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dimanche 3 avril 2011
Article for Wednesday, 6th of April: LivingSocial works to expand hotel-deals offerings
In the crowded space of daily deals, there are two big players: LivingSocial and Groupon. Over the past few months, Groupon has received the lion’s share of attention due to their growth, investment and valuation. Still, since recently, LivingSocial is leading Groupon in monthly unique visitors and the site should attract even more customers thanks to the acquisition of the social adventure company, Urban Escapes.
The article "LivingSocial works to expand hotel-deals" explains what this new offering consist in and how it can help LivingSocial differentiating from its competitors, not only Groupon but also travel deal sites like SniqueAway, Rue La La, Jetsetter, Ideeli etc.
LivingSocial Escapes is the company's travel division. Unlike sites like Expedia that work with thousands of hotels, LivingSocial Escapes only work with a small number of hotels. The site sends to its members local travel deals, available for purchase for 7 days and that you can generally use withing a year. It is a small revolution in the daily deals as the offers for travels and hotel nights were very few on the coupons sites. The deals include not only 1 or 2 night at a local hotel but also a dinner, spa, or other benefits. Customers are then offered more than a hotel night, they are offered an experience thanks to these attractive packages.
Both the hotels and the customers benefit from these deals. For the hoteliers, it is the opportunity to attract new customers with the objective to convert them into loyal guests with value-added packages, or simply filling beds during a slow period with 50% discounts. It is also a way to sell customers an extra night or two since many people prefers escapes of more than 1 night. For the guests, it is a good way to try a new hotel for the week end not far from home and to enjoy an "experience" at least cost. Besides, the site found a good strategy to promote sharing, offering a free escape to its customers that share a deal with their friends and got 3 of them buy it.
I think the idea of selling hotel deals on coupons sites is a great idea, provided you do it wisely... While it can be a very interesting way to sell additional rooms during slow periods and a good way to attract new customers as well, there are also a risk to devalue your hotel and to create expectations from customers... Besides, it has been proved that giving great discount for engaging trials is not rewarding as you will mostly attract one time guests that are looking for the best offers and could not offer the standard price otherwise. Still, it remains a good way to avoid selling through OTAs and to create good publicity for your company, without mentioning the great opportunity to sell packages that are unique and give and added value to your products..
dimanche 27 mars 2011
Article for Wednesday, 30th of March 2011
A few years after its creation, marketers have understood the power and huge potential that Facebook represents for their business. Although the use of Facebook as a marketing tool is very recent, we can already observe an evolution in how it is used and in how it impacts sales growth and revenue.
The article "Facebook leads to hotel room revenue" explains us that Facebook is not used only for CRM any more. With the development of the e-commerce, more and more hotels for instance integrated a booking engine on their Facebook page, offering their guests an additional option and service. Has it proved successful? Certainly. For some hotels, the conversion rate on direct referrals from traveler review sites to hotel supplier websites ranged from 4% to 6% in 2009, while conversion from Facebook to hotel websites was 8%. It is of course not as well developed for all the hotels but most hotels have now realized the potential behind Facebook e-commerce and the possible impact on their revenue. Thus, many have started developing, in addition to their customer-engagement marketing, an e-commerce activity on their FB page, like Westin Hotels & Resorts in January that introduced a shop tab on its properties' FB pages.
This trend is promised to grow with currently more than 13% of social-network users using social networks to shop for travel, according to the firm’s “Traveler Technology Survey 2010. In addition,
the proportion of people talking about travel on FB with their friends and family is in constant growth as well as the travelers'engagement with the travel companies on social media.
As a result, companies and hotels are jumping quickly on this FB business and even if most hoteliers still consider that the primary purpose of the social media is to engage with their customers to build trust and loyalty, few would ignore this new way of making revenue...
Comment:
For some people, the best uses of social media are: • An important component of hotel’s multi-channel marketing • Buzz-building • Brand-building • Interacting with and engaging customers • Keeping up with the times, making the hotel look current, cool and up-to-date • Driving engaged and relevant traffic to the property’s own website.
For my part, I think that e-commerce via FB is a huge opportunity. It is clearly the future of checking-in and selling on internet. Thanks to social media like FB, you can accompany your customers from the decision to purchase to the after-sales. You can give them tips and recommendations, fix any problems that can occur after or during the sales and even upsell! All of these in a friendly and more customized way. Besides, for those who doubt the utility for FB on both of these 2 uses (CRM and e-commerce), I think they should first wonder whether they use FB the right way (do they engage with their followers regularly? post interesting contents? use the proper tone? have an attractive page? etc.) and to use their analytics to discover what the problems may be. The key is to perseverate and to remember that FB is good not only at improving your CRM, image and sales when used properly but also to improve your ranking on internet (SEO) and the possibility to find your key followers, your influencers to help you growing your community online as well as your sales.
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