Social Media & Hospitality Under Microscope
January 3, 2012 Leave a Comment
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2011 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Syndey Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 9,800 times in 2011. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 4 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
October 20, 2011 1 Comment
If you are in the travel industry, you absolutely need to check out Kayak Trends (if you haven’t already)! This amazing (and free to use) site helps you find out where are people trying to go and where are they looking to stay! It gives you a great insight into the current travel trends based on the city you’re interested in. Once you find the data for your city, analyze it, and adjust your marketing strategy accordingly.
Here is the data that Kayak Trends display:
- How popular is the city in the searches during the current week
- The graph of the search volume for last 3, 6, and 12 months
- List of most searched hotels in particular city
- Who wants to visit that city (from which city they are from)
- Where do people from your city want to go to
- Hottest hotels for the week
For example, let’s say you are in Miami (can be any city). When you type in the search box Miami, you will see something like this:
Here is how you can use each piece of information to your benefit:
The graph: If you see that there are many people searching for your city comparing to 2 months ago yet your sales are still poor, you need to take a hard look into your operations.
Where are people looking to go: This is especially helpful if you have locations in more than one city.
Who wants to visit your city: This is extremely helpful for marketing purposes. Based on this info, you can adjust your marketing strategy to target the travelers in those cities (change your social media marketing strategy – it is fast and easy to do; PPC; banner ads etc.)
Most searched hotels in your city & Hottest hotels for the week: Are you featured? Are you on the top of the list? If so, congratulations! Are you on the list at all – if so, on which rank? Did your rank improve or worsen comparing to 3,6, 12 months ago? Are the competitors from your hotel class on the list? Learn from those who rank high – they sure are doing something right! Analyze this very carefully, as this can give you a great insight.
Last piece of advice – look at this site regularly. It may be a good idea to make this part of your monthly/quarterly reports. Remember to really ANALYZE the results: it is one thing to be looking and another to be really seeing. The insights are useless unless you analyze them carefully and are not afraid to modify the strategy. As Niccolo Machiavelli once said, “Whosoever desires constant success must change his conduct with the times.”
August 25, 2011 1 Comment
Which marketing channels does your hotel spend the most money on? What are the most effective ways of bringing business to your hotel? The answers to these key questions and many others can be found in a recently released HeBS 5th Annual Benchmark Survey on Digital Marketing. This is definitely a must-read if you are in the hospitality industry.
Key lessons you should take away from the survey:
I highly encourage you to go through the entire survey carefully and to modify your marketing strategy accordingly.
Feel free to ask questions and/or share the best marketing practices of your property as well as your marketing budget projections!
Learn more about me: http://onlinefantastic.wordpress.com/about/
Connect with me:
August 18, 2011 Leave a Comment
I began pursuing a BIG dream two weeks ago. After deciding I could no longer avoid the news about the famine in the horn of Africa, I had that gut feeling that I couldn’t sit this one out. I HAD to do something because I could. Something bigger than I could do alone. That’s when #Ask5for5 was born.
Two of my children, Ashen and Bereket, were adopted and are from the region affected by the drought in Ethiopia. They would be two of the statistics if they still lived there. I see my son’s and daughter’s faces in the photos of those suffering in the refugee camps. It could have been him. It could have been her. The thought haunts me.
And moms just like us are watching their children go hungry day after day. I can’t imagine what it’s like, but I have to –I have to be there to help them, because it could have been my children. These families have lost their livestock, their crops, food prices are inflated at the market if there any food there, and don’t have any more lifelines to tap into. Many are traveling hundreds of miles through parched land in hope of finding help. Many are dying along the way. It is estimated that 29,000 children have died in the last 90 days in the famine in Somalia alone.
But I KNOW we can do something about it. Instead of feeling overwhelmed and paralyzed, we can rally ourselves and our friends to respond! I set up a fundraiser through See Your Impact. 100% of your gift will go to the relief and development organization World Vision, where it will be combined with government grants to multiply up to 5 times in impact!
You’ll receive updates on just how your funding is being used to help save lives affected by famine in East Africa. I’m amazed at how much we’ve raised already — over $7,000 in just four days! We blew through our first 3 goals in just 3 days and are well on our way to $10,000 and beyond!
I need you to help me save lives. It’s so so simple; here’s what you need to do:
I’m also looking for 100 bloggers to stand with Ask5for5 to spread the word during Social Media week, September 19th – 23rd. If you’re interested, email me, ask5for5@gmail.com.
Thanks! Please donate and email your friends right now–don’t wait for a calmer moment, because if you’re like me, other demands inevitably crop up and you won’t get to it. A child’s life hangs in the balance, but you can help save her!
August 12, 2011 4 Comments
Facebook is taking the paid ads to another level and adding the option of targeting the users by their zip code (hooray for marketers and businesses)! So far the companies have only been able to target the users by the city, which can be way too broad. After all, how often do you really travel from one side of the city to another just to eat at the restaurant? Targeting users by the zip code adds much more relevancy to the ads, making this option very appealing to the advertisers. NOW many companies can really enjoy the big BANG for the buck.
This option is to become available the following week – I know I will certainly give it a try. Choose age, key words, zip code, better yet target the fans of the page of your direct competitor … The possibilities are endless 
Remember some good practices for Facebook Ads:
Guide to Facebook Ads is a great place to start if you’ve never tried Facebook Ads.
If you did, share your experience!
July 13, 2011 4 Comments
In my recent article about Facebook contests I have discussed some tips on how to run the successful Facebook contest. One of the things mentioned was that Facebook rules PROHIBIT running the contests directly on Facebook. Yes, this means no trivia, no “click like it”, no picture contests, no anything related to contests DIRECTLY on Facebook. However, you CAN run the contest through a 3rd party application (special tab you install on your Facebook page).
How do you do that? The easiest way is to go with the solution designed by one of the companies that specializes in online promotions. There are tons of firms that offer Facebook contest apps (Wildfire, Woobox, Promoboxx to name some of my favorites), but they are often fairly expensive, especially if you want to run a contest that requires the users to like your Facebook page before they can enter. As I mentioned in my previous post, making users (and those who vote for them if it is a voting-based contest) like your page before they can participate is extremely important, because it is the best way to increase your Facebook fan base. Some basic (cheap or free) versions of the apps will allow you to run the contest BUT will require you to upgrade to much more expensive version if you want this functionality enabled. This is why I love, love Binkd. You don’t have to pay a penny for this function and you can run all kinds of contests (picture voting, text voting, sweepstakes & more). The free version will let you run 1 contest at the time for 21 days. If you want to run more contests at the time or for longer period, the upgrade is under $10.
It is relatively new, so there are still few issues, but Binkd is very good at responding and fixes everything in 24 hours.
Give it a try and let me know your thoughts!
June 7, 2011 1 Comment
No matter if you are a jet-setter, airport hopper or just a grocery shopper, you have to travel. If you are a “hip” traveler you own a smartphone. If you have a smartphone, you should install these apps! I put together a list of travel apps everyone can use – read my guest post on the Top 10 Blog:
http://www.thetop10blog.com/top-10-travel-apps-for-every-kind-of-traveler/
March 5, 2011 1 Comment
So you have a Faceb
ook fan page… but how do you get fans? How do you increase the fan interaction? One of the best ways to do that is running the Facebook contest. But how to run it so it is effective? I ran quite a number of Facebook contests with huge success (even 97% growth in fan base in 2 weeks!), so I dare to say that I do know what I am talking about.. I wrote this article as a guest blogger on Ruhani Rabin’s Tech & Lifestyle site last month and already got a very nice feedback (20 comments, 128 tweets & 36 Facebook shares). Hope you enjoy it as well!
February 6, 2011 Leave a Comment
Two very p
owerful women on Twitter, Diana Adams and Amy Howell, recently compiled the list of top 75 “Badass Women” (as they put it) and I am honored to be listed among them! The article introduces many talented and smart women that you can learn plenty from (I did!), so I highly encourage you to check it out!
http://www.bitrebels.com/social/twitter%e2%80%99s-top-75-badass-women/
January 13, 2011 2 Comments
I recently had the 
privilege to talk to Hotel Insight about my biggest passion – social media. The interview touched on what I do, how I got into this field as well as the key principles of successful social media campaign, how to use Twitter, and my predictions for social media marketing. You can view the interview here: http://hotelinsight.wordpress.com/2011/01/13/interview-with-lucie-hys-hotel-social-media-expert/
Online world is my real world! I work in, love, breathe social media! Always positive, full of wild ideas, just a happy Internet/marketing/tech addict!
Online world is my real world! I work in, love, breathe social media! Always positive, full of wild ideas, just a happy Internet/marketing/tech addict!
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