This document discusses trends in advertising, particularly the growth of online advertising. It provides examples of companies using innovative online advertising strategies in both the hospitality industry and other fields. Experts predict that online advertising will continue growing as people spend more time on the internet and social media, and companies aim to reach customers through interactive digital platforms.

1. HOSPITALITY AND TOURISM MARKETING AND SALES
The Future of Advertising
Trends Project
Kevin O’Donnell, Jamie Stanton, Penny Swanson
11/16/2012
This trend project talks about the history of advertising online over the past year. How advertising is
influential in the hospitality field along with others, and where advertising will be in the future.

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The Future of Advertising
Advertising in the past year
Advertising has been around for many years and is how companies reach out to
customers or potential customers. There are many forms of advertising such as direct mail,
emails, radio, television, and more. Over the years the internet has become a new source of
advertising. Since the development of social media such as Facebook and Twitter, more and
more people have been spending additional time on the internet. With the amount of time
spent on the internet it only makes sense for companies to move a large amount their
advertisements to the internet. Advertising has slowly started to become more popular on the
internet. As it has grown greatly in the last year or so it will only grow more in the future.
Companies continue to plan on putting more money into the interactive advertising because
they are seeing that it is affective and bringing in money.
In the first quarter of 2012 the interactive advertising industry had the best first quarter
on record. IAB (Interactive Advertising Bureau) said they brought in $8.4 billion which is 15%
more than recorded in the year-ago period(Parker, 2012 ). This shows that online advertising is
slowly taking over. In just one year revenue jumped up 15% showing that there is great things
to come. Online advertising is affecting companies both within and outside of the hospitality
field in numerous ways. This is giving them a new way to attract audiences and draw them into
their business. When companies start to spend more money on the interactive advertising they
are broadening their business.
The hospitality business is reliant on the internet and online advertising. Many hotels,
airlines, and restaurants have started to create social media accounts or pages for their
business to help advertise. This viral advertising spreads the word to people faster and can
become huge in a matter of minutes(Time, 2012). Hotel marketers have started to also focus on
the property websites to help achieve the highest ROIs. With many different social media sites
to advertise on hotels have to remember that their website is also advertisement for their
company. The hotels have been using the main site for number of years but keep it up to date
and use it as an effective source of advertisement by making sure that they have rich media,
and current promotions. The more a company advertises the better they have been known to
do.

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The Future of Advertising
Real Life Cases within and outside of the Hospitality Field
Travel Spike is a company that allows hotels, attractions to make reservations through
their website. The company uses what hotels have to offer and fits them to the customer’s
schedule and the size of the party. They have a structured website that allows people to search
by region, category, and price. This allows them to have a custom marketing website, making it
easy to search for hotels nationwide. In addition to the website, Travel Spike provides
podcasting, social networking software, and social media marketing for your resort or hotel.
This has a direct effect on the marketing side of everything because they have proven that they
are travel experts that understand customers travel, hospitality, or tourism business. They have
the latest internet marketing and interactive media trends that people are using today to
ensure they are seen by the public. They use digital strategy, media buying, media planning,
and search engine optimization to appear on top sites such as Google, Facebook, Twitter, and
Groupon. Travel Spike changes the marketing strategies for hotels because they are a one stop
provider for online marketing for a company. This is a money saving strategy that covers most
of the overall marketing of a company online.
Cendy is another company that does online marketing for resorts and hotels. The
company specializes in travel and hotel internet advertising by building the individual hotel sites
for big name hotels. They provide website marketing, website design and development, search
engine marketing, branding and logo development for hotels and resorts.Through this
company, an individual is able to search for a specific hotel, read reviews, view amenities, and
book a reservation directly on the site. Similar to Travel Spike, they set up custom profiles on
social media websites promoting rates for lodging around the world. Cendy changes marketing
strategies because they also attract customers while they are visiting their daily websites and
get them to view hotels and resorts. When this happens, the customer becomes a follower of
the company which just promotes it even further. Cendy connects the ease of using social
media and cuts the hassle of searching to find a place. Also, it allows customers to use a
website they are already familiar with like Facebook. The other way this affects the industry is
it takes the rooms that are already going to be empty and it fills them with customers at a
discounted rate. This allows the hotel to reach its ultimate goal of 100% occupancy.
Local Corporation (founded in 1999) has been extremely successful within online
advertising. They paid close attention to what people viewed, and how often it was viewed. As
they closely watched some ads being viewed less and less, they would quickly pull them from
the internet and replace them with something new. This was so successful because they
immediately stopped losing money on something that did not seem to be of interest to
consumers. Many other companies may not pay such close attention, and will end up paying
much more to keep advertising something that is not getting any views. The article states that
“Local has grown from its big-margin organic revenues and organic traffic which represents
forty percent of total traffic” this was true from a few years back, but now they say that Local is

4. Hospitality and Tourism marketing and sales 3
The Future of Advertising
at record levels for online trafficking! Yahoo has an agreement with Local on paid search
results. It has been a month-to-month agreement, but recently Yahoo signed a five year plan,
which seems as if they want Local to themselves only. Local is anover $5 billon market which is
the fastest growing segment of the $47 billion online advertising industry. It has beat estimates,
trafficking users each month (over one hundred million.) Mobile traffic has gone up 275% over
the past year, which means a significant amount of people had visited the site and had seen
their advertisements. In 2012 alone, they have had a 30% gain in revenue.
Blue State Digital is a company who strongly advertised president Obama in 2004, and
again throughout this year’s election process. Along with advertising Obama, they racked up
many other campaign wins such as Tammy Baldwin and Elizabeth Warren (for senate), and the
fight for gay marriages in Maine, Maryland, Minnesota, and also Washington. They had been
working on plans for online advertising, for the past few years. They found a way to send over
one hundred million emails within just twenty four hours. Aside from the email “bombing” they
were able to provide more online contributions than any other service or company was able to.
Blue State Digital was founded in 2004, and executes online engagements, campaigned many
people throughout the election processes. They have very influential brands, making
themselves a very successful company. They helpednumerous clients to understand the values
beliefs and ideas of the potential individuals and provide everyone with the tools to succeed as
votes and fans. With advertising online, they gained nearly $1 million in just the four years they
have been working on these educational campaigning projects.

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Professional Views and Expert Opinions
Brian Decorah is currently the GM (general manager) of the North Star Mohican Casino
Resort in Wisconsin. He has worked in the hospitality field for the past 25 years holding
positions ranging from front-line employee, departmental supervisor, mid-level manager,
director and general manager. Brian finds that advertising is critical to the hospitality industry
because we are a product of advertising and amenities. One great quote he brought up was in
the words of Ted Turner “Early to bed, early to rise, work like hell and advertise!” That quote
alone shows the importance of advertising. When working as the Advertising Manager for
another hotel he shared that they had a budget for advertising alone that was over 1,000,000.
With experience in all areas of ads from radio and television to social media and online Decorah
believes that they all serve a purpose. Brian believes that for certain industries online
advertising is important and helps business remarkably. For example the hotels in Las Vegas can
utilize online ads more so than the current casino he works for. Location plays a large role in
which type of advertisement works best for the company. His casino uses direct mail (targeted),
Radio, Newspaper, Periodical, OOH, social media, and email. Direct mail is their number one
source because majority of their clients are over 60 and are in a close radius. Although his
casino will continue to use direct mail marketing he believes that in the next year that other
hospitality companies will start to focus more on the online advertising. When asked if he
thought it was important for hotels or casinos to advertise online more than they currently are
he thought that many larger well known properties utilize online marketing very successfully to
book hotel rooms, travel, and conference space. The more amenities offered the more
opportunities there are for success. He also believes that it is important to use destination
based marketing. Decorah believes that for the gaming side of the hospitality industry to make
advertising affective you need to attract gamers with price and make profits with the add-ons
for example offer guest free room and then make a profit off of them eating the buffet and
gambling. Brian believes that the future of advertising depends on the location of the property.
Rural casinos will continue to rely heavily on direct marketing while bigger more populated
casinos and hotels will grow into the social media and interactive marketing.
Advertising has impacted the hospitality industry in the past and will continue to in the
future. If companies do not advertise potential consumers will not know what the company has
to offer compared to other companies within the field that do advertise. Online interactive
advertising will impact the business landscape. Companies that continue to move forward and
use this newer advertising they will reach out to more potential guest and consumers. They will
increase sales more than companies who are not keeping up with current trends. Online
advertising will also help companies reach out and meet the needs of more consumers. Over
time this trend of advertising will continue to develop and grow. Technology is improving daily

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and as that continues to grow so will advertising and the way it is done. Social media is a big
part of why advertising online is growing so rapidly. Companies want to stay on top of the
charts so they stay on top of the trends as well. Over the next couple of years we believe that
advertising will be more intricate. No trend stays the same and advertising is not an
acceptation. Trends change and this one will continue to change. Companies are going to want
to stay on top of this trend to make sure they have the advantage over other competitors. To
stay on top of the competition they are going to look at what is currently being done and what
will be happening within the next couple of months and find a way to be even better than that.
Companies need to look at what their customers want, what fits their needs, and is going to
please them. They should be studying their target markets and brainstorming advertisements
that are interactive and going to draw them in and make them unforgettable. Overall
interactive advertising is going to be extremely successful for the hospitality field. It is giving
and going to continue to give the consumers what they want and need in a fast usable way.

7. Hospitality and Tourism marketing and sales 6
The Future of Advertising
References
Cendyn. (2012). Retrieved November 14, 2012, from http://www.cendyn.com/solutions/
Hotel Marketing. (2012, November 6). Retrieved November 13, 2012, from Hotel Marketers Focus on
Property Website in 2013:
http://hotelmarketing.com/index.php/content/article/hotel_marketers_focus_on_property_we
bsite_in_2013
Seeking Alpha. (2012, November 15). Retrieved November 16, 2012, from Local Corporation Dominates
Local Mobile and Online Adversting with Record Quarter:
http://seekingalpha.com/article/1012171-local-corporation-dominates-local-mobile-and-online-
advertising-with-record-quarter
Decorah, B. (2012, November 12). Advertising in the Hospitality Field. (P. Swanson, Interviewer)
Digital, B. S. (2012, November 9). The Sacramento Bee. Retrieved November 15, 2012, from Digital
Campaigning Drives Political Success: http://www.sacbee.com/2012/11/09/4973862/digital-
campaigning-drives-political.html
Parker, P. (2012 , June 11). Marketing Land. Retrieved November 14, 2012, from IAB: Q1 Online Ad
Revenues Up 15% Over 2011: http://marketingland.com/iab-q1-online-ad-revenues-up-15-over-
2011-13835
Time, F. (2012). Chron. Retrieved Novemeber 14, 2012, from Social Media & the Hospitality Industry:
http://smallbusiness.chron.com/social-media-hospitality-industry-37599.html