Twitter News = More Mobile Conversions for Hotels

I’m not going to reinvent the wheel here, but I am going to sum up (in average language) what’s happening for hotels with Twitter’s recent announcement about deep-linking and Twitter cards. This is especially notable info for big hotel brands that offer last-minute travel deals, but I think independents and smaller brands can definitely benefit, too.

In case you need any encouragement about the importance of mobile deals, a Nielsen study shows that 33% of mobile users searching for travel related content intend to make a purchase within the day. So much opportunity.

Basically, the new opportunity with Twitter—called deep-linking—takes your user straight from Twitter into your mobile app. If the user doesn’t have your app already dowloaded on their mobile device, they’ll be able to download it straight from Twitter (it’s really obvious… it says “download the app”). Bingo—easy app promotion.

If the user already has your app, they can go straight from Twitter into your app. As Tnooz notes, this means more conversions for last-minute deals since the user probably has their payment information already loaded in your app. They don’t have to sign in to clunky mobile websites; just press a button and the deal is booked. Cool! Most last-minute bookings are coming from smart-phones (around 70%), so this new feature means a big edge over the competition when it comes to conversions.

How do the Twitter cards factor in here? You have to have Twitter cards in order to use deep-linking, but you’ll want them anyway if you don’t already have them. They allow to you push out bigger and better Tweets with product information, pricing, etc. All hotels could benefit from Twitter cards, so check out that Tnooz link above for more details about the cards.

Read more about the new Twitter cards and deep-linking opportunities in Twitter's announcement.