Can hotels live without SEO and TripAdvisor?

Back in 2010, Google launched a service called Google Search Stories  that most of us have forgotten about apart from being touched at that time by the teaser called Parisian Love. A Google story of an American that finds love in Paris.
What Google Search Stories allows you to do is to create a video - complete with a music track - about Google's search results for various searches you perform on Web, Maps, Blogs,... about yourself or your company.

The whole process just takes a few minutes. Once you approve your video it's uploaded to YouTube for the world to access. Additionally, like most other YouTube videos, you can embed the code for your own YouTube video on your website or blog.
I love it. But let’s come back to SEO and TripAdvisor!
As I was benchmarking keywords for a study on the Mauritian Market it just appeared so evident that SEO and TripAdvisor were dominating results that I tried it on Google Search Stories and ended up creating this short video that is quite relevant.

35 seconds is a bit short to focus on numbers but this is what we learn from the story based on 5 results for the following keywords:
1. 5 stars resort Mauritius with WEB
2. Boutique hotel Mauritius with WEB
3. Pictures Paradise Cove Mauritius with IMAGES
4. Paradise Cove Mauritius reviews with WEB
5. Paradise Cove Mauritius location with MAPS
6. Book best price for Paradise Cove Mauritius with WEB

At search #2. Paradise Cove Resort in Mauritius appears in 1st natural results and catches the eye.
Then as a user would do, I searched for pictures, reviews, location and tried to book at the best rate.
TripAdvisor appears on Top 3 positions for each web result and also note that the hotel was also very well rated and placed on Google Map.

I think these 6 results answer to the question on SEO and TripAdvisor but you may also give it a try.

No pictures for Pinterest

Bad point though: Impossible to pin pictures on Pinterest!





If you have your own Google Search Story related to travel, feel free to post it just down here as a comment or create your own  and share it with us.

Could M-Commerce kill E-Commerce with growing Mobile shoppers around the world? [Infographic]

BigCommerce, founded by Eddie Machaalani & Mitchell Harper, makes it easy to setup your own professional online store - no coding or design experience required. Using built-in marketing tools, you can also drive lots of traffic to your new online store from places like Facebook, Google, Yahoo, eBay, Shopzilla, iPhones, iPads and more.

In an effort to understand the changing landscape of e-commerce, BigCommerce examined analyst and trend-watching data from several sources to build some context around the emergence of m-commerce (mobile commerce) in retail and then created the infographic below.

In-store mobile trends expected to grow.

Highlights about today's mobile shopper:
• About 1 in 5 smartphone users in America scanned a QR code in-store last year. People typically scanned fo 73% product info, 32% for Coupons and 25% for Event info.
• 42% of all US mobile subscribers have smartphones; 51% of all UK subscribers have smartphones; and 44% of EU5 subscribers do.
• Smartphone users spend more time on mobile apps than on mobile sites.
• Women (77%) prefer tablets for shopping as men (59%) prefer to purchases on their phones;

Click on the Infographic below to read all about it on BigCommerce:

Numbers, Myths & Benchmark about mobile applications for hotels. Is it time for you to GO MO?

Customers search for hotel apps on Google!

Compared with travel apps, mobile applications for hotels are trendy on Google since early 2010.

Customers use Apps and surf on mobile!
And Mobiles are also used during the stay. A study of 500 travellers (52% from Western Europe, 16% Northern Europe, 13% Southern Europe, 17% Middle East) found that 86% now expect wifi connections to be made freely available in hotels. Courtesy of: Brocade 

Customers use and book on Mobile apps!
Mobile bookings are poised to increase exponentially.
$160 million in 2010
$2.6 billion (2.4% of total online bookings) in 2012
$8.0 billion (6,5% of total online travel bookings) by 2013
Courtesy of: Buuteeq 

Customers book on Mobile apps when traveling!
82% of Priceline users book on day of arrival.

Facts on Hotels Gone Mobile.
Largest profit margins come from mobile users: 70% of mobile bookings are more expensive same-day bookings
Mobile services have led to an 18% increase for in-room dining orders
Courtesy of: Buuteeq

Myths about mobile applications for hotels
Mobile Apps and mobile websites are the same thing?
Apps and mobile websites are two completely different things! 
You need to consider BOTH a mobile website and a mobile application on iPhone and Android app.
Why do you need an Android and an iPhone app? Well, Android and iPhone combined represent 79% of the market. says Rourke Hospitality Marketing

Mobile Apps are expensive?
“Build an app for a nominal setup fee and an ongoing monthly subscription fee. If you are part of a collection of hotels this can help to reduce the cost even further by sharing the setup and monthly fees across the collection.” says Rourke Hospitality Marketing
Mobile Apps are NOT expensive!

What benefits do you get from Apps?
1 - Helps you stay in mind by entering the mobile screen of users
2 - Push notifications before, during and after the stay
3 - Give a good user experience during the stay
4 - Content managed with your website (CMS)
5 - Appear on app stores searches under your name + hotel or location

5 good reasons to which you can ad direct mobile bookings on online bookings.

Benchmarking 5 hotel’s mobile applications on iPhone
Focusing on 5 hotel apps on iPhone

++Creative and handy: Unlock experiences and stories at our hotels with our built-in QR code scanner.

It’s time you Go Mo… and read the complete story.

Numbers, myths & benchmark about mobile applications July 2012 from Arnaud Bilquez

Feel free to contact me for feedback or helping out on your mobile strategy!

Bing-powered searches now make up about 30 percent of all web searches!

A comparison between the current title-holder Google and Microsoft's search engine.

What do we learn from this Infographic?

Currently Bing is used by 25,9% of web searches Vs 68,7% for Google, but coming up fast thanks to Powered-by Searches on other websites Like Yahoo! and MSN but also Facebook.ocial medias.

Read all about it below.

Courtesy of: Online Degrees