Dragonfly Media Curacao

Source: hotelmarketing.com

NEARLY every morning, over his second cup of coffee, Tom Brady, general manager at the Affinia Chicago, logs onto his computer and surfs over to TripAdvisor.com to see if there are any new postings about his hotel.

“It’s an obsession,” he said. If the review is positive he moves on. If it’s unfavorable — like the complaint posted in March from a guest who had received a $90 parking ticket because of a valet’s error — he’s on it immediately. In that case, he marched straight out to the valet to find out what had happened. After identifying the guest, he made sure that the company issued an apology and a reimbursement for the ticket.
“This is all over the world,” he said, describing his concern about any negative comment on TripAdvisor. “Everyone is looking at this. I’ve got to make sure it’s solved quickly, so God forbid someone else doesn’t have the same problem.” (more…)

Source: www.hotelmarketing.com

Despite improved customer-satisfaction ratings at several e-commerce companies, online travel sites still suffer from security , performance and customer perception woes that cause potential travelers to put down their mouse and pick up the phone to book trips.

Forrester Research found that in the light of recent survey data those who book travel continue to resist the Web as their main resource for making reservations. The research firm polled about 5,330 North American consumers in the last quarter of 2006 to determine exactly what prevents them from putting their faith in online travel sites. To start, the top-three most common reasons for those who book travel not to stay online to make reservations include concern over credit-card security, Web-site performance issues and limits on the actions they could take online. (more…)

For the people who do not know Tripadvisor: Tripadvisor is one of the largest travel communities on the web. On their website travellers can write reviews of destinations and hospitality businesses (mainly hotels). A positive review on Tripadvisor is the ultimate testimonial.

Tripadvisor now also gives hotels the opportunity to post the Tripadvisor reviews on their own website. The technology involved is a tiny bit of HTML-code which hotels can easily implement in their website. Through this code the latest reviews (positive and negative) are shown on the hotel’s website.

“TripAdvisor is the largest source of travel information anywhere, and our new distribution initiative sets out to make it the largest source of travel information everywhere,” said Christine Petersen, senior vice president of marketing for TripAdvisor. “Consumers today value and seek out the opinions of people like themselves who have already lived the experience they’re considering.”

We wonder which hotel on Curacao will be the first one to show its self-confidence and put these reviews on their website…

Source: HSMAI.org

NEEDHAM, Mass., TripAdvisor(R), the largest travel community in the world, now allows travelers to quickly and easily post their vacation videos. TripAdvisor also allows travel marketers to showcase their wares by uploading their videos. Thousands of TripAdvisor travelers already uploaded their videos and hundreds of thousands more viewed them, revealing a strong demand for ever more descriptive ways to tell a story or research a trip.

“If a picture is worth a thousand words, then a video must be worth a million. Video can convey so much emotion so quickly,” said Christine Petersen, senior vice president of marketing for TripAdvisor. “We’re thrilled to offer the elegance of the written word, the power of candid photos and now the punch of video, so that whatever the experience, our travelers and the hospitality industry alike can share their information most effectively.”
(more…)

The Hitwise monthly travel category report for January 2007 is in.

Hitwise monitors statistics and search engines to create specialized reports about certain on-line markets. This specific report is about the popularity of travel(-related) websites and specific search phrases people use to find travel websites.

You can download the report from hospitalitynet.org.

Source: NYTimes.com

WITH more hotels guaranteeing equal or better prices to travelers who book with them directly, online travel agency Web sites like Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity aren’t always the bargain bins they once were for hotel rates. In response, the agency sites are forced to concentrate on other ways to keep and attract customers.

It used to be that you would book through an online agency because of the savings,” which for one night “could have been upward of $30,” said Lorraine Sileo, an analyst at PhoCusWright, an online travel consulting and research company. The cheaper rates often came with stricter cancellation policies and requirements for full payment when booking. Travelers accepted those conditions because the savings were significant.

“That was yesteryear,” Ms. Sileo said. During the travel slump after the Sept. 11 attacks, hotels were eager to work with discount and travel agency sites to fill rooms. But now that the economy is stronger, the hotel companies have been working to cut out the middleman. (more…)

By Jonathan Barsky and Lenny Nash
Source: HSMAI.org

The Market Metrix Hospitality Index, which is based on 35,000 consumer interviews conducted each quarter, includes a variety of measures about the hotel-reservation experience, both online and offline. This data provides special insight into the growing popularity of Web site usage and the satisfaction with the online experience.

The growth of online booking as a percentage of overall reservations continues to grow dramatically. More people are booking online and less people are booking through central-reservations telephone numbers and offline travel agencies. For example, over the past three years, Best Western International has seen online bookings grow from between 10 percent to 15 percent of overall traffic to around 40 percent today. At Choice Hotels International, nearly 60 percent of reservations now come from online bookings.
(more…)

Source: HSMAI

More people are booking online than ever before — and hotel companies have been trying hard to get these customers to book through their websites. These efforts have paid off. The majority of persons who make hotel reservations online are now booking directly on the hotel or brand website rather than going through the big travel portals. This is quite an achievement for the hotel industry despite many new websites attempting to book or refer hotel reservations. Hotel companies are paying less money to travel portals and are establishing more relationships directly with their guests.

One big reason why more customers are using hotel sites to make their reservations is that hotel companies have significantly improved their websites. The quality of the experience with the website can influence customers’ decision making, ultimately reinforcing loyalty or losing customers for the brand.

In 2004 and 2005, hotel websites were outscored by Yahoo! Travel and Hotwire for satisfaction with the online reservation experience. But now, for the first time, hotel web sites scored higher in satisfaction (providing a better reservations experience) than popular travel web sites. To make these gains, hotel sites have improved their navigation, design, usefulness of information, ease of booking and other critical components of the online experience.

The top performing hotel site for 2006 was Drury Inns. According to travelers, Drury’s website delivered the best user experience compared to all other hotel brand websites. Sleep Inns (Choice) and Courtyard by Marriott finished closely behind Drury. Hotel and brand websites have improved significantly and now, many of these sites outscore the best Internet travel portals in overall satisfaction with the online experience.