If you are a hotelier then you may be aware of Google's recent experiment listing hotel rates in Google Maps.  Many a General Manager has lost sleep thinking about how price-conscious customers can easily scan the room rates presented by major OTAs in each hotel's listing within Google Maps.  Not only can consumers compare prices across all hotels in a given region, but within each hotel listing they can easily compare room rates for a single hotel offered across different sites, including OTAs.

Here's an example of how the new feature works in Google:

1. Conduct a search in Google for hotels in a specific geographic region (for example, I chose "hotels in Chicago").
2. All Google searches that have a specific geographic modifier (ie, Chicago) should display the familiar Google Map box in the upper-right corner of the results.
3. Clicking the map box will take you to the Google Places listings, the new source of online marketing panic for hoteliers.  At the very least, by now hotel owners should have claimed and fully optimized their local business listing to capture customers conducting these kinds of local searches.
4. From here you will notice a few things.  First, above the left column of hotel listings is a check-in/check-out field that allows the user to modify the dates of their stay.  This allows for greater convenience once the users click on a specific rate as I'll explain later. Second, you will discover that to the right of the bold, underlined hotel name in each listing is a price with a drop-down arrow.  That displayed price is the cheapest price Google was able to pull from its list of hotel rate providers as identified in the next bullet point.  As usual, clicking on the hotel name itself opens a speech bubble on the Google map itself, presenting both the location of the selected hotel and additional Google Places information for that property.
5. Click the price link and you'll see a list of 5 total sites, composed of 4 OTAs and--at the bottom--the hotel's official website. Hotelier heart attack #1 comes from the realization that their hotel's official website is listed at the very bottom of the list of OTAs.  Hotelier heart attack #2 comes from the fact that their official brand listing doesn't even offer the room rate.
   
6. Clicking any of the OTAs in the price drop-down takes the user straight to that hotel's specific page within the OTA website. Fortunately for consumers, by adding the check-in/check-out fields at the top of the listings, Google makes it easy to purchase at each site by passing the selected dates over to the selected OTA.  Unfortunately for hotels, these selected dates are not currently passed through to the hotel's official website.
7. Once the consumer has made their decision on which site to book, they simply click the price/site they want, get taken to their selected site and begin the booking process.

Why are hotels concerned about the new Google Maps hotel pricing feature?

Hotels need to be aware of this new Google Maps room rate feature and how it will impact their business.  While hotels aren't happy to have to pay to play in Google's expanding advertising game, it's the same game that everyone has to play.  And considering hotels have benefited from the revenue generated through Google's free organic listings for years, it seems a small price to pay for that benefit.  Google has integrated this feature as a way of helping consumers navigate the cumbersome process of conducting online travel research and it will change the way consumers plan their travels.  Hotels need to ensure that they are providing a real value that differentiates them from their competitors beyond price, and should continue to look to other channels, such as social networking, as a way to diversify their online revenue channels.  The online travel world is always in a state of flux, and Google's new feature is just one in an ongoing list of new technologies and sites that will change the way hotels interact with consumers online.  Hoteliers need to be prepared for these changes and should know how to use these new technologies to their benefit, rather than simply lamenting about the good ol' days when everyone booked through the official hotel websites.

Just as mom, dad, grandma and grandpa finally take a shine web-based email, apparently a majority of teens have already moved on to the next great communication trend: social networking platforms.  According to a recent 2010 comScore digital trends report, a whopping 59% of people between age 12 and 17 experienced a decrease in the amount of time spent using web-based email.

So if teens are spending less time using web-based email, then where is their time being spent?  It seems that young people are migrating to more integrated forms of communication such as social networking and text messaging.  In fact, according to the comScore report "Social Networking now ranks as the [second] most engaging activity at 14.4 percent of time spent online," which is 3.8 percentage points greater than in 2009.  On the other hand, web-based email usage declined overall by 1.5 percentage points.

If your name is Mark Zuckerburg then this news is music to your ears, particularly considering the launch of Facebook's new messaging system, aimed at keeping a majority of online communication within the confines of the Facebook ecosystem.

What does this mean for the hotel industry?

If you're a hotel wondering where to put your marketing dollars in 2011, there are some things to consider from this report:

1. Don't write off email marketing just yet: Note that there was an increase in web-based email usage among the 55+ age demographic, as more older adults adapted to life online. Depending on the users you are looking to target, email marketing may still be a viable marketing channel.  Also, these potential guests may be more likely than the teens to be loyal users of your product and more receptive to specials and offers from brands they love.
   
   
2. Younger users are migrating towards social media: Although the 12-17 year old age group may not be your primary target market yet, keep in mind that these are your future guests.  Consider investing more time in managing important social media channels such as Facebook, Twitter, TripAdvisor, YouTube and other viable networks for your hotel that foster communities for your future patrons.  This is where your customers are congregating and forming opinions about your hotel, your city and travel in general.  It's important that you become a part of this community to connect with consumers who will not only stay at your hotel, but will ultimately influence others within their network based on their experiences with your product.
   
   
3. Online marketing trends shift frequently: The online marketing world is constantly changing.  While general practices like creating enticing, interesting textual content, posting rich media and targeting relevant keywords have long been staples of good online marketing, hotels must always be prepared to adapt to new ways of reaching customers.  It took a while for the hospitality to fully embrace the world of search engine optimization.  While search engine optimization is still an integral part of an effective online marketing campaign, when you consider that Facebook recently surpassed Google in terms of overall web traffic, is easy to see that another shift is taking place.  That's not to say that older forms of online marketing become obsolete. Email marketing, search engine optimization and pay-per-click advertising have been around for quite a while now; however, the way in which consumers are using these channels is constantly evolving.  And now, with the rise of social network, we are once again seeing a dramatic change in the way online users search for information.  As a hotel, it's important to work with an online marketing company that understands that all these channels--new and old--must be integrated into a single, comprehensive marketing strategy.  Failing to address one of these segments because can mean your hotel is missing out on opportunities to target relevant customers.

Overall, just in looking at the graph above, it's clear that different age groups use the internet in very different ways.  A one-size-fits-all strategy simply won't be as effective.  Make sure your online marketing plan addresses all relevant demographics by integrating channels that your customers frequent.  Just remember that your email marketing campaign may show up in Grandpa's inbox, but if you want to reach Junior you may want to consider reaching out to him on his own turf.

Chicago is a snowglobe that finally stopped shaking Wednesday afternoon.  Cars, still hidden under massive snow drifts, are only visible when their owners, in futile attempts to rescue their cars from their fluffy, white prisons, spend hours trying to remove the snow.  During the storm over 500 vehicles were abandoned by frustrated motorists on Chicago's iconic Lake Shore Drive after blinding snow brought traffic to a standstill for hours.  Pedestrians have become expert mountain climbers as they scale massive white mounds at every snow-crippled intersection, slipping and sliding their way to work.  Yet, despite this annual Chicago event we call Winter, Christopher Jones, fearless entrepreneur and founder of Blue Magnet Interactive, found love.

Boy Meets City.  Boy Rejects City.  Boy Recommends Florida Instead.

Chicago wasn't on Chris's list of Top 10 Destinations in which to live...initially.  Chris and I were researching various cities for the purposes of relocating Blue Magnet Interactive out of Washington, DC, where we had originally started our company.  I grew up in Chicago (actually Naperville, but Chicago tends to carry a little more weight), so I naturally put it on at the top of our list of destinations to research.  Chris humored me and my desire to return to the motherland somewhat, but comments such as "but it's so cold there" and "I think there are only two months in the year that Chicago doesn't get snow" made me realize that I had a long battle ahead of me.  Still, the central US location, proximity to O'Hare and the overall excitement of the city itself made it a prime candidate for our growing business.

Boy Meets Girl.  Boy Forgets How Much He Hates Cold City

On a snowy March day, several years ago, Chris was introduced to his soon-to-be bride, Kristin, during a trip to Chicago.  Many of my good friends from high school and college still live in Chicago, so when Chris came to explore the city as a potential business headquarter, I figured the best way to warm him up to this arctic city was to introduce him to the social scene.  So, that night over all-you-can eat sushi and beer, Chris was introduced to my Chicago crew.  Kristin, my good friend from high school, immediately clicked with Chris.  "Ah yes," I thought to myself, "My plan is coming together perfectly!"  Little did I know at the time, but my plan seems to have worked too well, because despite his affinity for fine wines, high-end cuisine and Star Wars movies and Kristin's penchance for marathons, hiking, mountain biking and romantic comedies, they were inseparable from that day on.  With a little help from cupid, Chris was sold on Chicago and the wheels were in motion for Blue Magnet Interactive...and the future Mr. and Mrs. Jones.

Boy Marries Girl in Mexico

Fast forward to January 29, 2011, and on a beautiful, wind-swept Mexican beach at the Excellence Playa Mujeres Resort, surrounded by close friends and family, Mr. Christopher Jones and Dr. Kristin Dziadosz exchanged vows and walked hand-in-hand through the warm, white Cancun sand as husband and wife.  Congratulations to Christopher and Kristin Jones!  Blue Magnet wishes all the best to you in years to come!

Groupon and LivingSocial may soon have some competition in the group-buying arena when Google enters the market with their Google Offers product this year.  Mashable recently broke the story that the search giant will soon be offering their own group discount product, after failing to acquire Groupon for $6 billion at the end of 2010.

What does this mean for hotels?  It's too early to say what Google's entry into the market will mean for the group-buying industry as a whole, but greater competition can only mean good things for businesses and consumers.  For one thing, currently Groupon and similar sites (like the hotel-centric TripAlertz) require huge discounts from business to offer to their customer base, sometimes as high as 50%.  While this may be appealing for budget-hungry travelers, hotels start having flashbacks of paying commission to OTAs for rooms booked through their sites.  Fortunately though, with more competition in this channel, these group buying sites are going to need to start competing for market share by lowering their rates.

But just because Google stamps their name on a product doesn't always mean it'll be an instant success.  Just look at Google Wave, Knol or Buzz and you soon realize that Google's had its fair share of failures too.

Overall, the concept behind all these group buying sites can be quite beneficial to many businesses, including hotels.  In order to make it worth while for the consumer, though, hotels need to provide a compelling offer to market on these group buying sites.  There's a reason these sites require businesses to discount their prices by 50%.  Don't think you can offer $5 off of your hotel's BAR, throw in a box of chocolates and expect to having a winning offer.  Consumers have more choices than ever these days, so value plays a large part in the decision making process.

When it comes down to Groupon, Google Offers, LivingSocial or any of the many group-buying clones, the main question for hotels is: How willing are hotels to cut their rates in order to increase occupancy over a specific need period?  Up to a point, a highly discounted room is still much more valuable to a hotel than an empty one.

...my entire flight of Chicago-bound passengers would have been entirely prepared, seat-cushion flotation devices and all. Why? Because they were actually listening to the flight attendant's familiar spiel. Sure, we've all heard it a million times before, but how is it that you get an audience to actively pay attention to very dry, albeit life-saving, content? Whether it's a cross-country flight or a struggling website, this info could save you!

I would assume that most flight attendants are quite aware of the fact that most well-traveled Americans can probably recite this obligatory airline script verbatim. In fact, I'm sure it's quite obvious that most passengers' attention is anywhere but the flight attendant during those first few pre-flight minutes of "oxygen mask" and "tray table" talk. That's why the good folks at Southwest Airlines provided an excellent demonstration of why it pays to provide entertaining content, whether it's preflight or website.

Seconds into the safety speech, my attention was piqued by a humorous twist to a familiar verse of the flight attendant script: "...oxygen masks will drop from the ceiling; if you are traveling with a child, or just someone that acts like a child, put your own mask on first, and then the child's." I had no idea there was entertainment on this short flight! With each successive joke one could tell that the flight attendant was able to secure the attention of more and more of the passengers by the increasing laughter that echoed throughout the cabin. People were actually paying attention to the same content they've heard flight after flight! They hung on her every word, waiting for the next cutting remark or witty jab.

Similarly, websites often suffer the same fate as the flight attendants--no one pays attention to what they have to say. But our good friends at Southwest have shown us that providing entertaining, often humorous, content can turn an indifferent audience into an attentive one. Whether you want to sell lampshades, expound on the importance of shoehorns, or blog about your emu farm, entertaining content will keep the visitors coming. And the best part is, truly entertaining content is viral--it just keeps on spreading and picks up momentum. When passengers would hear other passengers laughing at the flight attendant's wisecracks, they would instantly tune in to her comedy routine to see what she was going to say next. Likewise, once it's known that a site has really great, entertaining content, the visitors do much of the work of spreading the word. Friends email the website to coworkers who email it to their families and the viral marketing effect takes over.

I don't fly too often, but from what I've heard, Southwest Airlines has earned somewhat of a reputation for their humorous and edgy approach to the "Airline Safety" speech--and what a great reputation to have! So sit down at your computer, put your seat back in its full, upright position, take some time to write some entertaining content and watch your website soar around the globe.

In a previous post about optimizing a website for the user experience in addition to the search engines, I touched on several website pitfalls that even the most professional-looking sites sometimes fall victim to.  I would now like to take a minute and explain why these issues could be costing you a visitor.

Optimizing a website with poor usability is like advertising for a brick & mortar store that has horrible customer service. You posted advertisements all over town--in the newspapers, on the radio, through word-of-mouth--and have finally piqued the customer's interest enough to check out your store. The hard work is done--the customer is actively seeking your product. However, upon entering the store the customer is ignored by the staff, the signs for each aisle are improperly labeled, the gardening supplies are in the same section as the electronics, and in order to get any of your questions answered by the staff you have to complete a 5 page questionnaire. Your customer, like the one on your website with poor usability, has now left your store screaming and sobbing uncontrollably.

In my personal experience, here are 10 of the top ways to confuse and frustrate your visitors and eliminate any benefit you may have received through search engine optimization.

1. Poor Website Navigation

   This is probably one of the biggest turn-offs for visitors. Visitors to your site are in search of information and their time is valuable--they need answers fast. Make sure that your navigation scheme allows your guest to easily find the information they are seeking. Create an intuitive branching structure for your site and group common pages under one category. I've noticed a lot of Flash websites that try to be avant-garde by introducing a radical new or interactive navigation system. While it may look slick, it can be extremely confusing. If your visitors can't understand how to navigate your site to find the answers they need, they will leave.

2. Giving Fancy Names to Common Labels

   Don't call your "FAQs" section "Helpful Questions," because the online community has already become accustomed to the term "FAQ" and knows what they will find when they click that link. Although you may think you are being clever by calling the "Contact Us" page "Communicate," in reality you are making it very difficult for your customers to contact you.

3. Long Forms for Simple Inquiries

   Forms are not fun. Forms are less fun the longer they get. Unless you absolutely need information from a customer (ie, registering for a new bank account), do not insist that they complete a 5 page form. No one wants to get carpal tunnel syndrome on your website as a result of inquiring about your pricing. I can not remember where I read it, but I believe it has been said that the longer the form gets, the less likely people will be to fill it out.

4. Pop-up Windows

   They pollute your screen with excess windows that you never authorized on your nice clean computer desktop. Some website tend to force any link that takes the user outside the original site to open a pop-up window, rationalizing that by keeping the main website in the original window, the user need only close the pop-up to return to the original website. This poses several problems. First, pop-ups confuse people. In a pop-up there is no "Back" button; the only way to return to the original site is to close the pop-up. Most people are more comfortable using the browser's "Back" button to return to a previous page and will, in fact, click the "Back" button several times rather than navigating directly to the page though a menu link. If you must use a pop-up window, warn the visitor about it with a special icon or parenthetical comment.

5. Hard-to-Read Fonts

   Choosing the wrong font size and color can really hurt the readability of your site. Setting the body text of your site at a font size of 8 pixels is going to send visitors running to their local optometrist, seeking answers to why they get splitting headaches every time they read content on your website. Computer monitors are getting bigger every year and their resolutions sharper. This means that a 10 pixel font that looked great on your 17 inch, 800x600 monitor is not going to look so hot when your customer views it on his 30 inch widescreen iMac monitor with a resolution of 1920x1200. Also, make sure that there is enough contrast between your font color and the background color. Nobody wants to see dark red text on a red background.

6. Long Download Times

   Make sure your site downloads quickly. Large images and Flash files will ensure that your visitors see a nice blank screen while they wait for your content. There are still a few folks on dial-up that want to see your website too. Make the content accessible to everyone.

7. All Flash, All the Time

   Flash isn't inherently bad. It just got a bad rap. There are some amazing things that can be done with it; unfortunately, many sites haven't used it properly. Not only is Flash lower on the search engine friendliness totem pole, but it often prevents the use of helpful browser features like the coveted "Back" button. Also, if there is a lot of animation on the site it can appear sluggish and unresponsive on older computers with slower hardware. Not all of us have souped-up Alienware computers so keep Flash to a minimum unless you know how to wield it.

8. Huge, Unending Paragraphs

   Visitors don't read your website. They scan, scour, search, sift and browse. They look for main ideas, headings and bold text. If they can't find what they are looking for quickly they move on. Make it easy for your visitors by categorizing your thoughts with paragraph headings and creating bulleted lists rather than full paragraph. It makes it much easier to scan.

9. Inconsistent Branding Throughout Site

   Ensure that there is one common theme running through your entire website. Use the same font, color, layout and navigation on every page so that your visitor experiences a degree of fluidity in navigating your site. Inconsistencies in page layout, fonts and colors can confuse the user.

10. Body Text Written for Search Engines Rather Than Visitors

    Search engine optimization should be an integral part of your marketing campaign. There is no doubt that you should optimize the content of your site to its fullest, including all its meta tags, links, anchor text, and body text. On the other hand, you should never write solely for the search engines. Your sentences should make sense to human visitors who come to your site. If you're optimizing for the keyword "Chicago luxury cars" you wouldn't want a sentence like this: "Matt's Chicago luxury car dealership is your premiere luxury car dealership for luxury cars in the Chicago area, offering a variety of luxury cars." It's packed to the brim with keywords so not only will it probably be considered spamming the search engines, but it makes the entire sentence almost unintelligible to your readers. There is a balance between pleasing the search engines and providing your customers with readable text.

Do your customers and your business a service by making it easy for visitors to access the most important features of your site.  In the end, getting the customer more of what they want from your website can usually translate into money in your pocket, so be sure to spend extra time honing the navigation and functionality of your site.  Your customers will thank you for it.