8 Insights into OTA’s, Personalization and Your Overall Digital Strategy: Hospitality Marketing Link Digest

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Hey, Big Thinkers! Hope you’re having a fantastic day. Don’t miss these 8 insights into OTA’s, personalization and your overall digital strategy as you gear up for the rest of the week, OK? Enjoy:

1. There’s been a lot of discussion the last couple of weeks around the current OTA vs. hotel brand dust-ups. First, Hotel Marketing published a pair of pieces that claim “New Research Shows OTA Consolidation Harms Consumers” and “OTA Bookings Linked to Lower Guest Satisfaction.”
2. Tnooz followed that up with “OTA Or Hotel Direct – Putting The OTAs View.” (Full disclosure: That Tnooz headlines continues to bug me. I thought about rewriting it a few times, but it’s general incoherence mirrors the incoherence of the OTA’s argument on this so it felt appropriate to leave it as is.)
3. Speaking of the incoherence of the OTA’s argument, I took a long look at OTA claims in detail in this post, “OTA’s vs. Brands: OTA’s Say Hotel Companies Are Just As Bad for Consumers as… OTA’s?” This kind of griping and sniping between OTA’s and brands is nothing new—see OTA’s vs. Chain Brands: Expedia Comes Out Swinging and Expedia’s Accelerator Program: A Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing for just two examples—and aren’t likely to end anytime soon. But I still argue in favor of a “fair and balanced approach” to managing your OTA relationships—and expect I’ll continue to do that until someone gives me a good reason to switch. The only thing I would argue is that you should approach OTA’s the way male black widow spiders approach their potential mates: carefully.
4. All that said, there’s a lot you can learn from OTA’s, as BookAssist points out in “Learning from the Giants: How Booking and Expedia Build Their Traffic Online.”
5. Shifting gears a bit, eConsultancy has a fantastic piece that explains “How Six Travel & Hospitality Brands Use Personalization to Enhance the Customer Experience.”
6. Personalization for hotels remains near and dear to my heart, as you can read all about in “6 Stellar Insights into Personalization for Hotel Marketing” from the Hospitality Marketing Link Digest series and in
   “Why Hotel Marketing Depends on Personalization.”
7. With all the changes hotel marketers have to cope with every day, it’s fair to ask “Hospitality Digital Marketing and Distribution: Is it Time to Give Up?” As you might expect, I’d argue “no.” Be sure to read the whole article though to see why.
8. And, finally, since you’re not likely to give up (and good for you!), check out these 7 Must-See Posts Highlighting How to Market Your Hotel in the Future also from the Hospitality Marketing Link Digest series as a way to round out your knowledge of OTA’s, personalization and your overall digital strategy. You’ll be glad you did.

If you’re looking for even more hospitality marketing goodness, you might also want to take a moment to review the slides from Tim’s recent seminar, “Digital Marketing Directions 2016: The Key Trends Driving Your Hotel Marketing Next Year” here:

Finally, you will definitely want to check out some of our past coverage of the mobile, local, social web and how to make it work for your hotel, including:

• Is Social a Waste of Time for Hotel Marketers?
• 5 Fantastic Insights Into 2016 Travel Marketing Trends: Hospitality Marketing Link Digest
• 6 Key Hotel E-commerce Tips: A Cheat Sheet to Drive Direct Business
• 5 Hospitality Marketing Trends You’ll Want to Keep in Mind: Hospitality Marketing Link Digest
• Expedia’s Accelerator Program: A Wolf in Wolf’s Clothing
• For Travel Marketers, Content is Still King
• Trends in Hospitality Digital Marketing for 2016
• 8 Great Posts About 2016’s Top Trends: Hospitality Marketing Link Digest
• 5 Key Facts About Mobile, Millennials, and Hotel Marketing
• How Safe Are Independent Hotels from Airbnb?