Online Merchandising: Best Practices for Marketing and Merchandising Your Hotel | By Paolo Boni

Hotel chains, representation companies, travel intermediaries, thirdparty sites and guests all contribute to a hotel's online presence in their own valuable ways. They have their places and purposes. But hoteliers also have their roles in ensuring their hotel is marketed and merchandised effectively online.

One thing that the chains, representation companies, travel
intermediaries and third-party sites do quite well is ensure that your
property information, rates, availability and photos are available online
-- an integral part of ensuring that your hotel can be found and booked
online on a functional level. Guests, in turn, ensure that there are plenty
of written reviews of your hotel and user-generated photos and videos of
their experience available to their peers seeking real, unfiltered feedback
straight from the mouths of guests.

But there's a missing piece to the puzzle. Hoteliers typically have the
best knowledge of what makes their hotel unique. This is important
knowledge to have, first and foremost, but also to capitalize on. This
is why hoteliers have such an immense opportunity when it comes to
marketing and merchandising online.

Hoteliers play a very important role: bringing the hotel's online presence
to the next level. Not in isolation, but to complement the marketing and
merchandising efforts already in place. Differentiating their hotel from the
competition and connecting with consumers from the individual property
level completes the hotel's online presence to increase market share and
drive more bookings.

What can you actually do to extract more value out of your hotel's online
presence? What are the best practices for marketing and merchandising
your hotel?

• Ensure your photos and videos are pushed to social photo and video sites
• Develop and distribute visual content that tells your hotel's story
• Target your content to appeal to your guest segments
• ... and many more valuable tips

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Educational Seminar for Tourism Organizations (ESTO) 2012 - Booth Speaking at General Session

August 26-28, 2012
TBA
Boston - MA, United States

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