Cultural Influences on Travel Behaviour

July 3rd, 2009

Spaniards and Italians are the most demanding touristsm while the Dutch and British, on the other hand, are more concerned about practical aspects and less about the details of their room.
Over 80% of European tourists think that a very important factor when booking a room is a shower or bath, and over 60% acknowledge that [...]

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Tags: Hotel Marketing · Internet Marketing · Travel Marketing

Travel Industry is Shrinking in the US

June 23rd, 2009

Inflation-adjusted spending on travel and tourism in the U.S. declined at an annual rate of 5.9% in the first quarter after falling 6.9% in the first quarter, the Commerce Department’s Bureau of Economic Analysis said.
Weak demand is depressing travel and tourism prices, the agency added. They fell 10.9% in the first quarter on top of [...]

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Tags: Hotel Marketing · Travel Marketing

Aggressive Price Cutting keeps Online Booking Volumes Robust

June 10th, 2009

The online hotel sector is proving more resilient than traditional channels in volume terms but not prices, acccording to hotels.com.
The Hotel Price Index, produced by hotels.com at the end of last year, showed global hotel prices were 12% down. “There is some fairly aggressive price cutting,” added Pocklington.
He maintained there continued to be a shift [...]

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Tags: Hotel Marketing · Internet Marketing · Travel Marketing

Major Changes in Travelers’ Search Behavior in Recent Years

June 9th, 2009

Travelers visit search engines such as Google, Yahoo or MSN first (34%) when considering vacation destination alternatives. The Web sites of specific countries or destination boards are visited next (23%), followed by online travel agencies such as Expedia and Travelocity (22%).
While the percentage of leisure travelers who report making reservations online has grown more than [...]

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Tags: Hotel Marketing · Internet Marketing · Travel Marketing

How To Deal With Negative Reviews Online

June 5th, 2009

The rise of websites that empower consumers to write reviews of our businesses is causing many business owners anxiety, or even outright rage. Of course we love it when people say great things about our business, but what about when they say bad things? Do we really have a reason to fear?
Just how significant are [...]

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Tags: Hotel Marketing · Social Media Marketing for Hotels

Microsoft Bing Travel Offers Good Search Tools

June 3rd, 2009

Bing Travel makes it much easier to find lower price flights and compare the results against many of the top travel sites like Expedia, CheapTickets, and PriceLine.
Bing.com has been launched recently with a number of useful tools. One of the things that we really enjoy about Microsoft Bing is the Travel tool.
Bing Travel makes it [...]

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Tags: Social Media Marketing for Hotels · Travel Marketing

Hawaii hotels offer unusual deals

May 28th, 2009

With tourism in the dumps, Hawaii hotels are offering unprecedented discounts, freebies and other incentives in hopes of drawing tourists to the islands and survive the economic slump.
With tourism in the dumps, Hawaii hotels are offering unprecedented discounts, freebies and other incentives in hopes of drawing tourists to the islands and survive the economic slump.
The [...]

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Tags: Travel Marketing

Online Travel Bookings Decreased For The First Time since 1998

May 18th, 2009

The recession is finally taking its toll on online travel, with a decline in revenues this year forecast by PhoCusWright, the travel industry research company.
PhoCusWright said the value of online leisure and unmanaged business travel bookings would drop 3% this year to $93 billion. The company said it was the first time since PhoCusWright began [...]

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Tags: Hotel Marketing · Internet Marketing · Travel Marketing

Only 51% of Online Bookers Complete their Tasks Due to Design Issues

May 12th, 2009

Only 51% of bookers were capable of completing their tasks. While some of the reasons underpinning this low rate might have been outside the purview of the web experience, significant numbers of bookers reported problems with site navigation, the booking flow, and insufficient hotel/room information, all of which fall squarely on the plate of interactive [...]

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Tags: Hotel Marketing · Internet Marketing · Travel Marketing