The Wilshire Grand Hotel Raving about Lodging Interactive's Guest Review System

The Wilshire Grand Hotel is taking control of its online reputation by implementing the new, web-based Guest Review System from Lodging Interactive. This tool enables The Wilshire Grand Hotel to verify, review and display customer comments directly on its Website, and instantly post management responses to comments for better hotel-to-guest communications and heightened customer-relationship management.

Lodging Interactive is an interactive and social media marketing agency exclusively servicing the hospitality industry. The company's Guest Review System posts traveler's comments and scores their hotel experiences based on service attributes. Hotel managers receive real-time alerts advising when pending guest reviews pop up, eliminating delays in addressing concerns and turning potential problems into new opportunities.

"I'm a big believer in soliciting guest reviews, but unfortunately, due to the nature of the Web, there's no real way to validate whether or not a person claiming to be a guest with a bad experience actually stayed at your hotel," said General Manager Ed Reagoso. "The Guest Review System from Lodging Interactive puts a stop to fake reviews posted by competitors or dishonest guests looking for refunds. This not only helps us to maintain our impeccable reputation, but it gives me an opportunity to interact personally with our guests. When travelers take the time to honestly talk about their experience, it should be recognized and rewarded with an immediate reply.

"Thanks to the automated GRS tool, I can personally post responses to comments quickly,"
he said. "Not every hotel review site makes that type of interaction possible. It's not only great customer service, but it gives me the chance to really sell our hotel. Almost daily our reservations agents hear from guests who say they read the reviews on our site and truly appreciate that we took the time to respond. We attribute it all to Lodging Interactive and the excellent training they provide to us as part of their service."

An added benefit of the Guest Review System is that it enables travelers to share their reviews on Facebook with their network of friends. Hotels are notified in real-time of new guest reviews and have the ability to validate guest stay information before reviews are posted on their website.

"Lodging Interactive does an exceptional job for The Wilshire Grand Hotel of optimizing our web presence and providing us with the tools and training we need to truly enhance our guests' experiences and keep them coming back again and again," Reagoso said.

 

 

 

Search Marketing Service Enables Chain Hotels To Create Optimized Customized Landing Pages For SMERF Markets

 

PARSIPPANY, NJ , October 26, 2010 - Lodging Interactive, an award winning Interactive and Social Media Marketing Agency exclusively servicing the hospitality industry, today announced the introduction of HotelWebPages.com, an innovative way for hotels to establish customized landing pages to capture business from local demand drivers.

 "HotelWebPages.com is an innovative new service that enables hotels to position themselves to book business from local demand drivers. HotelWebPages.com is especially effective for branded hotels that do not have a website, yet still want to capture business from the Social, Medical, Educational, Religious and Fraternal (SMERF) markets," said Mr. DJ Vallauri, Lodging Interactive's Founder & President. "HotelWebPages.com will take online shoppers users from the hotel's custom landing pages directly into the brand's online booking engine all without the need of a stand-alone website."

With HotelWebPages.com hotels can aggressively market themselves online to capture incremental business from local and regional demand drivers such as:

• Events and conventions
• Local attractions
• Sporting tournaments and amateur travel teams
• Religious events
• Local corporations
• University and college events
• SMERF markets

HotelWebPages.com is a creative search marketing method combining proven Search Engine Optimization (SEO) copy writing expertise and state-of-the-art technology that offers hotels a customized landing page solution that is unmatched in the hospitality industry.

"HotelWebPages.com is not a tool that requires the hoteliers to research demand drives or to write their own content. Rather, with HotelWebPages.com we provide a full "turn-key" custom landing page solution for our clients," added Mr. Vallauri.

HotelWebPages.com key features include:

• Professionally written Search Engine Optimized landing pages
• Google map on every page with the hotel identified on the map
• Check availability reservations links on every page
• Request information links
• Search Engine XML site maps to expedite page indexing
• Ongoing Search Engine submission of all pages
• Monthly hosting services for all pages
• Monthly Search Engine Ranking Reports (SERP) for all pages

The hotelWebPages.com service goes beyond the creation of effective customized landing pages. All custom landing pages are submitted to Google, Yahoo and Bing on an ongoing monthly basis. Additionally, each hotel receives a monthly Search Engine Ranking Position (SERP) report.

HotelWebPages.com example: The Wilshire Grand Hotel’s page for the search term “extended stay hotel rooms northern nj” ranks 21 out of over 600,000 competitive Google listings:

 

"We recently started using the HotelWebPages.com service and have already started to see our custom landing pages appear on Google. The combination of Lodging Interactive's keyword research, search engine optimization expertise and technology really does work for us," stated Ed Reagoso, General Manager of the Wilshire Grand Hotel in West Orange, NJ.

For more information hotels can visit http://www.HotelWebPages.com and can contact Lodging Interactive at 877-291-4411 extension 701.

Link2Brand Empowers Branded Hotels To Manage Their Own Marketing Campaigns – No Website Needed

Lodging Interactive, an award winning interactive and social media marketing agency servicing the hospitality industry, today announced Link2Brand an innovative marketing solution for branded hotels. With Link2Brand hotels can launch their own marketing campaigns without the need of a dedicated hotel website; Link2Brand links directly to the brand's website.

“Our innovative Link2Brand marketing tool solves a long standing issue for branded hotels – how to create short, personalized and descriptive promotional links that seamlessly pass through brand SRP booking codes,” said Mr. DJ Vallauri, Lodging Interactive’s Founder and President. “Link2Brand empowers hotels to provide their own local web marketing for events and groups such as soccer tournaments, military reunions and to offer local businesses their own branded links to easily make online reservations. Link2Brand enables hotels to deep link into the hotel brand’s booking engine.”

For example this SHORT link with the hotel’s name:

http://myhotelpackages.com/SheratonBirmingham/Midweek

Sends visitors to this LONG link, deep into the brand’s booking engine and passes through the SRP code “DAYBAR”:

 http://www.starwoodhotels.com/sheraton/search/pre_decider_all.html?propertyID=115&ratePlanName=DAYBAR&IM=SOP_TITLE_179WD_SI_115_ATL

Complete ROI Tracking – With Link2Brand every link counts. All clicks are recorded in real time, and the hotel can simply log into its online dashboard to view click results. Monthly brand website referral reports will detail the number of Link2Brand referrals and revenue.

“We’ve made using Link2Brand so easy to use, hotels and marketers can create their personalized links in less than 60 seconds. Link2Brand can be used on Twitter, Facebook and blogs or micro-sites to drive business,” added Richard Walsh, V.P. Business Development for Lodging Interactive. “Additionally each hotel account can have up to 10 sub-users who can create and track their own unique links.”

Try Link2Brand Free For Ten Days

Want Better Web Design? Watch Real Users

I’ve been in web development since 1995. For me, and many of you, it’s easy to forget that people don’t have the computer equipment to use the web sites and Internet applications we build. I’ve always found it interesting that TV show web sites are Flash based and loaded with images and video. It’s as if they are built for an elite group of TV watchers and everyone else doesn’t matter.

via searchengineland.com

Ritz-Carlton Launches New Luxury Brand

According to the WSJ

Upscale-lodging operator Ritz-Carlton Hotel Co., hoping to take further advantage of the booming luxury travel business, will launch a new hotel brand called "the Reserve" that the company hopes will attract guests to smaller resorts and more out-of-the-way locales.

Ritz-Carlton, a subsidiary of Marriott International Inc. of Bethesda, Md., is planning to open the 125-room "Molasses Reef" on the island of West Caicos in the Caribbean sometime next year.

Unlike the majority of its current 62 hotels and resorts that generally exist in popular tourist and business destinations, the locations for the offshoot brand will likely be focused in largely undeveloped areas -- "places in the world where not everybody has been," says Vivian Deuschl, Ritz-Carlton spokeswoman.

To that end, the company will continue to compete with longtime rival Four Seasons Hotels & Resorts Inc. and other luxury operators that run small, expensive resorts like Kerzner International Ltd.'s "One&Only" brand. But the new brand's focus will shift away from a heavy focus on corporate travelers and group-meeting business that many of the existing Ritz-Carltons depend on for a large chunk of their business.

While the company uses the word "boutique" to describe the Reserve brand, Ritz-Carlton officials insist that the service element -- long decried as the Achilles' heel of the boutique hotel industry -- will, in fact, be enhanced. Indeed, as the luxury travel industry has remained strong in the past few years and shows few signs of cooling, the highest-end travelers continue to look for more exclusive options outside traditional resort destinations. Ritz-Carlton officials say they hope to open new Reserve properties elsewhere in the Caribbean and in Asia.

User-generated travel guides are worthless??

The Internet is awash with travel Web sites featuring "user-generated" comments: People post their I-stayed-at-such-and-such-a-hotel-and-here's-what-I-thought-of-it recollections, and the rest of us are supposed to adjust our vacation decisions accordingly.

Time was when only a couple of Web sites -- like TripAdvisor.com and Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree (thorntree.lonelyplanet.com) --featured such homely advice by amateur pundits. Today, a growing array of services -- www.igougo.com, www.tripmates.com, www.gusto.com, www.tripconnect.com, Britain's wayn.com and many others -- consist of nothing but.

Click here to read more...

How Much Should A Search Engine Optimizer Earn?

How Much Should SEOs Earn

Rand at SEOMoz has another excellent post named SEO Salaries - How Much Should You Make.  He details what he believes SEOs of all calibers should make.  Here is a quick snap shot:

In-House SEOs:

• VP/Director of Search Marketing: $100,000 - $350,000+
  
• Director/Manager of Organic Search: $75,000 - $150,000
  
• SEO Guru: $75,000 - $200,000
  
• Campaign Manager: $55,00 - $100,000
  
• SEO Specialist: $40,000 - $80,000

SEO Agency Employees:

• SEO Director: $50,000 - $100,000
  
• Search Marketing Consultant: $60,000 - $200,000
  
• Link Builder: $35,000 - $100,000
  
• Content Writer: $35,000 - $75,000
  
• SEO Researcher: $30,000 - $60,000
  
• Client Relations Coordinator: $35,000 - $75,00

Consider the above if you're trying to hire your own SEO expert for your hotel; it may become cost prohibitive to "do it inhouse".