In a day when web access is clearly important no matter where you are, the ability for your customers to access your site at their convenience is vital. However, making your site user friendly on a computer is one thing – making sure your site is available from a mobile platform is another. Currently only around 5% of online businesses have a mobile compatible website.

Creating a mobile version of your site doesn’t have to be painful or expensive. In fact it’s typically just a smaller version of your existing website with a more simplistic design. Here are some points to consider:

Bad Viewing Experience-
Have you tried loading a website using your smart phone and it just doesn’t look right? Have you had to zoom in and out to find the information? Have you ever clicked on the wrong link because the font is small because it’s optimised for a desktop computer? What about load times, mobile phones traditionally don’t have the same Internet access speeds as a desktop?

A website created specifically for mobile usage loads faster, uses the correct size font and only displays necessary information for quick browsing. No need to zoom in and out or any chance of clicking the wrong link.

Read more at eTourism

Still don’t have a mobile compatible website? You’re not alone. In fact, only about 5% of online businesses have a mobile compatible website. The best way for you to stay ahead of the curve, would then be to have a mobile compatible website. So, remind me again why you don’t have one yet?

No doubt about it, not having a mobile compatible website heading in to 2012 is going to hinder your business growth capabilities, so here are five good reasons you should have a mobile site going into 2012.

Mobile Screen Size

Let’s be honest, the size of a smartphone screen is nowhere near the same as a tablet, laptop, or desktop screen. In fact, smartphone screens are downright small comparatively. If you direct mobile users to your main website, they are going to have to do a whole bunch of scrolling and zooming to make the site readable.

If consumers find your website looking like the picture on the left, it will take them much longer to find the information they are looking for, it can deter them from being a potential customer. Sites essentially should be a miniature version of your main website and designed with the mobile user in mind. Meaning, navigation needs to be easy and something that can be done with the touch of a finger. By having a mobile friendly website, consumers can find the information they are searching for faster and easier, given the minimal screen size.

Faster Load Time

Let’s be honest, consumers are all a little impatient. We all want to see things load fast. A mobile compatible site is going to load light-years before the desktop version. Think of the mobile version of your site as the slimmer version of your main website, it’s going to load much faster since you’ve gotten rid of the unnecessary items hogging up the space. Speed matters on a mobile site, just as much as it matters on a desktop site. I know I’ve run into this issue several times with my Blackberry; when it happens, I only wait around if it’s a necessary task to be completed, because I know then I’m going to get stuck scrolling around the page and waiting for it to load the zoomed screen.

Read the rest of the reasons at: tigglobal

It is being highlighted that planning a trip online is actually very cumbersome and time-consuming process: a lot of jumping around from site to site, a lot of forms to fill out, a lot of waiting for results, and a lot of useless information. Quite often it is mentioned that the experience is infuriating—from the pop-up windows to the endless pages of search results.

Assessing the current status of the online travel sector, Tom Mulders, Industry Manager Travel, Google, says, “When we look at the phases of the travel cycle – Dreaming, Researching, Booking, Experiencing and Sharing – we see potential for innovation, particularly in the early stages of Dreaming and Researching, and the final stage, Sharing.”

The booking phase is traditionally an area in which the travel sector has placed most of its emphasis. Most sites are travel inventory and booking sites, focusing on shopping processes aimed at maximising RoI.

“Consumers spend a lot of time online on the orientation process, and an interesting question is whether they find what they are looking for in the dreaming and researching stages. Do Travel websites provide a good consumer experience by showing inventory instead of providing inspiration?

Read More of this article at eyefortravel

Paid search such as Google AdWords and pay-per-click (PPC) is generally a tactical outlet for driving short-term bookings – - a direct response advertising tool that allows hoteliers to achieve strong potential revenue. Paid search links search guests to hotel website booking engines.

Paid search including AdWords is special, too, because of the value represented as a branding outlet, a public relations channel and its ability to lower distribution costs versus third parties.

“We have experienced a 20% increase in PPC year over year,” said Agnelo Fernandes, VP sales & marketing, Terranea Resort, Rancho Palos Verdes, California (terranea.com).

“Since implementing an aggressive search marketing strategy, overall website revenue is up 50% year over year,” said Steven V. Seghers, president of Hyperdisk Marketing in Irvine, California (hyperdisk.com), referring to one of his hotel clients in the San Francisco Bay Area. “Return on investment (R.O.I.) for paid search alone is 6-1 and 8-1, and when you add in the total spend generated from paid search it is up to 15-1.”

AdWords and PPC advertising may be used in myriad ways:

1. Special promotions to fill “need” or “opportunity” dates or periods, where empty rooms are projected.
2. “Fire sale” or “flash sale” campaigns.
3. As a “shield” for special discounts or value-adds from other packages and price points running concurrently on online travel agencies (OTAs); these special discounts and/or value-adds are available only to those visitors who have clicked on to that particular key word or phrase; thus allowing the hotel to retain rate integrity.

Read More at HSMAI

The report, Communications Market Report: UK, also looked at the popularity of applications, or ‘apps’, among smartphone users and found that just under half (47 percent) of adult smartphone users have downloaded an app – with many people taking advantage of the availability of free apps. Teenage smartphone owners are more likely to have paid for an app download (38 percent) than adult owners, amongst whom just a quarter (25 percent) had paid for an app.

key findings:

Smartphone users have a much stronger relationship with their phone than regular mobile users. When asked how addicted they are to their mobiles phones, 37 percent of adult smartphone users admitted high levels of ‘addiction’ to their phone, with this rising to 60 percent of teen smartphone users.

Smartphone users get more use from their phone than regular mobile phone users. 81 percent of smartphone owners make and receive calls on their mobile everyday compared to 53 percent of regular mobile phone users, while 79 percent claim to send and receive SMS texts every day, compared to 50 percent of regular mobile phone users – this is driven by a higher proportion of smartphone users being on a contract.

Read more at eyefortravel

Travelers will love the simplicity and speed with which you can select, compare and book hotels without ever having to leave the page, except for the final booking. No ads or affiliate links that get in your way – just relevant hotels. Google Hotel Finder is so simple, it’s brilliant.

For the hotel industry, Google Hotel Finder has the potential to become a new level playing field where hotels can compete with online travel agents and have an equal chance to succeed in securing the final booking. A powerful catalyst for driving direct bookings via your hotel website.

Hotel destination search how it was meant to be

Prior to Google Places, if you searched for “hotels in New York” on Google, your search result page included not a single link to a hotel website, just links to SEO/AdWords savvy online travel agents and their affiliates.

With the introduction of the Google Places/Maps combo last year, that picture has changed only slightly, in that you now get for the same search first ten SEO/AdWords savvy hotels listed in New York, followed by the same old mix of Expedia/TripAdvisor/Booking.com mix of search results.

Enter Google Hotel Finder, type in the city and your travel dates, and all you get is a list of hotels, nothing but highly relevant hotels.

The initial list features hotels with an image, the hotel name and a short description, the hotel’s star and user rating, as well as a price per night, and how that price compares to its historical average (read: am I getting a deal or not).

Each hotel listing can be easily expanded with one click, giving you a slick overview of the hotel with more and enlarged images (slide show), the latest reviews, the full hotel address including phone number, and yes, a direct link to the hotel’s own website.

As you flip through the hotel listings, you can add the hotels you like to a handy shortlist to keep track of the ones you would like to compare and review later.

And once you’re ready to book, each hotel listing includes a blue “Book” button, which in Kayak-fashion presents you with a list of online travel agents the hotel can be booked and at what price, as well as yet another direct link to the hotel’s own website.

A simple navigation menu on the left side along the hotel list allows you to refine your hotel search by:

- Location: Simply draw your location on a map to only view hotels in your selected area;
- Dates: Enter your arrival and departure dates to only see hotels with availability during that period;
- Price: Define your price per night range, or use the deal finder to list only hotels that are offering deals that anywhere from 10% to 50% less than the hotels historical average rate;
- Hotel class & User rating: Select your preferred hotel class from one to five stars, and if you would like to see only hotels that have reviews.

Everything you need – and not more – to select your perfect hotel. Clearly, travelers will love Google’s Hotel Finder.

Read more of this story at HotelMarketing.Com

And with the emergence of social media as a major marketing platform, hotels will need to refocus their energies on this exciting new medium—a medium dictated by ‘young, forward’ thinking.

Tackling this shift change in outlook won’t be easy for hoteliers. It represents radical, even somewhat zany ideas and requests. For instance, in the past, hotels have always left the lights on for their guests at all times. There’s even a major hotel chain that uses that concept as its tagline. But this isn’t always what this younger generation desires: in a greener, more environmentally conscious atmosphere, these younger travelers would actually rather you left it dark. These young’uns would rather relish the dark, save the Earth and turn the light on themselves than have you waste all those kilowatts each and every night.

This fact is a small taste of the larger shift change that hoteliers face worldwide. Changing not only the way they market their business, but their very business model to boot.

There are a host of other issues and changes the younger traveler brings to redefining the luxury hotel experience. Technology is, quite obviously, at the forefront. And not just cutting edge technology but mobile cutting edge technology. Booking, watching virtual tours, finding rates (and discounts) from not only the host hotel but competitors, viewing room layouts, checking in to checking out all from their handheld electronic device.

Read more at Jet Luxury Resorts

Forty-eight percent of consumers combine social media and search engines in their buying process, according to data released by Social Media Today. This leads to an acceleration and amplification of information on the Internet, where shoppers research and obtain information very quickly and then broadcast their findings to connections on social media sites.

Those findings, in turn, impact the booking behavior of other consumers. In an Econsultancy survey cited by Buckhiester, 90% of online shoppers said they trust recommendations from people they know, while 70% trust opinions of unknown users.

Revenue managers can leverage this influence to drive business and increased bookings. Buckhiester outlined seven key components of a strong social-media program:

1. Product alignment

Buckhiester stressed the importance of knowing value scores on websites such as TripAdvisor. Most hoteliers are familiar with where they stand in the rankings, but value scores provide pricing signals. If a hotel has a higher value than its competitors, it’s revenue manager should be pushing higher prices.

Consumers are getting hyper-details about hotel guestrooms before they even check into hotels. Some hotel sites even allow guests to see the view from each room online. When the consumer has hyper-details such as these, revenue managers will have to watch RevPAR by room type much more closely.

2. Competitive benchmarking

“Social media is changing the whole way we approach benchmarking,” Buckhiester said. Websites such as Chatter Guard and Market Metrix help revenue managers manage and understand what is being said about their properties online. The new metrics to track and evaluate are reviews on online travel websites, videos, Facebook fans, Twitter, photo shares, bookmarks and blog entries. Buckhiester also suggested cross-comparing social-media metrics to market share performance.

3. Strategic pricing

Consumers are intrigued by new retail concepts that offer members-only deals, flash sales, group buying and auctions. The key is to focus on value instead of price. There are websites that show consumers exactly what they are getting for the price they are paying. Value seekers will pay more if they are getting more and then move on to social-media networks to spread the word about the great value.

If revenue managers decide to start a social-media initiative involving pricing, it is imperative they have sufficient staff to handle questions as they start coming in.

Read more of this article HotelNewsNow

5 Tips for a strong hotel facebook page

• Designing the page differentiates from competition: For obvious reasons the most visible characteristic of a hotel facebook page is the logo, as the hotel page design is facebook’s. Display your logo in an unexpected way. Provide a strong hotel overview page that’s both informational and fun. When creating your new hotel facebook page ensure that it reflects the colors, textures and the experiences that the property offers but also matches with facebook’s style.
• Tagging photos spreads the word: Studies indicate that images are the second factor right behind pricing in terms of influencing the choice of property to stay in. With today’s technology, taking a good picture is easier than ever. Facebook is great at sharing pictures and engaging users – every day 100 million photos are tagged on facebook. So, ask your guests if you can take pictures with them, then tag them on facebook. Your property will be seen by many of their friends.
• “The Hotel” menu item engage users: Having an easy-to-use and user-friendly navigation on your hotel facebook page is a decisive factor for how engaged your visitors are going to be. Bad navigation and usability can lead to visitors abandoning your facebook page. Keep it simple. Don’t try to overwhelm people with lots of options: 3 or 4 menu items are enough: hotel overview, rooms, special offers and a map are probably enough.

Read more of this article at GUESTCENTRIC

If F-commerce is part of your Facebook business and content strategy, you need to consider that people share, read, and generally engage more with any type of content when it’s surfaced through people they know and trust. Isolated shopping carts on Facebook or using Facebook to drive consumers to an online non-social e-commerce or booking engine likely won’t drive adoption and I would venture to say are not social commerce.

While doing research in the travel sector for a HEDNA conference in Prague I am speaking at this week, I looked at booking engines and e-commerce solutions of some of the major hotels, airlines, destinations, and cruises. Travel is perhaps as social a category as you can get; we talk about travel with friends before we go, we share experiences while on the journey, and we tell our stories after we get back. These travel experiences are being shared on multiple platforms with our friends through photos, wall posts, tweets, updates, check-ins, blogs, and reviews.

The examples below are from the travel industry, but the overall principles for social commerce applies to all businesses considering F-commerce. Leveraging social plug-ins such as “like,” share, send, comment, photo sharing, and status updates should be part of the social commerce experience. Providing consumers with value-adds, special offers, product sampling, engaging experiences, loyalty rewards, stories, etc. should also be part of the experience.

Travel Industry “Booking Graphics” Inside Facebook

Companies such as Virgin Trains U.K., Four Points Sheraton, Air France, and Marriott International have added “booking graphics” on their Facebook pages with minimal functionality. These “booking graphics” allow the Facebook consumer to fill in their dates of travel, but the application drives the Facebook user outside Facebook to the traditional online non-social booking engine. These examples are not really social; they do not leverage social behaviors nor do they leverage the user’s social curve.

Read more of this article at clickz