Weekly Roundup: Travel, Tech and Social Media
It's that time again! Welcome back to our usual weekly roundup of travel, tech, and social media news and trends! Check out what's new in the world of travel and hospitality below.
Happy reading and don't forget to come back next week for more!
Industry News
Hilton Infuses Mobile Throughout Mass and Personalized Appeals
Hilton is placing mobile at the center of its 2016 marketing initiatives, which include enhanced digital keyless entry options, its largest-ever campaign with a call-to-action for rewards memberships and a celebrity-supported social media contest, pointing to mobile's potential to build brand across demographics.
Yahoo Travel Shuttered as Part of Company-Wide Reorganization
Yahoo delivered on rumored job cuts and a company-wide reorganization today as it shuttered its Yahoo Travel product and laid off four of five travel staffers, including Editor-in-Chief Laura Begley Bloom.
AccorHotels Invests in Holiday Rentals to Understand Expectations
French accommodation giant AccorHotels has announced strategic investments in two holiday rental companies. AccorHotels deputy chief officer for marketing, digital, distribution and information systems, Vivek Badrinath, says the investments help the company better understand guest expectations in the home rental market and enable it to explore a “new complementary offer to upscale hotels.”
Trends and Insights
Google Explains Local Search Results: What Hotels Need to Know to Improve Their Rankings
A majority of travelers begin their travel planning on Google. Where a hotel shows up in local rankings influences its clickthrough rates and likelihood of getting booked. Last week, Google shared a blog, providing us with insights into how it calculates local search rankings, noting that local results are based primarily on a business’s relevance, distance, and prominence. Here’s what that means for hotels.
How to Build a Competitive Strategy
With an economic soft landing predicted for 2017 many hospitality businesses will need to have a foundation built on sound strategy for continued success.
Independent Hotels in Europe Must Adapt to Attract New Guests in 2016
Independent hotels in Europe must find new ways to attract customers during 2016 in order to survive. That's the stark message contained in a report on the future of the hotel sector.
Is Meta-Search to Blame for Hospitality's 5 Digit Look-to-Book?
The Look-to-Book ratio is a figure used in the travel industry that shows the percentage of the number of requests to your booking engine per reservation made. This ratio is important to online travel vendors for determining the ROI of their investment strategies to secure those all-important conversions.
A Tipping Point for Travel as Apps Overtake Mobile Web
Criteo‘s latest mobile commerce report claims that a tipping point has been reached, with apps accounting for more travel purchases than the mobile web.
As part of the PR around its 40th anniversary, Travelex asked more than 2000 “census-representative” American adults about their leisure travel plans for the year. The finding that only 4% will use Airbnb for their next vacation is the stand-out statistic as it adds to the generally confused picture about just how popular Airbnb is with travelers.
Twitter Introduces New Customer Service via DM Option to and Feedback Tools
As Twitter works to refresh and re-energize to counter negative sentiment and slowing growth, one of their key areas of focus will be social customer service. Why? Because according to Twitter’s own data, more than 80% of customer service requests on social come through via tweets.
