A day at the races

90% occupancy is what the city of Barcelona got for this weekend. I’m sure hoteliers are happy with this, but I think occupancy was even higher for past editions of the GP Spain of Formula 1

I had the opportuity to assist and to experience the emotions of this event. I was so excited about t, that decided to share some pictures.

I hope you enjoy them as much as I did.

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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.

My experience at the World Travel market

The World Travel Market is finished. I’m back home. Have been four intense days where the activity of the world’s travel industry has been happening in London. I had no chance to see much of the show since the activity at our stand was intense and this is the reason why I have to share my own experience instead of describing the events going on during the show.

Me and all my colleagues from Hotusa arrived to London on sunday, one day prior to the show in order to verify that everything was done at our stand, which was located at the Global Village. We wanted to see the stand as well as checking that the brochures arrived in good shape.

For this edition we launched a new brand, Style Trendy & Elegant Hotels, a selection of trendy and luxury hotels packed in a wonderful brochure. These hotels are all oriented to a particular target if customers in search of an experience beyond the accommodation.

Everything was done, and decided to go back to our hotel. I received a call from my friend and fellow blogger Javier García Cuenca, and decided to meet for dinner at South Kensington. After dinner, another blogger-friend called Isaac Vidal who told us he was having dinner just a few blocks from we were having coffee so we met and had a nice chat.

Day 1, Monday Nov 12
First day. It normally takes some time until the first visitors come to the stand when the WTM opens its doors. However this year everything was smooth at the entrance, and first visitors showed-up to our stand at 10.00 located at the Global Village, next to the entrance.

The flow of visitors was constant all day long. We at Hotusa Hotels are already used to this interest due to the fact that the company has been growing during the last years as well as gaining more relevance during the WTM year after year. This is a fact that has been relevant for customers, partners and competitors. This is the main reason why our stand is constantly visited by hoteliers, dotcom agencies, touroperators, friends, and visitors that are just having a look.

It was a great day. I also had a chance to meet fellow blogger Guido, also known as HappyHotelier. Nice chat where I discovered he is an experienced professional and even a better person.

While talking to Guido another fellow blogger showed-up at our stand. Guillaume Thevenot, they also met for the very first time.

I had to leave, because other meetings required my participation but it was great I could share some minutes with them.

Other visitors were Esther Mascaró and Carlos Hernandez, from Hosteltur. We talked about Turismo 2.0 and the social network they are going to launch soon.

The first day at the WTM was at its end and I realized the nobody came to me to sell anything. The organization made a good job on improving the quality of the visitors. Some of us complained about it one year ago.

Before taking the bus back to our hotel, Isaac Vidal sent us some invitations for the Spain’s Tourism Party. My colleague Xavier and I decided to go to the party, and met some friends, colleagues, customers, and of course, competitors.

The party was great and gave some good reasons to the industry to visit Spain. I believe they are doing also a great job in promoting our country and its regions as travel destinations.

Day 2, Tuesday Nov 13
With no doubt the longest day in my life. This second day is the day that brings more visitors to the WTM, and the busiest day of the show. Even better contacts than one day before. New potential customers, new XML integrations, new agreements. It was a non-stop day, not even time for lunch of course.

Another spanish hotelier and blogger came to see me, Victor Mayans, and we talked about Web 2.0 and how Social Media influences to the hospitality industry.

That day all Hotusa staff went to have dinner together. It had to be indian food, which is a must every year for the WTM. During dinner I realized that: we were 11 people, 9 of them were women, and only 2 of us were men. Being a spanish based company, only 4 of us were spanish, the rest were from Austrian, Portugal, Italy, Belarus, and France. Indian food is something neutral and was well accepted.

Day 3, Wednesday Nov 14
The countdown starts. The day starts busy and it gets a little lighter during the day. Thank God we have the bar, and some supplies of Spanish Ham, Chorizo, Beer and Wine. It helps and is a good reason to come and visit us.

Tonight is the WTM exhibitors’ party, but I have been appointed to an important meeting downtown at 7pm so I will not make it to the meeting… I mean to the party.

After the meeting Xavi and I were freezing and starving. In fact we had no breakfast at the hotel, no luch, and no dinner. We decided to attack an All-You-Can-Eat chinese Buffet a good deal for just 10 pounds per person. Who said London is expensive?

Day 4, Thursday Nov 14
Students’ day at the WTM. Many people with a bag full of resumes and another bag where they put everything the can pull put of the stands. Spanish based companies like ours are a good objective for young english students that want to start their carriers at a warmer country. I understand.

Today is the day where other exhibitors can find some time to step out of their stands to see what is cooking in the show.

I am back in Barcelona since yesterday.

The pictures are published in this Flickr folder..

Is Spain different?

We saw a surprising article at Hotelmarketing yesterday about the development of Travel 2.0 in Spain.

As a blogger and as a marketer who has developed some of the strategies mentioned in the article, I feel myself quite proud of being part of this development. However I feel disapointed that people at Hotelmarketing and Eyefortravel (as the source of the article) need to focus in Spain like they were surprised we could do such things too.

Yes, we use Internet in Spain, and we do have cars too.

Meneame.net a not so social content website

I have been informed today that Wikio has indexed my articles in spanish for its Spanish version. The email was direct, and had a personal touch that we all forget when sending business emails. After that email, I haver been thinking about the effects of social content sites, and its capabilities for promoting Blogs, or User Generated Content.

It’s no secret that Web 2.0 power is mouth to mouth and the place to start with this process are Social Content sites for its consideration by Social Networks, like Digg.

Since I started blogging I have been submitting content to Social Sites. Since I started blogging in Spanish, decided to go straight to the point by submitting my content, as well as letting others to do it, at Meneame.net, with no doubt the Spanish leading social content website in terms of Traffinc, Users, and News.

Now I can say that the quality of any of this sites, depends directly of the quality of the users that are part of such communities. Users who vote, comment, and promote articles.

Meneame.net is such a popular website that any article promoted to frontpage receives tons of traffic to the original Blog, source of the content. My question is why do you need that traffic for? do I really need garbage traffic?

Social sites where freaks are who decide if an article has to be promoted or not, having no idea about the subject of the article, nor having the knowledge and the intelligence to judge my articles, I don’t think are interesting to me anymore.

There have been many good articles, not just mine, that have been considered by those idiots as ‘Spam’ or ‘Not interesting’. Come on… Not interesting for a freak like you, but there must be someone in the Travel Industry that cares about my content !

These are the so called “Karma Whores” by friky.com in a great article (sorry in Spanish) that discloses the strategy to promote content in Meneame.net, which is called MEO, Meneame Engine Optimization.

Now all readers understand what I mean, I don’t want Meneame.net users in my Blog. It might be too much for them, but I can understand they are too busy giving Negative Votes, and classifying good articles as Spam. Now they are offended because I posted about it in my spanish Blog and submited it. You can see what happened. It’s funny but sad.

Thank Gog there are other good Social content sites like Fresqui and Digg that are increasing in popularity as well. Other minor Social websites in Spanish I use are Negociame and NoticiasRSS.

Wikio, very popular in the UK and France just started in Spain, and I’m sure it will also be popular here, with no need to have those idiots on board.

Another site I use for marketing articles is Puromarketing with a very nice design that makes the reading experience a pleasure and well targeted traffic to you Blog.

What’s left? Yes, A Travel Specific Social Content website. That is the reason why sometime ago I launched TiB or TravelinBlogs.com that uses the same software as meneame.net does. Funny right ? Well TiB is going pretty well with about 70 articles submited a day. I will write about it in a near future.

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