Internet Marketing Part of HeBS Plan for 07

On a recent report, a benchmark survey on hotel internet marketing budget planning and best practices in hospitality. Over the past few years, hoteliers have been hard at work trying to grow their online marketing revenues.

This year, one-third of bookings in hospitality in the U.S. will be generated from the Internet and another third will be directly influenced by online research, but booked offline. Therefore, it is important that hoteliers know where the best places are to spend their online marketing dollars.

They know they can do more but not sure as to what. They are willing to invest more but not certain as to where. They want to stay current with their peers but do not know what that means. However, with all of the new Internet marketing channels now available many hoteliers find themselves at a loss, with no clear structure on the best strategy to produce the highest returns.

Hospitality eBusiness Strategies set out to identify trends in online marketing techniques that have developed in the industry to help grow this distribution channel, in a recent benchmark study, conducted in conjunction with NYU?s Tisch Center for Hospitality, Tourism, and Sports Management.

The results were impressive and foreshadow things to come in online travel marketing for 2007 and 2008. This benchmark survey, a first of its kind, asked hoteliers what Internet formats and methods they are using to reach their customers, what Internet marketing practices they find most productive, why they choose to devote marketing dollars to certain mediums over others, and more. Using techniques like website design, search engine optimization, paid search marketing and email blasts, many have been very successful, so why jump into the trend.

Jron Magcale
http://jump2top.com