In the immediate aftermath of yesterday’s horrifying bombing at the Boston Marathon, spectators and runners alike existed in a state of confused panic as law enforcement and rescue teams rushed to the scene to tend to the injured. Fearful of more bombs to detonate along the marathon route, the Boston police quickly instructed bystanders to leave the area and return to their homes and hotels until the imminent danger had subsided. As the race finish [...]

As Twitter usage matures, marketers are appropriately moving their focus away from follower acquisition and towards maximizing the impact of their messaging on the platform. And the beauty is that by increasing engagement with your followers, you will acquire additional followers. Following are some quick best practices for Twitter engagement: Growing Your Audience Through Optimized Tweets Twitter experts often say that influence should be measured not by a user’s follower count, but by how often his/her [...]

Just a few years ago, hotels relied on a manager’s close watch and traditional guest satisfaction surveys to uncover which employees made a difference in a guest’s stay. Today, with the popularity of reviews and social media, employees that go the extra mile are easily surfaced in guest comments and in social media posts. Because of the transparency of online reviews, hotel staff is more aware of their impact on guest satisfaction and many hotels [...]

This week, TripAdvisor announced new property dashboard features, which are available to all business-listing subscribers. According to TripAdvisor, the property dashboard, accessible via TripAdvisor’s Management Center, “highlights the key metrics you need to measure your property’s day-to-day performance,” including competitor metrics, local market trends, cumulative page views and more. The review site published an extensive guide on this new functionality, which is worth a read. What we find most valuable about the new property dashboard [...]

Much to the relief of social media managers, 2013 seems to be the year when more sophisticated social media analytic tools will become widely available. For years, we’ve been faced with a frustrating reality that social media activities were difficult to track, which made the task of setting key performance indicators (KPIs) an arduous task. While the development of new tools is encouraging for marketers, it is still challenging to determine which tools are best [...]

My colleague recently participated in an HSMAI event in Bangkok, Thailand. One of the general sessions focused on the increasing role of online travel agencies (OTAs) and questioned whether the hotels have lost revenue due to their own reliance on the channel. The message seemed to be that when used wisely, OTAs are a great vehicle for selling extra inventory. Nevertheless, many revenue managers continue to be too heavily dependent on the channel, providing inventory [...]