Google Exec Shares 3 Trends Shaping Travel

Rob Torres, head of Google’s travel industry practice, shared three key trends shaping the hotel industry during the Hotel Data Conference.

Here is my brief summary – its very brief so please read the article for all the details.

1. Hospitality  preceded the stay and extends beyond it. 

You must be be on every device and channel. Guests start with discovery and planning and switch from their smartphone to tablet to laptop and to the desktop seamlessly. If your online presence doesn’t follow them, you loose.

2. Relevance is reality.

People are inundated with choice. Make sure you are in channels that matter.

3. Experience matters.

If the online promise is not what you deliver, you will have unhappy guests who will express this online in ways that can kill business.

Torres closed the panel by summing up his key takeaways.

“personalization is key to winning this game. More and more folks are all about relevancy. … I want that personalized experience,” Torres said.

See entire article on Hotelnewsnow >>Google exec shares 3 trends shaping travel.

MY take:

Its not often that Google shares info that can help hospitality marketers, a lot of what I see today, is the big G positioning itself to take control of more and more. Some of their recent changes in search have really hurt small hotels as they move more to authority brands and list the Big OTA clients.

Go here for more on how Google Tightens it grip on travel

Also on that page is our Video showing hotels are falling off search results!