Hotel CRM Reality Check

On January 20, 2017, I booked a hotel in Seville, Spain. That is also the day that Meliá Hotels & Resorts got my email address. The rest, as they say, is history.

For those of you who are not familiar with EU-based hotel companies: Meliá Hotels International is a Spanish hotel chain also known by its former name of Sol Meliá. They have 374 hotels in 40 countries on four continents. They are not a big  household name in the US, but they got some attention back in 2010 when they sold their “Tryp” brand to Wyndham Hotels. I made several groovy jokes back then about Wyndham “Trypping,” which thankfully nobody remembers. Moving on.

So why am I taking you all the way back to 2017? Since my initial interaction with Meliá Hotels, I have received 2-3 emails from them every month. After deleting some of the earlier ones, I was almost ready to “Unsubscribe.” Then I had an epiphany: how about I stay on the list and see how this multi-billion dollar hotel company handles its Customer Relationship Management (CRM), and in particular its email marketing campaigns.

What started almost two years ago is now ready to be shared.

 

Buzzwords, They Keep on Buzzing

There have been over a dozen articles (plus a couple of white papers) telling us how software is transforming the hotel CRM landscape. There is more talk about how “personalization” is changing everything. However, my two-year collection of emails from a well-established hotel brand sheds a very different light on how things are in the real world.

There are over a dozen CRM vendors who will sell you their software….I don’t think this is a software issue. The biggest CRM challenge for hotels is hiring the right people. Lack of talent is a much bigger threat to the hotel industry than our world-renowned outdated technology.

 

Let’s Take a Trip Down Memory Lane

A couple of things to keep in mind as we take this journey together:

  1. Meliá Hotels is just an example I am using for this post. I am not singling them out as an outlier. Before you high five your marketing team, please know that there are 5-8 other hotel brands (big box and independently owned) who have sent me a similar pattern of emails.
  2. I have not included every email ever sent to me. Some were deleted while I logged a quarter million miles of flying last year.
  3. This year I published the Ultimate Guide To Hotel Email Marketing. If you think you may need help, read my guide to start sending better emails.

I stayed at the Gran Meliá Colon Hotel in Seville in April 2017. After the usual follow-up emails about my stay and 2-3 emails about leaving them a review with TripAdvisor (which I never do), a barrage of discount emails started hitting my inbox. In June 2017, I started to document some of them.

Let’s roll.

 

June 2017

The first email I saved offered 45% off their hotel in London, Wow, quite a deal, right? Pay attention to the “45% off,” as it will make a comeback…again and again…like Jason Voorhees.

 

July 2017

In July, the discount dropped…but not for long.

 

August 2017

August opened strong with deals to Milan…40% off!

 

Dropped by 5% mid August. Dang, should have dropped everything and gone to Milan from Hawaii 4 days ago! It’s not that far, is it?

 

Three days later, the offer is limited to only one hotel! I still have not been south of Seville. Maybe I should quit what I’m doing and head to the Southern shores? But what about the North/Atlantic part of Spain? I want to go there too. Will I get 35% off ever again? What about the 45% deal? Is it ever happening for me again?

 

September 2017

Dear diary, the 40% deal is back!! Wait a minute…it’s for booking next summer!? What if I don’t get time off? Unless I am working in Europe, there is no guarantee of a summer break. In the US, there is no guarantee of ANY break. 40% off is too good to pass up, but I don’t know where I will be in the summer of 2018.

 

Are you kidding me? 22%!? Guys, I do not get out of bed for less than 40%. You have done 40% for me before. Why are you giving me only 22% off now? Are you guys mad at me for not booking last time?

 

October 2017

Sweet relief! The 40% deal is back! But wait…I need to go urban this autumn? I can’t go urban this autumn! I only go “urban” in the winters!

 

November 2017

OMG! I cannot believe this! 50% off! How is this happening? How are they going to make any money? But wait…the email mentioned “This is only the beginning.” What does that even mean? More 50% off emails, or will I be getting even bigger discounts!? This is getting out of hand, but I really cannot travel right now so…I shall pass on this miracle. Alas, it might never happen again in my lifetime.

 

It’s another miracle! But this miracle actually ends on Sunday! Black Friday is not just about brawls at the local Walmart anymore. It is now about deep discounts. Sounds like I will never pay retail again for my hotel room…thank you! I feel like I am living in the golden age of hotel discounting. How neat is that!

 

OMG! Three miracles in one month!  This is all that’s playing in my mind right now: “We are not worthy!” I guess Cyber Monday is no longer about buying bulk paper towels. You can now get 50% off for booking a room you otherwise would have gotten at full rate. There is a lesson in here somewhere.

 

December 2017

22% off is for the birds! 40-50% off and then we can talk. “Season of love and laughter.” Please. If you really cared, you would offer a better deal. From 50% to all the way down to 22%…now I am sad.

Are you kidding me? 20% off. Let me put on some sad music to go with this deal.

Oh, look who’s back! 45% is nice…but what’s with the lady trying to drown the kid? Love the “say goodbye to winter” tagline. If only it was so simple. Besides, I like winter in Hawaii!

30%? No thanks. “Am I well travelled?” Does logging over a million miles in the air count?

 

January 2018

LOL! “Head to London in February” = Someone who has never been to London in February. Hard pass.

Oh look, the underwater lady and kid are back! 45% off to book for summer. Again, no idea where I will be, but thanks for asking.

 

February 2018

“Jet off to somewhere soon.” Guys, 40% off is great. But remember, we don’t do time off in US. Hope the lady has sunscreen on.

45% off is good. But…”Goodbye Monday Blues”? I love Mondays! What’s wrong with Monday?

The underwater lady is back! I really hope that kid is all right.

 

So glad I did not book 4 days ago @45% off! 50% discounts are back! “Book now or regret it later.” Wait, are you threatening me?

 

“There is no better place.” Apparently that place is also secret enough to not be above the fold in the email design. Life is full of surprises, I guess.

 

March 2018

Nothing inspires confidence in a new hotel like a 30% off deal on Day One.

 

In the era of “fake news,” your tagline % better match the actual offer.

 

Four days in…where? I would love to hop there in 2.5 hours. When I checked into the hotel, they copied my ID, passport, credit card. Sir, I am not 2.5 hours from anything!

 

April 2018

Oh look! It’s the return of 45% off Summer.

 

Three days later: 20%? No, thank you. Hey, what’s the mysterious black stuff on the beach outlining Best Offers? (Cue in X-Files theme.)

 

Beach lady makes a comeback! This time on 100% green grass. Did she like her beach vacation? We will never know.

 

“Short Haul” in body copy of email sent to the other end of the world. LOL.

 

“Reservar Ahora.” English email, Spanish call to action. Can’t lose?

 

“Mid Season Sale”…but that lady is floating in the water. Will she catch a cold? Also, 30-35%…I’m more of a 45% and above kind of guy.

 

May 2018

Back to 45%, now we’re talking.

 

Four days later, down to 40%.

Beach won this round.

 

Back to 45% 6 days later.

 

20%…how about not.

 

It’s GDPR season! Also, is she opening or closing the curtain on my privacy?

 

40%…hey, it’s better than the 20% off from last week.

 

GDPR curtain lady returns! Also, check out my points balance!

20%… nope.

 

June 2018

Cool kid with shades giving 45% off.

 

Oh no, I lost 5% discount in 2 days! This one says it will hold for 10 days only! What if I am stuck in 20% discount land after that?

 

Last chance? Are you sure? I will never get a discount again? Oh no!

 

Oh c’mon! I thought 40% was valid for 10 days ONLY! Here you are seven days later giving me 45% off! I thought we were friends.

 

Going urban? Sure, like Urban Outfitters? Oh hello, 45% off. Nice to see you again.

 

“Unforgettable memories…with 40% off” is a hilarious snippet. But wait…there’s more. “Tell Me More With 40% Off” is a hilarious call to action! How do they do it?

 

Nothing will warm the heart of a hotel ownership group like having their management brand kick off a new opening with 35% off.

 

Cool kid with shades giving 45% off is back!

 

July must be about comebacks. Urban lady feels like a friend now.

 

July offers…but for October. Let me stop everything and figure out this email. Also, only 25% off?

 

10% deal? Do you even know who I am? I have not gone below 20% with you! Also, 50% off in the copy of the email. What game are we playing here?

 

I am still mad about the 10% email. But ok, glad to see we are back to 45%.

 

45% off…keep em’ coming, baby!

 

Searching for paradise? Dude, I live in Hawaii. Have you even checked my profile/analytics? Oh, never mind.

 

Wishing on a star that the next email will be 45% off.

 

Yes! My wish came true. 45% off email is back.

 

I get sun here in Hawaii. In Spain, I soak up some of the world’s best food. Didn’t I do so many food-focused things in Seville? Do you remember anything about me?

 

Escape from what? I am not trapped anywhere. Do you think I am? Why?

 

35%. Meh.

 

35%. Meh.

 

Did someone mix up their Instagram motivational quote with their call to action? Also, they spelled unforgettable wrong. Also, 35%. Meh.

 

45%, yeah! Wait, who is she looking at?

 

“Exclusive Offers Just For You.” LOL!

 

Last one. Check out my amazing point balance.

 

CRM Is Not An Acronym for Email Marketing

Somewhere along the way, hotel CRM has evolved into just sending emails to guests. The typical five-step email cycle breaks down as follows:

1. Booking confirmation email
2. Reminder email
3. Check-out email
4. Request to review the property on TripAdvisor (2-3 emails)
5. Discount emails for the remainder of your life

Break the cycle. You have too much information about your guest for you not to care about segmenting. Break down your lists by geography, interests, age, and then stay in touch for more than just discounts. Hotels all over the world have scanned or photocopied my passport and driver’s license. That level of personal information is only available to the TSA (Department of Homeland Security) and border control agencies worldwide. And yes, a small hotel in Kyoto. Think about it.

Three Step Plan for Improving Your Hotel’s CRM

Step 1: Designate CRM ownership. Select a person to lead your CRM efforts and strategy. Your customer database is something you need to own and maintain over time. Your database should not be passed around like a basketball, available to any department that wants to take a “shot” at making the basket.

It is not about software, it is about who is keeping an eye on things. Any customer contacts should get a final stamp of approval from a central person who is keeping an eye on CRM database quality and ongoing business analytics.

Step 2: Check yourself before you wreck yourself. Two parties have traditionally misused the hotel email database.

  • Sales and marketing. Avoid sending a promo about something that not everyone would be interested in (eg, local restaurant/bar promos that get blasted out to everyone in your database, including guests who never used it and live over 3000 miles away).
  • Revenue management. You guys are great, but please stop using your email database like an ATM machine. Every time the revenue numbers slack off a bit, you can’t just pull the lever on an “exciting 45% off” email and wait for the reservations to trickle in. Oh, this also answers another question I get a lot. “Why are our campaigns not performing like they did last year?”

Step 3: Segment or go home. Your hotel customer database is not going to stay fit and fine forever. It is not Hisako Manda. In addition to performing ongoing maintenance, you also need segmentation. One big list should make way for smaller segmented lists. Examples include:

  • Geographic location
  • Clicks (0, 1, or more?)
  • Frequency of use (checked in more than once?)
  • Replies

Conclusion

Somewhere along the way, hotel CRM became synonymous with email marketing. This is really unfortunate because, unlike other industries, hotels sit on a mountain of personal data. Generic outreach chips away at any hope of building a relationship with your guests. There is a ton of speculation in the marketplace about who truly “owns” your guest. The truth is that nobody owns your guest, but you sure can make an effort to reach out and be their friend. Remember, nobody makes friends and builds relationships just by offering discounts. You have to share value to see your revenue numbers grow.

 

 

 

The Ultimate Guide to TripAdvisor for Hotels

When TripAdvisor was founded in February 2000 in a small office above Kostas Pizza on 315 Chestnut Street in Needham, Massachusetts, I don’t think anyone could have predicted the amount of time and energy it would consume, and the strong emotions it would conjure.

Since I started my blog in 2013, I have consistently fielded questions about TripAdvisor. Looking back at the sheer volume of time I spent answering these complex emails, I think it’s time to for me aggregate my knowledge, experience and advice in one place. Here are some of the most frequently asked questions, along with my responses.

 

Is my competition  trying to take my hotel down on TripAdvisor?

Short Answer: Yes, it’s possible.

Long Answer: I get asked about this a lot by hoteliers around the world. “You are not being paranoid” is how I start most replies. There are some hotel owners/operators who turn to the dark side when it comes to TripAdvisor. Instead of improving their own product and service, they trash their competition. These are the folks that the youth today refer to as the haters.

The hospitality industry has always had its fair share of bad apples. Anytime you claim something is powered by algorithms, there will be a group of players ready to game the system. In a time when so much power is bestowed upon TripAdvisor, a lot of time people feel desperate to win. Desperation should lead to hard work…but often leads instead to a “win by any means” mentality. How many hotels walk on the dark side by writing/sponsoring their own glowing reviews and/or posting negative ones for their competitors will never truly be known.

Offenders are not just mom and pop operations. Let’s not forget Peter Hook*, a senior executive at Accor Hotels who took it upon himself to write awesome reviews for his own hotels while posting negative ones for competing brands. He got caught when the TripAdvisor Facebook app linked his anonymous username “Travare” to his Facebook account — after he had posted 106 reviews in 43 cities!

This incident happened all the way back in 2013… so how have things changed? Elementary, Watson. The bad guys have gotten much smarter.

*Self-fulfilling prophecy: He described himself in his Twitter bio as the “Director of Propaganda” for Accor hotels in Asia-Pacific.

 

Can you game the TripAdvisor “algorithm”?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: It has been done, and has led to some epic fails for TripAdvisor.

  1. Bellgrove Hotel, Glasgow. In 2013, this “hotel heaven,” a hostel for the homeless, made it onto the list of TripAdvisor’s 100 best places to stay, thanks to the efforts of pranksters who posted numerous five-star reviews.
  2. La Scaletta, Italy. Italians know their food, fashion and automobiles. Apparently they also know how to expose the flawed “algorithms” of the largest review site in the world. Read how a non-existent restaurant made it to the #1 spot. I gotta give it to the Italians on this one…the phone number for the restaurant was that of the city’s police station! Prendere in giro! The final burn: In December 2014, the Italian Antitrust Authority fined TripAdvisor €500,000, complaining that the site had failed to adopt controls to stop false reviews while promoting its content as “authentic and genuine.”
  3. The Shed at Dulwich, South London. All the British food jokes aside, London now has a ton of exciting chefs and restaurants competing for dominance in a growing food and beverage scene. Enter freelance writer Oobah Butler. His fake restaurant in South London became “London’s Top Rated Restaurant” on TripAdvisor. And this was all happening in 2017, not that long ago.
  4. The Riu Imperial Marhaba, Tunisia. This story is really tragic. Thirty-eight people were shot at this hotel, and it had closed its operations. Yet TripAdvisor included it on its coveted “2016 Traveler’s Choice Award” list. Makes you wonder, when do you become too big to do basic research when making your award lists?

 

PSA: Don’t put your life in the hands of a review site.

Let’s take a brief moment to address something terrifying about TripAdvisor: Profits will always be more important than people.

For me, the darkest side of TripAdvisor’s unchecked power and accountability was exposed in 2017 by The Milwaukee Journal, which uncovered how reports of rape and assault at some all-inclusive resorts in Mexico were deleted from their site. These two publicly posted excerpts really highlight the problem:

Exhibit A:

Milwaukee Journal: Why were these warnings deleted?

TripAdvisor: They were “determined to be inappropriate by the TripAdvisor community,” or removed by staff because they were “off-topic” or contained language or subject matter that was not “family friendly.”
 
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel asked to see the posts that were removed. The company refused.

Exhibit B:

When there were murmurs that the US Federal Trade Commission would be getting involved, TripAdvisor put out an official response via The Verge and Engadget. Here is an excerpt:

“We are not aware of an inquiry by the Federal Trade Commission nor have they contacted us. TripAdvisor is a global user-generated content platform that enables travelers to post positive and negative reviews and forum content about their experiences. We receive 290 pieces of content a minute and need to ensure that information posted on our site adheres to our content guidelines to ensure the integrity of these posts. We stand by our publishing guidelines and how they are applied.”

What I heard:

  1. The FTC is not coming after us, we are funded and have tons of cash for lawyers, so all is good with us.
  2. We get 290 pieces of content/minute for free. You really think we should be expected to hire enough people to go through it?
  3. We stand by our “publishing guidelines”… too bad about your death, robbery and sexual assault.
  4. Now if you’ll excuse us, we will go back to selling ads to hotels and restaurants.

The fact of the matter is, when you book a room at a hotel and make the decision solely based on the “world’s largest review site,” you are sometimes taking your life into your own hands. Remember, just as with Facebook: it’s a free site and they owe you absolutely nothing.

 

Do you use TripAdvisor to research personal travel?

People on my blog ask me a ton of personal questions. Should I feel like a celebrity? Short answer: No.

Whether or not I personally use TripAdvisor is a common question. Yes, I do. But, like anyone who does research on TripAdvisor, I’ve had to learn how to analyze what I’m seeing. I almost feel like Sherlock Holmes when I am reading a hotel or restaurant’s TripAdvisor page, looking for clues and using astute observation to determine what’s really going on.

I do not have a degree in psychology or behavioral sciences, but I have to say that I am a Quantico-level fake hotel review spotter. The sheer number of hours I have spent on TripAdvisor has given me almost perfect clarity. I feel like Neo in The Matrix…making the bullets slow all the way down. (Here is a link for some of you young readers.) The fact is that anyone (with a little practice) can spot the low-quality reviews posted by competitors, tricksters and desperate owners.

Here is my typical process, in case you want to sharpen your own methods:

  1. Look Beyond the Algorithm. I check to see how heavily the hotel is investing in TripAdvisor advertising. The amount money a hotel is spending on TripAdvisor advertising equates to how much time, energy and money is NOT getting spent on things that matter. Example: I can see when a hotel general manager’s bonus has been tied into their TripAdvisor rankings. That means the GM is spending a ton of time online, instead of in the hotel lobby talking to guests. As a user, you need to realize that TripAdvisor stars and rankings are guidelines, not commandments. To find real value, you have to dig deeper than the surface and play with the price and location filters. As with any set of data, you have to segment to win.
  2. Are They Trying Too Hard? I look out for hotels that press too hard for you to leave reviews online, offer special prices in exchange for reviews, etc. When a hotel steps into desperation mode, you know a lot of time and energy is going into collecting the volume of reviews and not the quality of the product itself. I have seen it all…from hotels offering to “complete” the review for me, to them sending me 10 emails requesting a review, to placing TripAdvisor review cards in the W/C. Remember folks: Desperation is never attractive.
  3. ‘Everything Is Awesome.’ Oh, great… I now have that song from the Lego movie stuck in my head! For those who don’t know, here is a gift that is sure to take over your day (and night!). These hotels are easy to spot because everything there is awesome. It is impossible to run a hotel that is all things to all people. When I see a barrage of awesome reviews non-stop over a short period of time, it pretty much signals that there is something going on that deserves more scrutiny.
  4. Go Direct. What do I do when I have a question/doubt? Email the hotel. It’s easy. Click on the contact page and reach out to a real human who might be able to answer questions, make recommendations, etc. Believe it or not, it works 99% of the time! If you do not have a positive experience doing this, you will know what’s behind the curtain of the TripAdvisor reviews and rankings.
  5. Diversify. TripAdvisor is not the only review site out there. Don’t forget the little search engine that is out to take everyone’s lunch. Google’s hotel reviews are a good source for quick concise content. Before I dive into TripAdvisor and start psychoanalyzing their “trusted” reviews, while getting hit with terrible banner ads and being yelled at to “book the best deal I will ever see in my whole damn life”… I locate the hotel on Google and see if there are some usable reviews. Let’s not forget there are a ton of professional travelers that post some truly amazing long-form hotel reviews. Here is a link to one of my favorite hotel review sites. They are not the “biggest review site,” but they are definitely covering a decent spread of small and large hotels in long story form with clear photos.
  6. Log Off. Last but not the least. Friends don’t let friends browse TripAdvisor while logged into their account! Right now is a pretty bad time for privacy. Let’s not divulge more information about ourselves to a multibillion dollar corporation! You don’t need them to serve you more “targeted” banner ads that you ignore, while they are heavily pushing hotels to buy these useless ads. TripAdvisor’s “Just For You” recommendations is not a feature designed to make your life better…it’s an avenue to sell more ads.

 

PSA #2: TripAdvisor’s homepage tagline evolution tells a story.

There is no hiding the fact that American companies love their taglines. TripAdvisor went after the whole trust thing hard for the longest time, until trade law finally caught up with them.

2006: “Get the Truth. Then Go.”
2010: “World’s most trusted travel advice”
2011: (April) “Over 45 million trusted traveler reviews & opinions”
2011: (September) TripAdvisor is banned from claiming that their reviews are “trustworthy” and must remove the following phrases from their website, courtesy of British Advertising Standards Authority:

  • “Read real reviews from real travelers”
  • “Reviews you can trust”
  • “More than 50 million honest travel reviews and opinions from travelers around the world”

2013: “The World’s Largest Travel Site” (The word “trust” is completely gone.)

2018: “The world’s largest travel site. Know better. Book better. Go better.”

Are TripAdvisor’s sponsored placements and ads a good idea?

Note: This is probably the most common question I get.

Short answer: No

Long Answer: Don’t pay to drive traffic to OTAs. They definitely don’t need your help making more money. If you need “brand exposure,” invest in your service and product instead. Investing in impressions and click-based ads on a platform that is not connected exclusively to your website and booking engine defies logic. Unless you are P&G/Unilever/General Electric with money to burn…spending money on banner impressions is a huge waste of your marketing dollars.*

“Logic is the beginning of wisdom … not the end.”

— Commander Spock, USS Enterprise

How about you invest in these 5 things instead:

  1. Make a better hotel website.
  2. Invest in better hotel content and photos.
  3. Get a better hotel booking engine.
  4. Improve your product value.
  5. Invest on Google, and drive direct traffic.

Bonus tip # 6: Subscribe to my blog. It’s free!

*I refuse to debate folks who love to talk about how much traffic VOLUME they get from TripAdvisor, or how well their campaigns are currently performing. I get it, you read things on the internet. I will someday run ads for the hotels I am working with ONLY when I can link the ads directly to the hotel’s website from TripAdvisor. You know, like the cool option I have with Google? If I am spending on ads, I want to exclusively close them on my most profitable channel. Thank you.

What do you think of the good ol’ TripAdvisor business listing?

Short Answer: This prehistoric marketing tactic by which you spend money for a link, which is declining in volume every year, deserves to be in a marketing museum.

Long Answer: I am old enough to remember when TripAdvisor launched their infamous Business Listing for hotels. I am also old enough to remember when you could get some pretty interesting results on Google from listing in online business directories. Wow, this took me all the way back to the late 90’s, early 00’s!

Fast forward to 2018. TripAdvisor still successfully charges a lot of money for placing a link to your hotel website. I must hand it to their marketing machine for showcasing the yuge value of this link. The word “convenience” gets thrown around a lot. How helpless are hotel guests that they cannot open another tab in their browser and just Google the hotel that has piqued their interest on TripAdvisor?

Here is the kicker. Over the past several years, the volume of traffic from a TripAdvisor business listing has dropped across the board for all hotels that I have worked with. The success of the new TripConnect CPC and InstantBook products has something to do with this. Why sell you a click for just a flat fee? Why not make a % commission on top of it by converting those clicks. The whole convenience argument starts to fall apart when you realize that anyone booking travel in this day and age has at least 5-10 tabs open on their browser.

So I cannot understand why hotels continue to pay for a simple link to their website from a page on a third party site. Possible answers:

  • Convenience. You really think someone smart enough to read online reviews cannot open a new tab in their browser and Google you? Spending thousands of dollars every year to save your guest a click?
  • Fear. There is heavy speculation that your TripAdvisor rankings ‘allegedly’ might decline when you stop advertising with them. Lawyers, pay attention that I am using the word “allegedly.”
  • Habit. There is the “we have always done this and it’s now a part of our annual budget” reasoning. An average hotel in NYC is probably paying 10K to 15K for a link. Now imagine they took that cash and spent it on better coffee for guests in their lobby. Or how about renting puppies to hang out with the guests on weekends? Imagine the possibilities!

 

How do I deal with business listing hyperinflation?

Short Answer: Just say no.

Long Answer: Only in the hotel business can you have the audacity to ask for more money (2018 vs 2017) for a link to YOUR own website from a page where YOUR guests have contributed all the content. But wait, there’s more! You are getting fewer clicks than before. It feels like an episode on Black Mirror.

But this is actually happening. TripAdvisor has raised the price of their business listing for every hotel I have worked with in 2018 (that’s over 70 hotels). This is happening even when the total number of referral clicks from TripAdvisor has gone down for ALL properties when comparing 2018 with 2017 YTD. But, guess what? You can keep your old rates if you start buying TripAdvisor sponsored listings! Alrighty then.

Can you imagine a hotel asking for a higher rate, while sharply reducing the value of their hotel product compared with the previous year? People would lose their minds and go right to….oh snaps!….TripAdvisor to post a barrage of negative reviews.

Sometimes it really feels  like that hotels are stuck in the sunken place. Get out!

 

Do I have to promote my new hotel with TripAdvisor Sponsored Ads?

Short answer: No.

Long Answer: Here is a simple two-question test you can use to find the answer for yourself.

Question 1. Is the ego of the owner/operator tied to TripAdvisor rankings?

Then yes, you will have to run banner ads on TripAdvisor, get little or no reporting in return, and listen to someone talk about Billboard Effect in your marketing meetings. Everyone will be pleased and there will be high fives all around.

Question 2. Is the owner/operator a professional who wants to generate net operating income while offering a good product?

Then no, there are better options for promoting a new hotel. You need to perfect your product first and then grow organically. Organic growth is much more permanent than plastering the internet with banner ads that nobody cares for. In addition, you need to target guests at several different points in the buying cycle. There are many other channels where you can list your hotel and get exposure, just to get a baseline on your newly opened product. There is even this little billion-dollar hotel booking site out of Amsterdam and another one in Bellevue than can help you get exposure without annoying people with sponsored listings. (Alert: these sites also offer banner ads, so watch out for that!)

Are your revenue and TripAdvisor rankings related?

Short answer: Yes.

Long answer: There is no denying that your revenue is going to take a hit if you lose your rankings. But please understand that it is not the end of the world. To make a profit, you must diversify. Google, Expedia and Booking all have reviews too; don’t put all your review eggs in one basket. Recovery from a TripAdvisor meltdown is possible, but your pricing, marketing and product quality need to be in full alignment. Please do not tie your distribution to a review website.  That way, when the TripAdvisor “algorithm” is not your favor, the odds might still be in your favor.

Pro tip: Do not tie your personal sanity to TripAdvisor. Stay focused on the real world and engage with your guests in real time. The saddest thing I’ve seen in relation to TripAdvisor was at a trade show.  A hotel owner was in tears pleading with TripAdvisor staff, saying that his negative reviews were affecting his marriage. Don’t be that guy; don’t give so much emotional power to a review website!

 

Conclusion

TripAdvisor is a social media network that uses free content to make money. Your hotel is a physical brick and mortar business in the real world that people can experience by booking a stay. Before you know it, someone will acquire TripAdvisor; then the new owners will figure out more ways to increase their bottom line. You cannot obsess over it, or automatically spend your hard-earned revenue on buying advertising without thinking it through. You are not in high school anymore. In the long term, it really does not matter what people say about you. Run a good hotel, work hard, be kind to your guests, and it’s inevitable that you will make money.

Is Your Hotel Booking Engine Destroying Your Profitability?

Almost every other day, I see a headline about the latest trend that is going to have a massive impact on hotels and travel. Some might even be worth exploring. However, the fact remains that if your hotel booking engine is hard to use, none of the trends will have any impact on your net operating income and profits.

Having worked in hotels most of my adult life, and having traveled extensively, I have vast experience booking rooms every way possible: using phones, travel agents (yes, I am that old), OTAs, and directly from apps. The one consistent problem I find on hotel websites is a disregard for the basic usability principles that form the foundation of an online shopping experience.

Let’s review the Top Ten hits when it comes to bad booking experiences.

1. The One-Hit (One-Screen) Wonder

Let me take you all the way back to 2004. Booking engines were still in their infancy. That was the year the one-screen wonder was born. It was introduced to independent hotels as the greatest thing since the Beatles arrived in America. The catch? It was a usability disaster.

In this type of booking engine, guests were expected to review room photos and descriptions, and select dates, room types, and rates, ALL on one screen!

Hotel Booking Engine

I tirelessly campaigned against this technology back then, but the public relations machine worked harder and had a much broader reach. Their message – “Did you know our one-screen technology allows consumers to make a hotel reservation in one click?” – proved irresistible to many hoteliers. They installed this software on hundreds of independent hotel websites worldwide; each install was followed by a press release full of praise.

In 2010, I came face to face with this monster. While stuck at Chicago’s ORD airport, I tried booking a last-minute room. But the one-screen booking process took so long, I did not have time to complete my reservation before boarding the flight. The hotel got my booking from my Expedia account. They paid a commission because they had invested in the wrong technology. You can imagine how many other bookings were abandoned on their website and booked through online travel agent (OTA) websites.

Of course, the one-screen booking engine was eventually discontinued. But not soon enough. The real economic impact can never be accurately measured. Don’t forget: while bad tech was being sold to hotels using gimmicks and press releases, Booking.com and Expedia were making it easier and easier for guests to book a room at your hotel via their own websites.

2. Way Too Many Questions

When a guest finally decides to book a room at your hotel, why delay the purchase by asking so many questions? I am on your booking engine, with my credit card/online wallet ready…so why not take the booking as quickly and easily as possible? Remember…there’s a good chance I’m at an airport, in the back seat of a taxi, on my limited lunch hour, etc.

This is one of the core issues I have with almost all of the mainstream independent hotel booking engines. The number of required fields makes the experience a little too much like an interrogation by a government agency.

As recently as 2014, I encountered one of the biggest hotel booking engine horrors of my life. I analyzed an asset and discovered that their booking engine had 43 questions before checkout! Later the same year, I saw this booking engine provider at a hotel tech conference and found out that 1500+ hotels and inns were using that system! I had to leave the exhibition hall and sit outside for a while to recover from the shock.

Hotel Booking Engine

Generally speaking, you need to severely limit the required fields on your booking checkout page. Require only what you absolutely MUST HAVE from your guest before giving them a reservation confirmation.

“Way too many questions, you must think I trust you.”

– Future (Jumpman)

Next: why use a teeny tiny asterisk for a required field, which then turns into a big red warning when it’s not filled out? Clearly indicate required items at checkout; don’t make guests go back and repeat steps.

Finally: in 2018, do we need a mandatory title field? Do you really need to know if I am a Mr, Mrs, Miss, Dr, HRH, Lord, Earl, Duke, Baron, or Knight? It’s awkward and even offensive. People of every gender, class, and profession pay with the same kind of money.

Wait, one last thing..

I present you with an asterisk to nowhere that cracks me up every time.

3. Land of Confusion

The optimal layout for the checkout process has been mastered by all the major OTAs, like Booking, Expedia and Airbnb. All the hotel technology providers need to do is follow the blueprint. The multi-million dollar investment in UX (user experience design) and usability testing has already been done for us! But instead of following these best practices, many booking engines continue to confuse the guests… resulting in a direct hit to your revenue and profits. Some of these checkout screens remind me of the 1986 Land of Confusion video by Genesis: way too much happening for anyone to understand what it means on their first try.

Check out this disastrous layout with my notes:

Hotel Booking Engine

What is happening here:

  1. Useless hotel rate code jargon is likely to confuse your guests.
  2. Default setting shows more than one room, even when one room is selected in the date/rate calendar.
  3. Odd placement of the “Continue” button in the middle of the layout makes your guest think too hard.
  4. Listing amenities during the checkout process is distracting and gets in the way. This info belongs on the rooms page.
  5. Four-step checkout? No, thank you.

4. Failure to Launch

According to research from Baymard Institute, around 70% of all shopping carts get abandoned. Slow and non-responsive carts are abandoned right away. The general consensus is that if you cannot efficiently collect my payment, you do not respect my time. That’s why slow-loading booking engines can seriously wreck your direct revenue.

The screen shot below is from a boutique hotel brand’s booking engine. This is what a typical user on high-speed internet was seeing when trying to book a room in NYC. Loading, if it happened at all, was taking over a minute (tested from multiple locations and internet providers).

Hotel Booking Engine

Guess what? This group filed for bankruptcy in 2009 due to massive losses in revenue. I am not a detective, but it’s elementary that a non-functioning booking engine might have hastened their demise.

Here is another example from a luxury hotel brand based in Asia, which has some of the highest ADR rooms in Hong Kong. Every non-responsive session is probably costing them a ton. Luckily for them, they are publicly listed and backed by heavy institutional investors. It’s easy to be lazy with other people’s money.

Hotel Booking Engine

What happens when your booking engine does not load quickly enough? Here are some possible outcomes:

a) The same booking comes in via OTA minus a 15-20% commission.

b) The guest books another hotel.

c) The guest decides to give up on their trip and stay at home (voted least likely outcome by revenue and digital experts worldwide).

A and B negatively impact your revenue, and option C is highly unlikely. One other possible outcome is that the guest calls your hotel reservations line…but kids these days don’t talk much on phones. So that outcome becomes less likely all the time.

5. Just Plain Broken

Every now and then I see a hotel asset that is completely failing online. In a time when the majority of bookings are happening online, you have to have a booking engine that works! Here is one that actually showed a System Error right on the checkout screen:

hotel booking engine

This booking engine worked great in some Western US states, but not so much on the East coast or London. It worked in Barcelona, but not Dubai. You get my drift? A shopping cart working part-time is just plain broken. It’s crucial to test, test, test, and repeat when it comes to your booking engine. An error message that literally spells out “system error” in red will decimate your brand, guest loyalty, direct revenue, and online marketing efforts.

6. Back in Black

Black is my favorite color. It’s good for a lot of things, but not as a background for a hotel booking engine. The top retailers of room nights around the globe (Expedia, Booking, and Airbnb) all use a white background for their ecommerce transactions. When it comes to website conversions, usability is the only thing that matters. In a desire to match the “look and feel” of their website, some hotels are using a dark background for their booking engine, making it really hard for everyone to use.

In the example below, selecting dates on a black calendar is really difficult…difficult enough for your guests to give up without completing the transaction. When you highlight dates, nothing happens to show you have done it. There is also a LOT of wasted space, where the booking engine could have displayed useful information. Is this blank space, or is something not showing up against the background? Either way, I’m inclined to run over to Expedia.com and take care of this booking quickly, in a more familiar layout.

Hotel Booking Engine

Solution: Please read this before designing your website and save yourself from design and usability disasters.

7. The Discount Horror

Showing your guests a popup that offers savings of “25% or more” when they are already INSIDE your booking engine and have already SELECTED the room they want is a really bad idea. Stop getting in your own way! This reminds me of a scene in When a Stranger Calls, a1979 American horror classic. When I saw this I exclaimed, “The discount popups are coming from inside the booking engine!!” It’s quiet ironic that this engine markets itself itself as a champion of conversions and direct bookings!

Hotel Booking Engine

8. Blast From the Past

In 2018, there are hotels that still have not integrated a booking engine into their website. If a date search on your website’s home page calendar triggers a pop -up window… please stop doing everything else and get it fixed.

Hotel Booking Engine

9. Too Much Information

Nobody likes folks who overshare. Why would you share your entire year’s business with me when I am just trying to book a room? Are you saving me more searches? Do you want me to change my vacation plan based on your availability? You don’t think I can find another place to stay in your town? Are you starting to see my point? Thank you and stop this.

Hotel Booking Engine

10. Do You Even Mobile?

Everything I have listed above gets compounded 100X when things move to a small screen. I could load up one hundred screenshots here, but the example below truly captures the struggle hotels have when it comes to mobile revenue and conversions. This hotel has done the unimaginable…served me THREE popups (including one survey and one special offer) when ALL I ever wanted to do was give them my money! This, folks, is the bad mobile booking experience to rule them all.

mobile booking engine

In mobile, you have to do testing. You cannot entirely outsource the responsibility to make sure your booking engine works properly on all the major screens your guests are using. You have to dive into your analytics and then follow up in the real world. One way is to go to your local phone store; time yourself and a bunch of your closest friends to see how long it takes to book a room at your hotel for some random dates. Brace yourself for the outcome!

The hotel brand in the example above has over 300 hotels in 40 countries worldwide. You’d think they would have friends to alert them…but guests never do. If you cannot sell them rooms on a mobile device, there are some spectacular mobile booking options available on the Expedia/Booking network that they will end up using.

Bonus Tip:

The single most amazing mobile experience offered in the travel business is the functionality of the HotelTonight app. If you have not tested it yet, please download the app to see mobile ecommerce done right. Anyone who can take the app experience to the mobile web will be the world’s top hotel mobile booking engine.

Oh, and my 2014 article still stands…do not sell $7 rooms on HotelTonight.

Conclusion

Offer protection, kill doubt. In a world of online scams and identity theft, you must make sure that you present guests with a secure and reassuring booking engine. A shady looking booking engine is certain to fail.

Make it easy. Most guests will abandon a booking engine that is hard to use while asking for too much personal information. Please note that booking engines and surveys are two very different things. Nobody should ever feel interrogated on your hotel booking engine.

There are many places where things can go wrong on your website. But none is more important than your booking engine. It is the core of your direct revenue strategy and deserves your undivided attention.

Use Hotel Website Content to Increase Your Revenue

Use website content to generate revenue

Contrary to what you might have heard, people still read. We read quiet a lot actually, but much of our reading has moved over to a screen instead of paper. When we are planning travel, we want to read about where we are going. However, the volume of content on hotel websites is shrinking.

Plenty of attention, and plenty of space, is given to photos and design. Hotel websites have started to look like clones, favoring heavy imagery and very light content; but that is a mistake. Your website is not an Instagram feed with a booking button. If you replace substantive content with photo captions and a parade of adjectives like Luxurious!, you are sending up red flags. Instead of giving a detailed description of your offering, you are just using generic marketing terms, which online consumers are too savvy to believe. And, by providing very little information that guests can use during the travel planning stage, you are sending your potential guests to other hotel websites or OTAs to get the information they need.

It’s your hotel content’s job to build trust, answer questions, and capture your guests’ attention. Good content will not only attract new visitors but also keep them on your website. The longer you can hold a visitor’s attention and answer their questions, the more likely they are to book with you.

You need more than photos to tell your story, and the time you invest in good content is worth it. Here are some of my top content guidelines for your hotel website.

The Need for Speed

Great content will never get consumed if it does not load quickly. Before you go about improving content, you must take a look at your website architecture and hosting. Your website visitors today are just like Tom Cruise in Top Gun: “they have a need…a need for speed.” Google recommends that your web pages load in two seconds. To make this happen, your content delivery process must be highly optimized. This is hard to achieve when you are sharing your hosting environment with hundreds of other websites; and even harder if they also share a clunky agency-backed content management system.

Using the right technology for content distribution will make sure all your hard work is served quickly to the desired audiences worldwide. Here are the two fastest ways for you to speed things up:

  1. Use a content delivery network (CDN). What’s that? Well, it’s system of servers (a network) that delivers web content to people visiting your website based on their geographic location. The main goal of a CDN is to solve latency issues. What’s latency? It’s the delay that occurs between the moment you request a web page until the moment its content appears on your screen. A CDN stores a cached version of your hotel website in multiple geographical locations to reduce latency.
  2. Optimize your photos. How can you make your images (and your whole website) load faster? Here are some steps you can follow.
    • Use CSS Effects (gradients, shadows, etc.). CSS animations produce good resolution-independent assets that look sharp at every resolution and zoom level.
    • Use Web Fonts. Web fonts allow you to use beautiful typefaces while preserving the ability to select, search, and resize text. Never encode content as part of an image. This decision doesn’t just give you speed, but also represents a significant improvement in usability.
    • Compress images. Don’t use higher resolution images than you need; web images can and should be much smaller than images used in print magazines. You should also remove hidden data in your photos (eg, color profiles, geolocation metadata, etc.) Less is more and every byte counts. Also, use vector images vs raster images wherever possible. Vector images are zoom- and resolution-independent, which translates into better speed and usability.

Fast load times will make your website visitors happy and drastically increase your chances of converting them into hotel guests.

The 5 Fundamental Questions

I always bring up these questions during my speaking engagements on digital and revenue optimization best practices.

These are the five questions your hotel website must answer:

  1. Who are you?
  2. Where are you located?
  3. What do you offer?
  4. How are you different?
  5. How can I buy, or contact you?

Looks like a pretty simple list, right? These are some of the easiest questions to answer for any property. However, somewhere along the way, in the quest for “cutting edge” branding and design, these simple questions are not getting answered. Unanswered questions → confused website visitors → loss of confidence → lack of revenue. Hotel websites are all starting to look the same. One massive image, accompanied by a few bold adjectives that mean nothing to your guests. Of course, these adjectives were highly praised during the “branding meeting.” I suspect even a few high fives were involved.

Get to the point! Tell guests who you are, where you are located, what are you offering, and how they can buy that or contact you right away. Superlatives and adjectives do not get people to take action. The best home pages drive people further into the website to read more. Relevant content invites people to click deeper. Answering questions = making connections.

The Tagline Fallacy

From famous shoe companies (Just Do It!) to folks peddling diamonds (A Diamond is Forever)… everyone loves a good tagline. So why not your hotel? Sounds like a pretty good idea… right? Welcome to the dark and mysterious world of hotel website homepage taglines. Cue in Genesis’s Land of Confusion.

It’s not practical to take a hotel experience and condense it into a few words. Different travelers have different needs. Counting on a few words to be memorable and reflect your brand and build trust and put your website visitors at ease? To quote the late Bill Pullman, “Game over man, game over.” Your guests cannot act on something they cannot understand. Remember the core questions I highlighted above? No tagline can do the job of answering them. It’s downright impossible.

Now try telling that to a marketing agency’s “branding guru” and watch the fireworks.

Content Cleanup Strategy

Content is one of the easiest things to access and repair on a hotel website. (This is especially true if your website is powered by one of my fav content management systems.) Time spent on improving content will generate results for you, if you do the following.

Ask yourself one simple question: Would I describe my hotel to a close friend using the words that are currently on my website?

Yes: Success, your content is good.

No: Write down how you would describe your hotel to someone you know and care about. Then add all the extra information you would be giving them if this was their first time visiting your city from somewhere far away. That is the content your website visitors need.

The hardest part for many hotel owners/marketers is realizing that your hotel content should not be about you…it’s about your guests and the location they are visiting. Almost all the website content I see on hotel websites is focused on describing the product or experience, instead of highlighting the hotel’s location and how guests can best enjoy it. Very few hotels are iconic enough to be a destination. Like Biggie said, never get high on your own supply (ie, don’t drink your own Kool-Aid).

Formatting for Success

Readability is your friend when it comes to converting visitors into bookings. When a traveler has over ten website tabs open during the travel research phase, one of the best ways to stand out is to present readable, well-formatted content. Your website visitors are not reading a mid-19th century novel. Remember kids: everybody skims. People only click when something catches their attention or answers a question they are researching. If they don’t find what they are looking for quickly, they just bounce off the website.

Here’s how to keep things readable/scannable:

  1. Fonts. Google wants you to stick with a base font size of 16 pixels. I personally prefer larger. (That’s partly because I refuse to wear corrective glasses for my failing vision). The cute tiny little font size you are using might be directly contributing to your website bounce rate.
  2. Headers and Paragraphs. Don’t let your content headers and subheaders become a parking spot for adjectives. These are tools to help make your content scannable and create a typographical hierarchy. Shorter paragraphs with descriptive headers are going to make your content easier to digest.
  3. Lists and Bullets. If Buzzfeed has taught us anything…lists work. “If you are looking for clicks, then you must make lists” is something I would say to a classroom of content writers today. (I also know they would all hate me for it!) Bullets, numbering, and bold highlighted content can help you break down large blocks of content into readable bits of information. Think of it like bite-size incentives to read the whole website.

The assumption that website visitors will never have time to read anything on your website is a crime. They will make time for your content if you make it easy to read, and convince them bit by bit that your content is worth their time.

Using Design to Boost Revenue

How you lead guests through your website comes down to your design and navigation. Great content that cannot be discovered will just perish in the shadows. Many hotel websites with good content lose their guests by using cutesy navigations, drop-downs, and irrelevant calls to action. Competing calls to action (Book Now, Check Rates, Sign Up for Emails) need to be addressed on a page-by-page basis.

For those who want to read more about this, check out my guide to hotel website design. Don’t design first and then stuff content in there. Design around content and watch your most relevant hotel website metrics point to the sky.

Popup Intervention

Three words: Don’t Use Popups.

Check out this banner I was shown within five seconds of visiting a hotel website:

The fact that you offer better rates than the OTA’s should never be a full-screen popup for someone who is visiting your website for the first time. Instead, let them read your new and improved, content-filled homepage and see what you’re about before accosting them with an urgent message.

Who Has the Best Content?

A question that I get asked all the time is, “So who is doing travel content right?” I really wish I could say the name of one of the big hotel brands. They have been in the travel game for decades and their online content should probably be the best. Unfortunately, that’s not the case. A not so little startup founded in 2008 in San Francisco has the best travel content in the game. I am talking about, of course, Airbnb.

Hotels thrive when people travel. Shouldn’t hotel content be inspiring and encouraging people to travel? Shouldn’t your hotel take the lead in answering questions about your location and neighborhoods?

One of the best examples of travel content is the Airbnb neighborhood guide that was launched in 2012.

Not only do they have excellent content on these pages, but also give the pages extra credibility by adding advice from locals. They feature best-in-class writing with clear-cut titles. And they take the whole thing to a higher level by breaking down the attributes of each neighborhood, and even the moods you are likely to encounter in each location. Check out the killer segmentation matching travelers to their preferences:

You would think the big hotel brands would be all over this because they do have the bandwidth and franchise fee revenue to produce this stuff. Instead, we get office desks taken out of hotel rooms and are told to travel “brilliantly.”

Here’s another tip: people love maps! Adding curated maps with comments about different points of interest makes travel planning a breeze. It’s amazing what you can create with the Google Maps API. It’s in their header, folks: “Build the next generation of location experiences.”

And let’s not forget the quality of the photography being used on Airbnb pages. He is my version of the Friday night lights quote:

“Good content. Great photos. Can’t lose!”
– Vikram Singh

Too many hotels are waiting at the bottom of the funnel for revenue to trickle down. Great content is the perfect opportunity to feed the funnel and create demand. Instead of squeezing the life out of a “book direct and save” campaign, how about participating in the guest’s travel experience at a much earlier stage?

Conclusion

Good content is your competitive edge at a time when buying advertising is getting more and more expensive. With so many hotel and OTA websites competing on the web to attract travelers, content can be your salvation. If you have a content-poor, design-rich website, it is hurting your long-term revenue as well as your immediate conversions. On the other hand, the playing field is wide open for your hotel to start filling the travel-planning void. Inspiring and useful content will not only get you new business, but will also help you stand out in a crowd of mass-produced content-free websites. If you are not using content to capture the attention of people interested in your location, neighborhoods, and attractions…someone else will.

Last Click Attribution Is Killing Your Hotel Marketing Campaigns

Last Click Attribution Is Killing Your Hotel Marketing Campaigns

Marketing success today can be measured using many diverse metrics. Analytics programs let you measure everything from who and where your website visitors come from to what content they are interested in. These engagement and conversion metrics can help you understand what is really working when it comes to your website and marketing efforts.

Some hotels have an in-house digital marketing team, but most outsource their online campaigns to an agency. Either way, these teams are usually tasked with producing an ROI (return on investment) report for every dollar spent on channels like Google AdWords, Facebook, etc. There is an industry-wide obsession with knowing where the last revenue-generating click came from. This metric invariably takes center stage in marketing meetings, ensuring that the conversation never moves beyond the last click and how much revenue was booked. Ignoring overall marketing channel performance might have worked for hotels in the good old days, but not today. A lot of hotels are struggling to understand why they are not seeing massive returns on their advertising dollars anymore. Even brand name traffic and clicks are in decline. So what has eroded your marketing campaign power?

The villain in this story – the one preventing you from moving forward – is this thing called last click attribution. It has derailed countless hotel marketing campaigns for both large and small operators. I’d like to take some time to help you understand attribution models in the hospitality and travel business, and how they affect your marketing efforts.

What Is an Attribution Model?

The good news is that most hotels and inns are spending some amount of money on digital ads. The bad news is that decision-makers have a limited understanding of how online marketing works today, and which strategies they should be crediting for the successes and failures of their campaigns.

Let’s dive right into attribution. An attribution model is a set of rules that that help you determine which touchpoints along the conversion path should be getting the credit for the final sale or conversion. Sounds simple… but it’s not. What makes it tremendously complicated in our sector is the number of touchpoints involved when someone is planning a trip, and subsequently a hotel stay.

A touchpoint is any point of contact that occurs between you and your customer; in our case, we are discussing online touchpoints. Here is a list of some of the touchpoints that might occur between your hotel and a potential guest who is planning a trip to Sydney over a period of weeks or months before visiting:

  • Top-level destination research: airfare searches, Sydney travel blogs, etc.
  • Neighborhood research: staying in Bondi Beach vs Central Business District vs iconic Sydney Harbor
  • Hotel research: Narrowing lodging search by researching independent vs brands; top-ranking hotels for value and price on TripAdvisor; hotel websites, social media profiles, and blogs
  • Things to do: online searches for top things to do in Sydney; lists and blogs about Sydney; seasonal events
  • Dining: restaurants, dietary requirements and cuisine preferences, must-haves, food blogs, review websites

While the above process is happening, your guest might also encounter some of these hotel-specific marketing touchpoints:

  • Hotel display ads: placed on top travel blogs and websites
  • Hotel location and value Google ads: “Luxury Hotels in Sydney,” “Hotels near Sydney Harbor”
  • Hotel brand name Google ads: when they search for your hotel by name
  • Hotel TripAdvisor Page: while they are still researching your price and value
  • Meta/OTA rate shop: your listings, reviews, and rate profile
  • Hotel blog post about seasonal events: useful content on your website
  • Hotel email newsletter: perhaps they sign up to stay in touch before booking or arriving the hotel
  • Hotel local dining guide; return visit for more useful content on your website
  • Hotel Facebook ads: and other social media ads, while scoping out your social profiles

Every single touchpoint is a crucial part of the shopper’s journey. This Expedia study showed that a typical hotel guest will visit over 38 websites before booking the room.

A typical website reservation that you are seeing today is the result of 30+ touchpoints that occurred at different stages of travel planning before the final act of booking a room. All the online channels you use today are more connected than ever; they must work together to support your goal of getting a booking. If you are only looking at where the final click came from when attributing revenue, you are missing the big picture. The very last step in a long decision-making process has not single-handedly earned the booking. It doesn’t make sense to allocate your entire marketing budget based on the last click that occurred before the booking.

So, let’s talk now about proper marketing channel attribution.

Deciphering the Attribution Models in Google

Google has been working on making attribution modeling more mainstream. In 2014, they released the Attribution Modeling Tool in Google AdWords. They actually want you to see how users interact with your ads, so you can run better campaigns. As of May 2016, you can integrate the attribution model of your choice with your conversion data and ad bids. Excellent tool for everyone involved! It’s especially helpful for the very few with “Marketing” in their job title that actually log in and work on their marketing campaigns. Of course, if you are just waiting for agency reports to drop into your inbox, you cannot witness this beauty firsthand…but at least you can make changes to the way you measure success.

Once you have decided to actively assign attribution for your paid and earned marketing efforts, you have to determine which model works best for your business. The following example illustrates how each attribution model would work for a hotel reservation with four touchpoints.

Touchpoints

  • Touchpoint 1: Google PPC Ad. Guest X finds your hotel website for the first time by clicking on one of your Google AdWords campaign ads for “luxury hotels in Sydney.” They browse the website and consume your content and photos. You capture their email address (with their permission, of course).
  • Touchpoint 2: Facebook Ad. Two weeks later, Guest X returns to your website, this time from a Facebook Ad about “Things to do in Sydney.”
  • Touchpoint 3: Email Marketing. Five days later, you send them an email about upcoming events in Sydney and why your hotel is in the best location to enjoy them. You get a click-through.
  • Touch Point 4: Direct Traffic. The next day Guest X books a room directly on your website by typing www.yourhotelname.com into the browser. Mission accomplished!

Your Attribution Options

  • Last Click Attribution. The last click before booking, in this case your website’s direct traffic source, gets 100% credit for the reservation.
  • First Click Attribution. The first touchpoint, your Google AdWords campaign ad for “luxury hotels in Sydney,” gets 100% credit for the reservation.
  • Linear Attribution. Every touchpoint – Google AdWords, Facebook, Email and Direct – gets equal credit for the reservation (25% each).
  • Time Delay Attribution. The touchpoints closest to the reservation dates get the majority of the credit. In this case, Email and Direct get most of the credit; Google AdWords and Facebook get less.
  • Position-Based Attribution. The first and last touch points (Google AdWords and Direct) get 40% credit each, and the remaining 20% credit for the reservation is divided evenly between the middle touchpoints. Facebook and Email get 10% each.
  • Data-Driven Attribution. This model gives credit for conversions based on the steps people have taken to find you and ultimately book a room with you. It uses data from your own account to determine which ads, keywords, and campaigns have the greatest impact on conversions. This is only available to accounts that have accumulated enough data over time. I love this model!

Where can you see all this? Oh, it’s right there in your Google Analytics dashboard! Look under Conversion > Attribution.

I have always loved GA. Here is why I think it’s better than anything fancy out there.

Why Should You Abandon Last Click Attribution?

Everyone would like to see the return on a marketing investment. It helps you justify why you did what you did, right? The cliché line “what gets measured gets done” (used by folks who love management guru books) is very hard to implement in digital marketing. I want to be clear that measurement is not the enemy here. It’s how you draw insights from the data that makes or breaks your marketing campaigns and future revenue.

Marketing budgets are already in very short supply in the hotel business. Imagine what happens when the allocation of these tiny budgets is determined solely by the last click that generated a booking. The result is apparent in hundreds of marketing reports today. It’s just not working anymore. It’s time to let go and move on.

The Booking Journey

The path to booking a hotel room today spans multiple websites and devices: online travel agents, metasearch, review sites, social media, etc. When you are dealing with 38 touchpoints, it’s not enough to look at the bottom of the funnel. Instead, ask yourself what you are doing to help your guest move through their booking journey.

Do you think your typical pay per click brand name ad “Official Website: Book Direct And Save!” helps when someone is still researching your location? No, it doesn’t!

Are you speaking with your guests on social media? Or is your Facebook strategy just serving up a“25% off for Spring Break” display ad?

What about email? Is it all about 35% off your best rates? Is that the only conversation you are having with your guests?

Focusing on the last touchpoint prevents you from helping your guests during the planning process, before they are ready to book. You are so busy moving marketing dollars to campaigns that target the last touchpoint that you never feed and fund top-of-the-funnel activities and channels. Ultimately, the volume is going to decline and you are going to end up playing the price game instead of selling value.

Underutilizing Your Marketing Arsenal and Agency

By giving 100% credit to the last click channel, you shift the focus of your marketing campaign to that one channel. All eyes are on the tool that is converting and showing a healthy return on investment. Hotel marketing agencies get stuck producing “ROI reports” to justify their existence every single month. Fixation on one channel kicks off a vicious cycle in which your revenue numbers start to decline, you fire the agency, hire a new one, repeat. This is particularly harmful if your digital assets are not in your control and you start from the bottom every time just like Sisyphus. Your website, campaigns and data need to consistently grow over time, and not get disrupted or lost when you change vendors.

Content production, photography, social media conversations, and email conversations are all part of your full marketing arsenal. Don’t go to battle with one weapon when you have a wide range of tools that allow you to target every single phase and touchpoint of the booking cycle.

Others Prosper While You Analyze

I have previously written about dinosaur metrics to avoid and super metrics to embrace. With most marketers 100% focused on the last click at the bottom of the funnel, the top-of-the-funnel playing field is wide open in the travel business. Online travel agents have done a great job of focusing on the entire travel journey. Of course, they bring tons of cash to the game and dominate paid channels…but there is a ton of work on the top of the funnel that is funded by conversions. They run, manage and curate thousands of websites that have content relating to the early stages of the travel-booking journey. As  a result, they build trust and solid brand names in the travel business without owning a single bed.

When you leave opportunity on the table, someone will always be there to seize it.

Conclusion

Booking a room at a hotel, bed and breakfast, or Airbnb is a process. First comes the destination, then the location within the destination, then a price and value comparison, and finally the right user experience to complete the booking. Judging your hotel and travel marketing campaigns at the finish line incorrectly assigns all the praise and investment to one single component. In time, your super-performing touchpoint will face a decline and stop producing revenue for you on its own.

New lemons are needed to make more lemonade. Stop squeezing the life out of your campaigns by focusing on the last click.