Spaniards and Italians are the most demanding touristsm while the Dutch and British, on the other hand, are more concerned about practical aspects and less about the details of their room.

Over 80% of European tourists think that a very important factor when booking a room is a shower or bath, and over 60% acknowledge that the first thing they do when arriving is check out the bathroom.

39% of users only visit the hotel restaurant if breakfast is included in the price, and 20% buy food outside the hotel to eat in their rooms

What sort of information do future tourists look for? Above all, about cultural activities and excursions, although the British and the Dutch, who have very similar interests, place greater importance on restaurants and special events. Italians, for their part, put information about leisure facilities ahead of any other matter (72%). Spaniards are more interested than anyone else in shows on in the city (52%), while the Dutch are the tourists with the highest percentage of people who do not look for any information of any kind (15%).

When booking a hotel room, the Internet is once again the first option, with the United Kingdom (87%) coming top. Spain (73%) and Italy (70%) are still somewhat behind as regards on-line operations. Even so, travel agencies still have a high share, and around 50% of those surveyed say that they use their services for booking rooms, although this percentage is much lower, 20%, in the United Kingdom, lower than the percentage of British travellers who sometimes book directly by phone.

The growing importance of the internet when arranging trips has made for a change in tourists’ travelling habits. Given this change in traveller profile, NH Hoteles has over the last year embarked upon a major update of its website, building up the aspects that customers are calling for more in their internet relationship with the hotel chain.

Get the full story at 4hoteliers.com

Kayak, the popular multi-airline airfare search engine, thinks Microsoft Bing’s new travel search engine looks so much like its own that it’s confusing Kayak users.

Kayak, the popular multi-airline airfare search engine, thinks Microsoft Bing’s new travel search engine looks so much like its own that it’s confusing Kayak users. The travel search company sent Microsoft a legal letter last week telling them to cut it out, Wired.com has learned.

Microsoft heralded its travel search as one of the key ways that its revamped search engine Bing bested Google by helping users make decisions, rather than just finding information.

Its search results for an itinerary presents users with sliders and check boxes on the left that let searchers change times and specify airlines. Search results reload instantly as boxes are clicked and sliders slid.

There’s no question Bing feels like Kayak. When Microsoft showed us the search engine under embargo, this reporter’s first comment upon seeing the travel page demo’d was “This looks like Kayak.” Our Bing review described its interface as “uncomfortably close to Kayak’s,” an observation that others made as well.

Kayak noticed too.

Get the full story at www.wired.com

City Tours is a new addition to Google Labs that puts Google squarely in the tourism business: Give it a city name, and Google not only suggests sites to see, but it also maps out a multi-day itinerary and proposes a minute-by-minute travel schedule for you to follow.

And what’s really impressive is that City Tours doesn’t only cover the standard travel hot spots like New York, San Francisco, and Las Vegas. You’ve probably never heard of Kennewick, Washington, but Google has a three-day tour in mind if you ever want to visit my neck of the woods.

In reality, City Tours is very much a labs project at this point with plenty of room for growth and improvement. After the “wow” factor wears off, you’ll notice that the Kennewick tour above suggests that I walk from sight to sight …

Get the full story at searchengineland.com

Try this new tool: Google City Tours

SEO is critical, but how do you know it’s working? Here are some tips and tools for spot-checking your SEO efforts and fixing the weaknesses.

If you’re reading this, SEO permeates everything you do. Or at least it should.

The trouble is, SEO isn’t a fire-and-forget tactic, and making the most of natural search results requires constant attention. But while SEO is one of the best ways to drive quality traffic to your site, it’s also deceptively labor intensive. Precious human resources — both internal and external — go into building and maintaining high-quality best practices, and SEO practitioners all say that ranking high in the right search categories is the responsibility of everyone on your team.

But SEO also requires vigilance because it is often about keeping a close eye on a countless array of factors, with no sure way of knowing which are more important than the others, and which combination of terms users will employ to find you. In short, there’s a lot to do just to stay current, and even more to do to get ahead of the curve.

Get the full story at imediaconnection.com

Inflation-adjusted spending on travel and tourism in the U.S. declined at an annual rate of 5.9% in the first quarter after falling 6.9% in the first quarter, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said.

Weak demand is depressing travel and tourism prices, the agency added. They fell 10.9% in the first quarter on top of a 16.5% decrease in the fourth.

The decline in the tourism industry is turning into a priority for Congress. The Senate is moving forward on a bill to create a private fund to advertise the U.S. to foreign tourists. Private money will fund the company, but it will be matched by up to $100 million a year from the federal government.

Get the full story at wsj.com

Sure, it makes sense for most businesses to follow their customers into the world of social media. But before doing so, they must have a firm grasp on how to measure the ROI of those ventures.

For organizations, social media can serve as a private media channel that allows corporate control of the messaging. Social networks provide an excellent vehicle for pushing out content that supports marketers’ objectives, while social sites are great for spreading viral campaigns and word-of-mouth programs. Many companies are using social networks to recruit and invite prospects to Webcasts and live events, both of which are easily tracked by assigning unique URLs and codes.

There is little out-of-pocket cost associated with social media, aside from personnel costs. Even small firms can start a blog with shareware, and there is no cost to post a page or group on Facebook or LinkedIn.

But while the setup costs are low, a marketer needs to assign dedicated resources to manage the process and create and maintain the content. Someone in the organization needs to own the social media function for it to work successfully.

Get the full story chiefmarketer.com

Don’t be surprised if you get a phone call from a cheery-voiced, erudite lady or gent tipping you off that the genteel, 137-room Hotel Ritz in London, created by Cesar Ritz himself in 1906, has rooms for 30 percent off.

This is no scam, no boiler-room telemarketer reading from a script, no digital voice that sounds human. At the other end of the line is a reservationist with an organization called Leading Hotels of the World (www.lhw.com), which promotes and books rooms for 450 of the finer places to stay in 80 countries.

Well-heeled vacationers and top-level executives seeking more than a plush bed when they travel favor these often distinctive and distinguished hotels, many with spas. But in today’s hard times, even big spenders are watching their euros, rupees, pounds sterling and greenbacks. They’re scaling back travel or avoiding historical, palatial, pricey hotels to keep a low profile.

Ted Teng, new chief executive officer of Leading Hotels, apparently doesn’t believe in sitting back in a huge leather chair behind a massive mahogany desk and pampering himself while cutting his own costs with a meat cleaver. He knows the hotels that are paying for the privilege to be part of an elite hotel fraternity want “heads in their beds.” They expect Teng and LHW to beat the bushes to send them reservations.

Get the full story at creators.com

Web analytics is critical to measuring the success of your website as you identify opportunities to improve your business and marketing initiatives. Most marketers are confused with business implications of analytics reports, so it ends up being simpler to track what you know.

Web analytics has made great strides in the past decade, from when hit counters were the most sophisticated metric trackers in use. But there is still a long way to go before analytics is used to its full marketing potential. In this article, I hope to articulate ways that marketers can maximize their analytics solutions. To do so, I will discuss the top 10 signs that the power of analytics is still eluding your company.

Sign 1: You bought the tool a year ago, and you’re still not measuring your business objectives.

Get the full story at imediaconnection.com

As consumers modify their spending patterns, their search behavior—the keywords and terms they use to locate products and services—also change. We recently culled over half a million search terms containing a certain modifier.

It is no surprise that the recession has affected online consumer spending habits. In lean times, people are more apt to curb spending and seek out the best bargains.

From a search perspective, it is now more important than ever for marketers to adapt their campaigns to these changes in consumer behavior to better optimize performance.

As consumers modify their spending patterns, their search behavior—the keywords and terms they use to locate products and services—also change. We recently culled over half a million search terms containing a certain modifier.

For instance, queries containing the word “cheap” would include “cheap flight,” “cheap car rental” and so on. Next we aggregated the keywords into groups based on the modifier and measured their year-over-year changes in impression volume and revenue per click (i.e. the per click monetization change).

Get the full story at searchengineland.com

The online hotel sector is proving more resilient than traditional channels in volume terms but not prices, acccording to hotels.com.

The Hotel Price Index, produced by hotels.com at the end of last year, showed global hotel prices were 12% down. “There is some fairly aggressive price cutting,” added Pocklington.

He maintained there continued to be a shift to booking on the web, with the online sector proving more resilient during the economic downturn.

He added: “From an industry point of view, people will continue to shop around but the shift to online is continuing. I suspect we will continue to see volume growth in the online sector. It’s been very robust this year in terms of transactions. In the UK market our transaction growth was higher than other markets.”

Get the full story at travolution.co.uk