The document discusses several key updates and trends related to online marketing and technology in the hotel industry: 1. Google has launched a hotel finder tool that allows users to search, compare, and book hotels directly through Google. This could significantly impact online travel agencies. 2. Hotels need to ensure they are included in Google's hotel database and optimize their listings to appear prominently in search results. 3. Google has introduced stricter requirements around website content freshness and engagement through updates like Panda. Hotels must generate unique, engaging content to perform well in search. 4. Mobile bookings and research are growing rapidly as more travelers use smartphones. Hotels need mobile-optimized websites and

1. Audience who take this presentation are expected to be
experienced in Social media(Facebook,Twitter,blog etc),
Internet, LAN,O/S (Windows) & general P.C
troubleshooting. They are expected to understand I.T
Security problems like Virus, Spyware, Malware &
Botnet and their Remedies

2. Role of Internet in Present Day Hotel Industery
Technology impacts and assists the
growth of practically every industry in
the present age. Hotel industry too isn’t
insulated from its effects. With local
and international hotel establishments
working overtime to tap into the power
of internet, in order to catalyze their
sales and to improve customer
relations, it is only evident how internet
is playing a key role in development of
hotel industry today.

3. Hospitality industry trends for 2012
• The hospitality landscape is evolving
quickly as new technology demands that
hotels become more social and engaging
in their marketing efforts, travelers are
looking for the best value propositions,
and consumer demand is pushing for
hotels to make concerted efforts on
property upgrades and improvements.

4. Online booking will continue to (modestly)
grow.
• The number of U.S. travelers booking and
researching online is still growing. More
than 114 million people will research travel
online this year, while 94 million will
actually book reservations. While more
than 50 percent of travel bookings are
made on the Internet, the online travel
market has matured and I expect modest
growth and stabilization

5. There will be more mobile bookings and research
• More and more travelers will be turning to their mobile
devices to not only research lodging and travel options,
but to book and communicate room preferences directly
with the hotel. Mobile channel booking has increased
four-fold between 2008 and 2010 according to Forrester
Research. Plus, Google is projecting that mobile will
overtake PCs as the most common Web-access device
by 2013. With travelers adopting smartphones and
tablets at such a rapid pace, it's crucial for hoteliers to
optimize their website for mobile usage to capture
potential mobile transactions.

6. Brands will put more money into deals to
expand market share.
• The brands are at war for the development
deals that have a chance to get financed.
Starwood, Hyatt, and Intercontinental are
aggressively pursuing the Hilton and
Marriott juggernaut
• Prepare for growth

7. Social media will continue to transform connections
with travelers.
• By 2016, half of the travel industry will be using
social media as a way of generating revenue
and bookings. Currently more than one-fifth (22
percent) use social media as a revenue
generating tool with a further 27 percent
planning to do so over the next five years. Plus,
social media will become more of a key
component of Search Engine Results Page
(SERP) algorithms. Facebook's posts are
already integrated into Bing search and Google+
emerged with native integration into Google
search.

8. Social Media Marketing in Tourism
Industry
A new communication landscape. Social media, unlike
traditional media channels, represent a unique way of
transmitting information in all directions, not just “one-
way” and “top-down”. So people generate and share
their own content, which is very vital for marketing in
tourism industry.

9. Article Marketing in Tourism
Industry
• Article marketing is vital tool for traffic sourcing and quite importantly
for increasing page rank not only in tourism industry. Promoting
travel destinations, tourism businesses or travel trade events is an
essential component of any long term online marketing strategy.
Thousands of unique articles submitted and distributed to hundreds
of article directories and e-zine directories will increase the value of
your travel & tourism website significantly.
• Tourism Review team is ready to create a unique set of articles and
submit them to tourism related article directories. As a result
hundreds of thematic and highly relevant one-way back links will
dramatically increase search engine rankings in the leading search
engines such as Google or Yahoo and result in free targeted traffic
to your website.

10. Blog marketing in Tourism Industry
• In addition to article marketing, blogging or blog
marketing considerably help promote
destinations, tourism businesses and travel
trade events in unparallel and efficient way.
Posting of different unique articles to hundreds
of tourism niche blogs market is an incredibly
efficient marketing tool in terms of both
developing free targeted traffic to your website
as well as increasing your search engine
rankings through highly relevant one-way back
links.

11. Social Media Bookmarking in
Tourism Industry
• Social bookmarking is one of the fastest methods for
internet users to organize, share, and manage web
resources currently available as a SEO tool. Most of
social bookmarking services support internet users to
organize their bookmarks with informal tags such as
tourism, travel, marketing etc. Such tags in fact promote
your travel business and make it much more visible and
searchable by search engines. When Tourism Review
specialists submit your website to the leading
bookmarking sites such as Delicious, StumbleUpon,
digg, Yahoo!Buzz etc., you will quickly notice increased
traffic to your website from people interested in your
services

12. Video Marketing in Tourism
Industry
• Video on your tourism or destination website is
quite essential, but what about all the other
video sites where many internet users are
already actively watching video spots online? It
is important to emphasize that with more than
3.7 billion search queries YouTube can now
claim the title of “The 2nd Largest Search
Engine”. It is almost unknown that a correctly
submitted video is more than 50-times more
likely to push your tourism website on the first
positions among search engine results than
traditional SEO techniques

13. The Mobile Era is Here!
• Why Cell Phones are Replacing the Laptop
• The sharp trajectory of growth for cell phones and the
growing number of PC-like features being incorporated
into their design are fueling the theory that the cell phone
is becoming the new laptop. Here are the reasons why

15. • It can e-mail.
• It can Web-browse
• It is small.
• It has Windows
• It has Bluetooth capabilities
• It is cheaper
• It can be used for cloud computing

16. Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Web
• Hotels do not need a mobile app if they
are a single-property, independent
hotel. Nor do franchised hotels and
resorts or smaller and mid-size hotel
chains and multi-property companies.
These hotel companies are better off
focusing on building and enhancing
their mobile websites and promoting
the mobile site via mobile

17. Here is why!!!
• Mobile User Preferences:
• The most recent eMarketer survey clearly
shows that users prefer a mobile app only
in the following three categories: social
networking, music and games. For
everything else they prefer to browse (i.e.
search for mobile websites).

18. Mobile Apps vs. Mobile Browsing!
Appps Browsing
Social Networks (FB, 54% 46%
Twitter)
Music 55% 45%
Games 61% 39%
Research 19% 81%
Product/Services and
Price
Comparing Products and 29% 71%
Price
Reading Customer 32% 68%
Reviews
Purchasing Product via 37% 63%
Mobile Device

19. Strong Brand Recognition Needed for
Success
• In hospitality, the success of a hotel
mobile app is directly correlated to the
strength of the hotel brand. Mobile apps
make sense for a chain of hotels. Smaller
hotel companies’ apps have little chance
of being discovered by mobile user

20. Technological Boundaries between Mobile Apps and Mobile
Browsing Are Disappearing
• With rapid advancements in mobile technology, the lines
between mobile apps and mobile websites are
disappearing. Newer, more sophisticated mobile
devices, mobile operating systems and mobile browsers
have enhanced the quality of the mobile web browsing
experience tremendously: touch screen user experience,
GPS and LBS capability, HTML5 rich media, video and
audio enhancements, data storage and interactive
functionalities

21. Cost!!!
• A good hotel mobile app can cost $15,000
and up, based on custom design,
functionality, interactivity, handling of
heavy graphics etc. At the same time, a
hotel mobile website is a much cheaper
endeavor – a 10-page mobile website
should not cost more than $1,500,
including an integration of the mobile
booking engine, Google maps, etc.

22. Portability!!!
• A well-developed mobile website is by default a
cross-platform entity that can be viewed on all
platforms capable of browsing e.g. iPhone, RIM
(BlackBerry), Symbian Android, Windows
Mobile, etc. In contrast, a different app or a
customized version of an app is needed for
every major platform i.e. an app for iPhone, an
app for Blackberry, an app for Google Android,
etc. All of this greatly increases the cost of
developing and maintaining the hotel mobile app

23. Discoverability!!!
• There are more than 300,000 apps in the Apple App
Store alone. Hundreds of apps are available for Google
Andoid, BlackBerry, and now Windows Mobile. How do
you promote your new hotel app? You need a very well
defined strategy and special budget to promote your
hotel app and break into the top list for your category
• A mobile website needs good mobile SEO and SEM
(Search Engine Marketing) such as Google Mobile
AdWords in order to reach potential customers looking
for accommodations in your location.

24. Reach!!!
• Mobile apps can be viewed only on smartphones, which
comprise roughly 50% of the mobile device marketplace
today. In other words, after you develop expensive apps
for iPhone, BlackBerry and Google Android
smartphones, you will be reaching only half of potential
mobile customers. A cross-platform mobile website will
reach 100% of Internet-enabled mobile devices.

25. Recommendation
• Creating mobile-friendly textual and visual content that presents the
hotel product well
• Enhancing the mobile user-experience via well-thought out mobile
site navigation, a mobile booking engine widget, mobile calendar of
events, etc.
• Increasing website “discoverability” via mobile SEO and mobile SEM
(e.g. Google mobile AdWords) and online media initiatives.
• Making the mobile website more interactive via mobile-social media
initiatives, interactive sweepstakes and contests.
• Soliciting sign-ups to the mobile opt-in list via the traditional hotel
website and the mobile website, via hotel email marketing
campaigns and various sweepstakes and contests, such as
interactive scavenger hunts, QR Code promotions, etc.
• Tracking conversions and user behavior via mobile analytics and
special tracking phone functionality.

26. Beware on web!!!
• Brandjacking Index®: How Brands Are Used As
Competitive Weapons
Hotel brands face a unique brandjacking challenge. Due to the
fierce competition for travelers via paid search and other online
marketing tactics, major hotel brands are losing more than two
billion dollars a year in unnecessary commission payments and
online traffic lost to competitors. The travel industry is well-
established online, with a robust mix of channels, so these
findings serve as a cautionary tale to other industries.
Protecting your company's brand online means more than
thwarting abuses and attacks--it means monitoring cyber-savvy
competitors and partners, too.

27. When’s the best time to Tweet? How often to po
Facebook?
Timing your Facebook:
• Most Facebook shares occur on
Saturday.
• These shares tend to spike around
noon, and a little after 7PM.
• Posting once every two days will result
in the most “likes”.

28. Best time to Tweet
• When the most traffic happens and when
actually the most tweets go out is also the
best time for you to tweet, which is
sometimes counter-intuitive

29. Social Media Risks for Companies
• 1) Viruses and malware — Data leakage/theft.
• Prevention: Make sure antivirus and anti-malware controls are installed and updated
daily. Create updating policies, standards, and training.
• 2) Brand hijacking — Customer gets exposed to hijacked and fraudulent presence.
• Prevention: Find a firm that can protect your brand. Update customers on potential
fraud.
• 3) Lack of control over corporate content — When employees post wrong or improper
information on social media sites.
• Prevention: Establish clear policies that dictate what can and cannot be shared.
Create the capability to capture and log all communications.
• 4) Unrealistic expectations of customer service at Internet-speed.
• Prevention: Make sure staff can handle traffic associated with social media presence.
Create notice with clear timeline for responses.
• 5) Mismanagement of electronic communications that may be impacted by retention
regulations or e-discovery.
• Prevention: Establish policies and processes that ensure all communications are
tracked.

30. Social Media Risks for Employees
• 1) Using personal accounts to communicate work related
information.
• Prevention: Have HR establish policies and awareness training so
employees do not share company info.
• 2) Posting pictures or information that might damage a company’s
brand.
• Prevention: Again, work with HR to develop policies that explain
what can and cannot be shared.
• 3) Excessive employee use of social media in the workplace.
• Prevention: Create content filtering or limit access to sites.
• 4) Employee access to social media via mobile, which may result in
data theft or leakage.
• Prevention: More policies, more training, more controls.

31. How Often Should You Email
Your List?
• When you’re putting together your email marketing
campaign, there is one very important factor you need to
think about: How often you should email your list.
Email marketing can be a powerful promotional tool, but if you do it wrong
it can do more harm then good to your business. Email your subscribers
too much with uninteresting information and they will swiftly unsubscribe
from your list.
Finding The Right Email Frequency
Honestly, there is no one right answer for this question. Different
businesses will be able to get away with emailing their mailing list
subscribers at different rates, it just depends on the type of emails you are
providing.
My suggestion, Email your mailing list once a week

32. UPDATES!!!

33. Google Hotel Finder gets top positio
The Google hotel finder is a very interesting
development that has the potential to shake up
the online market for hotels. As a service, it aims
to allow you to search, compare and book hotels
from all over the world. It can be accessed at:
www.google.com/hotelfinder

35. Appearing on the Google Hotel
Finder
The majority of hotels are already included in the
hotel finder but some hotels are currently
missing and some hotels that are included are
only shown if you use the shape tool on the map
to include the area where the hotel is physically
located. If your hotel is not currently listed please
be aware that Google are constantly adding
hotels to their database.

36. Analysis & Opinion
Key positives
● Clean, uncluttered design.
● Shape tool is useful but only beneficial if you
know the area you are visiting.
● Filtering options are useful and easy to use.
● Prices are listed clearly.
● The hotel website link is included automatically
and is free.
● Hotels can now compete directly with OTAs.

37. Challenges
• A user cannot search by hotel name, specific address or
landmark.
● Prices are currently displayed in US dollars only.
● English is the only available language.
● Only reviews from Google are listed.
● Some hotels are missing from the finder.
● Not all hotels can show their own prices yet.
● As of mid December, Google is placing its hotel finder
as the first sponsored link in search results for hotels in
the USA, causing considerable controversy in the PPC
market.

38. Google panda!!!
How fresh is your website?
Every year, Google makes more than 500 updates to its search
algorithm. The most significant update in 2011 was the Google
Panda Update, now in version 2.5, which made most hotel websites
obsolete by introducing very strict requirements for content,
interactivity, and page download speeds. This required sites to
generate engaging and unique website content (as opposed to
bland, old and tired content) that would intrigue users and increase
the site’s 'stickiness'.

39. Google announced that they had rolled out an update now known as the
“Freshness” update, which was said to affect 35% of total searches and would
allow for more relevant, current information to be displayed for a bevy of high-
volume search queries.
Why are these updates important for the hospitality industry? Between 50%-70%
of hotel website visitors and website bookings originate as leads from the major
search engines
How does this latest Google algorithm update apply to hotel queries
Traditionally, hotel websites are content rich vs. news rich, with descriptions and
information featuring and explaining in detail every facet of the hotel business and
service, from the bed linens to the capacity of a meeting room. The “static”
content is there, but the “fresh” content is certainly lacking, and this is the main
issue with current hotel websites after the latest Google algorithm updates.

40. So if hotel websites aren’t basically fresh, then how do
hoteliers respond to the latest Google “Freshness” Update?
• Promotional landing pages for timely specials and packages (e.g. a
March weekend package as opposed to an Advanced Purchase
package valid for all of 2012)
• Event landing pages for events and happenings at the property and
in the destination
• Promo tiles and banners on the website for featured specials and
events
• Marketing and sales messages in the main image window on every
page focusing on various aspects of the hotel product: room and
dining promotions, complete meeting packages, wedding
promotions, etc.
• New content pages on various topics: from seasonal and sports
events, to local festivals and customer segment-specific content
(family travel, seniors, weekend travel, romantic getaways, etc.)

41. Conclusion!
• The Google Panda Update made most hotel websites obsolete.
Bare, sparse copy stuffed with keywords can no longer sustain a
respectable SERP ranking.
• The latest Freshness Update created the need to add fresh content
to the website on an ongoing basis.
• In order to react to these two algorithmic updates, hoteliers need to
re-evaluate their website re-design strategies and budget for
website re-design or an optimization overhaul in early 2012.
•
Be proactive when dealing with your content and the various assets
you own. Highlight what’s great about you and make sure that
whatever you’re proud of is reflected on the back end of your
website, on social media, and within blogs and press releases.
Success will continue to come, especially if you stay ahead of the
curve

42. Q & A

43. THANK YOU