by Ian Van Kretschmar on March 25, 2010
Google’s Lat Long Blog announced on Monday that they have started experimenting with a new feature, visible only to a “small portion” of users, that will display specific prices for selected hotel listings.
Given the every increasing prevalence of the smart phone, the mind boggles at the possibilities of this kind of search experience. Delivering a “which-store-has-what-item-for-what-price” type of search result in the context of a map may turn out to be THE critical influencer in the decision over which hotel or store a customer steps into. The implication for for price driven purchases like hotel rooms is interesting and worth keeping an eye on.
Assuming the “experiment” is a successful one and hotel price display gets the nod for general roll-out, Google will then be competing in the same space currently occupied by some online travel companies and Microsoft’s Bing.
Cheers!
by Ian Van Kretschmar on March 2, 2010
I don’t know if you have noticed, but email seems to have taken a back seat to social media in recent years. Those who know me would also know that I am something of a new media evangelist, but I believe email remains a very powerful marketing tool when used correctly.
Email is Good
As a direct response tool, email allows a hotel to communicate with laser-like focus on specific groups of people; done correctly, a hotel can easily drive direct bookings. Perhaps more than any other sales tactic, email lends itself well to automation; a hotel can create a powerful sales system and let it do most of the hard yakka. As a feedback and research tool, a hotel can send an automatic survey link to gather guest feedback and, depending on a hotel’s own creative resources, email may be used to elicit new ideas and other relevant market research data. As a relationship building tool, a hotel can send loyal guests special offers and notify them of new amenities or features; beyond this, a hotel can provide guests with insider information and give the organization a personality (building top of mind awareness). As guest experience tool, a series of emails might be set up to trigger at point of reservation, in the lead-up to a stay and following the stay; automation will no doubt ensure a consistent guest experience while minimising the likelihood of human error.
Feeding the Machine
When our customers start to explore protel’s mail merge and file export tool, they quickly realise they have the ability to produce highly filtered customer lists with which they can then feed their own favourite email marketing system. [Continue Reading...]
