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.

Subsidise tourism in the European Union for the benefit of the small and medium tourist enterprise instead of the big tour operators and whole sellers

The crisis is not anymore a ghost, it is a reality especially for the small and medium tourist entrepreneur, Cyprus is defiantly not the exemption, despite that the minister of Industry, Trade and Tourism Mr. Antonis Paschalides was assuring the Hoteliers and Travel industry that we would only have a 10% decrease the reality is completely different. The best numbers talk about a 20% decrease in occupancies and the worst numbers talk about 30%.

What that is all mean? It mainly means that the big tour operators are not fulfilling their compromise with the industry. The tour operators that last winter were asking for help and took from the industry subsidies of some million Euros are now not fulfilling their compromises. The crisis excuse is simply perfect, easy to pronounce and very easy to demonstrate that the crisis is responsible. Now , if someone digs a bit deeper you find out that things are not that easy, and let me bullet point my thoughts.

1. Big tour operators support the destinations in the Mediterranean that are outside the Euro zone since their currencies are not subject to euro ? dollar relationship and therefore are at least 35% cheaper in airport taxes and ground tourist services such as transfers and accommodation.

2. The money they use to push those destinations is the money they got from the bleeding destinations like Cyprus, who did not have other alternative than subsidizing arrivals. Conclusion, the rich European destinations subsidise through the private sector the development of tourism to their direct competitors.

3. The EU rules put barriers to direct subsidies but not in Turkey or Egypt. Over there things are done according to ?market rules?. Therefore the big guys have more manoeuvre space and can with not much trouble pull the strings to the suppliers for lower prices.

4. Low cost airlines are not interested in covering long hall flights from central and northern Europe . The costs are far too high and they cannot enter in the subsidy dance since most of them do not work with package deals. This keeps the Tour Operators alive in the aviation map since the destinations consider them indispensable for bringing in mass tourism even thought low cost airlines transport many more passengers than charter flights.

Suggestions:
1. Independent hoteliers and small hotel chains that do not have corporate liaisons with tour operators could create a new business model that would fit the Low Cost airline model and make a pressure group in the market place.
2. The state instead of subsidizing tour operators could use that money to reduce the airport taxes, increase online presence in an effective manner towards the direct user.
3. Incentivize the tour operators with indirect incentives such as tax reductions, VAT exemptions that have impact on their profit and loss account and not on their cash flow, like this they keep the pulse of sales but without using direct cash benefits.

From attracting to seducing, the internet has changed tourism as well

The Internet has become the means of attraction of tourists for many “inexistent” Tourist Destinations worldwide. Places like New Zealand, Slovakia, Montenegro or regions such as Murcia or Extremadura in Spain almost did not “exist” before the Internet Revolution. They took very seriously their online potential and invested time and money on their online actions and strategies. Here below I try to will give you a different approach with 3 different methods of how Destinations could or do use the power and the potential of the internet to seduce visitors.

1. T.U.I: Traditional Uncovered Influence.

In T.U.I mode the destination gives to Thomas Cook, Thomson-Tui, American Express Travel or whoever other Big Tour Operator, lets say 3,5 million Euros each in form of “marketing expenses” and seeks ROI. This money is used by the tour operators to “market” the destination and of course to market it online since 50% of the sales of the big tour operators are now made online and almost 98% of total sales are confirmed using online tools. Thomsons-Tui for example last week was promoting Tunisia on their UK site and defiantly they were not doing it for free. If Cyprus for example is an expensive destination and Turkey or Tunisia are not so expensive then obviously the tour operator will prefer to promote an easy to sell destination than a hard one, since we are in S.H.I.T, (Stupid Hospitality Industry Turbulence) caused by real estate speculation

2. D.I.Y.O: Do It Yourself Online:

D.I.Y.O is a rather new way of attracting visitors. As all other D.I.Y methods, this requires new skills, new way of thinking, new strategy, new planning and especially lots of courage and faith in what you are doing. It works the same way as D.I.Y for plumbing. If you do not have enough confidence in what you are doing or if your skills are not yet well developed then you may end up with the house flooded. In politics flooding is dangerous, voters can punish you severely, just look what happens in the UK. Ministers fall over their chairs one after the other, but anyway that is in the UK, those things do not happen in the southern areas of the ex British Empire.

3. N.E.T: Neo-technological Effective Tourism:

N.E.T has 3 legs: The Destination, The Suppliers and The Customer all working in a team.

1. The Destination: a.k.a the Tourism Board: With N.E.T the Destination belongs to all and not all to the Destination. It needs to have proven flexibility, credibility and ability, not proven incapability. It needs to give answers online and not orders from-the-line. It needs to share valuable content and in an easy, indexable, universal and accessible environment and not hide content behind bureaucratic monsters and technological myths. In N.E.T “mood” the Destination to has a regulatory role and not a regular role.

2. The Suppliers Travel Professionals : In a N.E.T environment the airlines have online services and not online barriers, the taxis are booked online together with public transport and not “hitched hiked”, the hotels have online price parity and not online price asperity, the incoming agents are destination experts and not the destination desperates, in N.E.T suppliers practice online customer care do not customer scare.

3. The Customer: a.k.a the One who Pays Our Salaries.: The Customer is not only the receiver anymore but also the transmitter. He/She determines online how he/she wants to receive the service, he/she feels the value from home on the PC screen and he/she Pay Palls it. He/She is not scared to share and shout it loud. How does he/she does all that? By Blogging and not Blocking, by Commenting and not Complaining , by Face-booking and not Face-hiding, by Twittering and not Twisting , being on Youtube and not on Our Tube, by Trip Advising and not Trip Forgetting, by being Seduced online and not Ignored even online.

The article was originally published on the Cypriot Newspaper
Financial Mirror on Wednesday 1^st July 2009.

Is online Marketing is a matter of training as well ?

When we talk about online marketing most of us think of IT (Information Technology), well this is a very wrong idea. IT people are very good in applying technologies and give them to us, to the operations people to use them.

When it comes to the internet, technologies are just tools, tools we have in our hands as operations to use them. We need to be trained but not on the use of technologies but on the use of our skills online. The internet gives us the technologies most of the time for free, we need to train our brains to use them the same way we use the telephone or the vacuum cleaner. IT can prepare a web site but IT are not the ones who are going to position our product, brand and services in the online world. Think offline! We ask the graphic designer to prepare a brochure, we ask the printer to print them but we are the ones who are going to give them to right people. It is us, Sales and Marketing who will sit down with the customer to discus the services we printed in the brochure, so we should be the ones who talk to the customer online. For this we need to be trained.



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