Google is eating the review space and 4 more stories
IS GOOGLE TAKING ON THE REVIEWS SPACE?
I sat down with Daniel E. Craig of Reknown, who is the international go-to guy on the reviews and reputation and what started with a fireside chat about Google's Reviews efforts turned into a proper article with research and all. There are little flags out there that Google is becoming serious about their reviews. On twitter one commenter even said they're prioritizing Google reviews over TripAdvisor.
BEAUTIFULLY DESIGNED AND INTERESTING DATA
Sullivan, a brand agency in NYC, did a beautiful piece on hotel marketing and how travelers interact with hotels and travel sites. With only 25 participants the data has limited value but it is still an interesting read. Some odd outliers in there, such as nobody went to the hotel website, still worth a read if for nothing else than enjoying the great layout.
I'LL SAY IT AGAIN, VOICE IS COMING
Barry Diller and Dara Khosrowshahi, no introductions needed, sat down to talk about voice for travel. While it all still seems rather casual talk currently, you can be pretty sure they're working hard to be first movers in this space. We're going to see a major shift in search in the coming years and voice is poised come out the winner. What can hotels do? Start by ensuring your technology stack is future proof, i.e. has open APIs and if it doesn't I'd recommend you switch providers. Wont make me many friends but that's the truth.
PRETTIFYING THE CONFUSION
The hotel technology landscape is as fragmented as can get. Probably more than most other industries. So the folks at SnapShot have been working on making it a little less ugly. The Hotel Distribution Tech part of it at least is somewhat codified and version 2 of the Hotel Distribution Chart is looking quite good. I recommend most hoteliers to print it out and post it.
THE FUTURE IS WAITING, LITERALLY.
Hotel technology is slow because of legacy technology. That is arguably also the reason hotels and hotel chains lost the online and distribution space to OTAs, too old technology (and a lot of that tech is still around). I know because I talk to those new hotel technology startups, there's a lot of awesome tech waiting... waiting to be integrated with your legacy systems. To avoid being left behind at the next big technology shift, demand change. Demand integrations.