Hotels Must Embrace Remote Work
After my last pandemic-focused article, my inbox was flooded with queries about remote work. I had urged hotels to embrace remote work and stop putting geographical restrictions on hiring the…
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Strategy
28 posts
RIP BookingSuite: Protecting Your Hotel’s Digital Assets
On November 30th of this year, Booking/Priceline is shutting down its BookingSuite product, likely affecting hundreds of hotels worldwide. In short, they will stop running websites, booking engines, and revenue…
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Hotel Marketing and Revenue Management in the Time of Pandemic
As I write my first article during a global pandemic, my title inspiration comes from the Columbian literary superstar, Gabriel García Márquez. COVID-19 has rapidly decimated the industry I have…
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Reality Check on Using Influencers for Your Hotel
As social media marketing continues to evolve and grow, one of the questions hotel owners/managers consistently ask me is whether or not it makes sense to work with influencers. Personally,…
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How Google Reviews Is Crushing TripAdvisor
An interesting trend has been brewing in the travel business. Quietly but surely, Google Reviews has been expanding their online review market share for brick and mortar businesses. Since…
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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,…
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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.…
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Use Hotel Website Content to Increase Your 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.…
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The Ultimate Guide to Email Marketing for Hotels
Hotel email marketing has become more important than ever. The cost of click- and impression-based marketing on search engines and social networks continues to rise, not just for generic terms, but also…
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Hotel Website Design and Usability: Top 10 Mistakes
Hotel website design, like any kind of design, is subjective. Nothing is more painful than a website design “discussion” where stakeholders talk for hours about colors, content and photos. For every…
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Dinosaur Metrics Are Taking a Bite Out of Your Hotel Marketing Performance
Marketing is evolving as I am typing this sentence. I’m here to make sure you are not wasting your time, energy and marketing budgets by focusing on outdated metrics. Many of…
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Marriott’s Acquisition of Starwood: Winners and Losers
Marriott’s acquisition of Starwood is great news for investors, but unfortunately not for Starwood hotel guests and employees. The quote that sums up the reasoning behind this deal came from Starwood Chairman Bruce Duncan. “We…
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Hotel Brands’ Struggle to Understand Airbnb: The IHG Edition
When I’m on Twitter, I’m usually catching up on some of my favorite comedians (mostly comediennes) and posting my own material. But every now and then, some non-comedic items capture my…
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Your Marketing Focus Must Shift To Hotel Value Over Price
It’s amazing how much time and energy gets poured into deciding the price of a hotel room. There are STR reports, RMS Reports, and booking engine reports to go along…
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The Free Website Trap: Lessons From Priceline’s Rebranding of Buuteeq
Last year, Priceline.com made a splash when it acquired Buuteeq, a digital marketing and website “cloud-based system” for independent hotels, for what looks like $98 million. My detailed analysis of…
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Google’s Mobile Update: Keep Calm and Get With the Program
Every time Google issues an update, hotel marketing agencies have a field day writing articles and trying to give you a reason to panic about your online presence. To provide you with…
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My Top 6 Articles of 2014
It’s time to say goodbye to 2014. It was an epic year for me, and I especially loved sharing my thoughts about the industry with a wonderful group of loyal readers.…
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Front Desk: Ground Zero for Hotel Profitability
Want to increase your profitability, while improving your online reviews at the same time? Then start paying more attention to an area that’s too often overlooked when discussing revenue: your front desk. You…
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Do You View Hotel Marketing as a Cost or an Investment?
I am often asked, “What is the most important factor in a good hotel marketing strategy?” One of the top factors (that no one likes to talk about) is how a hotel’s…
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Reality Check: 7 Questions for Your Hotel Marketing Agency
Everything digital, including marketing, changes rapidly. Hotels know that online marketing is crucial, yet they take a back seat on innovations. Most of the hotel owners/managers I’ve met have been hesitant to…
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