To me User Generated Content seems like a no brainer, but I suppose these ideas take time to percolate up to the top. Their loss.

Good post, and some points worth thinking about for any site regardless of niche.

I would put my sites first before my blog, Great post, i think if you got away from the travel niche even for a month and come back you’ll have a fresh perspective and see even more opportunities to capitalize on,

Shawn,

I do have quite a bit of data, but I’ve been woefully inadequate here on my own blog Hopefully I can get back to blogging again soon, and I’ll also find a vehicle for publishing some testing results.

I think I’ll also look for some new sites for free testing in the coming weeks also to build some new data.

Will update here when I have some more info
Thanks for dropping by, rgds,
Richard

We only turned on aggregate support for clients this morning (we’ve had individual hreview on the consumer site since 2007) and I’ve just applied to have reviews of ourselves considered so let’s see if/when it happens.

We’ll be recommending that all of our clients who can use Rich Snippets (PHP only at the minute but .NET and others coming soon) apply too.

Rgds
Richard

We have just rolled out Google Rich-Snippet support for some of our clients so that their on-site reviews will appear in a much richer form in Google’s results.

@Stephen – delighted you found this. Well done on what you’ve achieved. It certainly gives you a competitive edge to be generating so much free traffic. If you do look at reviews you might want to get in touch with Conor who commented above. Loudervoice has a very effective and cost-friendly service.

Thanks to all for commenting.

Booking ratios
Email to book ratio approx 20 to 1.
Phone to book ratio 6 : 1

During our office opening hours we try to drive business via the phones and then represent the email address for bookings after normal trading hours. We also have online bookability of flights/hotels/car rental and late holidays online with specialist travel information posted online to drive ideas to help people who are planning something a little bit more tailormade that required contact with a destination specialist.

As always there is a huge amount of work to be done to compete and thrive in the online marketplace. We have been going for 10 years now and have a competent team of professionals who enjoy what they do and that is sharing their travel experience with people looking to travel abroad. It is vital that in the current environment people take a break away if they can afford it and we would appreciate the opportunity of helping you have a memorable holiday abroad. We do however need to share this experience better on our website http://www.gohop.ie but we are continually working to improve this.

Budget travels demise was a sad day for myself and many others as this was once a very colourful and interesting brand with whom many of us grew up.

The points in your article and the comments which follow will be consided in reviewing our online strategy. We do engage with customers after they have travelled to make sure they have had a nice experience and we take their thoughts onboard. In relation to customer reviews of properties we should look to integrate with tripadvisor or others as we need that breadth of content however the commercial realities of that is a considerable cost in itself. We must however rise to that challenge and exceed the customer expectation and that is what we will do.

Thanks

I think traditional marketers still play a pivitol role in developing an overall plan for a business. I think they need to employ an Internet marketer to assist with the implementation of digital marketing and engage with the digital marketer whether inhouse or outhouse on a weekly basis and follow up on progress etc. Its a new ring of the business and is quickly becoming a primary part of the overall marketing process.

I disagree with inhouse v’s outhouse. I believe with the right management in place and the correct follow up procedures a good outhouse internet marketer can have as much impact as an inhouse marketer and generally at a fraction of the cost. My arguement would be that an outhouse marketer is doing this across many industries and can see new opportunities quicker than an in house marketer who is blinkered to working with the business in hand.

Ity is difficult to find a digital marketer employee who is profecient in SEO, PPC, Digital Ads,Trafficking, Copywriting for the web etc. However employing a decent marketing firm who have individuals in place that are specialists in each of these fields can benefit a company hugely as you get the expertise of all these individauls in one package. Its up to the Marketing manager to communicate with the Internet Marketing firm and ask as many questions and understand exactly what they are doing for them.

There are many small web designers who claim to be Search Engine Specialists and charge a monthly fee for something they know nothing about. They are just costing businesses money and really damaging the digital marketing world.

If I could give one piece of advice, to a hotel that contracts it Internet marketing outhouse, I would recommend asking for weekly or at least monthly progress reports that highlight areas the firm is working on, progress from the previous week/month and a plan of what is to be achieved by the next month -Objectives and Goals. Then you will know they are working with you and delivering the goods.

I spoke at the Hotel Website Marketing event last week (about reviews of course) and was very interested to get a feel for hotels’ thinking on everything social on the web. The overall sense is that most understand it is happening, know they need to work with it instead of against it, but feel they don’t know enough to do it with confidence.

For many, 2010 wil be the year they really try to engage actively with their customers online.

I met a hotel yesterday and asked if they did email marketing. They said no. I asked if they sent emails to their customers. Oh sure all the time

I think the ones who have the biggest problem are those who have decided to offload everything “online” to external agencies and stick their head in the sand. In contrast, the ones who now have dedicated e-comm or e-marketing in-house will do the best and you can even see that now with those companies weathering the recession better.

Amazingly there is still a hard core who think they can put the genie back in the bottle. One person at the event asked how they could get their hotel taken off TripAdvisor! The old school approach to bad reviews – kill the reviews, don’t fix your service.

@Dan – I’ve spoken to some people in this space now, and I think you’re right. There’s a whole lot of anxiety around customer reviews (“can of worms” was used) as often the agencies don’t actually know how good/bad their own inventory is.

Rgds to both
Richard

Excellent post. In fact I suggest you should reach out to these agencies, try getting them online and take a percentage of their profits from the online sales channel :). If none of them are using the online channel, there’s a serious first mover advantage in the offing – wish I was there

Forgive me, but I generally nofollow targeted signature links, but to in your case I’ve edited your signature instead. It is sad indeed that Budget shut down.

It might be useful if you added some personal details to your site – it looks a little anonymous right now

Rgds and thanks for commenting
Richard

Wonder if they embraced the technology as you mentioned would this still be the case.

Sad Day for the travel business and the people that have lost their jobs.

@Gita – I think we’re quite behind in Ireland in terms of understanding the true benefits of the web. Many traditional industries here are made up of small enterprises who often lack the knowledge required to leverage online channels. But the good news is that things are getting better, albeit at a slow clip.

Thanks for commenting
Richard

The big message from them is that they want people talking about them online and they want to facilitate it and learn from the feedback.

If the same thing (a review) also works as a sales tool, marketing tool and SEO tool, then that’s the icing on the cake.

The traditional travel agents need to adjust to the new online realities or they won’t be in business in two years time.

In the U.K LateRooms are second to none at SEO. They dominate rankings for everything. Really impressive. Looks as if they utilize their brand authority via internal links to inner pages and sprinkle them with some good links (some of them a little on the boundaries in terms of Google TOS). But still, brilliant at what they do.

Thanks for that, rgds
Richard

Thank you.