News for the Hospitality Executive |
Social Search, Video, and Nimble Marketing: Tips for Hotels
By
Daniel Edward
Craig
March 15, 2011 When I saw Nate Bucholz, Google’s UK Travel Industry Manager, present at the HSMAI Europe conference in London last month, I knew that hoteliers would benefit from hearing what he had to say. So I asked him for an interview, and he graciously complied. Here’s a condensed version of our email Q+A session. He doesn’t get into specifics about Google’s recent moves to list hotel rates and availability in search, but on the topics of trends in video, mobile, and social search he has some sound advice for hoteliers. Tell us about your role and responsibilities at Google. I’m currently
based in our London office, where
I work with some of our larger travel advertisers in the UK and Europe.
My job
is to provide recommendations for advertising strategy and work with
companies
to profitably grow their business. I have a great team that I work with
to find
ways for advertisers to be more efficient and to take advantage of new
trends,
products and platforms like mobile. I’ve been strictly working with
travel
companies for my full tenure at Google – just about 4 years now. Prior
to this
I was based on Google’s Seattle office. Tell us about recent changes
Google has made to make social media
content more prominent in search. Realtime search is about helping
people find
the relevant information they need, instantly, as soon as it's on the
Web.
Realtime platforms are an easy way to share content, and at Google
we're
working to provide the fastest way to find it. We have recently made
significant enhancements to Google Realtime Search to date,
creating a new
permanent home for the service with new powerful tools. Realtime Search
now has
a dedicated website with
new features
including geographic refinements and a conversations view. In addition,
we’ve
added “Updates” to Google Alerts. As always we strive to deliver the
most
relevant information in search, and our new enhancements help users
more easily
find, explore and understand the latest real-time content. At the HSMAI conference you talked about the importance of video in the travel industry. How can hotels take advantage of the increasing popularity of video in search? Online video is gaining rapidly as a place of information and inspiration for travelers. There are a lot of ways to take advantage. If you have the content – be it professional, promotional, etc. – make sure it’s available for people to see. It should be a no-brainer at this point to put up the videos on YouTube. I’d recommend having a channel for your hotel, which is free, to house your videos and establish a bit of community. It can be easy to get lost amid all the content on YouTube, so there are a few things you can do to stand out:
You also said that mobile search
increased
by 1,200% last year, and long-tail queries are increasing. In your
opinion, how can hotels take advantage of this trend? Click-to-call mobile ads will allow a traveler to call the hotel with one touch, rather than worrying about navigating a web page on the phone and this can be a customer-pleasing way to advertise. Making sure your business’s place page is updated and accurate is another good rule – this applies to both mobile and desktop situations. Adding in more information about your business only takes a moment and there’s no cost. Recently,
Google has been experimenting with featuring hotel rates and
availability on Google Maps and Google Places. When do you expect this
feature
to be rolled out? Where will rates and availability be pulled from? It sounds like the system will favor hotel chains and online travel agencies. How will independent hotels compete? We are still at quite an early stage in our efforts to improve this whole experience. Our development plans are evolving and we look forward to engaging with more partners and hotels. What
is Google’s position on online travel agencies bidding on brand
keywords? Isn’t this a breach of trademark? What can hotels do to stop
this? In most
countries, including the
US and Canada, Google allows an advertiser to bid on whichever keyword
it
chooses. We believe that more relevant information is better than less.
Our
guiding principle has always been that advertising should benefit users
and our
aim is to ensure that ads are relevant and useful. We feel our policy
upholds
this principle and are careful to ensure that it follows the laws of
the
country in which the ads are served. Hotels are
certainly able to
enter into agreements with OTAs or resellers if they so choose. There
are cases
out there where hotels form agreements with OTAs on which terms they
can use or
bid on. Barring such an agreement, I’d recommend a hotel shows highly
relevant
ads to the search query in question and in turn takes the searcher to a
landing
page that is highly relevant to the ad. The owner of the trademark will
generally have the upper hand at being most relevant and this will
result in a
high quality score, which in turn will lower the cost per click of the
search
ad. One thing I see
frequently in the
travel industry is the advantage of nimble marketing. Small travel
companies
will often be up and running with the latest platform, ad format,
optimization
tool, while the big companies are still holding meetings and studying
spreadsheets. This first mover advantage brings customers, higher
margins and
good branding. If you are a large company, remember to be quick to
test. If you
are a small company – use this to your advantage! We have the saying at
Google
that it is good to “fail fast and iterate.” A
story comes to mind as an analogy. I spent the day
skiing with a friend
and boasted that I hadn’t fallen all day. His response? “You must not
be trying
hard enough.” Google Maps to offer hotel rates fast as
lightening but how accurately?
Dennis Schaal, Tnooz Pegasus, Google team to offer direct links
for hotel bookings, Jeri
Clausing, Travel Weekly More Tips for Marketing Your Hotel on Google
Places, Vizergy,
HotelMarketing.com How Google Social Search Works, Matt Cutts
Copyright © 2011 Daniel Edward Craig |
Contact:
Daniel Edward Craig |
Also See: | B&B
or Big-Box? Social Media Stirs the Sleeping Micro-Giant of the Lodging
Industry / Daniel Edward Craig / February 2011 |
Social
Media and Storytelling for Hotels / Daniel Edward Craig / February
2011 |
|
A
Round-up of Social Media and Reputation Monitoring Tools for Hotels
/ Daniel Edward Craig / February 2011 |
|
The
Confidence to be Transparent: Why Accor Hotel Group Posts TripAdvisor
Reviews Directly to its Website; An interview with Jean-Luc
Chrétien, Executive VP Marketing & Distribution, Accor /
Daniel Edward Craig / December 2010 |
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A
Positive Spin on Negative Reviews / Daniel Edward Craig / November
2010 |
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Walking
After Midnight: How to Avoid Being Bumped from Your Hotel / Daniel
Edward Craig / October 2010 |
|
Why Everyone Gets a Hotel Room Upgrade... But You / Daniel Edward Craig / April 2008 |