Our ‘Top 30 Irish Hotels on Facebook’ list this week has seen 5 hotels move up the table and 1 new entry.

Has your hotel made the list?

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Travelodge budget hotel chain is beating the recession in Ireland by using YouTube to drive brand recognition and room sales. The hotel sector has taken a big hit during the recession due to a reduction in tourism and business travel. This has been further compounded by reduced corporate travel budgets, global health scares and increased airline security. Despite these factors Travelodge has managed to increase room sales online.

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Glenn Strachan may have been driving from his hometown of Washington, D.C., to New York, but his mind was on a future trip to Michigan to visit his daughter.

So while in the car, the 53-year-old information technology consultant compared airfares on Kayak, booked a flight on AirTran Airways, made a rental car reservation, studied hotel reviews on TripAdvisor and picked a place to stay — all through his iPhone.

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With the increase in product personalisation what were once products are now services, especially in the travel, tourism and hospitality industry.

This has implications on how review websites operate. If the customer really did ask for salt on their chips they can’t complain about the taste.

If the customer really did only give 30 minutes to cross from one side of the airport to another they can’t complain about missing their connection.

Of course a travel supplier must make an effort to stop a customer buying a combination that really isn’t practical – but ultimately the customer may choose not to take that advice and the supplier is left in a very difficult position of turning away business or accepting a booking that might result in the customer having a poor experience.

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Transactional Emails in the Hospitality Industry usually come in the form of a booking confirmation or a post or pre stay email. An interesting report produced by ‘Experian’ analyzed more than 1,800 transactional emails and found that more than 100% of the time these emails are opened by the recipient. You won’t find anywhere near that kind of open rate on bulk emails.

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Everyone knows that Google’s Adwords service, and other key-word based advertising, works something like an auction. But in fact, it’s not that simple. How can you increase your traffic volume, at no risk to your budget? Volume and targeting are two instruments that should work in tandem. They help you fine-tune your campaign, to constantly increase profits.

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By integrating certain important elements into your website content, directory submission articles, blog posts and social media content, you can make them easy for search engines to find and improve your overall ranking.

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Booking travel tickets and holidays is mostly done online by people all over the world; however, it’s how they search for their tickets and holidays which highlight differences. By understanding local search trends, travel operators have a much higher chance of breaking into the market they are targeting.

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We fuss over subject lines, offers, calls to action and targeting, but sometimes a lack of response is simply a matter of timing. When should you send out your newsletters or promotions? And on what day and at what time? This is a question we should all ask ourselves before we send out a new email marketing campaign……

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