March 2008 - With purchases of online travel continuing
to scale at a feverish pace, the Internet is quickly becoming the most
significant distribution channel for hotel revenue growth. It is predicted
that at least 60 percent of all hotel bookings will be made online by 2009,
and, therefore, the Internet affords hospitality professionals an immense
opportunity to leverage increased brand awareness and highly profitable
revenue contribution.
In contrast to the upside offered by the online channel, the dynamic
growth of the online environment also creates a range of new risks and
opportunities for strong competition in hospitality. When this competition
crosses the line of legal propriety, hotel professionals should identify
and address the transgressions in order to protect their assets, revenues,
and brands. Illegal or improper online activities by others can cost
hotels revenue, profit margin, brand value, and goodwill. Hoteliers themselves
also should avoid running afoul of the formal laws and informal �rules�
of online marketing. Missteps can be costly.
Daily decisions about the online space � including what photos to post
on a hotel website, what to name a new package or promotion, whether to
bid on a competitor�s brand as a paid search keyword, and how to write
the title of a new email blast � should be made by business people who
are mindful of the areas where trademark, privacy, contract and other branches
of law might come into play. Proactive awareness can often avert
matters that ultimately might fall into the hands of lawyers.
Hospitality professionals can protect their brands online more effectively
and avert legal snares by adhering to the following guidelines of online
marketing (summarized from �Profits and Pitfalls of Online Marketing: A
Legal Desk Reference for Travel Executives� written by Mike Heilbronner,
Sue Heilbronner, and Cindy Estis Green).
1. Clear Your Trademarks
Before creating and publicizing a new name for a resort, hotel, or
program, hire counsel to �clear� the name and evaluate the potential risk
of infringing an existing trademark. Several vendors offer comprehensive
search services, and intellectual property attorneys regularly evaluate
such searches and provide opinions about the risks associated with using
new trademarks. Companies should seek to register new trademarks that are
important to their marketing plans (e.g., the name of a new spa treatment,
a unique hotel package, or the name of a kids-camp program at a group of
hotels). Once a company is ready to use a new trademark, and after the
trademark has been cleared, the company should file an application to register
the trademark with the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.
2. Continually Register Your Copyrights
Copyrights protect original works of authorship fixed in a tangible
medium (e.g., a work saved on a computer hard drive, written down, photographed,
or recorded). Make sure to register copyrights for all commercially significant
marketing materials. Such materials often include the creative elements
that comprise the overall �look and feel� of your website, individual graphic
components, photographs, film clips, etc. Continually re-register your
materials when important new website content is added and when material
design changes occur. Copyright registration is not mandatory, but it enables
you to protect your creative material when someone infringes on it.
Registration also offers valuable potential remedies in litigation.
3. Solidify Your Rights to Your Intellectual Property
Companies should take steps to secure ownership rights or licenses
for all content that is entitled to copyright protection, including content
on their websites. The financial and other risks associated with copyright
infringement are substantial. Hospitality professionals need to ensure
that all vendors, photographers, and web designers who create copyrighted
material on their behalf sign over the rights to that material in a clear,
written assignment agreement. Hoteliers also need to be sure that all vendors
have cleared the rights to any photos or other intellectual property used
on your hotel websites and in other marketing materials since, as an involved
party, you share potential liability. Lastly, if you or your vendors take
original photographs of recognizable people for commercial purposes, model
release agreements need to be signed in order to protect your ongoing rights
to the images.
4. Proactively Register Related Domain Names
To avoid cybersquatting and related problems, hoteliers should be extremely
aggressive in registering a variety of domain names related to their own
domains and future business ventures. The expense associated with registering
additional domains (as low as $8 per year per registration) pales in comparison
to the expense and resource drain associated with securing the transfer
of a valuable domain from a squatter. Hoteliers should register the following
types of marks for most top-level domains (.com, .org, .net):
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Common misspellings of trademarks
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Trademarks plus other descriptive phrases (e.g., brand + �hotel�)
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Trademarks plus common negative phrases (e.g., brand + �sucks�)
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Planned or possible future sub-brands in development at the hotel company
(e.g., brand + �express� or brand + �spa�)
5. Publish a Thorough Privacy Policy
Hoteliers must develop and implement legally compliant privacy policies
related to the collection and use of personal information. Every hotel
should have a link to their privacy policy on their website- on the homepage
and on any pages in which an individual has the opportunity to provide
personal information. For hoteliers, such pages typically include the home
page, reservation pages, website registration pages, email collection tools,
and RFP submission forms. Implementing and adhering to the privacy policy
are equally important. Make sure to designate and empower one or more employees
to ensure a privacy policy is implemented and to follow changes in this
dynamic, increasingly important area of law.
6. Adhere to Proper Search Engine Optimization Practices
Avoid being penalized and delisted by the search engines for improper
search engine spam techniques. Do not hide keyword-dense text on
your website or repeat certain phrases within �hidden� source codes for
only the search engines to read. These practices are called �keyword stuffing�
and, when detected, a website can be quarantined by the search engines.
Additionally, do not deliver one version of a webpage to a user and a different
version to a search engine for indexing purposes. Creating a homepage with
chunks of keyword-heavy text to increase your rankings on the search engines
and then redirecting consumers to an actual informative and engaging homepage
is called �cloaking� and can result in a site being delisted by the search
engines. Create web pages for users and continually optimize your site
in accordance with search engine guidelines, which can be found on the
various search engines� corporate websites.
7. Monitor the Use of Your Brand Name by Advertisers on the Search
Engines
Monitor who is bidding on or using your trademarks in pay-per-click
(PPC) advertising. Competitors and third party intermediaries could be
bidding on your hotel name and stealing part of your market share. Consistently
monitor the search engines for these types of PPC advertising and determine
if it infringes your trademark. Large, national franchisors/brands should
also be mindful of how their franchisees are bidding on the brand trademark.
Franchisee hotels should be educated on the franchisor/brand�s PPC bidding
practices in their region to ensure efforts are not duplicated and that
PPC expenses are not unnecessarily inflated by dual bidding on the same
keywords. Currently, there is no specific law directly preventing or even
discussing PPC bidding on the trademarks of others, but there are many
cases currently in the courts grappling with this issue under broader trademark
laws. When facing an infringement problem, seek legal advice on whether
recourse is available for improper behavior by advertisers or the search
engines.
8. Bid With Caution on Other�s Trademarks
The relatively unsettled legal landscape of using others� trademarks
in PPC advertising has sparked a range of non-legal responses in the form
of policies and contractual requirements by the major search engines, the
hotel brands, and industry trade groups. Most of the major search engines
have published guidelines on their corporate websites to communicate their
stance on the various forms of trademark bidding. The search engines� guidelines
differ greatly, but all of them provide for some form of penalty for noncompliance.
Self-imposed restrictions from the search engines fall into two general
categories: first, rules about whether a third party�s trademarks can be
the subject of bids; and second, restrictions on the use of a third party�s
trademarks in the heading or text of an ad that appears in the PPC results.
9. Comply to CAN SPAM Laws When Conducting Email Marketing
Email marketing is an extremely valuable tool for hoteliers to communicate
with potential guests and generate business through e-newsletters, email
promotions, and loyalty programs. Due to a variety of illicit tactics and
abuses involving personal email addresses - most notably �spam�- laws have
been created to govern the dissemination and content of email marketing
messages. The Can Spam Act of 2003 applies to all marketing and promotional
email distribution except for transactional emails (e.g., reservation confirmation
emails or thank-you correspondence). Can Spam requires that the following
elements be included in all commercial email covered by the Act:
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Accurate sender information, including accurate domains in identifying
the sender(s). For example, a hotel can use [email protected]
or [email protected]
as models of appropriate sender addresses.
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A subject line that clearly and conspicuously identifies the email as a
commercial solicitation or advertisement. Potentially acceptable phrases
in subject lines include �Special Offer� or �New Promotion.�
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The subject line must be clear as not to deceive recipients. The content
of the email must also be consistent with the subject line.
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The content of the email must contain an obvious and functional method
for recipients to opt out of future communications. A working unsubscribe
link or return email address likely is satisfactory.
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The email must contain a valid physical address that will enable consumers
to make offline contact with the sender.
10. Watch Online Travel Blogs and Review Sites
Hotels generally lack control over the information that is shared about
them online by the public. Stay aware of the �buzz� that travel blogs and
review sites are posting related to your property. Negative reviews can
cost hotels thousands of dollars in lost bookings and decrease a property�s
�star� rating on sites like TripAdvisor.com. Negative statements about
a hotel should be identified immediately and evaluated to determine if
they are true, false, or possibly fake. Accurate, but negative reviews
should be treated as a free focus group and used to fuel improvements at
the property. False, negative reviews require recourse by pursuing the
appeal or response process of the specific site. Most travel review sites
have established processes for handling negative reviews. Some sites allow
hotels to submit �management responses� that are posted alongside negative
reviews and others allow you to appeal a negative review and request its
removal from a site.
TIG
Global offers a comprehensive travel review and blog monitoring service
called HotelProtect�. This proprietary service also monitors the
web to identify trademark infringement and maintain your fair share of
the market. For more information on protecting and promoting your hotel
online, visit www.HotelProtect.com.
TIG Global (http://www.hotelprotect.com)
headquartered in the Washington, DC metro area, is the leading provider
of interactive marketing services for the hospitality industry. Serving
over 800 clients located throughout North America, Europe, Asia, and the
Caribbean, TIG Global combines its industry knowledge and e-business expertise
to help clients maximize the online channel. To serve clients worldwide,
TIG Global offers multi-language websites, a vast network of internationally
based strategic linking partners, email and pay-per-click marketing campaigns
tailored to all international markets, custom Web 2.0 solutions, and websites
optimized for major search engines around the world. TIG Global was recently
recognized as the eMarketer of the Year by the Hospitality Sales and Marketing
Association International. |