Cleanliness, Quiet and Customer Service Top Three Issues for Travelers
80 Percent of Travelers Concerned about Bedbugs

TripAdvisor, the world’s largest travel community, today announced the results of its hotel survey of more than 2,200 travelers worldwide. Ninety-two percent of respondents said they are planning to stay at a hotel or B&B in the next 12 months. Nineteen percent will stay at a hotel or B&B more than 10 times in the coming year, and 45 percent will stay between 2-4 times in the next 12 months.

The Good

When asked what makes a hotel great, 30 percent of respondents said location is the most important factor, while 29 percent cited comfortable beds, and 24 percent said hotel staff/great service. When asked what makes a hotel bed comfortable, 64 percent said it’s the mattress, 11 percent noted the linens, and another 11 percent said it’s the pillows.

The Bad

When asked what ruins a hotel stay, 54 percent said unclean rooms, 14 percent cited noisy hotel guests and 11 percent pointed to poor hotel staff/service.

The Ugly

Sixty-eight percent of travelers have experienced a dirty carpet at a hotel, 64 percent have dealt with non-working appliances, and 59 percent have waited as their room was not ready at check-in. Thirty-eight percent of travelers think the dirtiest part of a hotel is the carpet, 37 percent speculate it’s the bedspread, 11 percent believe it’s the television remote and another 11 percent think it’s the bathroom.

Bummed about Bedbugs

Eighty percent of travelers said they are concerned about bed bugs when visiting a hotel. Eight percent of travelers surveyed said they have experienced bed bugs at a hotel.

A Picture is Worth a Thousand Words?

Seventy-eight percent of travelers said hotels are often “as advertised,” 17 percent said they are rarely as advertised. Sixty-six percent of travelers said B&Bs are “as advertised,” 20 percent said they are rarely so.

Hotel Decision Making

Forty-two percent of travelers (46 percent of U.S. respondents) said they typically stay at luxury brand hotels, 31 percent usually stay at economy hotels and 21 percent said their norm is boutique hotels. Six percent most frequently stay at B&Bs.

Thirty-two percent of travelers (37 percent of U.S. respondents) said they are brand loyal when it comes to hotels. When asked what price range they target when searching for hotels, 19 percent said under $300, 27 percent chose less than $200, 28 percent said less than $150, and 16 percent chose less than $100 per night. Two percent said they search for hotels at more than $500 per night. When asked what type of hotel promotion offers the greatest incentive to book, 73 percent of travelers said it is a reduced room rate.

“Your hotel experience can make or break your vacation and we’ve found that travelers don’t ask for much. Cleanliness is the top travel requirement among TripAdvisor members and that doesn’t seem like too much to ask,” said Michele Perry, vice president of global communications for TripAdvisor.

Web site: http://www.tripadvisor.com/

As a hotel, one of the most difficult aspects of marketing is finding your target audience. A hotel can satisfy the needs of many different demographics, and simply marketing to the general public is not as effective as marketing to specific groups of people.

Your chances of success increase dramatically if your marketing is specific to a certain group or groups of people. This means that your marketing, and specifically your hotel’s website, needs to be as focused as possible to deliver the most potential guests to contact your hotel.

For example, if you design your website to please everyone in the market, most people will ignore it. Why? Trying to please everyone means you will probably please no one. It is impossible to speak to every demographic of a market. As a result, any effort to do so can result in a largely generic and therefore easily forgettable website.

Now, if you decide to gear your website specifically to families, then you will probably get a large quantity of families to check in to your hotel. This is because the marketing is speaking directly to the families. As a result, it highlights a hotel’s strong family-friendly amenities, like a kiddie pool, game room, and in-room video game system. Some of the market will ignore the website, but you will get a stronger response from the families, because you are appealing to their needs and desires.

But as a hotel, you do not want to limit yourself just to families for business. You want to attract as many different demographics as possible to fill your hotel. But how can it be done without coming across as generic and forgettable? This is why using local events to your advantage is a great way to target different demographics at different times. It allows you to shift gears regularly in your marketing and please everyone in the market, just at different times of the year.

Get the full story at htrends.com

This year US travel sales booked online will reach $105 billion, up 12% from 2007.

eMarketer forecasts that US online leisure and unmanaged business travel sales (including airline, hotel, rental car, vacation package, intercity rail and cruise) will reach $105 billion. Furthermore, from 2007 to 2012, sales will increase at an 11.6% average annual rate.

Even though online travel sales are growing, fewer travelers are booking their trips online.

“The fact that fewer travelers are booking online is not due to economic concerns—online travel bookers are an affluent demographic—it is caused by frustrations related to the planning and booking capabilities of online travel agencies,” says Jeff Grau, senior analyst at eMarketer and author of the new report, US Online Travel: Planning and Booking. “This, in turn, is spurring a renewed appreciation for the expertise and personalized services offered by traditional travel agents.”

Get the full story at eMarketer

The Washington Post has an interesting article on how companies benefit from blogging and how they engage customers online. The article includes examples of writing a blog by small businesses and multinational companies including Marriott blog.

Kathleen Matthews came up with the idea for chief executive Bill Marriott’s blog. He saw it as a good way to communicate. Moreover, Marriott has made more than $5 million in bookings from people who clicked through to the reservation page from Marriott’s blog.

“That’s the importance of public relations, of advertising, of everything we do,” Marriott said. “And this is just another channel.” Marriott also likes how the blog shows that he’s “a human just like everybody else.” He sometimes breaks from writing about corporate issues to post about the movies he sees on Saturdays with his wife.

Marriott has thousands of employees around the world, who make up about one-fifth of the blog’s readership and comment frequently. “It is the virtual substitute for Bill Marriott visiting every hotel,” Matthews said.

Get the full story at washingtonpost.com

Not long ago, the advent of online travel - allowing travelers to research and book their trips with a few clicks of a mouse - was thought to be a death knell for traditional travel agents. But faced with the increasing cost and unpredictability of travel today, vacationers seem to be returning to the fold.

Twenty-three percent of online leisure travelers in the United States say they would use a good offline agent if they could find one, according to Forrester Research. And spotting an opportunity, a handful of new websites with catchy names like Zicasso and Tripology have emerged in the last year, offering to act as free matchmaking services for vacationers in search of traditional agents.

On the sites, travelers fill out forms describing the type of trip they’re interested in (say, scuba diving in the Caribbean or a culinary vacation in Tuscany). The sites send those requests to agents who specialize in that region or type of trip. Travelers then receive e-mail alerts with up to three itinerary proposals from competing agents. Compete4yourseat.com, another matchmaking site, helps travelers connect with agents to find lower airfares. Travelers fill out a trip request form on the home page and once an agent bids on their requests, they can log in to view the deal.

Get the full story at boston.com

The most unique and wonderful element of Internet marketing is that results are almost totally measurable, something we could never achieve with media advertising. Sometimes, even a small change or addition can make a huge improvement in reservation production. The ability to quickly measure the impact of that change is priceless.

The true function of any kind of promotion is to produce incremental business. The Internet savvy manager isn’t satisfied with simply knowing how many people sees his/her ad (web site), it’s the number of reservation conversions that count, that’s measurable too.

Using the Internet during Difficult Times
Faced with these challenges, the Internet savvy manager turns to the Internet. Due to the sheer nature of the Internet and the ways, in which people use it, the Net has the ability to produce quick and lasting results.

The Internet-savvy manager knows that a properly designed web site is the foundation of any successful online sales effort. The big question is ‘what is a properly designed web site?’ There are those who believe that all one needs is a web site which demonstrates hotel facilities, amenities, and services, with plenty of photos. The fact is that this information alone does nothing to help make your site searchable. Before you commit to paying for a new site, make certain that the company knows why and how people select hotels on the Internet and what sales elements are necessary.

The Internet savvy hotel manager knows that the best place to start is to have someone analyze and evaluate the ‘workings’ of your hotel’s web site. This makes sense even if you have already decided to have a new site developed, this analysis will act as a guide or blueprint to avoid mistakes on the new site with the how’s and why’s to incorporate certain necessary elements.

Destination-Focused Marketing

The Internet savvy hotel manager understands that the selection of a hotel almost always comes after the decision to travel to a specific area. Knowing this, a savvy hotel manager decides to provide the ‘reasons’ to travel to where the hotel is located. This can be done in the form of destination-focused marketing and the listing of activities and attraction on the hotel’s site.

Travelers search the Internet for activities and places to visit, D/F marketing can help them to also find your hotel.

To get the full story visit htrends.com

The online travel market has grown in Germany by 24% but still only accounts for 15% of overall travel sales and EyeforTravel suggest the figures here indicate enormous room for expansion. The French online travel market is third largest in Europe and has been growing at a faster pace than Germany and the UK, though values are lower.

Variations in online penetration are reported between the individual European markets. The Nordic region (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway and Sweden) is arguable the most digitalised in Europe. The region boasts the highest proportion of online bookings, at 31% online penetration according to EyeforTravel data. Middle Europe (Netherlands, Belgium, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Austria and Republic of Ireland) hides some variety when it comes to travel buying behaviour. But all in all they are responsible for 10% of the total European online travel market, reflecting a 24% growth over 2006 and a substantial CAGR of 40% over the last 5 years. Southern Europe (Spain, Italy, Portugal and Greece) accounts for 13% of the European online travel market and Spain has the major share of that. Eastern Europe accounts for just 3% of the total European online market, generating EUR 1.5 billion in 2007. Internet and broadband penetration are very low in the Eastern European region, posing a structural barrier for immediate growth; however the online travel market is set to grow tremendously over the next few years in these markets. An interesting pattern has surfaced in EyeforTravel’s analysis of spend per online travel buyer, with Eastern European e-travellers spending one of the highest per capita values. It is suggested that luxury or higher end products may currently dominate the online market here through broadband connections being limited to more affluent households. The report suggests that as connectivity expands in the region more mainstream products are expected to take off. It is believed that the internet is definitely gaining more importance across Europe, as is travel, and hand in hand the online travel markets will continue to grow.

“There’s been so much more of a focus around the online channels recently and we’re seeing more and more suppliers across the entire European region really starting to adapt their businesses and take advantage of online sales platforms” states Amy Scarth, head of research at EyeforTravel. According to the EyeforTravel report, the online travel market is forecast to grow at a CAGR of 14% until 2011, as growth rates slow in more mature travel markets. Growth will be ruled by innovation and diversification and accelerated by the expanding travel markets both online and offline in Southern and Eastern nations. Growing exposure to online buying and subsequent trust is expected to develop steadily, as well as the amount of travel buyers in each market. Conditions for online travel buying are at their best in Nordic countries and the UK, where practical settings through the adoption of broadband and credits cards are complemented by cultural and supply side factors - notably trust in e-payment systems and an ever increasing number of online suppliers. However, EyeforTravel notes that the UK is expected to lose some market share in the overall European online travel market as other regions start to gain prominence.

“It is important to be aware that markets within Europe continue to perform so differently” emphasises Amy Scarth and “not only are online channels stronger in some markets but realising the variations of online performance between the different travel verticals in the various European markets is fundamental”. A regional analysis of the European travel markets has continued to reveal diverse patterns in terms of overall travel product expenditure as well as distribution. Air tickets account for the majority of sales in most markets apart from Germany, the UK and Middle European markets are the biggest spenders on airline tickets, whereas other countries spend more on other transport or accommodation for example. In terms of direct vs. indirect distribution, little change is expected by EyeforTravel over the review period. In the more mature markets, the major players have become known and are even starting to consolidate. In markets with strong intermediaries more sales will continue to go through the brand names. Whereas in Nordic countries with less established OTAs there is a stronger direct distribution pattern and suppliers will continue to sell most of their travel product direct. Eastern Europe is a case apart, as the market is still relatively open, and whether direct or indirect, the travel industry is called upon to build strong brands for the future and EyeforTravel highlight that OTAs are certainly starting to target this region as third wave target.

In Europe the top sectors for online revenue, airline and accommodation, have nearly diametrically opposed distribution patterns. The vast majority (72%) of air tickets are sold directly to the consumer and in the accommodation sector, the vast majority (70%) of online revenue is channelled through intermediaries. Regionally there are noted differences in penetration of intermediaries. Direct sales are responsible for the majority of online sales in all markets, however their relative share varies significantly.

Further information about the European online travel market can be found in EyeforTravel’s European Online Travel Report 2008 or visit eyefortravelresearch.com.

In today’s economy, one has to be careful about how to spend their money wisely, and this is especially true in the hotel industry. Hoteliers invest their money in marketing to bring in more guests, but in a tough economy, business slows down. So how is it possible for us to thrive, despite slow business?

The answer is: keep marketing, and don’t slow down. This does not mean simply market every way you know how, it means be careful in how you invest your money - what marketing methods work, and what don’t. It is more important than ever that we pay attention to our return on investment (ROI). So, stick to proven marketing methods that have a high ROI, and your worries will remain small.

Eighty-three percent of travel planning is booked online. This means that the internet has emerged as the premier distributor of hospitality. Since this is the case, it only makes sense that we work through the internet for the best possible ROI. Instead of cutting your marketing spending, look at the most effective ways to attract guests through internet-related means: online advertising and direct response initiatives as opposed to offline and brand-building methods. Plus, with web analytics tools, it is easier than ever for a hotel to track how their online marketing initiatives are performing.

Word of Mouth advertising is the best possible advertising. It is important that you monitor and measure your online reputation as determined by the websites like Facebook, YouTube, Flicker and other social sites along with travel chatter sites like TripAdvisor, IgoUgo, Hotel Chatter and many more. Once you have a monitoring and measuring method or tool, you need to implement a procedure to utilize this information to improve internal operations, build your Public Relations and integrate into your property marketing. Where possible you should interact with consumers with postings, networking and blogging. Granted your marketing spend during a slow economy has to be productive and it is difficult to determine your ROI from social media. But people do utilize these sites as part of their planning process for both business and leisure travel. You need to capitalize on good reviews and respond to offset bad review.

Get the full story at htrends.com

According to Hitwise’s latest travel report, 36.97% of all visits to the online ‘Travel’ industry went to the top 10 websites for the month of July, 2008. 46.04% went to the top 20 websites and 67.08% went to the top 100 websites.

The average visit duration for visits to the online ‘Travel’ industry was 9 minutes, 15 seconds for the month of July, 2008. This is a minimal decrease from last months average visit duration of 10 minutes, 2 seconds.

The monthly report provides Hitwise data on:

• Websites That Entered and Left the Top 100 for the past month based on visits
• Search Engine Traffic Trends to the ‘Travel - Agencies’ online industry
• Most popular industry search terms typed into a search engine that resulted in traffic to websites classified by Hitwise within the ‘Travel - Agencies’ industry.
• Fast Movers - indicates local websites which have witnessed substantial increases in rank in the ‘Travel - Agencies’ online industry.

Download the full report “Hitwise Monthly Category Report - Travel, July 2008” (PDF 212KB)

Ryanair Aug. 11 began implementing a policy under which thousands of customers could end up at the airport expecting to take flights for which their tickets are no longer valid.

Under a new policy announced last week, as of Aug. 11 Ryanair is rejecting the tickets of thousands of customers who bought them from screen-scraper fare-comparison Web sites that book the flight themselves, instead of directing the customer to Ryanair’s Web site to make the booking directly with the airline.

Ryanair’s action also could leave thousands of travelers without a legitimate ticket for a flight they thought they’d already booked, even weeks or months ago - and many of them may not find out until they show up at the airport.

That’s because Ryanair is notifying customers by sending a notice to the e-mail listed with the booking; for screen-scrapers making their own bookings usually list the e-mail address of the screen-scraper, not the customer, Ryanair spokesman Stephen McNamara said. In that case, it will be up to the screen-scraper to notify the customer, he said.

Get the full story at aviationweek.com