Hotels have awakened to the challenge from online travel agencies, and they are shifting money into online marketing to meet it, according to a new study by Hospitality eBusiness Strategies (HeBS).
The worldwide study of hospitality executives found that 68% of hoteliers plan to shift their budgets from offline to online marketing in 2007.
Emerging media will not be part of the mix for most hotels, based on respondent opinions about what produces the best return on investment (ROI). Website optimization was listed most often (72%) by hotel execs, followed by search optimization and organic search (68%) and Website redesign/design (62%).
Only 17% of respondents named consumer-generated media, blogs and their ilk as bringing high ROI. This is particularly relevant for online video, because individual hotel videos are a competitive advantage that many online travel agencies do not have.
eMarketer senior analyst and travel specialist Jeffrey Grau noted the motivation behind hotels' focus on the fundamentals, saying that "to compete with online travel agencies, hotels are focusing on improving the usability and functionality of their Websites."
New media is even more of an afterthought in intended 2007 budget allocations, where it came in among the least allocated Internet budget items.
Although this approach may seem single-minded, hotel executives are onto something. In a January 2007 study of US ad executives by Outsell, as reported by MediaPost, 75% named company Websites as effective or extremely effective at lead generation.
