Dragonfly Media Curacao

The Adrian Awards Gala was held yesterday evening. Regretfully we could not go, but Steven Damiana of CHATA and HSMAI Curacao could and he received the award, partly, on behalf of us. Below is the press release CHATA gave out and if you want to get an impression of the evening then you can watch this video on YouTube.

On behalf of the HSMAI Curaçao Chapter and strategic partner Dragonfly Media, Steven Damiana received a Silver Adrian Award for website design at the prestigious 18th annual Adrian Awards Gala of the Hotel Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI) thanks to the support of American Airlines at the New York Marriott Marquis. (more…)

The news was officially announced today that one of our websites, the one for HSMAI Curacao, has won a silver certificate which we can collect at the Adrian Awards gala in New York on January 28. The website won the award in the category web marketing.

Dragonfly Media is just over a year old and this is the first award we win with this company. For it to be such a prestigious award within our target niche is extra reason for us to be proud. HSMAI Curacao released a press statement today: (more…)

The Caribbean Hotel Association (CHA) three-day Caribbean Small Hotels Retreat on Barbados started yesterday. During this retreat owners and marketers of small hotels throughout the Caribbean will talk about subjects relevant to their business.

Yesterday, Billy Jonckheer (long-time marketer from Curacao) spoke about how hotels with a small budget for marketing should spend their dollars. His two most important points were that they should spend more money on their websites (and marketing those) and that they should make sure that they target their niche market. You can read the full article on nationnews.com

Yesterday’s internet marketing presentation for the HSMAI Curacao Chapter was, in our book, a success! People were hanging from the rafters and were pushing for attention (well, that’s actually not true - no rafters in the room ;) - but the room was packed to the brim).

Bo started off the presentation with an introduction to what DGF is and what we do. She talked about some of our design clients and introduced little old me. The idea of the presentation was to give people an idea of what internet marketing is and to talk about some of the basic concepts in SEO. I talked way too long and finished just in time, but it looked like people remained interested throughout the presentation (which was very cool). (more…)

There are several companies and organisations on Curacao that represent Curacao abroad to bring in more tourism. The two most important ones in this respect are the Curacao Tourism Board (CTB) and the Curacao Hospitality And Tourism Association (CHATA).

Today these two organisations joined hands and presented the facts and figures for 2006 and moderated a discussion about the marketing plan 2008. Bo went to this meeting in the morning and I joined the afternoon session.

We are no off-line marketing guru so we can’t say very much about the what, where and when of promoting a Caribbean destination in the US, but we do know about the internet-side of this discussion. There are two things about the on-line marketing efforts which were discussed that piqued my interest. (more…)

Tourism is booming on Curacao and the hotel chains know it. This morning the Curacao Tourist Board and CHATA (Curacao Hospitality And Tourism Association) presented the new Room Inventory Forecast to CHATA’s members.

This forecast shows the projects that are currently under construction or under development. It shows that from now until 2010 a total of almost 3,000 extra rooms will be available for tourists. You can see all the numbers at CTB’s corporate website. This is a good time to do business on Curacao!

One of the industries that has changed the most due to the power of the internet is the travel industry. In the ‘good old days’ when you wanted to travel somewhere you would go to a travel agent, load up on brochures and book your vacation with a travel agent. Your opinion of a destination was based on those brochures and the recommendations of travel agents and your friends’ stories. If nobody in your circle of friends had ever been to Thailand and your travel agent didn’t actively tout it, chances were that you would never go there. Some adventurous souls would grab a Lonely Planet and chase Phileas Fogg around the world, but the majority of people just spent their holidays on the well-beaten path.

The internet has changed all that. Roughly 80% of travelers research and book their holidays online and this is expected to become 90% before this decade ends. If you are in the hospitality business you need to be where your guests will find you and the internet (read: Web 2.0) is a different ballgame than the travel agents. In the days of the travel agents and the brochures potential guests could only listen to what you said, but now you need to listen to them and join the conversation or suffer the consequences.  (more…)

We received a press release today about the launch of a brand new travel website on boo.com. After reading the press release and doing some preliminary research we found it difficult to make up our mind about this website.

For the people that missed the dot-com bubble: boo.com was one of the great dot-com fiascos (it was rated number 6 in the list op top 10 dot-com flops over at cnet). The fashion website it used to host during the end of the last century was too heavy, not in touch with its audience and grossly missmanaged. But, the past is the past and Boo is as good a name for a travel website as it is for a fashion store.

The only independent review we managed to find on-line about the new Boo was over at dottourism.com, but they did not give an opinion about the website. The other websites we found with information about Boo were the ones that just rehash the press release.

As I said; it was difficult to make up our mind about this new website. So, I will just list the pros and cons that we see and I hope I will have my mind made up when I’m at the end of this post. (more…)

Source: Hotelmarketing.com

In today’s dynamic market where occupancy rates and ADRs depend on how well hoteliers utilize Internet marketing, it is no longer sufficient to measure basic website traffic stats like visitors, page views, or campaign stats like banner click-through rates and PPC clicks.

By Max Starkov and Jason Price

Marketing is all about results. Unlike offline marketing, we can track and analyze ROIs from our online marketing campaign results quickly and accurately over the Internet. There is no medium that allows tracking like the Internet does, yet in hospitality, we didn’t adopt these tracking technologies as soon as they were available. Instead we relied on cheap or free analytical tools to provide us with the information that management uses to make decisions. As a result, we are often basing important marketing decisions on inferior information.

We consistently receive numerous questions from hoteliers concerning how to most efficiently track and measure the ROI of online marketing efforts down to the reservation process. What metrics should hoteliers measure and pay attention to? What are the best practices in measuring ROI from the hotel’s marketing efforts? Or ROI from the hotel website? What are the best analytical tools out there? (more…)

When building a hotel website our goal is to deliver a product that will convert a high percentage of visitors into online revenues The communication with our client is extremely important, and both parties (Client and Dragonfly) need to have a clear view of the process of design and development.

Keith Paulin is a leading online marketeer in the hotel industry and wrote the following article about ‘Hotel Website Design’ on hsmai.org that we like to share with you:

Hotel website design is one of the most subjective issues that hotel marketeers face. Here are some guidelines for briefing your hotel website designer…

So, you have finally read one too many articles about how 30.0% plus of your revenues should be arriving via the internet and that a further 30.0% are influenced by what they discover online about your hotel from your website…and the end of month reports show you are way short of those numbers.

You have taken an objective look at your website and you have decided its time to act…you need a new website for your hotel. You want to get it right this time but where do you start? (more…)