Wifi and mobile: the hotelier’s twin peaks

By Steve Keenan

I spent an informative afternoon last week with hoteliers from Small Luxury Hotels of the World. Around 40 gathered in London, with social media the topic I was there to speak about.

But I had a couple of takeaways, too: wifi and mobile, two topics that have concentrated hoteliers’ marketing minds in the past year, alongside SM and guest reviews.

In a workshop with one group of 20, a Greek hotelier said that he had just gone wifi free for guests, having previously charged (the charges paid for the installation of around £18,000). In a show of hands, not one of the SLH hoteliers said that they still charged.

Surprising? A little. But it seems that luxury hoteliers have caved in to demand, given an article from Tnooz yesterday, which said that Intercontinental Hotels has also announced free wifi for guests who are members of its loyalty scheme.

Looking back, the whole cycle of the wifi argument has taken less than five years, from should we? to how much? to can’t afford to be at a commercial disadvantage cos Johnny down the road has it for free.

The cycle of switching to mobile bookings is only halfway through, however. SLH revealed figures which showed that in January, 30% of research on its site was from mobile platforms in the UK. When it came to booking from a mobile device, the figure was 19.8% in the UK - compared with just 7.1% for the same month last year.

Digging deeper into the stats, 89% of UK bookings from a mobile device came via the iPad, with 6.5% from the iPhone and the rest Android devices. And the UK is ahead of the market. Worldwide, 14% of all bookings in the last half of 2012 were made by iPad, iPhone and Android, up from 7% across the same period in 2011.

“It’s worth pointing out that SLH has only just launched a dedicated mobile booker, making it much easier for people to book via mobile devices. We expect to see an even greater surge in mobile bookings going forward,” said a spokeswoman.

So while the cycle is still in the relatively early stages, the progress towards bookings on mobile is clearly illustrated:

SLH website visits in January 2013 v January 2012

According to SLH, the results “do not come as much surprise” considering that the UK has one of the highest penetrations of smartphones in the world, according to Ofcom. As of December 2012, 58% of the population has a smartphone and almost a fifth (19%) owns a tablet. The iPhone is the most popular device capturing 29% of the UK smartphone market.

Wifi, ticked off. Launch of mobile booking app, ticked off. That’s those two covered. Now, about this social media. And should we allow guests to post unmoderated reviews….?

Country reports: social media in travel

Caption: Swedish blogger Lola Akinmade-Akerstrom

By Steve Keenan

Over the past nine months, we have been producing reports for World Travel Market London on how different countries have adapted to social media in their promotion of travel.

As you will appreciate, it has been quite a year in how tourist boards/destination management organisations (DMOs) have come to terms with this disruption to their travel promotion and marketing.

WTM originally published these reports as PDFs for which you had to register. As from the last report they are published as web pages, free of registration.

So here are our first five reports, the latest available in webpage form, and compelling content. Read here how the world of travel is embracing, and changing, with social media:

MAY 2013:
Coming soon… FLANDERS

MARCH 2013: SWEDEN
Includes:
- Superfast, connected and supersocial Sweden
- Blogger Lola Akinmade-Akerstrom’s takes on SM in Sweden
- Blogger 2: Journalist Paul Connelly on his move to Lapland and his SM takes
- The Big Swedish Twitter experiment
- Sweden: a hotbed of social media

JANUARY 2013: SPORTING BRAZIL
Includes:
- Brazil targets 1.2bn people online before 2016
- How will Brazil target the World Cup and Olympics in social?
- Brazil social networks streak ahead on mobile
- A tale of two Brazilian-based bloggers
- Social Brazil in numbers

NOVEMBER 2012: MALAYSIA
Includes:
- Meet the most social country on the planet
- A tale of two bloggers in Malaysia
- Sharing the journey: Malaysia Airlines
- Malaysia: a million likes on Facebook
- Growing pains: problems when governments take to social media
- Social Malaysia in figures

SEPTEMBER 2012: KENYA
Includes:
- Kenya gets connected
- Ex-Visit Britain PR chief Tess Longfield on her new role in Nairobi
- Kenyan social stars
- How the Kenyan Wildlife Service uses social media
- A blogger’s view from Kenya
- Governor’s Camp use of social media
- Social Kenya: in figures

JULY 2012: SPAIN
Includes:
- The Spanish social media landscape
- Interview with Enrique Ruize de Lera, head of Spanish NTO in London
- Blogger press trip tips
- Case study: Ushaia Beach Hotel, Ibiza - the Facebook Hotel
- Blogger stories from Abigail King and Annie Bennett, Spain-based writers
- Social Spain: in figures

TripAdvisor breaks the 100 million review barrier

By Mark Frary

It is the classic hockey-stick curve. What I am talking about is the chart showing how TripAdvisor has taken over the world in the 13 years since it was founded.

The company announced last week that it had surpassed another milestone - 100 million reviews. The site is growing faster than ever, giving that hockey-stick-shaped uptick. It really shows the power of social - growth begets growth as more people share more. You can see how the number of registered members has almost exactly tracked the number of reviews.

TripAdvisor is the first travel site to reach such heady heights. It now covers, according to the company, more than two and a half million places to stay, restaurants, and attractions in 116,000 destinations around the world.

The site now has contributions from members living in every country of the world and features hotel reviews in every country but one - see if you can guess which one before you reach the end of this post.

The announcement of the milestone was also accompanied by some other fascinating information. 16 attractions and 26 hotels around the world have been reviewed more than 5,000 times each. New York’s Central Park is the most reviewed attraction (12,327 reviews, of which 9,254 say it is excellent) while the Luxor in Vegas is the most reviewed hotel (10,157 of which 2,004 say it is excellent).

But how can users possibly take in all these reviews. Few people would bother reading more than a few I would suggest. TripAdvisor has introduced filtering to only show reviews made by like-minded people (e.g. families or business travellers) With this spectacular growth, it may have to go even further in personalisation to limit the number of reviews that people have to read.

The newly announced figures also shows the power of Facebook, is such a demonstration were needed. The company first integrated with Facebook back in 2010. Users of Facebook now make up 35% of all reviews on TripAdvisor.

The influence of TripAdvisor - WTM’s 2010 Industry Report showed that of the 36% of people who used social networks when planning, TripAdvisor was the most widely used - is clearly growing.

Many travel companies are worried about this dominance because as well as reviews, TripAdvisor offers the chance to comparison shop for rates at the listed hotels.

Search for the Luxor in Vegas for example, and the comparison shop button is one of the most prominent items on the page, allowing you to compare between Booking.com, Expedia.co.uk, Hotels.com and others.

Good news for consumers, perhaps, but not quite so great if you are an online hotel booking site or travel agency not listed here.

How will TripAdvisor use its dominance now is the question.

Facebook’s new newsfeed: threat or opportunity?

By Mark Frary

Brands that have been liked in Facebook enjoy access to a large amount of social media real estate. This is perhaps clearest when you view the one-billion+ member network on a mobile device where brands liked by your friends can often take up the entire screen. Great news for brands trying to reach a new audience but less interesting for users who get fed up with seeing their news feed cluttered with commercial messages.

This may be about to change. Facebook has announced changes to news feed. News feed - for anyone who has been living in another galaxy - is the real-time stream of status updates, photos, videos and so on from people and brand that you like which sits at the centre of the Facebook page.

The order of appearance is determined by an algorithm that takes into account things like number of comments and who posted the update. Brand like the newsfeed because they can appear there even if a user has not liked it - if a friend likes a brand you may get to see it in your newsfeed.

There are three major changes to newsfeed. The first is that newsfeed is now a family of newsfeeds and users can choose which they view (see left).

They can view recent updates (as now), see only photos or only music posted in the newsfeed or only things posted by friends. Brands should be concerned about how many people select this last option. Still, many Facebook users are creatures of habit and may still use the feed as now.

The second big change is the promotion of photos and video content. More than half of all content that appears in the newsfeed is photographic in nature and the company is redesigning the feed so that photos get more prominence, as you can see below. Tiny thumbnails are out and in come huge images.

Facebook says the redesign “is like moving from a 20 inch television to a widescreen”.

Brands with high quality imagery will love this change. Even if people choose to move to the friend newsfeed, the amount of screen real estate will massively increase.

Bloggers who post to Facebook will also see their content being presented more clearly and prominently. The thumbnail, headline and post extract have all increased in size (see left).

Finally, the company is also taking the opportunity to make the look and feel of the site more common between web, tablet and mobile devices. The navigation links at the left when you visit the site on the web have been replaced by icons, giving more space to the central column.

As with all updates, the changes are being introduced gradually.

However, if you want to get the new-look newsfeed sooner rather than later, go to http://www.facebook.com/about/newsfeed and click on the big button at the top.