Dragonfly Media Curacao

Source: www.hsmai.org

With an “airline passengers’ bill of rights” now in the news, it is the perfect time to consider your rights as a website owner. Airline passengers are not the only consumers being taken for a ride! Hotel owners need to be aware of certain hazards and pitfalls associated with some internet marketing vendors. Don’t get trapped in a plane, or a website contract, unless you know exactly what you can expect in any eventuality!

When you enter into a relationship with an internet marking firm, you need to know what kind of long-term partner they will be. Often, the true colors of an internet marketing company are revealed when you decide not to work with them anymore. This is something you have to prepare for before it happens! Insist upon a “Website Owners’ Bill of Rights” to ensure that you are working with an internet marketing company that is ethical and can provide all the services you need…and none of the headaches you don’t need.

ALWAYS own your domain. Not having ownership of your domain is one of the most common and painful issues that arises with internet marketing vendors in the hotel industry. Vendors often buy domains for hotels in their name instead of using the property or owner’s name. This is fine until you wish to stop working with them. Then you are at their mercy: if they are willing to sell you the domain, they can name their price.

Once you’ve paid for the website, YOU own it. Once you pay for your website, it is yours, whether or not you stay with the vendor that created it. You also have the right to take over your own website without damage being inflicted. Some internet marketing companies try to remove content, stock photography and other elements that you paid for in full. In other cases, hotel websites have been badly slashed: coding and optimization deleted, style sheets removed, interior page links altered, etc. Ask the vendor about their “ownership” and transfer policies before you hire them to design your website.

As of last monday we are no longer located in the Hoogstraat. As this was only a temporary office we had to move some time. We now have a new office at the Jupiterstraat #8 (the old Arthur Andersen building).

The idea is that we are going to stay here for a long time and when we, and the building, are fully up and running we will organize a bash for our friends and clients.

Update 3/18: We also have a new telephone number. You can now reach us on +(5999) 465 4520.

During most of the previous the client won’t have to do anything. It only becomes interesting for the client when the nameservers are changed and the change is being propagated through the internet.

The way most people set up their Outlook, Thunderbird or similar mail client is to enter names for the POP- and SMTP-server. These will be names like pop.yourdomain.com and smtp.yourdomain.com. During the propagation there will be a moment during which pop.yourdomain.com will point to, for instance, 1.1.1.1 and the next moment it will point to 2.2.2.2. After the change you will not be able to receive the e-mails from 1.1.1.1 because the name does not point there anymore.
(more…)

MSN adCenter has released a cool keyword forecasting tool.

Type in one or more keywords and you’ll get a breakdown as to the number of searches over the past year, and the forecasted number of searches for the next few months. It’s a great way to do more accurate projections on your traffic and sales volume for the near future.

As well, MSN will provide you with data about the demographics of the people who are searching for that particular keyword, namely age and gender.

No MSN adCenter account is required to use the tool.

Related Link: adlab.msn.com/ForecastV2/KeywordTrendsWeb.aspx

On February 28 we attended a really motivating seminar, organized by CHATA and HSMAI Curacao.
Speaker was John Fareed of Fareed and Zappala Marketing Partners.

John is one of those rare individuals whose flashes of insight and imagination are changing the way hoteliers see the world of marketing, speaking on the topic at industry events in Brazil, France, Germany, Ireland, Italy, Egypt, Mexico, and across the US, Canada and the Caribbean. He has appeared as an industry expert on national television programs including CNN and Fox News Network, in publications such as USA Today, New York Times, and Washington Post, and has had articles published in Hotel & Motel Management, Hotels, HSMAI’s Marketing Review, Meeting Professional, and on Hotel Interactive.

Fareed currently serves on the Board of Directors for the HSMAI Foundation, and is a member of the American Advertising Federation, American Hotel & Lodging Association, Association of Travel Marketing Executives, Caribbean Hotel Association, and the International Society of Hospitality Consultants. Fareed recently completed DIT’s Masters of Science in Hospitality Management Program in Dublin, Ireland and expects to graduate with honors in November.

To find out more about John Fareed, please have a look at www.fareedandzappala.com