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The changes are significant. In the image below, you can see the old format and the new format side-by-side.

As you can see, Facebook significantly reduced the length of business pages by removing posts from the page owner and placing them under a new tab labeled ‘Timeline’. Thus, they have promoted vital information about the business and user reviews above messages from the business. See a breakdown below:

The move appears to make Facebook compete better with local business directories like Yelp on mobile devices. As TechCrunch pointed out yesterday, the new Facebook local business pages look strikingly similar to Yelp local businesses on mobile devices

The impetus for this redesign was masterfully summed up by TechCrunch’s Josh Constine:

“…on mobile, Facebook seems to have found people want actionable information so they can make decisions on the go. That’s why it implemented this redesign.”

Business pages on Facebook mobile appear different, depending on the purpose of the page. For example, local business Facebook pages have a ‘call’ button, while brand Facebook pages have a ‘share’ button. So, just like Google before them, Facebook has made it critical that business owners create the right kind of business page, when establishing their presence on Facebook.

As with the last time I wrote about Facebook Nearby, we don’t know yet if guests will flock to it, or if they’ll continue to use other services like TripAdvisor, Yelp and Google+ Local. But, since there are millions of potential guests on Facebook, it sure doesn’t hurt to take a few hours to craft an excellent Facebook page (our free Facebook app can help with that). To this end, Facebook released some suggestions for local business owners to optimize their page and monitor their page’s success:

• Fill out your Page with basic information: Page category and about section. If you have a local business with a location, update your Page with your address, store hours, phone number, and other business info.
• Download the Pages Manager app from the App Store to make it easy to manage your Pages on the go.

Add this image to your site:
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Transcript:

THE MOBILE REVOLUTION

Digital marketing is constantly evolving as new channels emerge. Mobile marketing is the latest example, giving hoteliers an excellent opportunity to reach new tech-savvy guests.

Today, globally, there are 1080 million smartphones.

The Smartphone Marketplace

• 4 in 10 people make online reservations
• 92% make reservations from computers
• 8% make reservations from smartphones

What are the top reasons guests choose not to make hotel reservations from smartphones?

• The hotel website is difficult to see, read and browse
• It loads slowly
• Text is too small, and zooming in is awkward
• Guests don’t trust their mobile connection

What are the top activities guests perform on smartphones?

• 60% look at hotel room photos
• 56% share hotel information with their friends, via email or social media
• 42% use mobile optimized search engines to discover local hotels
• 40% read hotel reviews

Hotels that optimize their websites for mobile devices see, on average, a 10% growth in direct, online reservations made through their website.

• 47% of all travelers start planning their trip from a smartphone
• 32% of all hotel reservations will be made from smartphones by 2016
• 100% of online travel agencies (OTAs) are optimized for mobile devices, attracting more guests.

Does your hotel have a mobile optimized website?

buuteeq’s mobile optimized hotel websites are optimized for easy navigation, guest retention, and more direct, commission-free bookings.

What do guests look for in a hotel website?

• Hotel Info – Show guests why your hotel is the best place to visit.
• Reservations – Our commission-free booking engine is optimized for mobile, increasing reservations.
• Location – Guests can easily find your hotel with one-tap directions from your website’s map
• Call Button – The majority of last-minute reservations come from smartphones. A tap-to-call button will increase your last-minute, direct reservations
• Promotions – Guests can easily find your hotel with one-tap directions from your website’s map.
• Extra Info – include all the extra information you want your guests to know, like property history, nearby restaurants, etc.

Marchex analyzed 15,000 phone conversations made to hotels and concluded that guests who browse hotel websites are in research mode, and those that actually call the hotel are in purchase mode. Of course, it is very likely that the guest had to conclude research mode before entering purchase mode, meaning that online hotel marketing is incredibly important to convince guests to call in the first place.

More Details, Please

A third of those who called hotels were seeking more information about the hotel, including room views, which floor the room was on, and local attractions and events. This leads me to conclude that the hotel website failed to provide the guest with this information, forcing them to call. Hoteliers can save themselves much time and energy by providing answers to frequently asked questions like these on their website, in the form of articles, room descriptions, and location information.

Last Minute Bookers

Guests who call hotels do so with more urgency than those browsing the internet. 70% of them are last-minute bookers—that is, guests who want a room within the next 24 hours—and due to this urgency, are more likely to book.

Still, Some Breakage

Despite this high conversion rate, fully 62% of all calls hotels received were not destined for sale. Hotels can reduce this percentage by providing important information guests require on their websites and mobile websites. It’s clear that having an easily accessible phone number is important for guests who are not technically savvy, or for guests who have odd or specific questions. This is especially true for mobile optimized websites, since last-minute bookers tend to make urgent reservations from mobile devices. This is one reason why we place a tap-to-call button so prominently on our mobile optimized websites.

Many thanks to Tnooz for the heads up on this study. You can download the study from Marchex’s website, here.

This has been a long time coming. For what feels like eons, Facebook has allowed users to ‘check-in’ to pages tied to a physical location. Every day, millions of users are tagged with location-based information on Facebook—whether from photos or in location-based status updates. All of this data is going right into Facebook Nearby.

When your guests fire up Facebook on their smartphones, they now see a highly relevant list of local establishments—restaurants, grocery stores, and yes, hotels. They’ll see where their friends have gone, their friends’ reviews and recommendations, and algorithmically generated local suggestions based on what Facebook thinks your guest will like.

To make sure your mobile and social savvy guests can find your hotel on Facebook, simply create a Facebook page. You probably already have one, but we created a short step-by-step tutorial video to walk you through it which you can see here. Then, optimize your Facebook page for hotels by installing our free Facebook app. This will give guests a better experience when browsing your page, allowing your hotel’s unique charm to shine.

Guests can like your page, read your updates, check-in to your page, share it, rate it and leave a comment on it, right from their phones. Here is a quick video by Facebook demoing the new feature, and some screenshots as I walk you through it.

Do you think this new update will give Facebook places more discover-ability, on par with Google Local?

A quick tour of Facebook’s Nearby for Hotels

Guests access Nearby by swiping right from within their Facebook app on their smartphone.

Facebook will use your current location to deliver a highly tailored list of local attractions nearby. To refine your search, tap the ‘Places Nearby’ to search by business name or browse by category.

Tap on a Place icon to view more information about it.

Guests can view all information from your hotel’s Place page right from their smartphone app. This example is a local sports bar, but your hotel’s timeline cover image and logo image would similarly display here. Guests can chart directions to your property based on the address you supply on your Facebook Place Page, and they can like and rate your property for use in Facebook’s algorithms.
Notice the quick-to-tap call button. This will only display if you have included your property’s phone number in your Place info section.

Guests can leave you a nice comment. (Or a mean one). Notice the Recommend This Place button guests can use to share your property with their friends.

Update your Page, and these updates will be shared with guests browsing your page from their mobile devices.

As 2012 draws to a close, it’s interesting to check up on mobile travel stats to see where we stand, and to see if mobile growth has increased as expected.

Travelport has released a new whitepaper about mobile leisure travel and travel agencies that can be mined for some great data. The whitepaper defines mobile travelers two ways. The first are the ‘Digital Natives’, who are 35 years old or younger and are fluent in technology; who have blended their online and offline lives to the point where they automatically default to technology when making decisions or doing research. These travelers book up to three trips a year.

The second is the ‘Digital Immigrant’—travelers between 35 and 45 years of age who, while not fluent in technology, are increasingly becoming so, and are at least comfortable with it. These travelers book up to two trips a year.

The two groups have much in common. In response to surveys, both expressed a need to own more technology. They both used smartphones to plan trips and make travel decisions, and both demand relevant travel offers and promotions. They equally love tablet computers—63% use tablets, including the iPad, to make travel plans, and according to Expedia and comScore, 34% booked travel, including hotel reservations, from tablets.

They diverge slightly when it comes to smartphones. 87% of ‘Digital Natives’ currently own or plan to own a smartphone (iPhone, Samsung Galaxy, etc.) within the next 6 months. For ‘Digital Immigrants’, this number only drops to 80%.

The next question to answer is: What percentage of all travelers are made up by digital natives and immigrants? As of February, 50%, according to PhoCusWright—and this number has surely increased significantly since then. This means that, at worst, 42% of all leisure travelers, regardless of age and gender, own smartphones and use them to make travel arrangements—56% for business travelers.

When travel related bookings were broken down by Expedia and comScore last August, we find that 17% of hotel bookings are made from tablets and 11% are made from smartphones–making mobile bookings 28% of all hotel bookings worldwide.

This helps data supports Gartner’s prediction that global shipments of notebook computers and PCs will be overcome by smartphones by the end of this year (holiday purchases will probably push smartphones over the top).

The moral of the story, as we have trumpeted here at buuteeq for years, is that travelers are going mobile, and they increasingly have high expectations. They want detailed information right at their fingertips that is easy to digest. They want promotions, deals, add-ons and bargains, quickly communicated to them through a mobile optimized marketing experience. They use smartphones to book travel—both at the last minute as they are standing at the airport waiting for a taxi, and weeks in advance as they sit on the bus on the way to work. Hoteliers and hotel marketers need to make sure their online marketing presence is optimized for mobile, to avoid missing out on what amounts to over 50% of all worldwide leisure and business travelers today.

New 8-pin Connector

With the new iPhone 5, Apple is moving from the traditional 30-pin dock connector to a new 8-pin connector they call Lightning. Apple promises faster speed and whatnot, but the move was made primarily to make more room in the device for other features.

This means that all current connectors, docks, and devices formatted for the 30-pin will be incompatible with the iPhone 5, forcing users to purchase either a $40 or $50 adapter. This is annoying but manageable for individuals. But what about hotels?

The market is currently saturated with a plethora of 30-pin iPhone docks for hotels, and many hotels make good use of them for each room. Replacing them, or even buying an adapter for them, can be an expensive undertaking, especially if you have hundreds of rooms.

This iPhone dock is at the Hyatt Regency Denver at Colorado Convention Center. Photo credit: JefferyTurner on Flickr. Creative Commons.

Faster LTE

The iPhone 5 comes with ultra-fast LTE and updated Wi-Fi technology. This will encourage more mobile use; while planning a trip and after arriving at the hotel. Additionally, guests will be more likely to use mobile search instead of apps to do travel planning and booking without the hindrance of slower data transfer speeds.

Expect more mobile bookings (if your website is mobile optimized).

Bigger Screen

The new iPhone’s screen is 18% larger, with 326 pixels per inch, coming together at a 1136×640 screen resolution. If a hotel’s mobile website was created with a fixed-height, then it probably looks bad on other mobile devices anyway, but it certainly will look poor on the new iPhone. Instead, it is a better practice to craft mobile hotel websites with responsive design, so that they adjust themselves automatically to fit device screen size. This will save time and money in the future when Apple and other companies come out with more and more devices.

Here is an example of how one of buuteeq’s responsive mobile hotel websites looks, first on an iPhone 4/4s and then on the new iPhone 5:

Facebook Integration

When iOS 6 ships, which is the new operating system for the iPhone 5, it will be bundled with native Facebook integration. This will give future and updated apps a quicker, easier time integrating with a guest’s Facebook information, allowing them to share information quicker and better. For example, a guest could take a photo of your property, bellhop, or front desk clerk and share it instantly with friends on Facebook, to either praise you or complain about you in real-time.

Since checking-in on Facebook and liking Facebook pages will be much more convenient with the iPhone 5, guests will be much more likely to do so. It’s therefore important that hotels have a strong Facebook presence ready and waiting for guests to interact with when they visit.

Free iPhone 4

In a bold marketing move, Apple is giving iPhone 4 devices away for free to guests who sign a 2-year contract with a carrier. This is an aggressive move by Apple to undercut the “economy” device segment of the industry by providing a device that may be a few years old but is still a very compelling, handy tool, for simply the cost of the phone subscription. This is a shot across the bow at Google, trying to undercut their market share of lower-end Android devices.

It is projected that this could increase Apple’s market share from where it is now, which is ~20%. What this all means for hotels is simply that soon there will be more people using smartphones than ever before—people who previously would never have purchased one, due to the price.

This is just another bit of evidence that points to the necessity of having a mobile optimized hotel presence.

App Letterboxing

Due to the increased height of the iPhone 5, apps will need to upgrade to accommodate the new space. Apps that do not update will still work on the iPhone 5, but will be letterboxed. Studies show that users are reluctant to purchase apps for the iPad that are not optimized for the iPad. When you download and install an iPhone app on the iPad, Apple places the app in an iPhone skin. This is not a very compelling experience, which is why these apps do not sell as well on the iPad.

Similarly, apps that don’t upgrade to the new iPhone dimensions will see a similar decline in downloads and use. If your hotel has an iPhone app, you should upgrade it to fit the new standard.

How do you think the new iPhone 5 will affect your property? Sound off in the comments.

The Evidence for Apps

Many in the mobile field, including Zoe Adamovicz of Xyologic (which is a mobile app search engine) who recently claimed that mobile search is “obsolete”, believe that mobile behavior leans towards apps in favor of the mobile web and mobile search engines. In apparent support of this view, Nielsen recently released a study with the title “Apps Dominate Mobile Time Spent Accessing travel in the U.S.” which included some powerful statistics:

• Guests spend 95% of their travel related mobile usage time using travel apps
• Guests spend only 5% of the same time using the mobile web

The Evidence for Search

Google, on the other hand, released a body of research that we covered recently which leads one to believe that mobile search is still dominant when making travel plans. They make a number of important claims including:

• Mobile search for travel will grow by 68% next year
• 40% of mobile guests booked a room using a mobile search engine

Of course, Google has a bias in this whole thing. After all, they are #1 for both desktop and mobile search, and it is in their best interest to stay that way. This doesn’t mean their data is wrong, it just means we need to find something to back it up.

The Resolution

When you dig into the Nielsen data, a new picture begins to emerge. While it’s true that 95% of travel related time is spent using mobile apps, 78 million guests used the Google Maps app exclusively. This means that 78% of all the time spent using travel apps was spent on Google Maps.

Do you use the Google Maps app on your mobile device? I do. Almost every day. However, I’m not making travel plans as we think of them. Instead I’m plotting a path to a new supermarket, finding a new gas station with a lower price, getting directions to a new consignment shop my wife found on Yelp, and so on. In other words, most people who use Google maps to make travel plans are not making overnight travel plans.

When you remove the Google Maps app from the equation, the results are striking. Nielsen breaks down specific usage patterns, demonstrating that:

• 69% of mobile users use mobile web search to discover hotel information
• 86% to find ground transportation
• 100% to research cruise lines

This data support’s Google’s, demonstrating that, at least for now, mobile search is the dominant portal for making most travel plans, as Nielsen sums up:

When looking at the top U.S. travel apps and sites, consumers seemingly prefer apps for guidance and the mobile Web for trip planning

Why Should I Care?

If guests are discovering hotel websites from search engines using their mobile phones, then it is important to have mobile optimized websites in order to increase the number of reservations you get. Mobile use is continuing to boom, as demonstrated by these recent stats by Flurry:

• During July, there were 640 million iOS and Android Devices in operation
• Active devices in the U.S. grew by 30 million in 2012
• Active devices in China grew by 100 million in 2012; that’s a 401% year-over-year growth
• China is set to overtake the U.S. active install base by as soon as December 2012

The IDC actually released a report last week announcing that China has officially overtaken the U.S. in terms of smartphone shipments. While they receive more shipments than the U.S., Flurry’s stats are concerning active devices, which may not supersede the U.S. until December, as they predict.