2010 HeBS Digital Articles
Best Practices in Hotel Website Design
(Article- Hotels Magazine)
With today's "hyper-interactive" consumers, hoteliers need to address the profound change in inventory distribution and marketing in hospitality. This article provides tips on how to keep your website current in the minds of hyper-interactive consumers while meeting industry best practices.
by Max Starkov and Denis Strekalov
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Boosting Direct Online Bookings for Maximum Results
Bookings through the direct online channel (i.e. the hotelier's website) have numerous benefits and advantages over indirect online channels (i.e. online travel agencies). Read about the best ways hoteliers can invest in the direct online channel to compete for their fair share of revenue.
by Max Starkov
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Déjà Vu: The Billion Dollar "Leakage" Continues to Drain the Hospitality Industry
Read about the peaks and plateaus of business for Online Travel Agencies, and how hoteliers became susceptible to working with them. You will be astounded to learn just how much hoteliers lose from their bottom lines to OTAs.
by Max Starkov
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Innocent Ignorance or Crime and Punishment: The Perils of Duplicate Web Content
Providing duplicate content about a hotel to external distribution sites can mean lower search engine rankings than the third party sites! This article explains what duplicate content is and how you can make the content on your hotel's own website unique.
by Max Starkov
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Engaging the Hyper-Interactive Traveler Using Web 2.0 and Social Media: The Hotelier's Best Practices Guide
Your hotel website must implement engaging content to encourage today's hyper-interactive traveler to participate. This article gives suggestions of various Web 2.0 and social media initiatives and describes how you should measure the results of these efforts.
By Max Starkov and Mariana Mechoso Safer
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Facebook more Popular than Google? The Big News is Not so Big After All
On March 15, 2010, Facebook.com was reported as the most popular website in the U.S., surpassing Google by .04% share. However, Facebook is not going to completely replace Google, especially when it comes to hotel revenue. It is important to use unique ROI metrics to measure the success of Facebook initiatives.
By Max Starkov
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The Future is Now: The Emergence of The Customer Engagement Channel in Hospitality
Hyper-active consumers are communicating 24/7 via social networks and mobile devices, resulting in multi-channel convergence. This article explains why and how you should move from one-sided conversations (speaking to consumers) to engaging discussions (speaking with consumers).
By Max Starkov and Mariana Mechoso Safer
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Hotelier's Web Analytics Action Plan: Turning Knowledge into ROI-Focused, Action-Oriented Results
HeBS Digital highly encourages the use of sophisticated web analytics to measure your hotel Internet marketing initiatives. Here are our 10 most important metrics to measure and how to put the results into action.
By Jason Price and Mariana Mechoso Safer
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Hotel Websites Are Not Ready for Today's Hyper-Interactive Travel Consumer
Read interesting statistics about today's hyper-active Internet users and two case studies of Web 2.0 initiatives that HeBS released for its clients.
By Max Starkov
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Mastering Internet Marketing in 2010: Results of the 4th Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing
Read about the main findings from the survey, our interpretations, and hotel Internet marketing planning forecasts for 2010.
By the HeBS Team
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In Hospitality, Not All Internet Bookings are Created Equal
In light of the recession, the hotel industry has again "succumbed to the devil" in the face of the major Online Travel Agencies. This article breaks down why this is not the most effective distribution channel.
By Max Starkov
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Hotelier's 2010 Top Ten Internet Marketing Resolutions
2009 brought successes among many challenges as the economy began to see a slow recovery. This article provides our top ten recommended resolutions for hotel Internet marketers for 2010. Among them includes tracking results, bookings generated, and Return-on-Investment for every dollar spent.
By Max Starkov and Mariana Mechoso Safer