Relactions blog

Latest trends and highlights from the online hospitality market: Hotel eMarketing 2008, London 16-17 Sep

noreply@blogger.com (Francesca Tiribocchi) — Tue, 23 Sep 2008 13:24:00 +0000

Relactions was invited to speak at Hotel eMarketing Conference 2008 in London, with the keynote speech “Optimising your website to maximise conversion”, and I had the chance to follow a number of interesting presentations and participate to four different round-tables. The Conference was interely dedicated to the hotel industry and to analyse what strategy some of the best in class (the major group/chains) are undertakening to maximise their online marketing activities. Here are my personal...

The difficult relationship between hoteliers and online distribution

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Thu, 04 Sep 2008 15:03:00 +0000

An interesting video on the most common solutions adopted by hoteliers to effectively handle distribution and technology challenges.

A longer and richer tail

noreply@blogger.com (Martina Galea) — Thu, 27 Mar 2008 09:14:00 +0000

In a recent article published in the Harvard Business Review (n. 1-2 2008), university professor and forecaster Vito Di Bari predicts the appearance of the longer tail by 2015. Starting from Chris Anderson’s ground-breaking long tail concept, namely the grassroots diffusion of supply and demand on line, and the prevalence of “many niche items” as opposed to “few mass items”, Di Bari has hypothesized the growing density of the long tail concept, with users increasingly interested in specific,...

Usability: what's in a name?

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Sun, 20 Jan 2008 17:07:00 +0000

Usability is a very broad issue, so broad it can often be overwhelming when it comes to choose the right kind of testing methodology for your travel website and the right kind of company to conduct the analysis. Yet usability is a vital aspect for the success of a travel website, as it directly affects the conversion rates (i.e. your revenue) and the user experience (i.e. the perception and reputation of your brand). Additional benefits of revising your website based on a usability test...

Christmas wishes from Relactions (and a very special guest)

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Wed, 19 Dec 2007 17:33:00 +0000

And a happy new year from all our team!

Emerging trends in the hotel industry: no frills, more trills for European travellers?

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Tue, 02 Oct 2007 11:45:00 +0000

No-frill chic is a new consumer trend that is going to deeply affect the hotel industry, by shifting consumer expectations and changing the traditional segmentations in which marketeers try to squeeze - with decreasing success - the modern travellers. Trendwatching defines the No-frill chic trend as: "low cost goods and services that add design, third-party high quality elements and/or exceptional customer service to create top quality experiences at bottom prices. No-frills chic is...

Travel industry and Deep Web: exclusive interview with Marcus P. Zillman

noreply@blogger.com (Martina Galea) — Mon, 27 Aug 2007 13:11:00 +0000

Today we are interviewing Marcus P. Zillman, International Internet expert, author, keynote speaker, corporate consultant and one of the most renowned expert on Deep Web, information retrieval and Internet. Marcus is currently the Executive Director of the Virtual Private Library. He is a member of the American Society for Information Science and Technology, and is also actively involved as an internationally known speaker and author. Marcus will talk about Deep Web, search engines' future...

Starwood Aloft leaves Second Life

noreply@blogger.com (Francesca Tiribocchi) — Mon, 30 Jul 2007 10:45:00 +0000

Almost every day, there is news of a new company opening an office in Second Life. Nevertheless, it is also time to close for some of them. About two weeks ago, the online newspaper www.latimes.com reported Starwood Hotels & Resorts Worlwide closing its Second Life shop and donating its virtual land to the nonprofit social-networking group TakingITGlobal. Starwood was one of the first big brands to establish a presence in Second Life, with their much-hyped Virtual Aloft hotel property....

Online distributors speak: exclusive interview with Venere.com's SEO Manager, Susan Geraeds

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Thu, 14 Jun 2007 13:38:00 +0000

Today we are interviewing Susan Geraeds about Venere.com, one of the most successful player in the online hotel reservations industry. Susan will talk about her company, what SEO's strategy and operations they've implemented so far and are looking to develop in the future Travel 2.0 scenario. Venere is quite an exception in the European online scenario: an Italian company, and not a mega-OTA coming from the States, neither an online extension for exisiting travel operators. Can you tell us...

What is the real value of SEM? European advertisers and agencies answer

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Wed, 23 May 2007 07:42:00 +0000

There are lots of data around showing the unstoppable growth of Search Engine Marketing (whether organic listings or pay-per-click advertising) as the main and more profitable way to promote online travel services. However, there are far less informations on what is the actual perception and value of these activities from a client's point of view, especially within the European markets. In January 2007, Sempo (a global non-profit organization serving the search engine marketing industry) asked...

Most Europeans now using travel websites

noreply@blogger.com (Francesca Tiribocchi) — Fri, 18 May 2007 11:00:00 +0000

Here are some fresh and interesting numbers showing the amazing growth rate of online travel in Europe. comScore, a leading global firm in measuring the digital world recentely issued a research on European online travel industry, showing that 108.6 million Europeans (half of the total European online population aged 15+) visited a travel related site during the month of March 2007 (+6% vs March 2006). The most visited online travel Web sites were: Expedia, ViaMichelin and TUI Group with...

Lost in Second Life

noreply@blogger.com (Martina Galea) — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 16:10:00 +0000

Every day, nowadays, there is news of someone reaching the shores of Second Life: companies, politicians, entertainment celebrities, famous brands. So, as it seems that Second Life is the marketing and Web 2.0 event of the day, I decided that I would set out to explore it before it went out of fashion. After a few clicks, there I was, transformed into Trax Chandrayaan, my avatar. During the first log-in to Second Life, there was help on all sides to prevent me from getting lost. There were...

A new star in hospitality? Exclusive interview with CitizenM's CEO Michael Levie.

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Mon, 02 Apr 2007 09:36:00 +0000

Today we are interviewing Michael Levie about his new start up chain CitizenM (please note that this name was disclosed on September 3rd 2007; the brand was previoulsly referred as Onestarisborn, as you will read throughout this interview which took place before the brand launch): a new business hotel concept that is promising to take hotellerie by storm by introducing a luxury contemporary hotel for the cost conscious traveler. They say that successful businesses have clear, simple and...

Bloggers are hoteliers' best friends. With a little help.

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Thu, 29 Mar 2007 12:29:00 +0000

The Spanish Hotel Chain Magic Costa Blanca has launched the first (to my knowledge) Blogger Card i.e., a special package for bloggers, including discounted rates, priority check-in and other benefits. The line between public relations and private manipulation is always been quite thin...however, I think this is yet another sign of the increasing importance of building a strong online reputation by leveraging the power of social networks. More and more, the reputation of a brand is the result...

Google ergo sum?

noreply@blogger.com (Martina Galea) — Mon, 26 Mar 2007 09:11:00 +0000

In the last days, there's has been a lot of SEO buzz about AC Hotels's disappereance from Google listings. Last week, if we typed the command site:www.ac-hotels.com the response was negative: Google did not report any information about this website, while it was still on in Yahoo and MSN, although very few pages are indexed. Today the site re-appeared in Google, with 23 pages indexed (mostly in pdf and swf files). Now, the question is: why did AC Hotels's website disappear and re-appear...

PhocusWright ITB Berlin 2007: latest trends and highlights

noreply@blogger.com (Francesca Tiribocchi) — Mon, 12 Mar 2007 15:37:00 +0000

We just came back from ITB Berlin where we attended the latest PhocusWright Conference on Travel Technology for the tourism and hospitality industries. Here are our conference highlights. Travel Metasearch growing fast Paul English, CTO and Co-Founder of Kayak.com shared some impressive numbers on the fast growth of metasearch: Kayak is now reporting some 15 million searches per month. In January 07, the ComScore Report 2006 showed a 163.3% monthly unique visitors's growth for kayak.com...

Top 10 reasons why you shouldn't choose that SEO agency.

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Thu, 22 Feb 2007 14:00:00 +0000

In order to achieve significant results, an effective SEO strategy must involve the website’s content, optimising the texts, HTML, information distribution and site architecture in order to make the website content more visible and relevant. A simplistic approach usually means troubles, or rather, a waste of money. Here is my list of top ten of ways to detect that the people sitting in front of you might not be a serious partner to make your online business grow. 1. Here is your "Top 50" "Top...

(Mash that site up!)³

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Wed, 14 Feb 2007 19:57:00 +0000

We are all wondering how the future of of online distribution will look like. Well, I think that now we can get a much clearer picture by having a look at Yahoo! Pipes. Pipes is an interactive feed aggregator and manipulator. Using Pipes, users (with a little programming expertise) can easily create feeds that are powerful, useful and relevant by mashing up different sources, applying personal search filtering options and basically aggregating content in a very intuitive and customizable way....

Sooo Folksonomic!

noreply@blogger.com (Martina Galea) — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 16:25:00 +0000

Marcos Weskamp, graphic designer and art director, has been very good at putting in practises all the teories on mashup, realising an applicative that got him a premium award in the category of Net Vision at the Ars Electronica. Taking advantage from Google News aggregator, Weskamp created a visual map of news, bringing together graphic elements and some clever functionalities. Here is a powefull example of folksonomy at work: it is the popularity of the news to determine his visual ranking: ...

Click Fraud: what's the deal?

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Tue, 30 Jan 2007 19:29:00 +0000

A recent research by E-marketers enphatises once again the increasing relevance of click-fraud issues. This is obviuosly a main concern for the whole travel industry, where the pay-per-click spending (both in absolut terms and as keyword cost) is continuosly growing. The research reports an average 14% click fraud rate in 2006 across all industries, which should sound quite scaring to anyone seriously investing in paid search marketing. Wasting 14% of your budget means significally increasing...

A flash of creativity

noreply@blogger.com (Francesca Tiribocchi) — Mon, 15 Jan 2007 19:09:00 +0000

Orbitz's flash advertising games have always striken me as very clever, well-executed, and with a "viral" approach long before "viral marketing" was a topic on the table. They are quite irresistible in engaging the consumer in simple and funny games for a few seconds, which is an excellent result to achieve with a flash banner in an era where search engine marketing is the mantra... Now a community website has been created to access and play the games.

Mash that site up!

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Sat, 06 Jan 2007 12:23:00 +0000

To take the very straightforward Wikipedia's definition, a Mashup is a "website or web application that combines content from more than one source". So, what's the hype about mash-ups in travel 2.0; why there's so much talk about this Frankestein-like approach to web-site building? By mashing up very low-cost APIs (most famously Google Maps), and enpowering people to submit richer content in an extremely easy and exciting way, new mashup websites get born everyday, redefining the way users...

A Vespa and your website

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Fri, 05 Jan 2007 12:06:00 +0000

The beautiful Vespa is often considered the epithomy of Italian industrial design from the 50's and 60's, a period where the genius of some extraordinary designers and entepreneurs brought timeless objects into our households and imagination. The success of their works often relied in the undestanding that the design of an object is a consequence of its practical use in a given context, and that beauty and functionality must come together. Just like it happens in the nature, "function precedes...

KPI.. Keeping it cheap?

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Wed, 03 Jan 2007 16:16:00 +0000

Behind every successful business there is the capacity to measure the factors that really count in achieving their marketing objectives. The internet offers exceptionally effective tools in this regard, since unlike any other medium, every activity performed by every user leaves a measurable trace. However (and this is something that really astonishes me!) in the fiercely competitive panorama of the online travel & hospitality sector, many players still think it is enough to track the...

the day of the long tail

noreply@blogger.com (Annalisa Ballaira) — Mon, 06 Nov 2006 10:29:00 +0000

Here is a clear example of the potential of making yourself known by posting videos on hot-topics on the web: althought the content is pretty irrelevant, this video about the very hyped "long-tail" has been downloaded some 1.777 times from Google Video, adding up quite an interesting, cost-free number of contacts to the agency that posted it...