Thinking beyond reservations: Mobile, Social, and Hospitality (Part 1)

When talking about mobile within the hospitality industry, most of the focus to date has been on booking reservations. Reservations are worth much attention but are certainly only the start of what mobile can do in hospitality -- especially at resorts, where up to 30% of per-stay revenue might come from anything other than the price of the room. My motivation for today’s post is to take the hospitality+mobile conversation beyond reservations; I’d like to begin to explore the deep value that both guest and resort could gain by combining the full potential of mobile applications and best practices of social networking.

The opportunity here is so big because guests are committed (more or less) to staying on a private campus for several days. A good mobile app should be designed to anticipate the many (but predictable) needs guests will have and to help them navigate through that very specific environment. As a guest, here’s a starting list of what I would like to do with my mobile phone when on vacation at a resort:

• Learn about the resort’s services, features, areas, special events
• Book services like restaurants, golf, or spa
• Use concierge services for recommendations and booking with off-resort vendors
• Read other guests’ comments and ratings re: all of the above – but for specific areas in the resort
  
• Keep tabs on friends and family who are with me on vacation
• Order poolside/beachside food and beverages, but mostly beverages ;)

I could conduct most of the above activities using my phone’s web browser and current Google services (think Latitude for keeping track of my family), but it would be clumsy: Google maps probably wouldn’t have specific names for the different buildings, pools, and beach areas. I would have a hard time narrowing down reviews on TripAdvisor or CitySearch to just the golf courses or a specific restaurant. The resort’s traditional website might have what I need, but it probably won't render well on my phone and won’t have any outside content (ie: reviews) that might help me to choose an activity for the day.

Imagine, however, if I could download to my Droid phone a resort-specific application at check-in. I’m thinking along the lines of IBM’s Seer Augmented Reality app, which is akin to Layar, but for specific commercial purposes. I would be able to see that my wife is at the “Towers Pool” and could navigate quickly to recent ratings and reviews of that specific pool or perhaps one of the four restaurants at the resort. I might learn through an internal micro-blog function that one of the bars is where the action is. Navigation would be simple, designed for a mobile device, and always completely focused on my experience at the resort.

In a nutshell, this application would work to “curate” information that is specific to my experience. “Social,” “Mobile,” and even “Local” will remain heavyweight buzzwords for 2010, but I think that “curate” is a dark horse in the competition. We’re all familiar with that queasy feeling one gets after typing a straightforward query into Google and receiving 100,000+ results. The beauty of a well-designed mobile app is that it spares me from the Google Geyser of information. This is a serious problem with potential solutions cropping all over the place, including My6Sense for RSS and social,  Vizibility for preconfigured Google searches, and Wolfram Alpha for, well, anything you can measure.

Authors of curated content must understand their responsibilities in a socially-enabled world, however. Example: Users are more likely to trust raw user-generated content, even if it is less easy to manage. A best practice, therefore, is to design with links back out to Yelp and TripAdvisor, for example. Even if users decline to review this outside content, the fact that the resort is enabling access to it will greatly engender trust in the branded application and the content it hosts.

For the sake of brevity, I’ll wrap up today’s post here. I’ll continue thinking out loud on this topic, most notably with a followup on how mobile applications can jump-start a resort’s emerging social networking efforts. It’s on this front that the resort will see significant long-term value, I believe.

I’m interested in your feedback. What functions would you most like to see in a resort-specific mobile app? What functions would best serve the needs of the hotel?

Update: Part 2 of this post continues here.

It's not about the technology...

Jeremiah Owyang had a great line in the opening paragraphs of his most recent post: “Beware of plans or proposals that start with “Twitter Strategy” or “Facebook Strategy.” I could not agree more. Jeremiah's main point was that proper customer profiling should help define an appropriate social toolset. His statement is also valid, however, because social networking technologies are evolving too quickly to warrant strategies that are very platform-specific.

I think that Alvin Toffler may have called it first, back in 1970, when he laid out the timeline of humans' technology milestones (starting with fire!) and described how the pace of these milestones has been increasing exponentially since then. (The book is called Future Shock. I read it when I was 12, and it changed my life.) Some readers might be more familiar with Ray Kurzweil and his Singularity antics, but the big message is very much the same: the dominant technology of today will almost certainly not be the dominant technology of tomorrow.

Because social networking is enabled by technology, it’s easy to get lured into thinking about single platforms and miss the bigger (and cross-platform) picture. Some great examples of this can be found in the third-annual Social Media study of Inc. 500 companies, where 90% of the companies surveyed responded that they “currently use social media.” Here are four points that were of particular interest to me:

• A full third of those companies surveyed do NOT monitor their brand online
• Almost two thirds of those companies surveyed have no formal social networking guidelines for their employees
• We see (no surprise) that adoption of Twitter and Facebook has occurred very rapidly
• But we also learn that the use of message boards, online video, wikis and podcasting has leveled off or declined.

Wow- So let’s get this straight: Even as 90% of surveyed companies say they use social media, only 66% monitor their brand (eg: the results of their social media efforts) online? And only 33% set guidelines for how their employees should use these channels? In my mind this is an unmistakable (and inexcusable) example of using technology without strategy. It makes me cringe. Remember: whether it’s an online forum, or Twitter, or some future telepathic social hive: basic principles like monitoring and employee code of conduct must be defined. You are otherwise driving blind and setting yourself up for a PR disaster.

And regarding the final two points:  Why are some of the “traditional” social media no longer growing? I would like to think that it’s because companies are beginning to understand the different categories and appropriate uses of social media channels. And, that might be true in some cases. It’s equally likely, however, that organizations continue to jump from one new technology to the next, without a strategy that defines how a full suite of social networking channels could work in concert to support the needs of the organization and various market/customer segments.

Eventually, there will be other Twitters (it will be interesting to watch AOL bring its AIM client base into the modern era), so companies should be thinking about meeting the needs of “market segments whose profiles align with a Twitter-like product” vs. the service itself. Organizations should always be sure that a strategy, with goals and methods of measurement, has been defined before going live in a new social networking platform.

Of course this does not mean that our clients will not have a strategy for Facebook --  of course they will. It simply means that the roots of their strategies will be applicable to other social networking technologies as they evolve. It means that the strategy will account for other social channels and digital marketing efforts. It means that “success” will be defined and that we will measure against it. To do anything else is to leave yourself in a constant state of reaction.

Web marketers, your largest source of website traffic is at risk. What’s the future of search engine marketing?

In my last post, I referred to the last decade as “The Google Decade”.  In 2009, most commercial websites generated over 50% of their traffic from the search engines, primarily Google.  In fact, many DMW clients enjoy search contribution over 70%.  Both sources of search traffic, natural and sponsored (paid), are under attack in 2010 due to the rapid adoption of smartphones and social networking.  Digital marketers need to understand these changes and devise a proactive demand generation plan that includes mobile and social.

Google’s navigational value may diminish as users use mobile applications to direct navigate to brands they know and trust.  The improved usability and convenience mobile applications provide is real and they could change user behavior.  This could impact Google revenue line and share price.  Over the past few years, we have witnessed how users opt Google instead of typing brand URLs into their browsers.  The AdWords revenue from this behavior is huge. Google has responded to this threat to their revenue stream by expanding their mobile and display offerings including AdMob purchase, Android OS rollout and the recent Nexus One Smartphone launch.  With Nexus One, in fact, Google has made search front and center in the design of both the hardware and software.  There are 4 hard coded navigational buttons – Home, Back, Menu and Search.  The top of Home is a large search box.  Even if you load Nexus with your favorite apps, the search field and button are omnipresent.

The rise of the social web has forced Google to include Tweets and Facebook posts in search results, pushing down natural search results.  While the impact of this move to real time search is small today, it could become meaningful, if not significant, in 2010 and beyond.  This will lead to new search optimization tactics, some of which may border on spam, and best practices.  For example, if you Tweet exclusive offers to your followers, these could be found at the top of Google search results.  Also, can users searching Facebook find your company?

So, what should marketers do?  They should be proactive and anticipate this potential risk to their web traffic.  Marketers should get serious about these important and growing areas of digital marketing and devise new digital demand generation strategies.

• Social Networking – start with a company audit and strategy framework and follow with paid social media. Social tactics without strategy are over-rated.  
• Social Search Optimization – how can you gain better natural search positions by leveraging social?  How can you assure your brand is easily findable on Facebook and other social networks? 
• Cross-media Measurement & Management – move away from “last click” measurement and understand the interplay between all digital media. Allocate and optimize digital media based on full revenue attribution.   
• Social Media – Facebook’s targeted CPC program has real potential for marketers. It should, however, be tracked and managed with other search and digital media. 
• Mobile Media – begin testing and measuring mobile search, links and display advertising. As Google builds out Android (AT&T just decided to carry Android phones!), mobile search volume will increase. 

There will be a lot of changes in media consumption and user behavior in 2010 and digital marketers need to stay ahead of these changes and understand how they will impact their demand generation plans, traffic, revenues and profits.  On this blog, we will try to keep you informed and provoke new thinking and discussion.  We welcome the dialogue and debate.  Please comment and share your thoughts below.

Is Forrester's Groundswell Missing a Step?

While recently discussing a potential client with Jack, it occurred to me that The Groundswell, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff, makes an assumption (in my edition, at least) that might not be as valid as it once was: that an organization is starting from (social) scratch.

The potential client is a national brand with brick-and-mortar retail throughout the United States. While corporate HQ currently considers dipping its toe into the Social pool, some of the individual retail sites have been running Facebook and Twitter accounts for some time. Corporate has no real sense of who is doing what, and you can bet that there are no guidelines regarding the branded content being pushed through these channels. This kind of situation will continue to become more common as the adoption curves of social media continue upwards. I won’t bemoan the potential risks of allowing franchises and employees to communicate in this manner without policies and guidelines – I think most readers will agree that at least basic expectations should be defined by the organization.

In light of this, I think that the Groundwell POST approach to social strategy needs a minor update. As defined by its authors, the “P” stands for “People: Assess your customers’ social activities”. This is generally construed to be the baseline phase of the strategy and usually includes (for me, at least) conducting an assessment of competitors’ social activity as well. My recommendation: Update the “P” in the POST strategy to “People: Assess your customers’ and employees’ social activities.”

Conducting an assessment of employees’ and franchises’ social activity might help to kick-start a centralized Social effort by identifying disparate customer communities and examples of good (or not so good) guidelines and goals. Depending on the depth of the analysis, this first stage might also yield some rough metrics regarding the ROI of Social. Example: We might learn that certain employees are able to resolve customer service issues directly and for far less cost per incident than traditional call centers. Final note: Any new strategy must be aware of the current state. Without this awareness, customers might get confusing or even contradictory information, which in turn will most likely detract from desired goals and metrics.

Thoughts? How central is an initial internal assessment to your Social Media efforts?