What is a Direct Booking really? and
IS DIRECT REALLY DIRECT?
There's a paradox on Direct Bookings, if the cost to get that revenue is the same or higher than the cost of an OTA (and believe me it often is) then is it really worth doing it direct? Yes there's the merchant-of-record thing and you have the email address. But that concept of "who owns the customer" is rather passé in my opinion. Ask your guest if you own them...
HOTEL MARKETING TECHNOLOGY GOOD AND BAD
I was lucky enough to be selected for an interview by Revinate recently about hotel marketing and the technology problems that hotels have. The super short version of the interview is, hotels are service companies that cater for guests. If technology gets in the way of that, hotels stay away from it. Currently integration issues are more trouble than they solve in most cases. We need to fix that.
GOOGLE STANDARDIZES AND NORMALIZES WEBDESIGN
Fake news or not, the new AMP standard (accelerated mobile pages) is going to change webdesign in the years to come. This is something hoteliers and hotel marketers need to take into consideration. Websites won't have their unique design anymore so the competition needs to be on the content.
OPTIMUM OCCUPANCY IS AROUND 75%?!
There's a weird concept in our industry, especially on higher end hotels. That the optimum occupancy for profitability is around 75%. While I get it, having been a hotelier, that means one conciously builds 25% more rooms... to keep them empty? It does make one think. That's some expensive investments.
GETTING READY FOR 2017
New advertising channels (Pinterest launched two), new distribution platforms (subscription based OTAs) and more. As we get closer to the end of the year - here are some technology pieces to include in your hotel marketing plan for 2017. If nothing else, try them.