buuteeq

Daily deals have proven to be profitable. Rice University reports that between 55% and 61% of businesses running daily deals make money with them.

There is no doubt that daily deals can be a powerful, profitable marketing tool. The challenge is to educate ourselves so that we use them shrewdly.

This free eBook offers 6 steps hotel marketers should take when crafting daily deals, and lists the major players in the industry to give you options for marketing your hotel.

Download the free eBook

BREAKING: Today, Google has promoted their knowledge graph carousel to appear in more search queries. While it previously appeared for a select few hotel queries, it now appears for many generic queries like “hotels near Seattle” and “cheap New York hotels”.

What is the Knowledge Graph?

In May of last year, Google announced the Knowledge Graph, which is a database Google keeps of static knowledge that rarely changes, such as historical events, accepted scientific theories like gravity, famous people, and physical locations like landmarks, points of interest, and hotels.

The goal of the Knowledge Graph is to give users more accurate, precise, and better written information about topics that rarely change, instead of relying on any random website to write about it. Google sources their information about topics in the Knowledge Graph from online encyclopedias like Wikipedia, and authorized profiles like verified Google+ Local Pages.

Google displays information from the Knowledge Graph in two places. For people, definitions, historical accounts, and theories and ideas, Google displays information in a box to the right of the SERP (search engine result page), in the same place where they show off Google Pages information.

For local queries, Google displays a black strip at the top of the page with results that users can flip through.

Why is this important?

Hoteliers gain a huge benefit from the Knowledge Graph because it takes focus away from online travel agencies (OTAs) and gives more prominence back to hotels.

Let’s take a look at the query “cheap hotels in new york”, seen in the image below. Before the Knowledge Graph, OTAs like Expedia dominated the SERPs, taking not only the top organic places, but also the top paid advertisement placements. Unless you had a very popular hotel or bucket-loads of money to spend on search engine marketing ads (SEM), you could never oust OTAs.

Now, traditional organic listings of indexed websites have nearly vanished, even when viewed from monitors with a very large resolution. As you can see in the image above, only 2 traditional organic results appear, both pointing to OTAs or directories. At the very top we find an organic listing of Google+ Local Pages. These are not OTA listings, and these are not paid SEM ads. These are organic results based on the verified Google+ Local pages that Google thinks best match the query. Thus, by simply creating a Google+ Local page and verifying it (which is free and easy to do, as I explain in this guide), hotels can oust OTAs and much of the competition, taking the top spots for popular location-based queries.

This is huge news for hotels that OTAs have traditionally drowned in the search results. This change gives even the little guy a big opportunity to gain more new guests based on the quality of their web presence instead of the number of backlinks their website has or the amount of money they can spend on SEM.

Also, Knowledge Graph displays more hotels on the page. On a very large monitor like mine (1920×1080), Knowledge Graph adds another 14 hotels to a 1st page result–more than Google’s famous 10-per-page SERP, and even more than the relatively new local block, which Knowledge Graph appears to have superseded.

While SEM ads do take up a prominent place of the screen (highlighted in the image above) organic listings appear first, at the very top, and a large map takes up the rest of the screen, with organic results users can click on to learn more.

Clicking on a hotel in the Knowledge Graph produces more detailed information about that hotel. If you have a website, it will appear as the first organic link, allowing you to gain more direct bookings. If you have a Google+ Local Page with photos, reviews, and good content, it will appear to the right with more information, including a phone number for easy phone reservations, and a button to plot driving directions. Phenomenal.

This is a welcome update from Google. If your hotel is taking full advantage of Google’s free products, it should appear fairly well in the Knowledge Graph.

I have been fortunate enough to have traveled to a total of 24 countries prior to 2013 and was ecstatic to add Cambodia as my 25th this past April! There is a very particular charm about Southeast Asia and the level of hospitality is unmatched anywhere else in the world (that I have been to).

I spent two weeks traveling with a friend, having time to both drink Angkor beers in a hammock on the beach and to experience sunrise at Angkor Wat – the largest religious structure in the world. In between, I was able to meet with various property owners to better understand the Cambodian travel industry – one that is in its relative infancy due to the country’s horrific recent history.

Arriving in the capital of Phnom Penh, I found the city relatively quiet as it was in the middle of the Khmer New Year. Finding transportation to the coast proved difficult due to the holiday, but we ended up in the beach town of Sihanoukville shortly before midnight. The Cambodian travel industry is growing rapidly, with small beach towns turning into lucrative tourist destinations. The backpacker friendly Mushroom Point, even in the off season, was the temporary home to travelers from North America, Europe and Australia. Our time in Sihanoukville was spent mingling with said travelers, laying on the beach and eating copious amounts of fresh seafood.

Wanting to escape to even more remote beaches, we traveled south to the island of Koh Russei. The beachfront bungalows of Koh Ru are all there is to find on the island, providing an immaculate private beach to guests. Once we arrived, we could not have asked for a more relaxing ambiance, yet the journey was far from relaxing as our boat ride was during a storm that left us both terrified and drenched upon arrival. The week that we were at Koh Ru marked beginning of the one month countdown to when the property was going to be closed, as a result of the entire island being bought by a Russian company. Soon enough, the island will be scattered with larger resorts – a sign of a growing Cambodian economy, but bittersweet to those like myself who have been lucky enough to enjoy the rustic quaint setting. Much of the conversation around the restaurant in the evenings was about the changing landscape of the country. We heard stories of other nearby islands were also being purchased by foreign companies, eager to take advantage of the growing popularity of Cambodia as a travel destination.

Not quite ready to leave the beach, we headed to Koh Rong Samloem for two more days of crystal clear waters, striking sunsets, morning coffees with sweet milk (guilty pleasure) in the hammock and jumbo shrimp feasts in the evenings. We stayed at Lazy Beach, which felt nearly private as again, it was low season and sighting another guest was infrequent. The kitchen at the property allows you to request any seafood you want and will deliver it fresh the next day – hence the jumbo shrimp dinners.

Eager to learn more about Cambodian culture and to spoil ourselves a bit after some hot nights without air conditioning (in 100+ degree weather), we flew north to Siem Reap, most well known for its proximity to Angkor Wat. Siem Reap reminded me of other small cities in Thailand and Vietnam and it was a wonderfully familiar feeling. We stayed at the luxurious Tara Angkor Hotel (a buuteeq customer!) where we were pampered with an extensive buffet breakfast, massages at the spa, warm showers(!), and fresh fruit smoothies by the pool. Hands down one of the nicest hotels I have ever stayed at, the staff at Tara Angkor offered the epitome of excellent service.

Apart from being treated like royalty at Tara Angkor, we spent plenty of time riding through the city on tuk-tuks and perusing the street markets – buying souvenirs while passing by stands of snails and crickets (which we chose not to indulge in). The sun and heat wore us out fairly quickly and we had a 4:30am wake up call to explore Angkor Wat the following morning.

Angkor Wat at sunrise has been on my bucket list for many years and it was even more spectacular than I had imagined. The architecture is mind-blowing as is the sheer size of the now-abandoned city. The early rise was well worth it.

We spent our final day in Cambodia back in the capital of Phnom Penh, spending a somber day at the “killing fields” where the Khmer Rouge regime executed prisoners in the 1970s. Although being faced with the reality of a terrible time in Cambodian history was difficult, it was important to my understanding of the country and its people. I am excited to see how Cambodia continues to grow and change over the next decade, but am grateful that I was able to experience such a gracious, dynamic, inspiring country at this point in time.

I consider myself so lucky to be part of a company like buuteeq that values travel in such a special way. The most defining moments of my life have been associated with travel and like other countries I have been to, Cambodia left me feeling enlightened, challenged and motivated.

Forest and Cynthia sit down to chat about buuteeq’s company culture and how TinyPulse allows employees to easily and anonymously voice their concerns to management. A fascinating glimpse into how young, innovative tech startups function.

Transcript

Forest:                   Hi I’m Forest Key, the CEO of buuteeq.

Cynthia:                 I’m Cynthia Mason, the VP of H.R.

Forest:                   We are both enamored, we were talking about this product called TinyPulse that we use a lot for our culture and our H.R. processes here at the company. We thought we’d do a little plug for TinyPulse because we’re big fans, and talk a little about our culture along the way. We were introduced to TinyPulse I think about nine months ago now that we have been using the product. It’s basically a weekly survey that goes out to our entire team of about 90 employees today. It gives you an eye and some of the other managers of the company great insights into what’s going on with our culture, and how we as a management team and as a team defining the culture for a start-up can really make an impact.

Specifically, one of the first things that the tool revealed to us is that one of the questions that came from TinyPulse was about our culture, and whether with eyes closed, hands tied, ears covered could we recite from memory what our mission statement was, and our corporate values were.  I myself as a founder had spent a lot of time writing such a thing but I couldn’t remember off the top of my head. So we went off and created this cute info graphic, and since then the company has this Sigpi concept which is an acronym that we use to remember these values. It seems like a small thing, but it actually has been relatively transformative because it has given us a way to rally around the very specific best practice for a company like us. I think the key thing is it creates a dialogue between every employee, and every other employee, and with management and back and forth that’s completely anonymous. People are able to bring ideas that they otherwise might not feel comfortable mentioning to the manager directly, or in a public meeting, and all hands meeting, but they feel much more comfortable doing it anonymously, and really as a result we get very thoughtful very actionable feedback. Cynthia, why don’t you give us some examples of the many quantitative things we have done as a result of some of the requests.

Cynthia:                 Yeah sure. We had many requests for to add to our benefits, and we’ve added several new benefits as requested such as a 401K plan with a matching [inaudible 01:50] percent which happened relatively instantaneously which is great. Something as simple as vegetarian options for Monday lunches which we provide for the employees bring it to the office, and we had quite a few vegetarians that we were not catering to and so just simple things like that I think it really gives our people a voice.

Forest:                   Yes, there’s a pulse a monthly question how happy are you at the company, and what’s interesting about that is we see a trend over the months of that happiness volume. It’s been pretty consistent for buuteeq. As we see someone voting with a lower score on a scale of one to 10 we get once in awhile we get a four or five and that’s really interesting to Cynthia and I. We try to dig in and see through the anonymous information that we can see what kind of feedback was given with that score.

Often we will see some thoughtful feedback saying this aspect of the workflow isn’t happy for me, or I’m not enjoying this aspect of my job or communication style. These are things we can jump on and do something about. We might not be able to fix it immediately but it gives us very actionable feedback that we otherwise generally would never see. You and I were recently having a conversation about doing our first kind of formal annual reviews and having conversations with, we’ve been having conversations one on one with almost everyone in the company. We’re starting to get some feedback from the individuals that we want to take to management, some of the team managers.

What we wanted to do to augment that was to have TinyPulse get some anonymous data to go with that one on one data that you have, so that you have a more complete picture. We were literally five minutes before filming this video we were glued to the screen, and seeing that data coming in real time. Incredibly thoughtful data points. All that are anonymous none necessarily traceable back to a specific manager. In some cases we’re able to pivot the data departmentally, so we are able to understand that this is some feedback that should go to the head of product organization or the head of the sales organization.

Cynthia:                 For us digging in on it, having the one on one’s with the employees, and getting feedback so that we can customize the questions like that it really digs a little bit deeper because they’re not saying it’s me which they feel comfortable with, but when it’s anonymous they feel completely comfortable. The feedback is actually pouring in which is fantastic. For me it’s like having my own personal trusted employee relations manager that’s just out there constantly asking our employees “What can we do to improve your experience?”

Forest:                   Like an outreach communications person which is a lot of work to do. There you have it a little bit about TinyPulse which we are big fans of, but also about our culture. Hopefully along the way, you heard a little bit about how we think about our culture, and thank you for visiting our H.R. website, and please apply for the many jobs we have open. We are always hiring sales people, and customer success people that’s a constant need for us. If you’re interested in hospitality and a company like buuteeq we look forward to hearing from you. Thank you very much.

Having a website is simply not enough anymore.

The use of mobile devices to make travel plans and book rooms is increasing every day, while desktop Internet use will soon be supplanted. Online transactions are an important part of a hotel’s revenue stream, and increasingly, these transactions are made from mobile devices. Because of this, hotels need to optimize their digital marketing presences for mobile and tablet devices quickly in order to be ready when mobile Internet use overtakes desktop use. Those that don’t will be unable to compete in online market arenas.

buuteeq’s Cloud DMS software allows hoteliers and hotel marketers to create, customize and publish mobile optimized hotel websites that conform to or exceeds all modern mobile website standards and performance expectations, delivering high-quality and attractive hotel marketing content to guests in a way that encourages increased direct reservations and last-minute mobile bookings.

►Download the Free Whitepaper

Penguin 2.0 launched exactly two weeks ago, on May 22. As I promised, here is my deep-dive into the data, to see exactly how much (if at all) Google’s dreaded Penguin 2.0 update affected our clients.

For this report, I’ll, compare the average visits of all our clients, two weeks before Penguin 2.0 and two weeks after.

Aggregate Average

Our data reports little to no change after Penguin 2.0. Two weeks before, our clients’ average visits was 33.87, and two weeks after, it was up slightly at 39.34.

Organic Average

To make sure our clients’ search engine performance was not negatively affected, let’s focus in on organic traffic only. Here you can see that before Penguin 2.0, 44.86% of their visits were from organic. After Penguin 2.0, it’s at 44.20%—a statistically insignificant change.

How about by region? Could Google have targeted, say, websites from China or Latin America? According to our data, region was not a deciding factor. All our clients, regardless of location, passed through the fires of Penguin 2.0 safely.

North America

Latin America

Europe, Africa and the Middle East

Asia Pacific

China

Another question to answer is whether or not a specific type of lodging property is more susceptible to Penguin 2.0 than others. The idea goes that smaller properties with fewer backlinks might suffer more than larger properties that are “too big to fail”, as the myth goes (no website is too big to fail, as far as SEO is concerned).

Here is a list of 4 week traffic averages for our clients, broken down by property type. We consider hotels to be small, medium, or large based on room numbers. As you can see, each property type maintained traffic and even increased traffic during and after Penguin 2.0.

Bed & Breakfasts

Inns

Small Hotels

Medium Hotels

Large Hotels

It looks like Penguin 2.0 was a non-event, as far as our customers are concerned, but there are plenty of horror stories out there of websites getting slaughtered by Google’s recent update, including big names like DailyDot, Yelp, and yellowpages.com. Today, more than ever, it’s crucial to select a trustworthy digital marketing provider with a proven history of safe SEO.

Further reading: See last year’s article where I did a similar break down for Penguin 1.0.

When our new clients, the Malibu Hotel Group, signed up with us, they gave their previous web hosting company a courtesy call, informing them that they were switching services. In response, that hosting company immediately turned off all their websites.

The Malibu Hotel Group was in a dire situation! We hated to see them lose out on direct online bookings, so our team worked furiously to get all 4 of their hotel websites up and running. 23.5 hours later, we succeeded in publishing a beautiful, brand new web presence for all 4 properties–miles ahead of what they had before, and already set up to take direct bookings.

Kudos to everyone who made this happen so quickly! You can visit their 4 new hotel websites here:

• Park Tahoe Inn
• Park Tahoe Aspen Court
• Peery Hotel
• Pacific Grove Inn

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is the practice of formatting website data for search engines like Google to encourage indexing and increased rankings on search engine result pages (SERPs).

buuteeq has chosen to follow SEO best practices as outlined by Google. They frequently perform their own internal SEO research and implement other research provided by the white-hat, professional SEO community. Combined, these practices place a hotel’s best foot forward, encouraging higher SERP rankings and protecting hotel websites from penalties due to future algorithm changes.

buuteeq incorporated these best SEO practices into their product, Cloud DMS, which powers and publishes hotel websites, mobile optimized websites, Facebook apps and more. Since Cloud DMS is software as a service (SaaS), hotel clients will gain the benefit of future SEO improvements, adaptations and innovations as technology evolves, ensuring their SEO is never outdated.

►Download the Free Whitepaper

Google has redesigned the way YouTube looks and works, to make it work on all devices, including tablets and mobile. They’ve redesigned the way we organize videos on our channels and communicate with new viewers, an update they’re calling YouTube One Channel. Since video marketing is an important part of every hotel’s online marketing strategy, it’s important to understand how YouTube One Channel works so you can take advantage of the new tools at your disposal, which will help you market your hotel property tour videos, image slideshows, and other videos.

Currently, YouTube users need to “opt-in” to take advantage of the new YouTube One Channel layout, but starting June 5^th, Google will roll YouTube One Channel out to all users. Optimize your YouTube channel now so you’re prepared before June 5^th.

What Has Changed with YouTube One Channel?

Channel Art

The most visible new feature with YouTube One Channel is channel art. You can now upload a large image, similar to a Facebook or Google+ cover photo. This image acts differently depending on the device used to view your YouTube channel. For example, if someone views your channel from a TV (navigating using an Xbox, for instance), then YouTube will display your cover art in full resolution (a whopping 2560px by 1440px).

If someone views your channel from a desktop or laptop computer, YouTube crops your image into a thin, wide strip that stretches across the top of your channel.

Finally, if someone views your channel from a mobile device, like a smartphone, YouTube shrinks your art and shows only the center of the image at the top of your channel.

Overlay Link

YouTube has made it easy and clear for guests to find your website from your YouTube channel. You can now overlay any link you choose onto your cover image. Use this space to link to your hotel website, so guests know exactly where to make a reservation.

Channel Trailer

The Channel Trailer is the best innovation that comes with YouTube One Channel. You can tell YouTube to auto-play a specific video only to non-subscribed viewers. Then, once guests subscribe, they see your recent and popular content, instead of the trailer.

This is an excellent way to make sure that guests see your marketing message when they hit your profile, instead of getting lost in your vast library of videos. Choose a video that shows off your property in the best possible light—for example, a property tour, with tours of local attractions, and perhaps short interviews with your staff, to make your property personable.

Sections

YouTube gives you more control over how your video library is presented, by allowing you to create sections. These are shown to guests who have subscribed to your channel, making it easier for them to browse your content. You can make sections of your most popular videos, recent uploads, and custom-made playlists.

How to Set-Up a YouTube One Channel for Hotels

Channel Icon

First, upload an icon for your channel (usually your hotel logo–your channel may have one already). Hover over the icon and click the small pencil that appears. The image you use must be under 1MB, and the dimensions must be up to 800px by 800px (square).

If you don’t want to make an image, you can instead select a frame from one of your uploaded videos, and crop it to shape.

Channel Art

To change your channel art, click on the blue ‘add channel art’ button at the top of the page.

You can now choose the artwork you want. You can use an image already uploaded to your Google+ profile, select an image from YouTube’s gallery of stock images, or upload a custom image.

For hotels, it may be easier and you may get the best results by uploading a very high-resolution photo of your property. If you want to create a custom image, use a tool like Photoshop to make an image that fits YouTube’s recommended channel art size, which is 2560 x 1440 (and less than 2MB).

When creating the channel image, consider the channel icon, which appears in the top, left hand corner over your image, and your website URL link, which appears over the bottom, right hand corner of your image. Make sure to create a cover art that leaves these spots blank, or at least looks good with these sections obscured.

Once you upload your cover art, YouTube will show you how your art will look on 3 different devices—TV, Desktop, and Mobile. Make sure your image will look good on all three—particularly on desktop. You can crop your image as necessary clicking the blue “adjust the crop” button.

Edit Links

Include links to your website, blog, and social media channels, which will appear beneath the “About” tab. Click the pencil icon over your cover art and click “Edit Links”.

Add links. Click the “+Add” button to create new links fields. The left column is the link label or description, and the right column is the actual URL.

Tick the check mark that says “Overlay first link on channel art” (make sure it is checked). This will place the first link in the list over your channel art, acting as a “call to action”, directing guests to your website. To remove a link, click the trash can icon.

Next, complete your social links, below. These will appear as social media icons next to your links under the about tab, and over your cover art, if you choose.

Description

To complete the About tab, make sure you write an interesting description that encourages people to visit your website. You’re limited to 1,000 characters, which should be plenty. Sadly, links you include here won’t be hyperlinked, but that’s what the “Edit Links” section is for.

Channel Trailer

Choose a video from your library to act as your channel trailer, which auto-plays for non-subscribed viewers. Click on the home icon, and make sure the drop-down says “Unsubscribed trailer”, if you don’t see the trailer selector. Then, click the blue “+Channel Trailer” button.

Then, choose a video from your library. You can sort your videos to find the one you want easier, or you can search by video URL. Note that you can only enter URLs to videos that belong to your account.

Once done, your trailer and its description will appear. Make sure to edit your video trailer and write a killer description, including links and “calls to action”.

Sections

Switch to Subscriber View to add new sections.

Next, click the “Add a Section” button at the bottom of the page to add a new section.

Choose from several sections to add. I suggest either creating a custom playlist that has your videos in the order you want them to be viewed, or simply adding the Recent Uploads and Popular Videos segments.

You can move each section up or down in the list by clicking the arrow that appears when you hover over the section. You can delete a section by clicking the trash icon.

You can switch sections between Horizontal and Vertical view. Vertical view will show off more videos in a small grid.

I hope this guide has helped you complete your YouTube One Channel. Leave a comment below and share a link to your shiny new YouTube channel.

Each week, the buuteeq team scours the web for the latest news and trends in hospitality, marketing, and tech that hoteliers need to know about to be successful.

Here are the must-read articles you may have missed last week:

1) Penguin 2.0 Launched Yesterday

2) For travel, the key to loyalty is personalization

3) How To Genuinely Say Thank You

4) Content Marketing for Hotels

5) Ten Quick Ideas for Summer 2013 for Hoteliers

6) 5 Questions Brands Should Ask Before Using Any Social Media Tool

7) Google Kills Zagat Scores, Introduces New Local Business Rating System

8) The Web transforms the way the Chinese travels

9) Google Launches Destination Advice on Top Attractions, Plus Conversational Search