What Do Travelers Experience When they Walk through Your Digital Front Door?

When I started in the hotel business 52 years ago, the first impression customers had of our hotels was the lobby when they walked through the front doors. But in this digital age, often the first impression comes when they visit Marriott. com. Its our digital front door.
-- Bill Marriott, Chairman & CEO of Marriott International

93 million American adults are now using the Internet to plan travel -- up from 90 million in 2007
U.S. Travel Association

Renovating Our Digital Front Door, Marriott.com

Its increasingly likely that travel shoppers will first encounter and experience your hotel online. From desktops, laptops and hand-held devices, they consume images and anecdotes, offers and insights. They evaluate, compare and choose. The journey now starts with a search. The mistake some hoteliers make is in underestimating the full power and potential of the travel shoppers online experience. Its online, in the initial leg of the journey, that expectations are set and decisions are made. As a result, hotel industry success will increasingly revolve around the stories we tell and impressions we make in this hyper-competitive, virtual marketplace.

Its now imperative that hotels provide complete, accurate and compelling information on their web sites.
U.S. Travel Association

Theres no escaping the Internets growing impact on the travel industry. In a recent report, the U.S. Travel Association noted that nearly 93 million American adults are now using the Internet to plan travel -- up from 90 million in 2007 . In fact, more than three-quarters of all online travelers planned pleasure trips online in the past 12 months.

Given these trends, the USTA argues its now imperative that hotels provide complete, accurate and compelling information on their web sites. But its not just your web site that matters. Considering Googles estimates that the average vacation planner now engages in 12 searches and visits 22 travel sites over a one month period, you would be smart to ensure your hotel can be found on a variety of other travel sites besides your own.

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So its clear that hotels must actively market themselves online if they wish to remain competitive and profitable -- if they hope to engage online travel shoppers. The question hoteliers now face is this: What will it take to provide a compelling experience online that will turn lookers into bookers?

A combination of rich media and social media tactics tend to maximize outcomes in terms of customer experience and conversion.

Our recent study of hotel e-business practices revealed an array of interesting and actionable insights in this regard. The VFM Leonardo survey, which generated responses from 590 companies across the world, sought to identify the e-marketing tactics that are most actively being applied and the ones proving most effective at producing conversions. Consistent with other studies of e-commerce behavior, we found that a combination of rich media and social media tactics tend to maximize outcomes in terms of customer experience and conversion . More specifically, e-business professionals are realizing their best results by marrying rich visual content -- such as videos and visual hotel tours -with user generated reviews, ratings and rankings. But heres where it gets interesting. Theres a clear disparity between what hotel e-business professionals find most effective and what they are presently deploying. The most widely used tactics at present are either rooted in social media or focused on visual merchandising. The top five tactics that are now deployed are branded social community pages such as Facebook and MySpace (71%), user ratings and rankings (65%), user comments and reviews (63%), videos for merchandising, advertising and demonstration (56%), and visual hotel tours (43%). The most effective tactics -- rated very effective by more than 60% of respondents -- were somewhat different than the ones that are presently most popular. According to the survey, user ratings and rankings (67%) is followed by hotel tours (66%), user comments and reviews (64%), and videos for merchandising, advertising and demonstration (60%).

Hotel E-Business Survey 2010 VFM Leonardo

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Here are some of the other disparities we identified: 38% believe lifestyle imagery is very effective yet only 19% have deployed this tactic. 48% believe 360 degree spin/panoramas are very effective yet only 32% have deployed this tactic. 64% believe hotel tours (combinations of guided spin, zoom imagery, videos or animation) are very effective yet only 41% have deployed this tactic. 39% believe branded social communities are very effective yet 69% have deployed this tactic. What this tells us that many hotel marketers are flocking to flavor of the month approaches while ignoring tactics that have proven to be more valuable. And while there is likely a great deal of value to be realized over time from social networking tools such as Facebook and Twitter, there are more immediate gains to be produced by deploying video, visual tours and user-generated content such as comments, ratings and rankings. Maybe its time for some new thinking. To fully enhance the travel shoppers digital experience, you should focus on the tactics that have proven most effective: User ratings and rankings Hotel tours User comments and reviews Videos for merchandising and advertising 360 degree spins/panoramas

Of course, its one thing to embrace the power of such media as a driver of marketing conversions. Its entirely a different matter to apply this insight. Weve found that hotels often are held back by the perceived difficulties of developing video content. In one recent Webinar we produced, attendees claimed this was the number one barrier (74%) they faced. They tend to be intimidated by several mistaken beliefs. One is that video is expensive. Another is that its difficult to produce. Still another is that its hard to find a high quality vendor.

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We experienced a 30% bump in bookings after we went from no video to video.

David Attardi Director of E-Commerce B.F. Saul

The reality? As our clients have been pleased to discover, specialists can produce a high quality hotel video on your behalf for less than one thousand dollars. Slide-show montages that look like full motion video can be produced for a few hundred dollars. Given the minimal investments required to produce high quality visual content, a growing number of hotels are even producing specialty videos to serve particular audiences. One hotel produced a special video to demonstrate its an excellent location for weddings in the Washington, D.C. area. This enabled the hotel to reach new and untapped markets. The impact can be quite impressive. B.F. Saul Company, which operates a portfolio of different hotel brands, has proved to be exceptionally successful when it comes to visually merchandising its properties. We experienced a 30% bump in bookings after we went from no video to video. We found our sites became better, more efficient and stickier and we experienced more revenue per site visit after we launched video, says B.F. Sauls Director of E-Commerce, David Attardi. Attardi not only measures the impact of the companys marketing efforts on conversions and bookings, but also on number of views, quality and quantity of comments, and the number of times visitors share the content by forwarding (or re-tweeting) it to others. He counsels other hotel marketers to identify their strategies and then, execute. Dont be intimidated, he says. Start trying things. Its easy, its fun, its effective. He counsels other hotel marketers to identify their strategies and then, execute. Dont be intimidated, he says. Start trying things. Its easy, its fun, its effective. As a growing body of research and a growing number of success stories make clear, hotels must actively merchandise themselves online if they intend to engage travel shoppers at the earliest stage of their journeys. Moreover, they must actively syndicate their content to third party travel, search engine and social media sites to ensure that prospective guests are consuming it where they engage in travel research and booking activities. So what will travelers experience when they encounter your hotel online -- either at your own site or a third party travel site that displays your content? If you tell them a compelling story and show them the powerful experience you can deliver, you can expect to see far more of them entering the front door of your hotel.

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About VFM Leonardo

VFM Leonardos VScape and VBrochure products leverage the distribution capabilities of the VNetwork, the most universally accepted and largest online visual content distribution network for the global travel industry. VFM Leonardo offers the most effective digital asset management and online merchandising systems available today with over 1,000,000 visual images (photos, virtual tours and videos) for 90,000 hotels worldwide currently in distribution across the VNetwork. All four global distribution systems (GDSs) - Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre, Worldspan - as well as Pegasus source hotel visual content through VScape. Tens of thousands of travel-related channels including online travel agencies, travel research and supplier web sites, search portals; Travelocity, Orbitz, Priceline, Tripadvisor, Yahoo! Travel, Kayak, Google and more also source visual content through VScape. VFM Leonardos VBrochure Online Merchandising System is part of the largest, most universally accepted and online visual content distribution network (VNetwork) for the global travel industry. VBrochure is a user-friendly system that helps you merchandise your hotel in its best, most current light, wherever travel shoppers are shopping on the web. For more information, visit www.vfmleonardo.com. Follow us on Twitter at @VFMLeonardo. VFM Leonardo Head Office 111 Peter Street, Suite 530 Toronto, Ontario Canada M5V 2H1 Toll Free: 1-877-593-6634 Tel: + 1 416 593 6634 Fax: + 1 416 593 7572 Web: www.vfmleonardo.com Email: insidesales@vfmleonardo.com
VFM Leonardo Global Offices Canada - United States - United Kingdom - Israel - Singapore

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