Today's travelers are more tech savvy than ever. This means that when a consumer turns to your Web site he or she expects an engaging and rewarding experience, as sophisticated as any other online shopping experience. Advancements in Web technology are paving the way for the ultimate online customer experience. This creates a catch-22 for hotels, since it creates both a challenge and an opportunity. The Web gives travelers easy access to information not only about your hotel, but also your competitors' properties. The challenge here is to never give your guests a reason to abandon your Web site. The opportunity is that if you can keep them coming back for more visits, you can captivate new visitors and ensure their satisfaction so they become repeat and profitable customers. Below, I offer ten strategic secrets to help improve the customer experience for visitors to your Web site, and thus grow online bookings and increase your ability to strengthen longer term customer loyalty. READ MORE

Hotel managers and sales directors seem to forget that while they see their beautiful hotel or resort everyday, the rest of the world doesn't. The idea eludes them that before vacationers make reservations at an expensive resort, they want to see the property. And there's a "disconnect" between the website and their other advertising and marketing tools. Its always puzzled me why hotels keep their Virtual Tour a "secret." Some don't put a link to the tour on their website main navigation menu and don't guide callers to the tour over the phone. Using other advertising and marketing media to drive traffic to your website (hotel or franchise) just makes sense. READ MORE

The call to the Sales Department comes in, "Hello, I'd like some information about having a wedding reception for 200 people at your hotel." Now you have to convince the bride-to-be your hotel is "thee" place to hold her reception, before she asks you to mail her one of your banquet menu/info packages and moves on calling her list of your competitors for their banquet menu/info packages. There wouldn't be a problem if you could magically transport one of your brochures over the telephone or if they were visiting your property. Sales or Reservations would just take them on a Property Tour. The good news is, it is possible to send your brochure over phone lines and take a potential customer on a long distance property tour. All it takes is a well-planned website and a Virtual Tour. READ MORE

I plan to be in Crete for a conference this spring. My husband and I love Greece, so we are thinking of bringing our children along, and stopping in Athens for a couple of days on our way to Crete. Not knowing where to stay, I started with a Google search for "hotels Athens". Google returned 1,510,000 results. Gee, that narrows it down. So what will make me decide which results to click on? Obviously, results on the first page, or first couple of pages, are the most likely to get looked at, so search engine optimization of your site and/or search engine advertising are crucial. But let's assume for a moment that you've done that successfully, and landed on the first page of results. Here's what I had to choose from... READ MORE

Potential Guests want to see your rooms, (you know, the place they're going spend a lot of time in), your fine dining restaurant (where a couple can have a romantic dinner), recreation facilities like the pool (where their kids want to spend as much time as possible) and the ballroom (where the bride-to-be may be having her wedding reception). They want to see everything! Everything that might convince them to stay at your hotel instead of your competition. You want them to see the hotel, too. Don't you? The new plasma-screen TVs and work desks in the rooms, even the small flat-screen on the wall in the suite bathrooms. The upgraded bedspreads, linen and furniture too? You want to show off after spending thousands, even millions of dollars, to upgrade and update your rooms, don't you? And the views too, like the mountains, the lake, a city skyline, the ocean, a desert sunset, etc. Again, you want them to see everything that might convince them to stay at your hotel instead of your competition, don't you? READ MORE

In the current economy, hospitality providers are increasingly seeking ways to boost productivity and streamline operations. At the same time, they are trying to become more environmentally responsible. A document management system can help hotels achieve all of these goals and more. Best of all, most hotels that implement a document management solution realize a fast return on investment due to both direct and indirect cost savings. If you're still using a traditional paper-based filing system, it's time to consider the transition to electronic document management. Following are six top reasons to implement a paperless solution at your property. READ MORE

No one would dispute that OTA's and Hotel Suppliers are irrevocably tied together, but over the years the love-hate relationship has gone through several evolutions, each of which has borne out a valuable lesson. Obviously the ultimate goal for a supplier would be to have every booking come through its .com. This hasn't happened, and it most likely won't ever happen. The primary reason? Today's travel buyers like to shop and see what's out there. With the economy as it is, more than ever, the ones that are making travel plans are taking every step necessary to shop for a rate that will allow them to stretch their dollar as far as they can. When there are fewer travelers, which is happening now, the tension escalates even more because the Online Travel Agency and the Hotel Supplier are fighting even harder for that dollar. READ MORE

The overriding goal is a satisfying user experience. However, any hotel or hotel chain must first ensure that the booking engine not only reflects the proper image of the property but allows the property to manage their revenue management strategy as well. Then of course there is the issue of usability. If the engine is too confusing or dysfunctional no amount of wonderful images or descriptive text will help... READ MORE

You know from experience that there's more to creating that wonderful hotel environment than just a good looking lobby. You need staff who greet guests well, facilities in good repair, comfortable beds, clean bathrooms, and so on. The same goes for your website: the best-looking website in the world might still not generate more bookings for you if you commit one or more of these common hotel website errors: READ MORE

This year, experts predict that business travel will rebound to pre-9/11 levels for the first time. The National Business Travelers Association says there will be 219 million domestic business trips in 2005, up from 210.5 million in 2003 and awfully close to the 220 million made in 2000. This is good news for travel aggregators and suppliers alike - great news, really. But how do travel marketing executives leverage this upswing in terms of online marketing? Well, luckily there is even more good news: There are still plenty of stones left unturned in the online marketing arena, especially in the search engine marketing space (which I must say is the darling of the online marketing world). READ MORE

When was the last time your company made major changes to its web site? I'm not just talking about adding new specials or changing pricing; I mean some significant redesign. If you haven't done so within the past year or two, it is time. Recent research on hotel websites shows that consumer expectations of hotel sites are rising. So even if your site has not changed it may be starting to look bad versus the competition. And in the web world, you've got a lot of competition. READ MORE

The explosion of the "merchant model" after 9/11 caught the hospitality industry by surprise. Over the last 4 years many hoteliers have been struggling to decrease their dependence on the online merchants and to develop direct online distribution strategies of their own. Hoteliers are also trying to find answers to several critical questions: does the cost of doing business with online merchants outweigh the cost of not doing business with them? What will be those crucial developments in the online hospitality marketplace over the next five years and what can hoteliers do to prepare for and take advantage of them now? This paper provokes thoughts that may help shape executive decisions under the current circumstances. READ MORE

With more and more revenues in hospitality being generated from the Internet, predictions over the next three years from now will see the Internet contributing over 20% of all hotel bookings and convincingly surpassing total GDS bookings. With such an industrial shift toward the web, hoteliers need intelligence tools to measure performance against its competitive set on direct and indirect channels outside of the GDS. Hoteliers are in search of Internet intelligence reports that make sense. Here's what sales & marketing, and revenue managers should be asking in order to competently formulate their online pricing and inventory control strategy... READ MORE

A little over a year ago I published the article "Brand Erosion or How Not to Market Your Hotel on the Web", which created a lot of commentaries and, we hope, made at least some hoteliers re-examine their online distribution strategies. Since 9/11, in times of unprecedented crisis and continued economic downturn, the Web allowed Internet-savvy and proactive suppliers and intermediaries to establish rewarding interactive relationships with their customers, move inventory and stay ahead of the competition. At the same time it punished those suppliers who had no clear Internet strategy and understanding how the Web and online distribution work. What has changed since then? READ MORE

Direct-to-consumer online distribution should become the foundation, the main focus of any hotelier's online distribution strategy. In the offline world, hoteliers are the best direct salesmen with an estimated 75% of all reservations sold directly to consumers. Online, the industry direct sales average 52% (PhoCusWright, 2002) with many hoteliers reporting less than 5%. As a result, many hoteliers cede control of their inventory and pricing property to online intermediaries, at an enormous cost financially and to brand integrity. Website optimization is the first step toward building a robust direct online distribution strategy. READ MORE