My colleague, Eric Ingrand, just attended an Eye for Travel Conference. One of the speakers was a woman named Barbara Pezzi from Swiss Hotels and Resorts who talked about using web analytics to evaluate the best online marketing strategies for your business. According to Pezzi’s research, many consumers are unhappy with the content on travel websites. As a travel or destination company, it is important to understand how to reach your customers through the content on your website as well as through your advertizing choices and marketing initiatives.

I listened to a webinar last week put on by HOTELS magazine and VFM Leonardo called “Merchandising your Hotel Online.” I hope you can benefit from some of the statistics that were shared.

A recent survey conducted by HeBS on Hotel Internet Marketing identifies significant online marketing trends in the hospitality industry.  The survey polled hotel general managers, e-commerce managers, sales and marketing directors and hotel revenue managers to discover trends in online marketing priorities and strategies among hoteliers for 2009.  Here is a short summary of the responses:

I hate when I ask for one thing but get another. Especially when I paid for it. Consumers do not like being taken for a ride. So if you’d like to appease me (and your other potential customers) pay attention to where things went wrong in some of my more recent ill-fated encounters and how you can avoid them in your online marketing strategy.

I recently watched a webinar hosted by Marc Gobe, an expert in consumer trends/brand strategy. He emphasized both the importance of emotion in marketing and how emotion effects our brands. The world is an inherently emotional place; in our marketing, we need to look at how emotions affect consumer mindset and why. Gobe points to fear and hope as the strongest emotions that influence consumption. The way in which we allow either of these two emotions to dominate our marketing strategy determines our future and the future of our brands.