Dec 28, 2013 | bookings, travel bookings, visual travel bookings
VisualBookingsTechnology & Tourism Marketing- Transforms BookingEngine to Travel Planning Systems – YouTube.
This video is a detailed look at the on and off-site marketing and sales funnel activities for VBT. For more on the VBT planning and reservations see VBT overview.
Visual Travel Planning Software Turns any Booking Site into a Interactive Sales Machine
In this video on Visual Bookings Technology the focus is on marketing, that is, driving more traffic to the VBT site where the travel shoppers are engaged with an interactive and fun travel planning system that helps them find exactly what they are looking for and book.
This one of a kind solution, turns traditional booking sites into sales machines that close more business. The solution can be implemented on top of bookings systems used by chain hotels, tourism destination and hotel association. That means a tourism website does not have to change software or systems and instead adds the new travel planning and sales systems as graphic interface. VBT also can replace existing travel bookings system providing a turnkey solution in the cases where the portal owners wants to make a change to its systems or does not already have a booking engine. In the “all done for you” solution the Visual Travel Planning and Bookings is an integrated product using the arcRes reservations platform.
Mostly we expect that portal owners will already have the reservation component and VBT will implement the travel planning visual interface on top of any existing software.
To Get on the list to evaluate and test out this dynamic new technology – Click Here >>>
Jul 30, 2015 | the future, trends
Digital Marketing trends that are changing how e market hotels and tourism destinations.
Perhaps the biggest and most powerful force for change in travel marketing is Mobile, it is simple going to pull the foundation from under the pillars of all the established platforms.
Mobile technology is playing havoc now but when coupled with the consumer changes like the advent of millennials doing their own thing, it is devastating some businesses and many industry practices.
The new generation Z are said to “Wake up Connected” and what that means to travel is just begining to emerge!
global trends in travel marketing that effect hotels ad tourism destinations
The 5 Digital Trends Changing Hotel and Tourism Marketing seem as Shaping the Future of travel by Marketing Technology Blog and in the SDL infographic are:
“Social Amplification, Personalization, Digital Do-it-Yourself millennials, Visual marketing and Mobile.
Other factors and forces are at play including the increasing role of government to control the growing monopole of OTAs as the industry consolidates and the most successful get bigger. Governments are taking issue with fair rate policies and insisting that small hotels have control over heir marketing strategies and pricing.
While the digital trends above are forcing a shift in balance from the biggest to the global consumer and tourism provider – these other forces, like the possible end of rate parity now blowing in the wind, are also creating a more even playing field.
For the full article see Digital Marketing in Travel
Jun 1, 2015 | bookings, sales funnels
In this, now famous study by psychologists Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper, consumers bought more when offered fewer choices. “With 24 flavors, 60% of the store’s customers stopped to taste test and 3% of the tasters bought jam. With six flavors, 40% of the store’s customers stopped to taste test, but 30% of those tasters bought jam. Customers were ten times more likely to buy when offered less flavors.”
Clearly too many options overwhelm shoppers who will often abandon the shopping cart if their are too many option. It is also true that less choices, more often than not, will increases conversions.
For hotels the dilemma with website bookings is that hotels have multiple room types, rates and options which can easily exceed 50 or choices. In addition their are add-ons and upgrades that can just confound travellers.
For the most part it is not possible for hoteliers to present a a standard room into a suite, or a garden view to a beach front for example, yet as this article points out there are some simple strategies can help to boost conversion in travel shopping.
Here are some suggestion for our own experience and from the linked article
1. Set defaults in booking choice.. Exapmple Poinsettia Villa Apartments. When a user clicks on the book now or reservations button they go direct to booking process set fr a reservation for the average stay (7 days) and starting 7 days from the current date. The booking engin shows all units with a brief description and image. Shoppers can get more info by clicking on details within the arcRes booking options.
2. Show best rates and special. A booking engine like the one above will loook for the best rates and show the traveler the best option for them. The best rates are show above normal rates that are crossed out. This makes shoppers feel comfortable that the are getting the best deal. Its also important to have Best Rate Guarantee show ion the site.
3. Minimize add-ons during booking. The airline industry success in up-selling premium seats and travel insurance when booking flights, and hospitality followed with add-ons that are now a part of bookings. The fact is that data shows few shoppers purchase add-ons, and it accounts to approx 0.1% of the total revenue. The suggestion is don’t offer them till after the booking is done.
4. Beak down the buying process into several steps. To varying degrees hotel websites help shoppers through the booking process. In the Power Marketing Consultants Strategy, website design is seen as part of the messaging system and need to be focused on specific goals and steps in getting people to that point. For example, start with a compelling headline that talks to your ideal customers needs. Create 3 hot buttons that lead people to information answering their question or displaying information that they need. Its a departure and rethinking of the tradition approach that looks at a website as a brochure.
PMC points out that those days are over. Hotel Websites must be behavior responsive, visually engaging sales funnels that are an integrated part of marketing, advertising and messaging systems.
You can download the entire report on website design and Power Marketing Strategies at PowerMembers.allCastMarketing.com when you register for Free Membership that offers marketing insights, guides, videos, case studies and strategy reports.
5. Make it visual. We have shown how visual and behavior responsive technology has increased engagement by 500% and conversion by 300%. With news systems and the latest VisualBookingsTechnology.com hotel and tourism organization can transform static pages into highly effective sales funnels. Hotels need to start to look at website as sales funnels and implement the latest technology to improve the travel-shopers experience. See more on how visual information system like Pinterest are Transforming travel
power marketing website optimization strategies
Feb 15, 2015 | advertising, visual marketing technology
36 Visual Content Creation Tools the Pros Can't Live Without.
We know it is now clearly the age of visual communications. We have seen that our old sites with lost of content, but not a lot of visual content just are not as engaging as they used to be a couple of years ago. That’s why sites like the Barbados Tourism Encyclopedia are shifting to visualization mode with visual bookings and behavior responsive technology for marketing.
This presentation covers some really neat tools that will help anyone create engaging visual blogs and presentation. Check out products like Canva to build presentation that come alive – Some that are not mention are HauikuDeck
Feb 3, 2015 | advertising, mobile technology, TravelShopping, visual tourism marketing, visual travel bookings
TripAdvisor Mobile Strategy: Forget Ads On Those Tiny Screens, Instead Optimize For Clicks And Commissions – Forbes.
Its an interesting and maybe accurate prediction that the advertsing business model will not work on Mobile. To some extend we are seeing it fail even on the d4esktop as travelers just are not click on links, banners and ads like they used to. They want value added. Not a list or an option to go to another site like Booking.com.. They know about them already.
So TA is putting bookings on its own site. The question is “Is that a value adds” The answer is no. Travelers want help in making decisions – like Visual Travel Planning and Visual Bookings technology.
TripAdvisorss CEO Stephen Kaufer believes Instant Booking will help. TA wants to offer the best experience, particularly on the mobile, which accounts for 40 percent TAs traffic today and that is growing. It used to be TAs mission of offer the best trip planning now it is moving to offering both planning and bookings. He says: “On the desk top it is a reasonable experience. It’s what all of our customers have been doing for years and years and years. On the phone it is certainly more painful because you’re clicking off onto someone else’s site and how do you get back? It’s not easy. There’s more friction in the process.”
TAs Booking was launched in May 2014; it will be fully implemented on mobile and partially on desktop early in 2015, TA visitors will still have meta-search options “because booking on TripAdvisor is just one option.”
As Kaufer says” “We have the most lodging choices of anyone , the most reviews to help you select which is the best property for you. We have the best price comparison. And then with Instant Book, we will offer the traveler the ability to finish the booking on TripAdvisor. But hey if you found a better price somewhere else, you are certainly welcome to click on that and book it somewhere else.”
See the article for more details
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Oct 14, 2014 | technology
Startup pitch: IBM's Watson powers new travel advice tool WayBlazer – Tnooz.
Its been a long time in incubation but IBM Watson is on the move and its heading for travel
Terry Jones, chairman of WayBlazer the first to use IBMs watson for a dedicate travel planning tool, first contacted with Manoj Saxena the GM of IBM Watson about 3 years ago and talked then about the an incredible business opportunity.
The idea was to bring Watson to travel and offer something new, as Jones says “Watson is very different from the kind of computers I ran at Sabre or previous startups. It’s a computer that speaks and understands natural language. It can make sense of unstructured data, like words on an internet website.”
Jones and Manjo believe that the the travel booking problem has been solved fairly well planning has not!.
“WayBlazer can change that, make planning a trip online as easy as having a conversation with a friend.We add Watson’s natural-language processing to a cognitive travel graph we license from another company in Austin, Cognitive Scale. That graph database allows us to relate concepts to each other — people, places, times, deals.”
It is also a highly visual solution along the lines of http://VisualBookingsTechnology.com. For this WayBalzer has sourced hundreds of thousands of open-source images on the web to supplement results with visuals, these include images of tours-and-activities.
– See more at: http://www.tnooz.com/article/startup-pitch-wayblazer-aims-travel-insights-service/#sthash.b5xRuYGt.dpuf
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