Online Marketing for Tourism: Social Media can Drive Sales to Hotels and Airlines

This post is inspired on the Mashable post about Social Media and how it can drive revenue to airlines and hotels. Therefore I would like to thank Shashank Nigam, its writer for the inspiration.

As Shashank very accurately says Social media is no longer the “new” thing, especially for airlines. Looking at JetBlue or Lufthansa we understand that social Media is part of their daily routine. However, most airlines are still wondering or even worse are still doubting that Social Media can drive them Euros in their accounts. In resort areas, and especially in the Mediterranean, things are even “harder” since the big tour operators are dominating the market and the average airline manager is Social Media illiterate and this because of working habits and lack of training. Cyprus Airways, Olympic Air, Egypt Air etc are companies with long tradition in bureaucracy and difficulty in change of Business Culture. Maybe the exception is Turkish Airlines who has lately been very Social Media oriented and I am sure their seeing the benefit.

If Dell can makes $6.5 million from Twitter, why can’t airlines and hotels? The 5 tips given from Mashable are very helpful. Here I twisted them a bit and added ideas for resort hotels and local airlines.

1. Clear Distressed and Early Booking Inventory of rooms and seats on Twitter

Like Mashable points out, running an airline or hotel is much like running a cinema, with more operational complexity though. It costs about the same to operate the plane or the hotel no matter how many seats or rooms are filled up. Any unsold seats or rooms at the last minute are called “distressed inventory.” Combine the last-minute nature of such seat/room availability with the real-time features of tools like Twitter and you create the opportunity for airlines and hotels to generate cold, hard cash. Any seat sold there before departure is less money lost.

Resort hotels and Airlines should be able to create a new tariff category. Twitter tariff that would be valid only for twitter followers and it should have an expiring hour. This will avoid conflicts with travel agents and tour operators. Of course, you have to set clear expectations with your followers that the account will only be sending out deals, and is not a customer service vehicle.

Ultimately, using real-time platforms like Twitter helps the airline circulate cheap very last minute or early booking fares and get people to fly more often, or even for the first time. Hotels could similarly post unfilled room inventory on Twitter. Those rooms they are trapped after the cut off dates of the Tour Operators. Ultimately this could fill up the planes and hotels and drives more revenue. Especially in the two edges of the steam, Early booking and Last minute.

2. Integrate Social Media Into the Booking Engine


Hotels should use social Media driven booking engines such as Sybelio version 5.0. This platform creates unique URLs for special offers in 14 Languages and is capable to post them on the most popular Social Media Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook (fun page and profile). Highly recommendable to test drive the tool, you will love it.

Airlines should be able to connect with Social Media seamless and the sign up forms could be the start point. Instead of the check box, “Would you like to receive emails about our offers” they could have “ would like to share with us your travel experience on social Media?”.

3. Integrate with Social Media Travel Applications with the frequent flier and loyalty programmes.

For example, an airline could integrate TripIt data with their frequent flier database to create a list of their loyal customers and the destinations those customers are planning to visit. The airline could then reach out to them with a custom-tailored travel deal.

A hotel could do something similar, taking into account the location the traveller, and in case the company does not have a hotel in the area suggest a third party one. This will increase trust, loyalty and industry solidarity.

4. Create Private Online Communities


This a great tip for independent hotels that have from season to season repeaters. Small and medium size stand alone hotels could forget the complex loyalty schemes. A small, simple and user friendly online community, will do a great job. Ning is a good start, and it has all the above characteristics. It can be as private as you like and it has the capacity to create groups. People would feel special and defiantly it will increase return business.

5. Remember: Social Media is About Relationships

It’s important to remember that social media is always about relationships first.
A good example of relationship building is Lufthansa’s MySkyStatus, which allows you to share your location with your Facebook and Twitter friends during the flight. Right now, it’s not generating any revenue for Lufthansa, but if they integrate a field to input a passenger’s frequent flyer number, they might be able to mine the data for some unique insights. However, right now, they are concentrating on building a relationship with passengers through social media, not hammering them with ads.

It is important to always set the right expectations with your fans or followers on what you’re going to be doing. If you’re only selling seats or rooms, let them know. If you are providing customer service, let them know that, too.

In the hotel industry we know very well how painful is to loose a relationship and hard it is to create one. So do NOT confuse advertising with Social Media. People will walk away if you bang them every day with sales and offers. So treat your customer online as if he was standing in front of your front-office or even better as if he was having a coffee in your lobby.

Here I would like to thank again  Shashank Nigam for his post.

Direct Online Hotel Marketing can make a difference in times crisis

Have we invented everything on the internet ?

Sometimes it seems that innovation on the internet is either impossible or very expensive. Well I must say that the young MBA Greek student at Kingston University UK has proven us that things can be neither expensive nor impossible.

Spyros Pyrgiotis has created www.thetextpage.com looking at it as a cheap way of advertising. Pay per character model, a newish way of charging advertising that attract the attention of media such as BBC.

Now, how can the travel industry benefit from initiatives of this type? The travel industry is the leader in offers. Hotels and other accommodation facilities with the help of user friendly online booking engines (like Sybelio which is fantastic for special offers) could publish their special offers at a very low cost on this web. Google is indexing this site every 20 minutes since and the fact that it renews its content very often is an advantage for keeping it high in Google rank.

So, if you are an hotelier and you suffer from the low production of the tour operators it is time to take action. Get a non commissionable online booking engine that helps you create offers. ( I personally recommend Sybelio) and spread your offers online using Social Media correctly and why not pay per character at www.thetextpage.com.

Sybelio online booking system

View more presentations from Petros Mavros.

How can you increase hotel bookings online in times of crisis?

The internet is full of special offers from hotels that sell their rooms at very low prices especially through portals. The big guys in the market, Expedia, Booking.com, Last Minute and so many others are squeezing the hotels and especially the independent hotels to give low, very low prices to the visitors of those portals. The crisis is the perfect excuse to make more money for the portals. The lower the prices the more the hits, more bookings so more commissions.

Now, my proposal is simple. Now is the time to use our brain as hoteliers, we need to work out a simple strategy of online pricing, maintaining or not price parity since today parity parity is only a theory and give to ourselves more visibility.

Visibility means, presence, professional presence in the different social media, serious and professional SEO and really user friendly mostly customer friendly online booking tools. Tools that give you the functionalities you need to spread your offers in the Blog sphere, in the Social Media Jungle and reach your end customer without a cent of commission.

Do those systems exist? The answer is yes. A Spanish company has developed this system and it works really well. Sybelio has the capability to do that without the hotel to need to invest crazy amounts of money and without a cent of commission.

I was talking to Daniele Pesavento, the Sales and Marketing Director and he has given me a demo of the system which at the beginning seems to be another online booking tool. After seeing that it does the job in 14 languages, it has a very powerful special offer module that can create any type of offer and the way that those offers can be linked to all the Social Media I was more than convinced to connect it my hotel web site if I had one.

Online customer Scare by Cyprus Hotels

On Friday the 10th of April 2009 I made a survey to 12 hotels in Paphos, Limassol, Agia Napa and Troodos in order to find out how Cypriots book their weekend holidays. The result of this mini survey is:

• 80% make there bookings online
• 10% book over the phone
• 10% with travel agents

Now the Cypriots who use the internet prefer www.bookcyprus.com , www.booking.com and www.expedia.co.uk . This would have been completely normal if the Cyprus Hoteliers did not have what we call special prices for locals. The funny thing is that these special prices are more expensive than the web of the hotels, more expensive than Booking.com and more expensive than expedia.

Then, today Saturday the 10th of April I have made a test on the 12 hotels I mention above. I called their reservations department, I checked their own web, I looked for them on the 3 web sites mentioned above and I also called to a travel agent.

The result was:

• 8 of those 12 hotels had 5 different rates for the same dates for the same room. One rate on the phone, one on their own web, one on expedia, one on booking and one on bookcyprus.com
• 3 of them had the same rates over the phone and on their own web but different rates on the 3rd party web sites.
• 1 hotel had price parity all the way thru.

I felt like an idiot when I mention to one reservation officer of the first 8 hotels that on booking.com I see that they have available rooms for 55 euros cheaper than the price is giving me over the phone and on their own web is 45 euros cheaper than the phone price. The answer was very embarrassing, those prices are for foreigners. I asked what would it happen if I book on booking.com and the poor lady got upset, she told me that I cannot make a booking from abroad if I am a Cypriot, and that the prices for Cypriots are the ones she told me.

I thanked her and I hung up the phone. I stared at my computer and I thought of sending an email to the General Manager of the hotel and the owners with a copy to the CTO and the 2 hoteliers associations. I decided that I will not do it because the reservations lady came all the way from Russia to work in Cyprus and she only follows orders of those I was going to send an email to. I will not mention the hotel, I will only say that is a five star hotel in Limassol.

I am wondering if hotels in Cyprus really want Cyprus residents to stay in their hotels.

Post originally Published on www.emergence2009.com