Alimara Award for Turismo 2.0

I have been informed from the organization of the awards that Turismo 2.0 has been chosen by the jury as the winner of the ALIMARA 2008.

For 23 years, the CETT Group has been organizing the Alimara Awards which recognize the efforts and the quality of the travel promotion materials.

This is a success story and I see no reason why it can not be done out of our frontiers. It might be a shame that travel bloggers just don’t want to communicate as a group as Darren pointed some days ago. Paul, from Luxury Travel created a T-List Facebook group, but has not taken off, in fact in my experience, Turismo 2.0 also has a Group in Facebook, which does not show much activity. The reason might be that users, like in my particular case, are tired of silly messages on Facebook and are not paying attention to everything that comes to our account, including the groups.

I would be delighted to repeat the Turismo 2.0 success if other bloggers decide to help and support it.

If you're new here, you may want to subscribe to my RSS feed. Thanks for visiting!

Mistery is over, the Blogger Hotel unveiled its identity

My name is Eurostars and my surname Madrid and Tower. I mean, my full name is Eurostars Madrid Tower ( “Hotel” for friends)

With these words written by the hotel yesterday the Blogger Hotel unveiled its identity. The Blog of a Hotel, has over 4.000 registered users and more that 500 comments per day, posted by its visitors.

The hotel is located on a privileged site on the main Castellana avenue, inside the Cuatro Torres (Four Towers) Business Area, one of the major areas of economic development in Madrid. This same business park will eventually house the future City of Madrid International Convention Centre.

Podcast on Online Reputation Management

Andy Beal of MarketingPilgrim who just released a book with Dr. Judy Strauss titled Radically Transparent has been interviewed by Paul Dunay.

Company reputation is available to everyone. It is radically transparent.

Enjoy it.

Some concerns about Blogging and the Conversation

Javier Garcia, started a Meme that consists in having Spanish travel bloggers posting about the reasons why TripAdvisor should join the Conversation and discuss the issues that worry Spanish hoteliers.

I have clear position about this as the hoteliers have already some resources to block third parties use of their brands.

The fact is that TripAdvisor is a company with a business model based on reviews (and advertising, of course). It does not mean it is an Enterprise 2.0 so I see no reason why TripAdvisor must participate in Blog comments or a conversation if they don’t want to.

There are few 2.0 Enterprises, realistically speaking, very few in the tourism sector, may be none. A real 2.0 Company would be a company that promotes and incentivizes R & D through employee participation and collaboration, internally and externally by creating a community with its customers. It would be a company that joins the conversation with its customers with the aim of seeking continuous improvement and customer satisfaction.

We should get back to the real world and not demand anyone else to join our conversation just because we are blogging about it. If we have something to ask, we should honestly knock TripAdvisor’s door and say…

Hello, I would like to ask you a few questions.

That is what I have done.

Tripadvisor & its use of the Hotel’s Brand

There have been some discussions among the Spanish hoteliers since Fitur 2008 regarding the use of the Hotel’s Brand by Tripadvisor with lucrative purposes.

It seems hoteliers, basically independent hotels, are worried about the use of their brand being made by third parties when adding no value to it. In fact they understand that OTA’s add value by enhancing distribution, but review sites like TripAdvisor where anyone can post a review (positive or negative) with no need to demonstrate that ever stayed at that particular hotel, has no added value, despite the importance of transparency for its founder.

I understand that Hotel Chains have the capability to promote themselves on Tripadvisor and generate relevant traffic to their Corporate Websites,but independent hotels are not given a chance to purchase sponsored Links at Tripadvisor.

Are the hotels loosing the control of their brand? In my opinion, major OTA’s bid on hotel brands at their search engine marketing campaigns, and dedicate resources on SEO for brand based keywords. OTA’s have the capability to bid on PPC campaigns at sites like Tripadvisor as well as metasearch engines. Independent hotels have no chance to generate traffic from this sources unless it is intermediated.

Of course a hotel can protect its brand from being used by third parties, but it will definitely impact revenues from OTA’s who, most likely, will penalty that hotel to non-priviledged positions.

I haven’t heard a discussion like this on the english travel blogosphere, and hope somebody will discuss about it.

A definition for Marketing

Jeremiah Owyang has posted a definition for Marketing that is worth considering.

Just nine words t define what we do (or we try to do) on daily basis:

[Marketing is the act of connecting customers to products]

New Host, all over again

I messed up when moving the blog to a new Host. yes a faster one, a more reliable one, but a I made a big mistake.

Just backed-up the spanish Blog, and redirected the domain to the new host, so I can not recover the content of the english Blog.

It made think that I’m not posting in english at all since the last 3 months. That was the moment to consider if I will continue with this blog or not, and decided that I will.

I’m sorry about it folks.