Louis Halpern's View on Internet & Hotel Marketing

I’ve been asked by a much loved client to write some notes on Internet Trends that I think are important at the moment..   So here are my thoughts

Ubiquitous Internet
The web will be accessible anywhere all the time. WiFi, WiMax, 3G & 4G will all take their part to allow us to use the internet everywhere all the time.

Mobile
Smartphone usage will continue to increase.
Mobile payments will become one of the preferred methods for payment. The iTunes Store has lead the way and there are interesting services like Square (www.squareup.com) surfacing to change how you and I can utilize our phones to pay for stuff while on the move.

Media consumption
Consumers are empowered. Combine this with further advances in technology, will mean the media will become more:

• distributed as the same content will pop up in multiple locations, formats and channels
• personalised as media will be tailored to reflect what consumers have watched, read, experienced and shared.
• contextualised as when, where and how consumers get their information will dictate its format, which will shape how they interact with and share the information.

Big Screens
The emergence of Google TV demonstrates two things:

• humans understand the best way to find things (read TV show for now) is to use the familiar simple search interface rather than sift though hundred of choices
• computer screens are going to grow rather than shrink

Brand engagement
Brands will need to figure out how to engage the community so they have two way conversations rather than marketing by interruption.

Social Media will become the largest component of web usage
Neilson reports that social media use grew by 82% in the last year becuase the web has become an efficient platform for communication. As the significance of social networks continues to grow, businesses must invest more in community building as a marketing driver. According to the recent “Tribalization of Business” study released by Deloitte, 94% of businesses will increase their investment in online communities and social media.

Keyboards will move towards extinction
Text-based interactions are going to become a minor component of our web experience. Touchscreen interfaces and motion sensors are driving alternatives to the keyboard and mouse which means, our reliance on: videos, social games like FarmVille, and interactive delivery interfaces like the iPhone OS will grow rapidly.

I’ve been researching statistics about the iPhone for a presentation I’m doing tomorrow and thought I’d share the following:

- average total number of unit sales for apps is 101,024 copies

- 1m UK iPhone Units passed on 27 Feb 2009

- 7% of users have only free apps

- 38% of iphone app purchases are in the entertainment category

If anybody has any similar statistics please share with me….

I’ll add sources in due course.

How do you keep a cool head in the face of an erupting volcano threatening to blow away a client’s bookings?

Around the time of the first Icelandic volcano’s eruption, I was stranded at the St Lucia hotel of one of our clients. They were concerned that through no fault of their own, they could potentially take a massive revenue hit from decreased European bookings, as these customers were physically barred from traveling to their resort. After listening to their concerns, I recommended that the hotel aggressively target their US and Canadian customer base. We quickly developed a promotion where the hotels offered an aggressive discount for the entire duration of the stay for US and Canadian customers who booked before 30th April, 2010.  This way, the resorts could increase the hotels’ occupancy levels while also capturing North American holiday makers.

How do you promote a massive deal like this in under two weeks? Aggressively. First, our client’s webmasters created new custom landing pages for both hotels which were only visible to people who clicked on the PPC ads, which were set to be shown only to searchers from the US and Canada. In turn, HC turned the focus of our existing PPC campaign towards creating ads for the promotion. The next step was maximising PPC bidding, to ensure that the ads were constantly visible to the remaining target market – the US and Canadian searchers who were the only customers able to take advantage of the offer. The new promotion specific landing pages pages helped to easily track the level of interest and bookings generated by the campaign.

The result? 5 days into the campaign, the hotels saw a sharp increase in bookings with an ROI of far more than $25 for every dollar spent.  A job well done by the HC team. A great example of working as a team with your client.