If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to our RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Insiders are hotly anticipating the acquisition of Sidestep.com by Kayak.com that was announced in December 2007. When the two giants in Travel Search become one, what will it mean?

Greg Saks of Compete.com notes that the two sites don’t have much overlap in usage - only 10-20% - making this one of the biggest developments of the year in Travel Search. Both sites rely on other travel sites for leads and now the two will no longer have to compete against each other for that traffic.

Sidestep’s acquisition of TravelPost.com has helped it establish itself as a travel content site, which is a weak area for Kayak. Kayak’s technology, in turn, will help SideStep compete better. Between them, they attract about 5 million US visitors to their websites each month. See Greg’s analysis of their merger here.

We’ve written before about trend lodging and the benefits available to those who cash in on the popularity of things like “Girlfriend Getaways” and “Mancations.” Today I was reading a USA Today article and ran across the newest “buzzword” - “Staycations!”

Defined as a trip taken closer to home but for long 3 or 4 day weekends versus spending weeks away from the house, a Staycation is much easier to accommodate within your “deals and specials” structure as you dont necessarily need to offer something “extra” - just package 3 or 4 days together at a great price and add the special to your website.

Many of our clients report a large number of repeat visitors in December.  People return to their home towns to visit family or they return to a favorite vacation spot.  Oftentimes, they’ve stayed with you for years. These are the IDEAL guests to ask to post a review!  Encourage them to post comments when they have returned home.  Give them an incentive, an extra cookie at bedtime with a note.  Or better yet, you can send them a Thank You email in which you provide a link to a review site. 

These are friendly reviewers who know and trust your company.

Sometimes all you have to do is ask.

As you may have heard, Tripadvisor has rolled out a new design and user interface.  The basics are still there - it’s still probably the most popular travel-related website on the web - but the homepage is less cluttered now.  They intend to show the site as having clearer navigation and a more evident “path” through the site.  An email I received from Tripadvisor today contained this statement:

Check out the new site and see how we’re making it easier for you to plan the perfect trip!

I decided to take their advice and go check it out.

•    Click on the thumbnail to visit the website. 

• I kind of like the subdued colors -but they’re almost too subdued.  It’s kind of boring to be honest. 

• They’re still monetizing the site with TONS of sponsored ads.  This is a pet peeve of mine.  They wont let us BUY a link on the site from property listings to a clients’ website.  They prefer all bookings to go through Hotels.com and their other affiliates (they’re owned by Expedia.)  This doesn’t stop them from placing annoying Google ads everywhere.  On rare occasions I have been able to get my clients’ Google ads to show on the Tripadvisor site but not all the time - and there are no instructions anywhere that say - “Take these steps and your ads will show on Tripadvisor.”  Tripadvisor will not tell you how this is accomplished, Google will not tell you how - you just better be pretty lucky.  At the very least I think they should let us run a site targeted campaign on Tripadvisor - it can’t be that hard for them to put together on their end.

A side thought to ponder:

I wonder what the clickthrough and conversion rate would be on some good contextual linking vs. the AdSense model.  Yes there is the paid link debate, but if you’re buying a human-edited DIRECTORY listing that’s not even considered - think Yahoo Directory or a bed and breakfast directory like PillowsandPancakes.com.

• They switched the “Other” category to “Specialty Lodging.”  Big deal - you still can’t submit anything other than apartment and condo complexes here.  What about vacation rental homes - what about the huge VRMs that can put hundreds or thousands of pages of content on Tripadvisor?  C’mon people - vacation rentals are the wave of the future - let your USERS review vacation rental companies here. 

So I’ve ranted a bit about my annoyances with Tripadvisor - and even with those annoyances they can really be a valuable resource.  In the end, it is their site and they can do with it as they please - but in my opinion, embracing a large segment of the tourism population (I’m talking VRM’s) would go a long way towards building good karma in the industry. 

As a strong advocate of online reputation management, I do suggest having a listing if you can, monitoring it diligently, and being involved in the Tripadvisor forum that is established for your region/city or state.  You can gain a good authoritative voice.

I think Vacation Rental Managers are always going to have trouble (read: it’s impossible) getting listed on Tripadvisor - but don’t loose hope - I heard today about some new and exciting stuff coming very soon from the folks over at FlipKey that will make the Tripadvisor review model look a bit stale - that’s all I can say right now - but stay tuned to the Blizz Blog for more on that in Januray 2008.

We have written many articles in the past about how press releases can have a big impact on your marketing efforts, including how they can be used for SEO purposes (check out Mary Bowling’s article: 5 Ways to Use Online Press Releases for SEO). Don’t believe us? Here is some proof:

Vacations Inc., a Winter Park CO Lodging provider, writes almost monthly press releases about their business, local area events, and other pertinent Winter Park news. After submitting these to online resources (PRWeb for example), they archive them as new pages on their website, so that guests can find a variety of information about the area. Not only does this provide beneficial information to site visitors, it also provides valuable content on their website that is well optimized and picked up by search engines. In addition to these pages on the website ranking organically, their press releases on news sites also tend to rank well organically.
Take a look at the “shelf space” that these press releases take up in Google’s top 10 results for various keyword phrases:

1st & 5th “USCSA National Championships Lodging”

Click Image to See Live Query

1st “holiday blizzard Colorado”

Click Image to See Live Query

5th, 6th, 7th & 10th “Spring Splash Winter Park”

Click Image to See Live Query

9th “Europe Ski Conditions”

Click Image to See Live Query

If you have news, take advantage of it and use it to your benefit online. Submit it to online press release distribution sites and post news on your own website. Don’t let good news go to waste! If you have questions about how to do this, please contact your Blizzard Project Manager or our Business Development Department to get more information.

Email Marketing lends a new and innovative portal to online advertising and lets you be the promoter. Collect emails during check-in, during check-out, while making reservations or browsing your website. Keep in mind, prospective and past clients are scouring the specials, deals and packages your company is promoting; looking for fun ideas for their next getaway and delivering that information to them monthly is a great way to retain that interest.

Keeping a guest up-to-date with the ongoing happenings at your Bed and Breakfast, Hotel or Vacation Rental agency is a great way to ensure that they will be a continued support for your business.

Plan a monthly newsletter blast that highlights area events, website specials or seasonal activities in your area. Not only will a newsletter keep past guests up-to-date but it will also keep you fresh in their mind. So the next time a visitor is ready to plan a romantic or family vacation they know who to call.

Email Marketing is a fast and easy way to advertise to your already targeted traffic. Consider segmenting your email marketing list and sending variations on a blast based on those segments. Returning visitors get a 5% discount in the off season – have them refer-a-friend for a 10% discount on their next meeting.

Make sure you have a sign up form at the front desk and on your website. You’ll have new and repeat guests autographing the sign-up form in no time, while also increasing the chances of a reservation conversion.

Email Marketing is a key factor in getting repeat guests to book online. Make it easy to sign-up, opt-out, and book online with easy to find links.

The annual HEDNA (Hotel Electronic Distribution Network Association) conference was held last week in Phoenix, Arizona.  Attendees found that one of the top challenges was information overload.

Henry Harteveldt, VP and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research gave the Kickoff keynote and was pretty harsh on the industry as a whole.  SOme statistics that he threw out were:

• 43 per cent of those surveyed by Forrester believe travel Websites shopping experiences have become less useful
• 15 per cent feel the Internet doesn’t help them save money
• 11 per cent of US online leisure hotel guests say it’s more difficult to shop for travel online now than when they started.
• 47 per cent of travelers are happy to fill out user profile forms, BUT more than half of those travelers say they’re not happy with the benefits received.
• 21 per cent feel they can find the best travel information using offline resources

So what can the travel industry do to bring back the joy of online booking?  Think Relevancy and Usability. 

Harteveldt advises that “we need to make online booking easier, be clear instead of confusing, reflect customer preferences, do a better job providing content and make it easier for guests to reach us” and vice versa. “We need to meet travelers on their terms, with tools that matter, to (re-)engage them,” Harteveldt says.