As there is no consensus about a generic term for them (or rather have not heard of any), I have settled for SMD (sales, marketing and distribution) - a boring and highly predictable acronym which is not going to please anyone, but it will have to do for now.
SMD’s they are, as that is what they do - Sales, Marketing and Distribution. How much more they do, how well they do it, and what criteria they have differs from company to company.
To start with, here is a quick look at the Sales services that they offer
UTELL HOTELS & RESORTS - focuses on the TMC’s
- Comprehensive account management of top Travel Management Companies to ensure that member hotels benefit from the same business opportunities as the global hotel chains
- Broad network of regional and national sales to negotiate access to valuable regional and local sources of business
DESIGN - does not give enough detail, but mentions their presence at trade shows
- Membership Services
- Sales & Marketing Services
- Travel Trade Shows
SUPRANATIONAL - strong focus on TMC, corporate RFP’s through Lanyon, sales activities
- Global exposure of the Supranational Hotels portfolio to the travel community; travel agents and the corporate market.
- Centralised RFP submission
- Road shows and sales days
WORLD HOTELS - strong focus on corporate and group business
- Corporate Rate Programmes
- Worldwide Consortia Contracting
- 3 dedicated global group desks working for the meeting product
GREAT HOTELS OF THE WORLD - great focus on the corporate sector
- Consortia and direct-to-corporates GDS sales campaigns
- Meeting and incentive planner sales blitzes
- Individual sales blitzes for member properties
RELAIS & CHATEAUX - focuses on promoting properties at events and shows
- Promotion of properties and the brand on the international level, trade fairs and exhibitions, sales blitzes, showcases and large-scale public events.
LEADING HOTELS OF THE WORLD - powerful brand name, more focused on marketing
- sales and promotional activities
Independent hotels will benefit the most with an SMD company association, if they take a good look at the service offering and ensure that what the SMD company focuses on, is in the area of interest of the hotel.
Moving on from sales, I will take a look at the Marketing services on offer, but that will have to wait for tomorrow or the weekend.
DISCLAIMER: Information and comments provided here are to provide an overview. It is not meant to indicate the full service offering of these companies in any way.
There is no one term to describe these organisations - they are at once hotel companies, hotel consortiums, hotel alliances, sales and marketing companies….to give you an idea, here is a look at what three highly visible organisations call themselves.
In their ‘Who are we’ section, Great Hotels of the world website describes itself ”an alliance of the world’s finest luxury hotels and resorts” http://www.ghow.com/
And Leading Hotels of the World is ”a prestigious luxury hospitality organization representing 430 of the world’s finest hotels, resorts and spas” http://www.lhw.com/
WORLDHOTELS ”is a dynamic international hotel organization committed to providing the smartest sales, marketing and distribution solution to independently operated hotels and hotel groups” http://www.worldhotels.com/
For the independent hotelier, these organisations and many more similar ones provide an option to run their own hotels without being managed by another company but at the same time with the benefit of belonging to an umbrella brand/organisation. For a certain yearly fee and commissions for reservations delivered through their website, independent hotels get the benefit of being part of a global brand, their sales and marketing services and even more importantly the power of distributing their inventory to the widest possible audience.
The yearly fees with some of these organisations may not be easily affordable by many independent hotels who may be better off looking out for niche organisations which fit their pocket and offer more flexible options of working together.
Would you pay £15000 to £20,000 or thereabouts a year to become a member of a hotel alliance like the ones above? What do you get for that price? What are the pros and cons? How does an independent hotel owner decide if it is worth it and what works for them?
In the next days, I will take a closer look at some of their services to understand some of the main advantages (and possible disadvantages) of joining these organisations as a member hotel.
Some of the other important companies (this list is not exhaustive)
Utell Hotels & Resorts http://www.utell.com/
Small Luxury hotels of the world http://www.slh.com/
Design Hotels http://www.designhotels.com/
Supranational hotels http://www.snrhotels.com/
Relais & Chateaux http://www.relaischateaux.com/
Preferred Hotels http://www.preferredhotels.com/
As per one of the recent reports from trendwatching.com this is real and it is being ‘tried’ out by hotel companies in the US and Australia. It is based on the fact that high end travellers are hard for marketers to reach in general except for occasions such as when they are in a hotel room - and this concept of having a captive audience is what leads hotels and other industries to collaborate on ‘TRYVERTISING’
According to the article what is different with this approach is that it finds a way to market products at the critical time when the product is “relevant” to consumers - when they are tired, hungry, and so on. Deals range from the availability of Aveda toiletries in Westin hotel rooms to Mercedes-Benz cars for guests at the Ritz-Carlton
Click here to read the article at trendwatching.com
- E-mail marketing - For limited e-mailing (ie not for corporate giants), my pick is Icontact for its user friendly interface, possibility to do surveys, creating a newsletter from a web page and low costs. http://www.icontact.com/ It is also possible to create surveys quickly which I have found very useful.
- Analytics - Google analytics http://www.google.com/analytics/ for the reasons discussed in the previous post
- Search Engine Optimisation - http://www.webceo.com/ has a free and paid for version which allows you to automate web search engine and directory submissions
- Trend watch - http://www.trendwatching.com/ the trend setter in the area of picking up trends in all areas. While not specific to hospitality, it has more than 8000 ‘trendspotters’ around the globe watching carefully for emerging trends and ideas in all areas. A very good example of a trend spotted relevant to hotels is ‘Room service with Ads’
- Competitor Intelligence - Travelclick for its specialised products and expertise in hospitality and the value it brings to the understanding of competitor statistics. http://www.travelclick.com/
The number of Google applications which exist are phenomenal - no wonder it dominates the internet. So whether it is the independent hotelier or a chain, there is much to be made from looking at how some of them can be made to work for the hotel industry.
1) Google Analytics
Analytics is becoming more and more well known as a fantastic application to track and analyse visitors, trends, searches etc. All it requires is the insertion of a small html code generated by Google Analytics into your web template or the page you want to track. From the following day, a multitude of options to understand visits by city, which keywords have landed them on the site, which websites have sent traffic, which pages are most popular and how long they stayed there - just to name a few, will be available on your dashboard as you log in…used well, this is a great way to focus marketing funds as well as to correct weaknesses in the website in terms of retaining customers. The possibilities are endless and I have just listed a few - more at http://www.google.com/analytics/
A sample screenshot of the dashboard
2) Google maps
They are a great way of pinpointing hotel locations on your website http://maps.google.com/
3) E-mail with Gmail
While most corporate organisations as well as smaller companies have their own domains and e-mail set ups, managing their e-mails while travelling has always been a challenge. Gmail is a very flexible solution which allows you to respond with your domain e-mail provided you set it up that way. So even if one does not have company wide intranets and VPN dial ups, Gmail offers you a simpler way of responding to work e-mails while on the move. You can also pick up e-mails on gmail on your mobile phones as long as you have internet access. http://mail.google.com/mail
4) Blogger
While there are still discussions on the pros and cons of blogging, there is no doubt that if you are looking for one of the most user friendly blogging platforms, Blogger will come on the top of the list. http://www.blogger.com/
Wordpress is another blogging platform popular with the blogging community.
5) Google search
While this is certainly not news, very few people use google search effectively. With the internet throwing up hundreds of thousands of new sites and blogs every day, the accuracy of the search becomes more and more relevant. Spending an hour to understand the mechanics of the search function on google can save hours and hours of time when one needs quick access to relevant accurate information.
Just using quotes around the term you are trying to find gives you far more accurate and as well as better related results eg: “itb”berlin, rather than itb berlin on its own.
And of course there are more, Google documents, Google calendar, Google Picasa for managing images, Google Adwords etc
Then check if an overseas trade show representative in your country is providing you with the opportunity to buy discounted visitor tickets.
For example Montgomery Exhibitions, the representative of ITB in the UK provides trade visitor tickets worth 43 Euros (the price at which it is sold online) for 32 Euros if you buy it from them.
No rate parity here. But certainly an incentive if you have many visitors going to the show.
A few facts from last year to start off - figures mentioned are part of the ITB exhibitors survey and more details are available on the ITB website
- about 180,000 visitors and over 10,000 exhibitors
- Hotel business forms about 23 % of the total exhibitors
- about 32 % of the exhibitors are German companies or do business in Germany
- number of trade visitors who have a management position in their company is about 50%
- Building new contacts in tourism is listed as one of the key goals of visitors with about about 88% of them mentioning it followed by strengthening existing business relations
- Post fair success is estimated at 86% although it does not say how it actually measures up
So what are some of the events expected this year?
- The future of e-business will be discussed with leading online travel industry representatives at the Travel Technology Conference PhoCusWright@ITB in collaboration with PhoCusWright Inc.
- ECOtourism offers an international panel and an advertising platform for products, offers, and concepts that target a sustainable development in tourism.
- A conference on the budget hotel business which is a growing trend
This really isn’t about online marketing, but could not resist the urge to share what a high tech future hotel rooms will have….
An article published today on Ehotelier comments further on mobile technology in travel - the article is by Nick Gay from EyeforTravel. You can find it here
Hostec Europe is on in London this week - and their website said it was the ”premier technology event for the foodservice and hospitality sector”. So I ventured out to Excel exhibition centre with a colleague in the hope of discovering some new ideas and technology - particularly in the area of marketing with mobile technology.
It was quite disappointing! Yes, there were quite a few Point of Sale products (POS), some Property Management Systems (PMS) and some integrated PMS/Sales and catering products like Springer Miller, Evo-soft and of course Micros Fidelio. There were also some automated check-in kiosks from Ariane which seemed to be the most popular stand. On asking some of them about mobile technology, they were all quick to say that it was under development, but no details were forthcoming.
Further casual conversations also did not give the sense that there was new thinking in these areas - most products are still primarily built by technology professionals for the business and not through a real collaboration.
And just when we were resigning ourselves to no new discoveries, we spotted a small stand, where a gentleman sat at a small machine with a biometric scanner. Intrigued, we started talking and he invited us to try out CLOAKSCAN which called itself ‘the world’s first biometric cloakroom and lost property management system’. It aims to simplify one of the issues which plague both event organisers and venues - the issue of lost cloak room tickets. Instead of issuing a ticket you scan your fore-finger. This information is stored in the system for as long as your item is deposited. And this is backed up by camera technology which captures images as well!
Also worth a look is their Blue2, a bluetooth broadcasting system which allows venues and promoters to communicate to users via Bluetooth-enabled mobile phones. More information at http://www.idscan.co.uk/
Some innovation at last …..but the search for more mobile technology for hotels continues!
