10 travel technology and distribution trends

Though travel demand in Europe stalled during the global recession, the pace of technological progress continued unabated. Those hotel and travel companies that seek success must either catch up or risk becoming irrelevant, according to a new report.

“If you want to be successful and grow and perform well, you really have to understand the technology and what’s out there,” said Cees Bosselaar, director of business development and a destination marketing specialist for PhoCusWright, who presented findings from the company’s “Travel innovation & technology trends: 2013 and beyond” report during the World Travel Market in London.

There was not one game-changing advancement or trend but rather a confluence of subsequent shifts that are changing the overall environment, he said during a news conference.

“Each of those trends, they should not be viewed individually but as a mosaic of interconnected trends and parts,” explained Florence Kaci, PhoCusWright’s director of sales for Europe, the Middle East and Africa and European market specialist.

Following are the top 10 technology trends that will help hotel and travel companies leverage innovation in the coming year and beyond.

see full story @ HotelNewsNow

It’s Time to Burst the Hotel SEO Bubble: What Hotels Really Need to Know

Hotel search engine optimization (SEO) is one of the most debated online marketing techniques in our industry. That’s because its efficacy is hard to prove, and techniques have to constantly change to outmaneuver Google’s updates. Google maintains strict control and secrecy about how they manage and update their search engine results pages. Of course, there are guidelines posted on their Webmaster Central product, and a few utterances here and there. This leaves the floor open for some serious speculation… Cue in the SEO “experts.” I am not an SEO expert, nor have I played one on TV. But I am definitely a trained SEO observer who has been in the industry for a decade, and a huge fan of web analytics and data-driven decision making.

It’s Time to Burst the Hotel SEO Bubble: What Hotels Really Need to Know

Pinterest Best Practices for Hotels

Recently, Pinterest launched an analytics dashboard for businesses, which gives brands the ability to more closely monitor their presence on the platform. If you haven’t started using Pinterest, it is a pinboard-style photo-sharing website that allows users to create and manage theme-based image collections such as events, hobbies and interests. Users can browse other pinboards for images, ‘repin’ images to their own pinboards, or ‘like’ photos. Hotels and restaurants can have their own boards where they can ‘pin’ images, track which users have repinned their images, and identify followers.

see the full story @ HospitalityNet

Next generation site architecture

The need to design and deploy a next-generation site architecture that maximizes your chances of findability, no matter where and how searchers look for you, is one of the hottest topics in the evolving mobile and multi-device world.

Get the full story @ Search Engine Watch

Want better email revenue? send late at night

In everyday life, most people don’t want to be bothered late at night. But the opposite seems to be true when it comes to email. According to new data, emails sent late at night outperformed emails sent any other time of day.

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Choice Hotels launches technology division

Choice Hotels International has launched SkyTouch Technology, a division that develops and markets technology products for hotels. With the launch comes the unveiling of SkyTouch Hotel OS, a cloud-based property- and rate-management solution for other hotel chains and independent properties.

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Three technology trends that are transforming meetings

While virtual meetings technology won’t ever replace the networking, brainstorming, and relationship building that happens at face-to-face meetings, they are going to play an important role, and will continue to transform the meeting industry.

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Three ways technology will transform future of business, according to IBM

With cloud, mobile, social and big data advances all happening at once and at lightning speed, how will shifts in technology impact the way businesses are run? According to Ginni Rometty, the first female CEO of IBM, it will change everything.

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Forbes

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