Hospitality eBusiness Strategies (HeBS Digital), the industry’s leading full-service hospitality digital marketing firm, this month celebrates ten years of generating groundbreaking returns for hoteliers through award-winning websites and digital marketing campaigns.
To kick off the 10-year anniversary celebration, HeBS Digital will be launching the following:
- A new website and URL of www.HeBSDigital.com.
- Client appreciation discount of 10% off all products and services from May 24 – June 24 (including mobile websites, sweepstakes, Facebook custom tabs, and more).
- Fan Frenzy Contest on Facebook to reach at least 1,000 fans on its Facebook page by June 30. HeBS Digital will give away $1 for every new Fan gained until the contest ends.
- Sweepstakes: HeBS Digital will launch an interactive sweepstakes in June celebrating major milestones over the past ten years. Prizes will correspond to each milestone and a grand prize of an iPad2 will be awarded.
Milestones HeBS Digital is celebrating from the past ten years:
2001:
HeBS Digital President & CEO Max Starkov conceptualizes and creates Hospitality eBusiness Strategies (HeBS Digital) as an extension of two travel Internet start-ups: Travelbreak.com and WhaleMedia.com. HeBS Digital secures its first clients and begins developing a portfolio of ROI generating services. Starkov starts teaching graduate courses on Hotel E-Commerce and Online Distribution at New York University’s Tisch Center for Hospitality and Tourism Studies, as an adjunct professor. Also this year, HeBS Digital starts the tradition of publishing groundbreaking articles on hotel e-commerce and online distribution topics with 12 articles in 2001, including “Wireless in Travel and Hospitality: Hype or Necessity?” and “Independent Hoteliers: Twelve Inexpensive Ways to Promote Your Website.”
2002:
HeBS Digital secures more notable clients, some of which are still with us today, locks in 2 industry conference speaking engagements, and publishes 5 industry research articles, including “Hotelier’s Top Ten New Year’s Internet Marketing Resolutions” and “Brand Erosion or How Not to Market Your Hotel on the Web”.
2003:
The HeBS Digital portfolio of clients hits 100 with Fairmont Hotels! HeBS Digital wins its first major website design award – the HSMAI Golden Click Award (now known as the Adrian Award), and is engaged for 2 major industry event speakerships. HeBS Digital publishes 9 research articles, including “Best Rate Guarantees in Hospitality” and “Developing a Destination Web Strategy in Hospitality.”
2004:
HeBS Digital solidifies its place as the only hotel digital marketing firm to focus strictly on driving direct online channel revenues for its clients with the article, “The Year of Direct Online Distribution.” HeBS Digital also secures 3 HSMAI Golden Click Awards and 5 speaking engagements at major hospitality conferences.
2005:
HeBS Digital continues to gain notable clients, many of whom are still with us today. HeBS Digital also wins some big awards this year, including three HSMAI Golden Click Awards and an eMarketer of the Year Award for its client, Joie De Vivre Hotels. The firm has 5 speakership engagements and publishes 3 articles, including “The End of the Merchant Model as We Know It” and “Search Engine Marketing in Hospitality.”
2006:
HeBS Digital launches the first “Benchmark Survey on Hotel Internet Marketing Budget Planning and Best Practices in Hospitality,” in conjunction with NYU’s Tisch Center for Hospitality Studies. HeBS Digital also publishes 7 articles and wins 13 awards, including the Best Travel Website of the Year WebAward. Notable articles include “Consumer Generated Media – a Threat or an Opportunity” and “Developing a Blog Strategy in Hospitality.” The firm has 6 industry event speaking engagements, including a “Blog Strategy in Hospitality” workshop at EyeforTravel’s Travel Distribution Summit.
2007:
HeBS Digital wins 18 website design and digital marketing campaign awards, and reintroduces the important topic of mobile marketing as something to watch (after first introducing this topic in 2001) in one of its 9 published articles. Other important articles include “Building an eCRM Strategy in Hospitality” and “Measuring Results and ROI from Marketing Spend in Hospitality.” The firm secures 7 guest speakerships, including a social media workshop.
2008:
HeBS Digital introduces its first Web 2.0 application on a website – an interactive sweepstakes for Eldorado Hotel Casino in Reno, Nevada. HeBS Digital wins 21 hotel website design and digital marketing awards, and publishes 6 articles, including “Best Practices on Monitoring Hotel Review Sites” and the much acclaimed “Getting Back to the Basics: The Hotelier’s Internet Marketing Action Plan.”
This year, HeBS Digital has 10 guest speakership engagements, many of them on customer engagement, best practices in managing the direct online channel, and social media.
2009:
HeBS Digital dominates HotelMarketing.com’s Most Popular articles of the year with 6 articles, including the groundbreaking “Mobile Marketing & Distribution Strategy in Hospitality: the Future is Already Here” and “The Prisoner’s Dilemma, the Stockholm Syndrome, or a Case of Both?,” an article on the increasing dependency on OTA’s, which garnered many comments. This is also a big year for awards, with HeBS Digital receiving 16, including the Gold Magellan Award for its interactive sweepstakes product. HeBS Digital’s President & CEO receives the HSMAI “Top 25 Most Extraordinary Minds in Sales & Marketing” honor.
2010:
HeBS Digital receives its 100th creative digital marketing award! HeBS Digital receives a total of 39 website design and digital marketing creative awards and publishes 12 new articles, including “Best Practices in Hotel Website Design” and “Engaging the Hyper-Interactive Traveler Using Web 2.0 and Social Media: The Hotelier’s Best Practices Guide.” Max Starkov is appointed to serve on the HSMAI Digital Marketing Council, the highest hotel Internet marketing authority in the country, commissioned to monitor and educate HSMAI members about the emerging trends and innovations happening in hotel digital marketing universe. HeBS Digital also expands its client services by opening a dynamic, fully-functional client services office in Las Vegas.
Over the past ten years, HeBS Digital has grown to a 65+ person company of top-notch, in-house experts in all areas of hotel website design and digital marketing. HeBS Digital’s senior team has 11 Master’s degrees in hospitality studies, tourism, marketing and business administration from top universities. The company continued to expand and generate serious ROIs for clients even during the recession (2240% ROI overall for clients in 2009 and 2237% ROI in 2010) by constantly driving innovation, developing best practices in the industry, and providing exceptional services to each and every client. Clients stay with HeBS Digital an average of 5-6 years, proving the company is not just an agency but a partner to its clients.
“HeBS Digital doesn’t just provide a service to hoteliers; we offer value and a partnership. We have always strived to be the smartest company in the industry – not the largest. We are very excited to take our company to the next level, and believe that rebranding to HeBS Digital exemplifies our commitment to constant innovation in the online space,” said Max Starkov, President and CEO of HeBS Digital. “Every strategy we have created, every website we have launched, and every digital marketing campaign we have promoted from the day HeBS Digital started operating has had one major goal – to drive serious revenues for our clients. From all of us at HeBS Digital, we would like to extend a warm thank you to the industry and to our clients for your support. We look forward to continuing our mission of helping hoteliers maximize online revenues and maximizing value for our clients with cutting edge services for years to come.”
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