The world is riding a digital wave. From smart phones to iPads, today’s public is thirsty for the latest technology. People want to be entertained and engaged.
How can hoteliers and government agencies stay relevant and ride the digital wave? One word, Video.
Video engages users on a level that stimulates the mind and emotions.
Instead of telling a guest why they want to entertain your service, tease them with a video that whets their appetite for more.
As of February 2010, YouTube alone had over 48.2 million users, a statistic that does not include the number of non-users who browse the site each day.
The first step to ride – and leverage – the digital wave is to formulate a plan of action to utilize video. Here are 3 ways hoteliers and government agencies can step into the visual world of video:
1) Show service benefits in a real environment. Allow the public to experience a service without seeing it in person.
2) Bundle video with your other marketing content. These include eNewsletters, press releases, and banner ads.
3) Provide “how to” product-and service-related information. Video excels as a virtual how-to for complex services and products that may require step-by-step training.
At Softscribe, we embrace the Video World for our clients in three ways: flip videos, more complex motion graphic videos, and soon – multi-themed videos from Vipe.
How are you currently using video in your marketing mix?
Would you like to know the Five Best Practices to Build a Successful Video? Stay tuned for Part II of the “Video World” Series.
Photo Credit: Apple.com
My friend and colleague Glenn Hasek asked me to guest blog for his Green Lodging News site, which has over 175,000 viewers per month. It is the definitive portal in hospitality and travel for anything green.
If you want to get your green hotel message out consistently and to the right channels while keeping your staff fresh and effective, check it out. Here’s the beginning and click through to read more.
“In my experience, your hotel can achieve its green-oriented marketing goals when your team uses public relations as the organizing principle.
Our company does this through a simple approach that prioritizes:
Content, Search, and Social Media.
An added benefit is that this approach helps members of your marketing team stay more effective and fresh. They can leverage the pressure of daily deliverables instead of being swamped by them.
I will take these priorities one at a time and also share a key hub-and-spoke organizing idea.
Read More.
Photo credit: daisykate14 on flickr
I was I was one of the 4,500 hospitality professionals who attended HITEC in Orlando in late June, and it was an upbeat experience.
My one-word synopsis? Digital.
Two of the coolest offerings, though, were not even on the show floor. They were seed ideas in the wings; watch them grow.
I liked the Clarabridge sentiment engine, which I saw in the Aptech Computer Systems booth (disclaimer: Aptech is a long time Softscribe client. I have their permission to share this secret sauce).
It was the first time I’ve seen business intelligence data and actionable guest sentiments (“Had a great stay but the refrigerator leaked all over.”) on the same page. That combo is easy on a marketer’s brain power and eyeballs. Similar solutions overload with too much information.
Also in the wings and discussions was XIPWIRE, which lets you “Mobilize Your Wallet.”
Remember how you donated $10 to Haiti Relief, texting on your cell phone and paying via your phone bill? Imagine being able to pay your restaurant tab the same way – from your table, via your cell phone and bill. Talk about sidestepping PCI compliance. And I hear tell it turns a table eight to ten minutes faster.
Mobile payment, digital anything and sentiment engines that measure emotion – not words – are just a few of the ideas that brightened up HITEC 2010. Vendors were happy.
Softscribe’s hotel technology clients are part of the industry’s DNA. Join us next year at HITEC 2011, set for June 20 to 23 at the Austin Convention Center in Austin, Texas.
Mainframes →Minis → High-speed RISC computing → PC LANs → ASP cloud →Handheld.
The force behind mobile-ready development, iPhone apps, and having a mobile-ready website goes way beyond being cool. It is about company survival and meeting travelers where they are with effective tools to make business decisions.
Fast-moving business travelers today are not hairy-knuckled laptop draggers. They use a handheld and breeze through airports stroking an iPhone, Android or Droid X to do their work.
Business travelers are power users. Mobile by definition, they use web phones to search flights, hotels and car rentals, and book millions of dollars in reservations based on what they see in their hand.
This is why mobile solutions, including iPhone apps and iPads, dominated this year’s HITEC (Hotel Industry Technology Exposition and Conference) in Orlando in late June. Hospitality tech vendors know their solutions must be mobile-ready. No one whips out a laptop to book a room or check a flight anymore.
The handheld future of travel is coming from companies like TripCraft with its mobile total enterprise platform. This new system enables travelers to see an entire hotel chain with regional attractions, availability, and instant reservations for loyalty-powered bookings. Its integration with Cendyn’s eCRM suite also lets travelers access their frequent-stay profile to personally engage the chain. (Cendyn is a Softscribe client)
With technology evolving to a smaller and smaller physical presence, the question is: what is next? We give you a view into the future in our next blog entry – stay tuned.
What did you see at HITEC 2010? Let us know.
Photo Credit: http://www.flickr.com/photos/stevendepolo/
