Let’s go! – by Stefanos Vasdekis A blog about entrepreneurship, the web2.0 world, and life.

Smart online marketing for hotel websites

You know that internet is the right place to get more visitors to your hotel, but you don't know where to start from or you are not sure you're doing everything you can. Here is a checklist:

1) Search engine traffic
It's so difficult to rank in the top spots of free search engine results that many hotel owners don't even try. Well, at least you should consult a search engine optimization (SEO) specialist or invest some time reading to understand the basic principles of SEO and follow them. If free traffic comes, consider it as a bonus. In the meantime pay for search engine traffic (pay per click advertising - PPC) through Google's Adwords and Yahoo's Search Marketing programs. If you're short on time to learn about PPC, it will be cheaper for you to consult an Adwords professional to set up and run your campaign.

2) Big travel websites
You have already heard the big names of internet travel, like expedia and travelocity. You might also have booked your holidays with them. But have you tried to include your hotel in these websites? You need to spend some time to make sure that your hotel is listed in all well known travel websites, as they already have tons of traffic. Sometimes you will be able to submit your site directly to them and other times you will submit to another service that feeds the travel website. Here is a list:
www.expedia.com
www.orbitz.com
www.tripadvisor.com
www.travelocity.com
www.hotels.com
www.octopustravel.com
www.opodo.com 
www.venere.com 
www.bookings.net
www.cheaptickets.com
www.priceline.com
www.hrs.com

3) Web 2.0 world
There is so much buzz about social networking websites that no hotel owner can afford to ignore this new world. First of all there are blogs and social bookmarking websites. If your hotel has something unique and bloggers find it, then enormous buzz is generated. See for example this hotel that was featured on the first page of digg.com, http://digg.com/design/Extraordinary_Hotel_with_30_Different_Rooms . Note that most likely your server will not be able to serve the traffic if your website is featured on the first page of digg (here is where the phrase "dugg to death" comes from), but this is not a reason to avoid buzz... People also use social bookmarking sites like http://del.icio.us for search, replacing search engines, so it's important to be listed under relative keywords ("tags" in web 2.0 world).

Then there are all these community websites, where people share experiences, ratings, photos, wishes regarding online travel. Check:
www.virtualtourist.com
www.trekshare.com
www.igougo.com
www.mytripjournal.com 
www.travbuddy.com
The good news about web 2.0 world is that it's free to get in. The bad news is that you cannot pay to get in... That means that you must have or do something worth mentioning. An average hotel with average service will never get web 2.0 buzz as there is no interesting story associated with it.

Then there are mashups, websites that search for best deals in many booking engines and combine the results with maps and reviews they get from other websites. An example is www.mobissimo.com and here is the list of hotel booking engines that it searches simultaneously:

Active Hotels, AsiaRooms, Bookings.net, Candlewood Suites, ChinaHotelz.com, Circus Circus, Conference Centers by Marriott, Country Inns, Courtyard by Marriott, Crowne Plaza, Fairfield Inn by Marriott, Holiday Inn, Holiday Inn Express, Holiday Inn Select, Hotel Indigo, HotelClub, HotelPronto, Hyatt, InterContinental, La Quinta, LastMinuteTravel, LasVegas.com, Lodging.com, Marriott, Marriott Vacation Club, Mirage, OctopusTravel.com, Onetravel, OnlineHotels.com, Orbitz, Park Inn, Park Plaza, Radisson, RatesToGo, Renaissance Hotels, ReserveTravel, Residence Inn by Marriott, Skoosh, SpringHill Suites by Marriott, Staybridge Suites, The Venetian, TownePlace Suites by Marriott, Travelguru, TravelWorm, venere.com.

Another service similar to mobissimo is www.kayak.com . These websites make it so much easier and faster to find the best deal that is no surprise they're getting more and more popular.

To sum up, the 3 smart moves to promote your hotel website online are:
a) Pay for clicks from search engines.
b) Make sure you're included in as many big directories as possible.
c) Explore the web 2.0 world's opportunities.

Good luck!