dimanche 31 janvier 2010

Summary 7: 15 tips for survival in difficult times

Most hoteliers have been stricked by financial crisis. To survive through this recession, managers have developed short term fix solutions. But was it efficient? This article describes that short term solutions are not always successful. 
Here under are some key pointers to help survive during difficult times:
  1. Think very carefully about your advertising and marketing activities and adjust them accordingly
  2. Know your guests and understand their requirements
  3. Monitor your competitors on a regular basis.
  4. Research and refocus your target market segments and go for volume -- for instance, choose 100 small contracted companies instead of five key accounts
  5. Make sure the correct rates for business and leisure guests are loaded into the right distribution channels.
  6. Do not forget about your existing regular contracted clients. Provide loyalty programs and, remember, it is easier and less expensive to keep existing clients rather than find new ones.
  7. Make your website a business generator =
  8. Familiarise yourself with the latest and most up-to-date technologies and booking systems
  9. Load promotional videos and advertisements on portals such as www.youtube.com; use social networks (Twitter, Facebook, etc.) and Web2 and deploy word-of-mouth strategies.
  10. Don't hesitate to keep co-operation going with third party intermediaries (such as HRS.com, booking.com), online travel agents, business travel agents (such as AMEX) and other tourism related companies.
  11. Use customer relationship management systems
  12. Create special offers for local clients to encourage them to use your hotel at weekends and during holidays.
  13. Develop new packages and programs to generate demand from new guests.
  14. Drive cost-cutting activities in the hotel. Involve hotel staff in looking at how costs could be reduced in their departments and introduce incentive programmes to encourage come up with ideas.
  15. Always employ talented service-orientated people
 In my opinion, if we look carefuly at these 15 key points, sales and marketing strategies have become the main tool to survive through the recession. That is why, I have chosen this year to do a last internship in the sales and marketing department of a hotel, because I believe that I will learn new ways to develop hotels in general. I think, that these key points will help me in my internship, and that they will be effective to adapt in those financial circumtances.

mercredi 20 janvier 2010

META SEARCH TRAVEL SITES POWER POINT ON JING

Please find below the link of my work on meta search travel sites
http://www.screencast.com/users/camillensw/folders/Jing/media/46537e9c-3558-49c8-90cb-85f2c6437890

This new presentation was "rework" compared to the last one I made

dimanche 10 janvier 2010

META SEARCH TRAVEL SITES WORK-Jing document link

Meta search travel sites : definition
Comparison Mobissimo and Booking Buddy meta search sites
How do travel experts feel about meta search travel sites
Conclusion : my perspectives

On Twitter and in the Workplace, It's Power to the Connectors

“On Twitter and in the Workplace, It's Power to the Connectors” is an article which can be find on the Harvard Business School Review website. The author of this article is Mrs Rosabeth Moss Kanter a professor at Harvard Business School, specializes in strategy, innovation, and leadership for change.
In this article Mrs Rosabeth Moss Kanter expresses her thoughts about the importance of networking in our society and more specifically she focuses on business organizations and career success.

In the 20th century, American business organizations were very formal with a vertical hierarchy. In our days, we observe that more and more companies are relying on what we call networking and horizontal organization. This evolution in the way companies are organized in without a doubt an opportunity.

Indeed, networking has become a new strength to achieve a successful career. Even more, power is now handled by what we call the “connectors”, people who seek efficiently relationships and who connecting people to one another.

It is the fact that thanks to the creation of social media tools as: communities, Facebook, Twitter, Viadeo... it has become more easier to connect to a group and build a “networking area”. However, it has been observed that personal networks are more used because they are considered as the best way to find resources quickly. That means that, for example a manager will rely more on the people he has worked with or met in his career rather than data bases of resumes resource.

To get a good networking or social capital, it mainly depends on 2 factors:

- Having a great social capital is linked to the length of organizational experience
- And it is linked to the nature of the job. For example a sales manager thanks to the nature of his job will have better chance to get a huge and efficient network than may be a financial director.

However, what is there to be remembered by this article is sentence: In essence, "She who has the best network wins."

In my opinion, it is true that we are more and more talking about the importance of networking and the power that result from it. 10 years ago we were talking about an “individualist society” and now we have come up to a “community society” were people are linking to each other.

More personally, I have observed during my internship when I was a project manager, that having a great network gives you power. For example, when organizing a congress it is important to rely on a” personal network” of suppliers because they are more efficient, and the relationship with those suppliers makes the work easier and get it done faster.

Now, it is up to everyone to create a “network area”, to be active, and even become a “connector”.

samedi 9 janvier 2010

Summary 5: American Express Business Travel to launch BusinessTravelConnexion.com

I chose this article, because I did my last internship of 8 months at American Express Business Travel head office in Paris as a project manager.
I was really surprise that American Express has for objective to launch a business-to-business online networking community: BusinessTravelConnexion.com for the corporate travel industry.

Their mission with the creation of this travel community is to “revolutionize the business travel experience. Thanks to this B2B community users will be able to be in touch with industry decision makers, suppliers, and

The other benefits for users are :
  • As any other community, users are able to share information and learn news, strategies about American Express Business Travel.
  • Users will be also empowered to participate in online discussion boards
  • Users will have access to discussion boards, editorial reviews, hot topic polls, product development councils that means more transparency.
  • Finally users can provide feedback on what they want to hear about from the industry
Other tools as RSS feed, blogs, and a Facebook page will be created.

Creating a community website will be beneficial also to American Business Travel : to my opinion executives of the company will be able to have feedbacks from their client, reach new customers, and adapt their strategies to what customers are suggesting.
It is true, that at first I thought that community sites were more useful for B2C companies, but after having read this article I am more and more convinced that creating a community B2B will be a good opportunity.

However, I also have some doubts I made some research about B2B community, and the issue that keeps coming back is that it is more difficult to create a B2B social media strategy in general rather than a B2C.

What makes it difficult is that B2B social media users are less passionate and that it is takes more time to build for example a community when having B2B users.

 But still it is difficult to answer the question : Is Social Media can be adapt to B2B?



dimanche 3 janvier 2010

Summary 4: The great online travel revolution; December 16, 2009

It is now recognized as a fact that the web has revolutionized the way people travel. More and more online services have Emerged in the travel industry thanks to the web: price comparison sites, OTAs, blogs, communities ...

As a result, more and more customers are not avoiding high street travel agencies, newspaper, brochures ... Many high street travel agencies have seen their turnover rates lower down since the development of online travel services.

In my opinion the 4 main reasons for customers to look for a travel online are:
  • Customers can look for the best prices
  • It is easy to search online: gathering information, getting opinions on hotels for example (Trip Advisor) and to book online (example: Cook / Expedia ...)
  • Customers are also saving time: it takes less time to go on the Internet than going to a high street travel agency.
  • The last motivation is that the customer is sort of "free", he can search by himself for what he wants.
It is true that with the evolution of Google web search and the development of booking engines, online travel services have found their way in a profitable business. Today, with the financial crisis OTAs still continues to make profits by attracting customers with low cost products. Example, Easy Jet offers low cost plane tickets online that are very attractive in terms of pricing for customers.

So in my point of view, online travel services have a great future in front of them.

However, the competition is becoming very hard, for example more and more OTAs are launched every year on the web. The market is becoming saturated with All Those OTAs Expedia, Opodo, Last Minute Travel SNCF Booking.com, all the tour operators' websites ...

OTAs have to come up with new strategies to keep their customers and to keep their profitability.

Here under are some ideas that I have come up with:
  • To better serve its customers online
  • Ensure customer's satisfaction
  • Innovation: Innovate with new services
  • Be aware of the trends on the marketplace.
  • Use social media communication
  • Drive traffic and increase the linkability
  • More transparency
  • Allowing communication