Final Exam Article - Conversations with Customers

Due to my travel schedule, this portion of the final exam will NOT be due Friday 27, as planned. The NEW due date is Wednesday 02/05 by noon. Please post your answer in your blog.

Please use this linked article to explore 'social sharing' and the role in travel purchasing. In your posting, please assess + explain:

1. What is meant by social sharing sites, link to 2 examples
2. How does social sharing inlfuence consumers' choices, link to 1 article to support your assessment
3. How hoteliers can best utilize social sharing trends to communicate with customers. Link to 2 examples.
4. What is your opinion...can hotels effectively establish an online conversation with customers? Yes, why...no, why not?

I'll review all blogs and post comments on your work. Any questions, please email me.

Class 20/04 - In Class Exercise

Mme. Dorothy Wang Yu will be covering the class today and available to answer your questions. I am available by email, if needed.

CMH 4 - A - Hughes, Julia + Sebastien will make presentations, followed by 1 hour team online exercise.

CMH 4 - B - will review and rate 3 travel related websites, followed by 1 hour team online exercise.

The online exercise is 50% of the final exam grade.

Instructions:
1 Hour team exercise

Outcome – Select one reseller site to represent your hotel online.

Work as a team of 2 people
>Select one hotel
>Thoroughly analyze 3 reseller sites from the list

Determine which 1 site will best generate new business for your hotel
>Criteria:
>Reach
>Image
>Forward Distribution

Document – for each of the 3 sites you are analyzing
-Who is the target customer group for the reseller site
-What is the ‘reach’ of the site, how do you know
-What is the hotel ‘image’ projected by the site, what types of hotels are listed
-Distribution – what types of marketing programs are offered to participating hotels
-Distribution – are affiliate programs offered, if yes – what are the affiliate benefits
-Your conclusion – which reseller would you select for you hotel
Comparing your hotel’s customer profile to your analysis, explain your selection.


Post your work in each team member’s blog – cross link to the other’s blog

3rd Party Reseller Sites - choose 3 to analyze

http://www.avantgardehotels.com/

http://www.hoteladvisor.com/

http://www.gtahotels.com/

http://www.worldby.com/index.html

http://www.france-hotel-guide.com/

http://www.hotelclub.net/hotel.reservations/

http://www.tobook.com/

http://www.flashbooking.com/index.do

http://www.ratestogo.com/

http://www.laterooms.com/

http://www.minotel.com/


Hotels - Select one
http://www.kubehotel.com/kubehotel.html

http://www.collegehotelamsterdam.com/

http://www.regina-hotel.com/

http://www.base2stay.com/

Class 06/04 - CMH B Affiliate program research

What are hotel affiliate programs? How do they work? Where do they fit in the distribution channels?

Amazon invented affilate programs for onward, exponentail distribution.

How do bloggers earn money from affiliate programs?

Please go to one of the following and read about their program...post a brief in your blog:
1. Hyatt Hotels
2. Hotels.com
3. Travelocity

See you Friday.

Class 06/04 - Research CMH 4 A+B

For the upcoming class, we will move into Mobile Distribution. As a reminder of the work to post in your blog:

Mobile Role in Hotel Distribution

1. Research find 2 channels for mobile hotel distribution

2. How do they work

3. How does a hotel participate?

Will Google lead the way...really?

Buzz + Viral + Mobile

How should a hotel use the combination of buzz + viral on mobile devices to bulid brand and win guests?

Be imaginative.

Look up viral marketing.


Buzz marketing

How does HI Nice use Radio to create buzz??

Prep for 16/03 Class

Welcome back...a long 3 week break from RM!

So now onto understanding 3rd party distribution. In this half of the course, we should be able to answer the questions:

1. When should a hotel use 3rd party distribution?

2. What resellers are available?

3. How to select the right channels?

4. How does a hotelier manage all this?

We will start with a tactic used by resellers to win customers to their resellers sites...an away from hotel sites....Best Rate Guarantee.

The Reading from Clickz

The research - to be posted in your blog:

1. List 3 Reseller Sites
2. Explain their guarantee - how it works

In class, you will examine how reseller BRG compare to hotel direct BRG.

Accor Launches a New Concept

This preview site is to express the "All Seasons" hotel concept.

What do you think? What would you do differently?

All comments welcome!

Search - The Last Element

Google changes the recipe...again.

What are the implications for hotels working on direct distribution?

Because Google now weighs a variety of new and ever-changing variables in determining what to return for a search, some established SEM techniques no longer apply, or at least must be altered.

Google's algorithm now takes into account searchers' click history as well as their Personalized Homepage when it returns search results. The changes are designed to offer results that are more useful to the searcher, with each new user behavior becoming a new factor in future searches.

For search engine marketers that means the days of trying to divine that one secret formula for scoring high among search results are now gone. Now there are an unlimited amount of variations in search results even for a single search term, because search results in part depend on the click history of each user.

Also being factored into returning search results are the types of sites in users' Google Bookmarks, a social tagging tool analogous to del.icio.us. SEL speculates that Google Reader feed subscriptions or feed click history are not being used for Personalized Search, but the RSS aggregator could provide yet another data set for Personalized Search.

Web2.0 - fun, 5 minute video

Research and Reading for Class 16/02

We will wrap up Direct Distribution and move onto 3rd Party Distribution. For the class, please do a bit of online research...posting results in your blog.

1. Search for an independent hotel (non-chain) - any city, any style

2. From the top ten results, copy and paste the 3rd party links in your blog

3. Visit these 3rd parties to identify their target markets, and competitive advantage over hotel sites.

4. Prepared to present your findings and links in class.

Please read the following article:

Building a De-Commoditization Strategy in Hospitality

Be sure you understand the concept of comoditization...and why it is harmful to hotel pricing.

See you Friday!

Optimization Recipe

Here is a PPT to help visualize 'the recipe'.

Quick Quiz

A quick quiz on the class and reading material:

1. Why is direct distribution important to the hotel? Give 2 reasons.

2. What is the role of 3rd Party sites? List 2 sites.

3. From 'Succes in Online Travel', what is price deflation? How did 3rd party sites affect price deflation?

4. List 3 of the hotel specialty 3rd party sites, from the same report.

5. What is the key concept from your selected article for THIS week's blog post?

Distribution PPT

E-Distribution

Some Great Posts

Alina has posted an article and groovy photo about Hotels rooms of the future....Annelore liked the article too.... Reza posts on the Room of the Future, but a different source.

.

Alex's blog has some very artistic images...Chloe quotes 2 of her colleagues.

Geraud has posted on the luxury sector....Luxury hotels are Hughes topic too. Laila lets us know about Asia hotel development.

Julia posts on outstanding RevPAR results in France.

Nice work from those who are participating in online discussions...look forwared to more cross posts next week.

Online Travel Success

Discussion questions from today's reading...

1. Explain ‘price deflation?’

2. According to the article, what are the causes?

3. What is an OTA, give an example.

4. The online travelspace is extremely crowded, what does the report recommend to ‘break away from the pack’?

Open Book, Notes for the Exam

In answer to an email question...yes, you may use notes, printouts, translators for the exam on Friday.

If you haven't read the articles, the notes and print outs won't help. Please bring a calculator. The exam starts at 9AM, plan to come 5 minutes early.

None of the material in the mid term will be repeated in the final.

See you then.

You are Smarter than Bill Marriott

Well maybe not smarter, exactly...but more advanced in Net usage.

Bill Marriott has just started a blog!

screenshot

word

iPhone

iPhone presented Steve Jobs himself...a CEO doing product presentation on YouTube. This what today's marketing looks like.

Hospes Hotels - 'Experience' Site

An absolutely glorious site for the Spanish Group, Hospes Hoteles . Be sure to view the site at different times during the day...see what happens.

You know this name...but did you know they have a hotel. Very cool!

Which hotel would you choose? Why?...Leave a comment!

RSS Challenge

I hope everyone had a wonderful break!

As mentioned in the last class, your challenge is to start getting information delivered to you via RSS.

The calender of assignments and this blog have the orange button that signifies that you can be updated automatically, without having to come to the blog.

Additional challenge...

As of this week, please use Hospitalitynet.org as the source for your blog postings. Use their RSS feed. Further, after you have posted a commentary about an article:

1. Go to a classmate's blog

2. Read their article and commentary

3. In your blog, post an opinion or response to their posting...link to their post!

Summary:

Each Wednesday an article commentary AND comment on a classmates blog is due on your blog.

In class Friday, we will review Optimum Business Planning, for the final. Next week is the final exam. Yes, you will need a calculator.

The second semester will cover Online Distribution. The required background reading for the week after the final is an excellent repport form Price Waterhouse, "Maintaining Success in the Online Travel Space". PDF download