‘2.0 starts here’ This is how the first post published on the blog of Madrid’s Hotel Auditorium finishes, which started a new online communication strategy two days ago. Most of you already know the meaning of web 2.0, coined by Tim O’Reilly in 2004. A second web generation you can get informed about visiting the corresponding section on a proper web 2.0 platform: Wikipedia. The aim of this second generation is, broadly speaking, to share knowledge and experiences between users and, from a corporate approach, to participate in the dialog established between the said users to improve services and boost loyalisation.

By means of Twitter, yes, that microblogging system we have been talking about, we got to know that the Hotel Auditorium launched its brand new corporate blog, an initiative, promoted by Rafael Martinez, we applaud from Hoobing for since our very beginning we bet on this sort of new 2.0 functionalities; we incorporated a home specialized in tourism blogs so users can get to know other traveler’s experiences and we also show links to the corporate blog of hotels with this service. From here, our best wishes in this new challenge fot Hotel Auditorium!

Nevertheless, the case of Hotel Auditorium is not an isolated one within Hoobing: other hotel chains like Valamar hotels, with 9 hotels in Croatia, are taking care of their 2.0 functionalities and have awesome corporate blog where they provide news relating the hotel chain as well as information and reports about their destinations, always written in a plain and familiar language.

Likewise, the Catalan company Nuñez y Navarro, has been already managing its corporate blog NN for 3 years now, NN Experiences. A complete blog where they inform about events that take place in the city of Barcelona, location of its hotels, by means of which they launch different marketing strategies, like, for instance, the stories contest “Barcelona, a unique experience”, where the communicate their brand to final users with the aim to boost loyalisation. Besides, they manage to create what the Spaniards know as “boca a boca”, the well-known buzz, which is to say to make users talk about your company.

From the Hoobing Team, congratulations to all for a well-done job!

Keep on bloggin’

Last Thursday took place HOTELtrack’09 within the framework of the Sitc (hospitality tradeshow), an encounter taken place in Barcelona and gathering more than 60 professionals from the tourism industry.

This year Hoobing had the opportunity to participate reading the paper “Intermediary Free Environments, an Opportunity for the Hospitality Industry”, and we had the pleasure to share table with Emilia Jódar, Yahoo! Search Account Manager and Ramón Solé, Product manager for Rumbo.es and Viajar.com. Unfortunately, Viçenc Martí, Vueling’s Marketing General Manager could not stay due to work compromises.

First of all we would like to thank Lluis Soler for organizing the event, both the topics reviewed – revenue management, innovation within the hospitality industry, online positioning, etc.-and the readers were excellent. Fernando del Corral, Asunción Zorrilla y Javier García Cuenca were superb in their presentations relating revenue management. Oscar Casasnovas clearly pictured how an independent hotel can innovate in social media marketing and showed the importance not only of listening but also of participating in the conversation, so being able to carry out improvements in the hotel service with the aim to loyalise possible customers.

We, on our behalf, wished to review the evolution of the distribution systems within the hospitality industry, before the internet era, during the first steps of online distribution, what is currently going on and finally, which are the latest trends. Following our motto Book directly | travel smart, direct sales are becoming more and more important, especially during hard times like today’s, a moment when there’s a tendency to cut down intermediary costs.

As a conclusion to HOTELtrack’09, in our opinion, not only innovation is important to generate revenues as Hosteltur online journal noted last Friday, the 17th: microsegmentation of customers is also essential for hotel-driven marketing campaigns to render really effective. To get to know the customer and send him the information he really needs is the best way to “hit the target”.

Recently, Hotels are often relying on QR Code technology. But, what is the QR Code? The QR Code is a system to obtain data with an operation resembling that of the code bar. The acronym QR stands for “Quick response”. To read QR Codes a mobile phone with an integrated camera is required, it is also necessary that this mobile phone integrates a QR Code reader. If your mobile phone has not this functionality available, you can get more info visiting the website of  the manufacturer

Reading QR Codes from Hoobing hotels is as easy as to focus the code that is displayed by clicking on the link in each hotel datasheet and then taking a picture of it. Automatically, the contact info for that hotel will be displayed on the screen of your mobile phone such as name, address, phone number and email address; you will be able to save this data in the phone’s memory. This is a very handy for users will be able to store the said info in case they need to contact the hotel when travelling.

Other services implemented within Hoobing hotel datasheets:
- Twitter account (enlace wiki/twitter hotel), - microblogging service that allows you to distribute information comprising a maximum amount of 140 characters-,
- Link to the corporate blog
- Link to the hotel RSS system, very useful to receive real-time updates, offers, news, etc.

Would you like to visualize all tools included in each hotel datasheet? Check the datasheet of the Soho hotel in Barcelona and check our project on the terrain.

All these services are an answer to the real needs of the traveler of the future. We hope you find them useful!

Last February the 2nd we announced that the Blog search engine homesite was already running. A little more than a month after, we have the pleasure to inform that we already have a homesite for the community of hoobbers.
We already explained in due course that Hoobing.com is not only an intermediary-free hotel search engine; it also wants to become a social tool for the whole community of travelers. That’s why, functionalities like the blog search engine or the community of travelers are very useful to get ready for a trip: one can complete the available information about destinations by means of blogs, which are written by the travelers themselves, as well as sharing experiences with other users.

Hoobbers, our registered users, can create pix galleries, upload photos, write on his travel diary and share it with other users. This way, one of the activities that will enhance our social network is the possibility to check the recent activities of other users. Besides, users can also search for other users by means of the functionalities “search by continent”, “search by country” and “search by map” included within our search engine.
Another functionality which will allow users enjoying their tourism experience is the option to search hoobers depending on the kind of tourism they practice: family tourism, business tourism, gourmet tourism, etc. The said functionality can be used by clicking on the tab “Types of Tourism” on the top area within the user homesite.
These are little details we are implementing to make Hoobing a great traveler social network. What about you? Aren’t you a hoober yet? Sure you are one of those who books directly on the hotel website, aren’t you? And then you go checking tourism blogs around to get ready and avoid forgetting any detail for that long dreamed trip of yours. Am I wrong? So, what are you waiting for to become a Hoober? We, at Hoobing, want you to visit the official Hotel website so you can carry out your booking processes directly there, because of the reliability it implies, because you can get lower rates, because it’s a more transparent process;  Hoobing has included a blog specialized homesite where you will be able to look for information relating your future trips . Do not forget to check the activity on Hoobing by means of our new Hoobers Homesite

And now… register with our community and follow Hoobing’s philosophy: Book directly | Travel smart

As we commented last month, our blog search engine is already up and rolling. Today, we would like to dedicate this post to our “blog of the week” section, one of the options included within that search functionality. From January the 29th, 7 blogs have been honored as our “blog of the week”. From last thursday, the Hoobing team recommends you a blog that recently registered with Hoobing.com. Its name: “Volta dels 25”, an interesting blog written by a young Catalan journalist who is traveling around the globe with the intention to interview 25 25-years-old youngsters from all over the world. “La Volta dels 25” was awarded most voted non-English blog by Travel Blog Awards 2009, which we commented last week. Next, we display the list of blogs that Hoobing highlighted to date. Amongst them, you will find purely informative blogs, while some other prefer a more personal approach, we will even find some completely unpublished before, as” A Outra Face da Cidade Surpreendente”, a superb  fotoblog about Oporto.

Club del Viajero

3 viajes al día

Asiasido

Berlin Unlike

China, prepara tu viaje

A Outra Face da Cidade Surpreendente

Today we write about a much-discussed topic that makes a call to a reflection exercise. This topic is about the price disparity between the website displayed on the hotel website and those offered by the intermediaries. The said issue arises from a discussion which took place on the Twitter community. After an exchange of opinions between Ignasi Casellas from Hotel Condado, Jordi Ruiz from City hotels, Carlos Velilla from Finca Prats, Andreu Roig from Es Picot and myself, Jordi Ruiz send us an article posted on his blog (written in Spanish) where he recalls his personal experience when trying to book a room directly on his website, finding his prices higher than those displayed on the intermediaries. Jordi’s experience is not an isolated case: many hotels sell their products at a cheaper price through their IDS than on their own booking channels. That implies a lower opportunity cost for the hotelier.
On his post, Jordi Ruiz highlights the remarkable investments many hotels carry out on their corporate website, booking engines, positioning strategies for main search engines, etc. One must make these investments profitable and the best way to do so is offering equal prices on the official website and avoiding higher prices than those displayed by the IDS, who in many cases already get remarkable commissions. Generally speaking, we will get the best prices going directly to the factory, won’t we? So, how is it possible that this is not applicable for some hotels? How is it possible that one may find cheaper prices on intermediary portals than those offered directly on the official website? The benefit the hotelier gets for online bookings carried out directly on his website is completely free of intermediary costs and that’s where hoteliers should focus. Otherwise their benefit margin is reduced.

The debate is open…