Proclaimed by CEO & Co-Founder Joe Fernandez to be the “most comprehensive and accurate model they’ve ever released”, the Klout platform has quadrupled the number of signals it measures (now over 400) across seven networks (including Facebook, Twitter, Google+, LinkedIn, Foursquare) and has – for the first time – integrates Wikipedia data to assess a person’s offline influence.

Savvy hospitality marketing professionals have been exploring and implementing social media marketing since the advent of the term Web 2.0 in 1999.  However, it was not until 2003 that the first customer-led associations with this platform were highlighted by the O’Reilly group.  They said, "customers are building your business for you" and suggested that the activities of users generating content in the form of ideas, text, videos, or pictures could be "harnessed" to create value.  [...]

Today, Revinate, the leading provider of cloud-based enterprise software for the hospitality industry has raised $14.5 million in Series A financing from leading venture capital firms Benchmark Capital and Formation 8. The funding will be used to accelerate Revinate’s international expansion and for product development. Revinate, which recently celebrated its third anniversary, has well over 10,000 hotel and restaurant customers worldwide using its software platform to manage online reputation and connect with guests in today’s [...]

Last month, Google announced the launch of Google+ Local, a new way to search for and share your favorite restaurants, local hot spots and pretty much ever other business you can think of. The launch is the first step in integration with review site Zagat since the acquisition of the company by Google in September 2011. Although this integrations is still in its early stages, we wanted to outline the major effects it will have on hotels and restaurants.

The commissions paid to Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) are often viewed as just “the cost of doing business” in the hospitality industry.  According to a recent L2 report, hotels forfeited $2.5 Billion to OTAs in 2010 which begs the question- are there ways to limit this expense?  In the Facebook Factor I talked about how fans and advocates are more likely to book directly with hotels.  This can reduce the influence of review sites and [...]

A few months ago, we partnered with our friends at BCV to bring hotels and restaurants up to speed on the Facebook Timeline rollout to brands. In the webinar we discussed all the key ingredients to creating a hearty Timeline for your brand. As a true social media enthusiast, I am a huge fan of Timeline and it’s ability to aid in telling your brand’s story – how you came to be and all the [...]