In order to compete with online travel agencies, hotels have begun to shift their money into online marketing according to a study by Hospitality eBusiness Strategies. The global study found that 68 percent of hospitality executives plan to focus their budgets on Internet marketing in 2007.
When it came to what hotel executives thought would bring them the greatest return on investment 72 percent said Web site optimization. This was followed by 68 percent who said search optimization and organic search, while 62 person favored Web site redesign.
Just 17 percent said consumer-generated media and blogs would bring a high return on investment. This is relevant for online video, since individual hotel videos hold a competitive edge that many online travel agencies do not have.
Other types of online marketing that hotel executives believe would bring a high return on investment were email marketing (58.7%), strategic linking/partnerships (52.7%) and paid search (40.7%).
eMarketer senior analyst Jeffrey Grau noted the motivation behind hotels’ focus on the fundamentals, saying “to compete with online travel agencies, hotels are focusing on improving the usability and functionality of their Web sites.”
New media rated last when it came to hotels online marketing budgets. Only 2.3 percent of hotel executives planned on allocating their budgets towards blogs or user-generated media.
In a January 2007 study of US ad executives by Outsell, 75 percent named company Web sites as effective or extremely effective at lead generation. This was followed by 56 percent who believed email campaigns to be the most effective and 48 percent who preferred search engines.
