Business, Yelp, Bing, CitySearch, Superpages, Yellow Pages etc.). Use Links to build credibility! One of the most important factors in ranking in the SERP’s is the way in which links interact with your website! Basically speaking, search engines learn about web-sites and/ or specific pages by analyzing links from other sites that lead to them (that domain). Links from trustworthy and high-value sources (like .edu, .gov) signalize to the search engine that the linked page / site is also trustworthy and therefore worth of a prominent placing in search results. You should monitor and regularly audit all inbound link activities and opportunities to gain credibility from links and avoid punishment for

bad (spammy) links. Link management strategy is the magic word here!

Be aware of the traffic! Check your ranking visibility on regular basis. See how the content impacts search engines and end consumers. Get knowledge of user engage-

ment insights and organic traffic. Be proactive in tracking via analytics tools:

• monitoring of keyword ranking visibility on an analytics platform (i.e. Google Analytics)• using Google Webmaster Tools and Bing Search Console for technical SEO spot checks and assessments

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Be more than ‘just a hotel website’ There it is again - our friend ‘content’! Provide the travel planner with engaging and informative content! Avoid generic and boring de-scriptions. Entice the visitor. Give tips to the local area, guide about nearby attractions, tell about activities, add event calendars and interactive maps and share other interest-

ing local knowledge. Show that you are the number one of the destination!

Don’t exclude other digital marketing possibilities, like paid search, banner advertising, email marketing, reservation retargeting etc. and turn you hotel website in a high reve-

nue generator.

Now, let’s go a bit into details on various SEO elements.

Title tags is a very important element. Not only does the title appear in the clickable por-tion of your listing in the organic search engine results, also it improves the rankings if you place your targeted key in the title. Titles should be clear and in line with the page’s

actual content.

Use Google Keyword Planner to identify the relevant keywords for your hotel and tar-get markets. You should look beyond the obvious short tail keywords, and also include landing pages with more fragmented mid- and long-tail keyword search combinations to penetrate the more low hanging fruits of online traffic. This will help your overall SEO

strategy gain more power.

Every title tag should include those 3 elements to properly represent your pages and help with rankings:

• Title of the page• Appropriate accompanying keywords• Name of your hotel / brand

Note: you can only target 2 or 3 keywords per page to ensure maximum result. More will dilute your potential to rank. So you will need several landing pages to target different key-word combinations

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Rich Snippets - They provide an instant information about your hotel through reviews and ratings (a star rating displayed below your Title Tag, a review written by a customer which replaces the meta description, specific business information like address or open-ing hours). Rich Snippets can instantly boost the click ratings. A very useful SEO tactic in

your arsenal.

Headers - Create and tag headers and sub-headers in the content of your page. This is a very important on page element for targeting keywords! Many leisure travelers use their smartphones to get travel inspirations in spare moments, with the headers (caption ti-tles) you separate your text which captures the attention of the users and makes it easy

to navigate.

Using these kind of caption titles makes it simple to understand what your page is about. Recognizing the topic it will improve your usability statistics, which in turn will improve the SEO score of your landing pages. Use a clear structure with paragraphs broken down

into subdivisions. It will make your website user-friendly.

Content - I repeat: The Google Search Algorithms are very sophisticated, which means you need an amazing content! The most important factors for your content are: Quality (engaging stories), Readability (free of spelling and grammar errors, easy to navigate and scannable - i.e. short paragraphs and bullet points), Freshness (updated information, correct pricing), Usability (functional links, easy to navigate with a quick possibility to

find what the user is looking for, easy to book directly).

Ergo: Pay attention to detail! Make sure your headers are tagged appropriately, your website is easy to scan and read and publish fresh quality content to engage readers.

And don’t forget: Content is King when it comes to good rankings!

Meta descriptions - They provide a short summary of the page inviting to visit your link. They are direct ranking factors and can influence other aspects like the click-through rate (how many users your page gets) and the average time the user spends on the site

(both of which are direct ranking factors).

Meta tag descriptions in the SERP’s can give valuable information and influence unde-cided users. A good meta tag will bring more traffic to your website and generate more direct bookings. Whenever a guest reaches for a keyword you include in your meta de-

scription, those terms will be balded in the test results displayed to him.

You should mention the USP’s - something that differentiates your hotel from your com-petitors and also include a call to action for a guest to book with you straight away. Make

sure you send the right message to target the right audience.

Note: the keywords must correspond to those in the Title Tag

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To display a rating / review Rich Snippet you will need a developer to ‘mark up’ the cor-responding text on your website using the standards found on Schema.org. You could also use any other type of Rich Snippets like Events and Product/ Price Markup. The in-formation about an upcoming event can be displayed just below the Title Tag and Meta Description. Hotels can take advantage of concerts, happenings, special theme nights, festivals etc. by listing them as a Rich Snippet. TripAdvisor relies mainly on the use of

Product / Price Markup Snippets.

As they occupy the same space as rating / review Snippets, you have to make a choice, what you would prefer to display in your site’s Rich Snippet.

Rich Snippets don’t affect directly your search rankings but they have an influence on the rate of users clicking on your listings in the search results, as well as on the bounce rate and the average session duration. These snippets don’t only draw the eyes of users to your listings but they also give them an instant information and an additional reason

to click through your website.

As I mentioned above: Linking is a very popular and effective SEO tactic! There are two types of links - internal and external links.

• Internal links point to other pages on your website. They help search engine spiders to find all the pages on your website (in order to rank high on SERPs, the search engines must first know that the pages exist) and they make it easier for the potential guest to find what they need (i.e. a link to the reservation menu for a direct booking)

• External links are either Inbound (lead users to your page from other pages) or Out-bound (lead users from your page to other pages). Google also looks for websites to link out to other relevant websites, that shows that a website participates in the community (and is not interpreted as spammy). Reaching out to other websites for linking them to yours is an important and simple tactic to generate traffic. Think of travel bloggers and hotel listing websites.

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Protect What is Yours

The most basic and simple step is to claim what is rightfully yours. And that is your name, your trademark is yours. Protect it!

Many hotels don’t, and therefor basically allow OTA to bid on their trademark in search engines, and steal their direct business. That is just damn stupid in my book. Why would

you let the OTA take the traffic of people who are specifically looking for your hotel.

You can easily control your distribution cost and direct production by implementing Brand Protection as part of your online marketing strategy. Meaning that you should submit the hotel’s Trademark to Google (and other search engines) to block Ads with the

hotel name / brand by others.

Why? Be aware that when working with OTAs, those 3rd party websites also advertise on your hotel brand name (on brand keywords) on Google, Yahoo and Bing.

How? When a consumer is doing a search for a particular hotel (yours in this case) on Google the OTA’s are bidding via Google Adwords on your hotel name and are diverting potential direct bookers to their 3rd party travel agency website. This Ad appears on the top of the listings in Google and the unaware customer clicks on it first and lands on his

page (not on yours!).

Through advertising on the hotel name in the search engines, the OTA intent to convert this direct client into their own client - for your hotel or even worse re-direct them to yet another hotel! This phenomenon is lately very questioned and referred to as ‘SEM hijacking’ or ‘brand keyword robbery’. The OTA’s should focus on generating extra book-ings and incremental revenue, but unfortunately they don’t show much consideration to

that promise, especially when it comes to independent hotels.

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Yep, this is what we think of Hotel Brand Hijacking by OTA’s

So what is the solution? How do you protect your hotel brand?

• You need to have your brand officially registered. You can register your brand locally or on European level. The European level registration is of course much more effective. An online application costs € 850 for a trade mark.

• Once you have your trademark registered you have to submit it to Google. The follow-ing link will be helpful for you: https://services.google.com/inquiry/aw_tmcomplaint

• Once this is accepted you’ll have to do a follow up with Google (by email) to make sure all advertisers accomplish the policy. Remember, you’ll not be able to remove all advertising on you hotel brand name, just those showing your hotel brand name in the ad text (url is excluded)

The aim should be to create a true win-win situation, and not one as the OTA smartly try to define it in their sales pitch to hoteliers. Sure, you need their help to reach a larger audience of potential guests but also they need you (probably even more) because at the end it’s you who have the rooms!...and with that the power of negotiation.

Ok guys, enough for today. This was part 1 of our Hotel Internet Marketing plan for in-dependent hotels. Next week we will con-tinue with more hotel online marketing tips and best practices we use at Xotels.

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Chapter 4Hotel Internet Marketing Plan And

Online Strategies

In pervious chapter we ended talking about brand protection to drive direct sales. An-other method that can be used and is very effective is PPC advertising in search engines, also called SEM, or Search Engine Marketing.In Part 1 of our hotel internet marketing plan we ended talking about brand protection to drive direct sales. Another method that can be used and is very effective is PPC advertising in search engines, also called SEM,

or Search Engine Marketing.

As most of you will undoubtedly know you can bid on keywords searches in Google, Ya-hoo, Bing and other search engines. Ad’s appear above the natural search results in the SERPs, as well as below. The positions at the top and the bottom of the search engine pages get premium visibility hence you can bid on them via a PPC (pay per click) model.Of course this type of online or digital marketing is highly competitive and thus costly.

So where is the cream on top of the cake when it comes to SEM?

Very close to home actually. Bidding on your own brand name, is considered a very effective form of brand protection, and generates the highest levels of ROI.

Brand protection by denouncing Trademark offences works on the EU continent, but unfortunately the trade protection laws in the UK, US, and the rest of the world, leave a lot to be desired. There it’s a free game for the OTA. So as a part of your agreement you need to ensure that they are not allowed on your trademarks (or any deviation from it).Still, unfortunately OTA do not seem to respect this …. Hence you should also be adver-

tising on the brand… your own brand ...

You should be bidding on your own brand name / trademark via Google Adwords, as well as Yahoo and Bing’s advertising platforms, in the same way the OTA are. The price on this is much lower than short tail destination keywords, and it delivers a very good

return on investment.

ROI’s we are achieving with our clients hoover between 35 times to 15 times, which matches a % cost between 2.8% and 6.7%. This is way more attractive than 15% to

25% OTA commission.

SEM drives high ROI through Brand Protection

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Below some practical tips to get you on your way:

- Target generally speaking languages instead of territories

- Target as many languages as possible, each of them with a dedicated ad in that par-ticular language. It doesn’t matter if your website is not translated in that language, just redirect users to the English version of the website. Having ads in specific languages will help the CTR (click through ratio).

- When defining the keywords use the keyword modifiers. Broad match is sometimes too broad and will pick up generic keywords for the destination that usually does not convert well. With Broad match modifier Ads may show on searches that contain the modified term (or close variations, but not synonyms), in any order: +El Moulí

- Monitor the keywords that are being picked up and add negative keywords if you don’t want your ad appear for a particular word.

- In some cases, you might have a brand name already used by other hotels, for exam-ple “Ambassador”. In this case we recommend to have a look into your target markets and eventually exclude locations that do not belong to these (to control your cost). Also make sure you include your specific location so people know it’s your hotel

- Include a call to action in all your ads such as ‘book now’.

- Add sitelink extensions to your ads as well as location extensions and phone extension in order to fit as much space as possible on the page.

Re-Marketing to Drive Conversion

If you have visited our website before I am sure you know what I am talking about. You will see our logo and advertising banners all over the internet to remind you that we actually do more than blogging. We actually sell revenue management technology and

yield consulting services.

And if this is your first time, you will be sure to find out soon ;-) ...This form of marketing is called remarketing. It allows hotels to bring back people to their website that have not booked yet. Your ads are placed on news or community web-sites, as a friendly reminder about your hotel as travelers doing their research process.The fun part of this is that the ROI is very good compared to OTA commissions. And this is of course logical as we are marketing to people that have already visited your website

before, so naturally the chance of conversion is higher.

And that’s really what remarketing is all about, increasing your conversion, an easy way to drive your direct sales...

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Here some easy to implement action steps:

1. Create segments into Google Analytics, according to users that did visit your first step of the booking engine but didn’t convert. Segments could be language oriented, or based on particular promotional or package pages which visitors to your website viewed.

2. In Google Analytics go to admin - audience definition - audiences - new audience - im-port segments and select the segment you just created. When you create a Remarketing Audience in Analytics, it is then available in the Google Adwords account you selected.

3. Now go to Google Adwords (note: your google adwords and google analytics accounts should be properly linked) and create a new Display Network only campaign - Choose how to target your ads: Interests & remarketing - select a category: remarketing lists - Pick your audience.

To give you an idea below a screenshot from Google Adwords from one of our hotel clients of the first semester of 2016:

As I said, returns are very high, for instance with our English branded adwords campaign we generate in revenue €179,985 with an investment of only €1,772. So you would be

foolish not to do this.

As you can see we are trying in many languages to see which ones particularly can gen-erate traffic, and which can convert better. It helps us as well to better understand which

languages we should translate the site in for instance

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Meta-Search Marketing gives you direct visibility with consumers

A year ago, I was much more enthusiastic about meta-search marketing than now, as I see in which direction it is going.

ROI used to be 10 times or much better even, keeping distribution cost below 10%. That was still a substantial discount OTA commissions. Unfortunately, it seems costs in this are steadily increasing and the advantages that meta-search brought us in the begin-ning is slowly eroding. Their cost is creeping up to the same levels OTA commissions are

at. Not the most attractive outlook.

I fear hotels will start looking for other areas to spend their precious marketing dollars eventually … It is probably time for a new disruptor in this field … to turn the table upside

down ….

That said for some hotels metasearch still pays off tremendously well (and this is really on a case by case basis).

Oh yes before I forget, what is meta-search? These are price comparison websites that compare (real-time) prices of hotels. The major players are Kayak, Trivago, HotelsCom-bined, HipMunk, SkyScanner and of course TripAdvisor (yes they are no longer just a re-view website). And yes let’s not forget Google HPA or HotelFinder of course. Consumers

can see straight away where to find the best rate for your hotel.

With the coming of the mega price comparison websites, hovering above the OTA, it has become impertinent for hotels to get a solid control over their wholesale rates. Unfor-tunately, too many FIT rates (destined for packages) are being marked up and offered online on proxy-OTA or via affiliate models. This can seriously damage the public (BAR)

pricing strategy of your hotel.

So don’t give FIT to far of a discount. Or as we do, we mark them up an extra 10% to 15% in our channel manager, so that these proxy-OTA can’t undercut your BAR rates. You could of course chase your FIT and Wholesale partners, but who has time for a con-stant cat and mouse game? Better put this energy somewhere else so you can achieve

even more ...

So now that you have your rate parity back in line, it is interesting to see that you can go head to head with the OTA directly on the Meta-Search website. You can put your price

next to the OTA and compete like for like.

As mentioned ROI is still healthy for some hotels. But this is not consistent across the board. For some of our better performing hotels we are generating between an 8 to 12 times return on investment (12.5% to 8.3% cost). Getting below this is extremely diffi-

cult and really depends as well on the average reservation value of your hotel.

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Below a screenshot with a sample of the ROI we are achieving with one of our hotels in Spain.

Playing with Pricing and Packaging

Extra Discounts help to pull in those with doubtsYou could offer membership discounts for instance. OTA are doing this actively, and

so should you. Below some ideas that are working very well for our hotels:

But we do see the cost % of these channels steadily increasing. And if it continues, like this we would soon consider them to be just another OTA channel, and no longer as an

alternative to attract direct sales for hotels.

When looking at pricing there are some more easy ways to get travelers to book directly on your brand.com hotel website.

As long as it is presented as a membership rate, there is nothing the OTA can say. They are doing exactly the same. In return for people signing up, and becoming a member,

you provide them with a discount code.

Besides a membership discount, you could also advertise a discount via remarketing to people who have visited your website and not yet booked. So if they looked at the 5% discount page, and went into the booking engine, and did not book directly you can serve them a remarketing advertising banner, with a 10% discount a few days later. It

helps pulling those who have not yet made their mind up across the line.

It’s logical, no? If you tell people if they join the club, they will get a better rate than elsewhere. And be sure to include calls to action and urgency into your messaging for

the best possible effect.

• A 5% discount code for people that sign-up to be a member to receive your newsletter• 10% discount code for repeat guests• Optimized landing page with a 5% discount code for people who are searching on Google actively for a discount at your hotel.

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One tip however: When juggling with discounts, try to avoid using a ‘subscribe’ field. To-day’s travelers are looking for instant value. When booking they don’t really care about future discounts. They seek answers NOW. Therefore, it’s better you send them straight to a hidden page with current offers. Prepare a link that sends the visitor to the booking engine with the already incorporated discount code. That way your rates are not public

and searchable and you can outmaneuver the rate parity restrictions.

If discounts are instant, this can really work well for your hotel. In most of our hotels we are actually generating around 40% of website sales with discount codes.

Experiences Sell, Package It Up

On OTA hotels are being marginalized to a commodity. They sell rooms and rates. Noth-ing more, nothing less. So on your own hotel website you need to really put the unique-ness of your hotel in the spotlight. When potential bookers visit your myhotel.com web-site they need to feel they are truly experiencing your hotel. But it is not just the hotel they should experience, they should also live a sensation of what it would be like to visit

your destination.

You should create niche products that cater to the different client segments or target markets. In the hotel industry we commonly refer to such products as packages. I am

sure you are familiar with this.

To give you a clearer idea of what I mean by reaching different target markets, let me use as example a hotel website we are currently working on for Hotel Grums in Barce-lona. At this hotel we target various different kind of travelers, and have put together

packages that meet their individual needs:

• Weekend Break• Summer Vacation• Spa Offer• Romantic Escape• Pre-Cruise Package• Cruise & Parking Offer• Barcelona with Family / Kids

As you can see we are clearly targeting different consumer niches with these tailored hotel packages and offers.

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Push Occupancy during Low Demand with Campaigns

Create an interesting concept and an offer they can’t refuse. You could create a sense of urgency, like a limited-time offer, which is likely to help gain attention quickly and make users act right away. Use technology, engaging pictures & messages and great content

to motivate readers to make a booking.

Find innovative ways to capture the attention of your target audience. Identify what is relevant for them? What are their passions? What are they saying about your destina-

tion? Find ways to integrate that messaging into your campaign.

Using the urgency message to book before a set deadline to get access to a special deal, will help increase the lead time with which people book your hotel.

Example: In one of our hotels we are actually launching a Christmas promotion to come over to our destination for Christmas shopping. The promotion includes a bottle of cham-pagne in the bar upon arrivals and some cute gifts in your room and a local souvenir to take home. We have set a deadline of October 31st to create a sense of urgency, to be able to book this sharply discounted offer, which is only available on the direct website

of the hotel.

The offer will be not only featured on the hotel website, but it will be supported with emailing campaigns to our customer databases, as well as PPC advertising and diffusion via social media platforms. As you can see, a full cross-channel marketing campaign to

drive more direct sales.

We are now brainstorming on how to add on a kind of competition or contest on best guest picture taken and posted on our social media pages, and tagged with a designated has #hashtag to create more brand awareness for our hotel(s). Of course with a prize to

be won, a free weekend …

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Incentivize direct bookings by doing good

Take a philanthropic approach to direct bookings and instead of offering discounts (for example if you don’t want to ‘cheapen’ your hotel because your USP is ‘luxury’) engage the customer into contributing. With every stay booked directly on your hotel website, donations for a good cause can be made. By ‘feeding the hungry’ you feed your image

and by ‘saving the world’ you save your hotel from OTA-dependency!

I could see this to work over the Christmas season. When people are in a generous mood and seem to like donating more to the poor than in other seasons. Donate 1% of direct

booking revenue to the red cross or the local shelter for instance.

Trigger Guests to Push Up Conversion

Keep in mind that guests sometimes need a little ‘push’ to book. There is nothing wrong in sending them little signals to catch their attention and to remind them about your amazing property! You can use different tools to convince your visitors to book directly

on your hotel website.

What can be that attention-catcher to increase your conversion rate?

A very useful and powerful tool are Message Pop-ups. OTAs are using them frequently on their website, use them as best practice, learn from them and use them on your website too. Include clever notifications which pop-up in the ‘right moment’ based on the algo-rithm of visitors’ behavior. Send a relevant notification, which will appear on the screen.For example, during the research session of a potential guest on your website, capture his attention and increase the urgency to book directly by sending a triggering message that this hotel room is the most available one, that there are so and so many people looking at this room right now, that the guest will receive a discount or a gift voucher for

this booking etc.

You can then send a promo-code to the guest via mail or direct him to a hidden page with private discounts. You can use the momentum to ask the customer for their pre-ferred stay month. That way you keep a record of when to send direct marketing emails

with discounts to this client.

You should also capture the attention at the exit of your website. Convince your leav-ing visitors with one last message. An Exit Capture message will appear when travelers attempt to leave your website. Here again you can not only incentivize to book but also reach out and ask the visitor for the preferred stay month (to send him future discount

codes). You can use the Exit Capture tool within the booking engine!

So called ‘Basket Recovery’ is also a popular technique. It means basically that you fol-low up with all the guests who started a booking process but didn’t finish it (for whatev-er reason). You send them a reminder to go back to your website and finish the booking,

maybe incentify them with a discount or an upgrade.

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You can set up a specific audience targeting element to customize your messages and make them more relevant. The targeting can be done not only for users exiting the web-site but also ‘filtered’ by geographical segmentation, by visitors coming from specific

websites, by the time spent on your website or by returning visitors.

We are currently conducting extensive testing in this area. First results look promissing. We will update you on the outcome in Q1 of 2017.

Update December 15, 2016: First results from our A/B Testing shows a 14% to 20% increase in web revenue within a period of 3 weeks.

Why Pay so much in Commissions?

Investing in Direct Marketing gives a Higher GOP

Now let’s have a look at numbers, Key Performance Indicators and Commissions... It seems that many hoteliers don’t realize that direct bookings are more cost-effective then the distribution via the OTAs. Diverse marketing campaigns to drive direct bookings may look at first sight as more high-priced and perceived as a ‘luxury’ spending...The ‘expense side’ of the budget is frequently discussed, expenses are scrutinized and often

it is the marketing budgets which are cut short.

OTA-commissions on the other side are declared as ‘travel agent commissions’ in the hotels financial statement. Cost of Distribution is not fully accounted for in many hotels Profit and Loss statements, but are deducted from gross room revenue. In particular mer-chant model distribution costs are not transparent, and there is no budgetary limitation to them. It is almost like ‘they have the right to exist’ and are not restrained in any way

by the property budget... and therefore can grow exponentially!

Many hoteliers also dread to invest substantially in marketing, as this is a tangible ex-pense that needs to be spent up front. Commissions of OTA are not noticed till upon reconciliation of the financial data, and the invoice comes in. But this is after the fact.

The OTA commissions and its lack of transparency is often misunderstood, or even ig-nored. This is concerning!

But what if you can get lower cost of distribution by investing in marketing than paying OTA commissions? Who would you not want to invest in digital marketing to get a better

bottom line result for their business?

Yes, a hotel is a business and should strive for optimal results. So please don’t forget that we can also sell successfully our own products. As in the end the rooms belong to

the hotels.

The OTA’s are merely one of the channels to use, but not the sole focus. If you leave it up to them too much, you will simply see them raise their commissions over time. Strategi-

cally investing in digital marketing will keep a balance in the market and the OTA at check.

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When evaluating and analyzing the financial aspects and the KPI’s hoteliers should not only pay attention to RevPAR. We are using the following two key performance

indicators to keep ongoing insight in our hotels distribution cost.

• NRevPAR• ProfPAR

NRevPAR, similar to RevPAR goes even one step further and subtracts the distribution costs (transaction fees, travel agency commissions, marketing spending, etc) which is absolutely necessary for effective measurement of a property’s revenue management strategies. Factoring the cost of distribution into its calculation gives you a more trans-

parent performance indication.

ProfPAR on the other hand indicates the profit earnings for each room available in the hotel. It accounts for movements in both revenues and expenses. It allows to uncover economic phenomena that RevPAR won’t. (see also CPOR – Cost per Occupied Room)

Therefore, it is absolutely significant to compound RevPAR versus these other two KPI’s and especially to see the difference between RevPAR and NRevPAR to see the impact of the OTA commissions and direct marketing spending on our overall profit. Seeing this comparison in ‘black and white’ in front of your eyes, you might want to start pushing

your direct sales!