Tuesday Travel: Weekly Marketing Roundup

Looking to improve your hotel’s marketing going into 2013? Here’s a quick round-up of this week’s best hotel marketing and distribution tips and techniques:

• Tnooz says to forget flights, Google is quietly adding new features to Hotel Finder as rivals look on (and advertise), moving more towards a fully featured OTA solution.
• Of course, you can use Hotel Finder to your company’s advantage. Happily, HotelMarketing.com has a look at how to claim your Google Hotel Finder page.
• While we’re on the topic of Google, Tnooz has a breakdown on who comes out on top for organic and paid search in travel, particularly with generic terms where so many customers start their shopping process.
• Now making sure that you’ve claimed your Google+ Places page (key to showing up in Hotel Finder as noted a moment ago) matters more than you may think. David Meerman Scott highlights how Google Plus emerging as a back door to top search results.
• Of course, getting people to your website only matters if you offer them a solid experience. Hotel News Now takes a look at how website personalization drives demand and loyalty.
• Another factor in consumer’s purchasing decisions? Your online reputation. Chris Anderson at Cornell’s Center for Hospitality research has a new study that may confirm your online reputation directly affects your hotel’s revenue per room

. Well worth the read.

• Increasingly, folks coming to your site will do so on mobile devices. Over on the main blog, I take a look at why “mobile first” matters next year.
• I’m not the only one pushing mobile: TechCrunch suggests Priceline bought Kayak because of its strong mobile growth. Key quote, “…a big part of Kayak’s resurgence has been its focus on mobile. In its Q3 report, Kayak showed that its mobile revenue per thousand queries (RPM) had increased 63 percent compared to the same quarter in 2011.” The same article notes that mobile now accounts for about 18% of Kayak’s search activity.

Don’t forget to check back here regularly for additional hotel marketing tips and techniques. And take a look at my main blog for additional online marketing and e-commerce news and info.