A new review has been added to the information about the book WEBSITE Marketing Today – Trends and Fatal Mistakes. This is the first book in the series on Marketing Hotels and Tourism. The new page starts with a summary of the first chapter, “Travel Then and Now”. It goes on to provide an overview of what you can expect to learn from the Book, including reviews of leading apps as well as technology and detailed strategies that you can implement right away. It demonstrates what works and what does not and looks at critical and fatal mistakes many owners make.
Tourism Dominated by New Media
The book WEBSITE explores how hotel & tourism marketing has changed and studies the evolution of the WEBSITE. Once considered just an online brochure, it is now a major marketing and communication channel owned by hotels. The hotel and destination Website is a vital resource today in a market that has become dominated by Online Travel Agents, Meta-search Engines, Google Search, Google Travel, Social Media Channels, Apps, New Media and Technology.
Website – More Than a Brochure
Today’s Website is a marketing resource that gives hotel and tourism professionals, business owners and marketers a vehicle to communicate directly with their clients and prospective guests. Since the beginning of the digital age, the industry has seen a shift to distribution, with sites like Expedia and Bookings.com taking a growing share of business. Their marketing practices can undermine independent hotels that can get listed in the wrong category, be featured incorrectly and, in some cases, not get featured at all. Getting featured and booked on the OTAs has become difficult for small brands who have little control over the OTA policies. The reliance on OTAs has, to a large extent, eroded brand integrity.
Direct Communication
The Website is the one thing that hotel and tourism marketers own. It can enhance the brand and speak directly to travellers and guests. With advances in technology, the website can be a powerful tool in competing with other alternatives and amplify the shopping experience. Hotels and tourism owners have an advantage in the offering of personalization, personal service and expert knowledge of the destination. They can offerperks and benefits that might not be available to OTAs and other sites.
Technology Available to All
Leading technology in bookings, meta-search, artificial intelligence, bots and personalization is now available to every hotel and tourism owner. There are tools, resources and apps that can plug in to a hotel website to automate the communications, sales and booking process. Messaging strategies that talk direct to prospects and help them make informed choices are available to everyone. There are resources, services and outsources that hotels can hire to do the work that is needed.
What is needed is a simple guide that shows the way. That is this Book, WEBSITE. Chapter 1 sets the stage and the book flows through several chapters that offer practical advice and actionable strategies; all in simple language with easy-to-use examples and case studies.
Avoid Fatal Mistakes That Will Destroy a Website
Chapter 1 – Past & Future in Website Marketing: See the 7 Reason Why you should buy the book. Learn about trends that will affect website marketing. See how to avoid common mistakes that most business owners make! >>>
The official Press Release for the new paperback version of my book on hotel website marketing strategies is just released in paperback. It has wide coverage and I want to add a bit about the book that is not in the Press Release. But let’s start with a question I hear over and over again:
Does Your Hotel Really Need a Website?
With the rapid rise of Social Media, Web 2.0 and other distribution channels, hoteliers often develop their hotel presence on these channels at the expense of their own website. But having your own website is actually more vital now that it has ever been. Social media is great – so are the Online Travel Agents, review sites like TripAdvisor and even Google. All give hotels their own pages and brand exposure… sort of!
Your page on Booking.com is not your brand. It is most definitely their brand with your product tucked into it along with piles of competition shouting out “a better price”, “a better deal”, “a bigger place” and so on. This is often done with very inappropriate comparison by the platform. You simple can’t rely on 3rd party sites to represent your brand well. It’s not their priority.
Taking Control of Your Brand
The only place you can really control your brand and your message is on your own site. But since you are reading this, it means you probably know that already. What you might want to know next is how to properly position your website to represent your brand. Maybe you are wondering how to differentiate your hotel from all the others. Perhaps you have seen that most hotel websites all say the same sort of thing: “Best Family Hotels”, “The ideal Romantic Getaway”. It’s all platitudes and it just does nothing for your business. My book and the bonuses will help you see through platitudes and show you how to dig deep to find the true “why” that makes you special. There is an entire section on how to create the right message and how to create hot buttons that will inspire and engage guests.
Messaging and Hot Buttons
Marketing travel is all about selling the vision and the dream. Features and Benefits are for the text books, not the imagination. They alone do not tell stories or motivate buyers. You do need to ask yourself: What is our Hot Button? It’s got to be an activator, that is, something that will get attention – something that is Familiar, Unusual or Problematic that is also important or relevant to them. Of course, different people have different hot buttons, which is fine because your market is made up of those who will love the difference you are setting up. In the book we demonstrate with a small villa resort that discovered that the people who loved the resort were independent-minded travelers who did not want to be with the crowd. The hot buttons had a few variations but all were about “holidays without crowds”. That hits on the main problem that their clients wanted to avoid. If you can solve a problem and articulate that clearly to your market, that is a hot button.
Discover Little Known Strategies for Digital Marketing
You are going to discover all the traditional website strategies, like how to optimize for SEO, blog for travel, optimizing for mobile, etc. But this book starts a journey that will explore the website messaging strategy that you need to build to get the benefit of the books following that deal with Digital Media and Technology.
The techniques shared are not common practices. We don’t talk about design but about messaging and strategy to carry that message across your website, building on your unique opportunities and your mission.
Here is the latest Press Release as published on Wall Street Select. We also got picked up by Travel Weekly and 300 media outlets – It’s available in Kindle Digital Format and paperback.
Book Bonus Tips and Membership
Be sure to get the book bonus. It includes membership to a site where I will share ideas and tactics as you progress. Right now my team and I are very excited as we launch what we know is going to be the next big disruption in tourism. It’s all to do with personality branding and matching hotels with travelers by personality.
I’ll be sharing ideas with book readers on how this might apply. Our partner in this project is a world-class award-winning personality branding professional who has written several books and has helped many businesses and individuals find their unique point of Fascination. You can find a link to her HowToFascinate assessment at info.personaholidays.com. The assessment is FREE and can get you started on understanding how your own character may play a part in the brand you build. There is also a brand assessment. Both are free and for a small fee you can upgrade to a paid version which gives you an in-depth report and a video. Sally, our partner, is bringing HowtoFascinate to tourism – More about that at http://Fascinatingtravelers.com
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