Amazon vs Booking.com

Amazon vs booking.com part 1

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Expedia promotes vacation packages on Facebook - Comment about Deborah's article

This article and her comment are very interesting. I am agree with Deborah. Today, customers have a place more and more important in the strategy of a website like Expedia. In addition, this article shows the importance that social media have today in a marketing strategy. In this sense, with this type of tool we can attract more and more customers.
I think that Expedia had a good idea with this contest on Facebook, it is a very good marketing strategy, but also, a very good communication strategy.

Best Western launches iPad app

 This article is about "Best Western to Go", a new application launched by Best Western. 

 This new application is very interesting for travelers , and offers more than a simple tool of reservation. In this sense, Best Western proposes an application very complete with many tools.

For example, a person who uses this application can create itineraries to help with a travel planning by inputting addresses of attractions and restaurants nearby of the hotel and, by using the GPS.
The user can save in this application his past trips in order to remember easier his favorite attractions, restaurants, for each location already visited.
In this application, a user can add pictures and descriptions, and, he can share it with his friends via e-mail or facebook.

I think that this new application is very interesting for travelers, and it is a very good marketing tool for Best Western. In this sense, this application is not another booking application, but, it is a complete application which can be used by users during all the time of their trips, and after also. It is a good tool which can give many information to the user, and, which can permit at the user to share his information and impressions with his friends.
It is a good marketing tool that can help to promote Best Western; and it is a real value-added, which should interest many travelers and should be quickly developed by other hotel groups.

Class Assignment - Jan 5

The westin paris vendôme

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What service you can offer with Sixth Sense?

Assignment : Sixth Sense from MIT presented at TED on Prezi

Expedia offers free rooms upgrades for top customers - Comments about Aude's post

I totally agree with Aude!! The hospitality and the customer loyalty is a real story of the service quality. I think that what makes the customer loyalty it is not only the amenities or upgrades, but it is how the customer lived his stay. A customer will decide to return in a hotel, only if the entire stay occurred without problem. And, consequently, as Aude said, the key to hospitality's success is the service; the quality of this service. Thus, the customer loyalty will be done according to the quality of the service offered by the hotel, by its employees.

How travelers use online and social media channels to make hotel-choice decision?

This article is about the study "How Travelers Use Online and Social Media Channels to Make Hotel-Choice Decision",released by the Cornell Center for Hospitality research. It is a very interesting study, made by Laura McCarthy, Debra Stock and Rohit Verma.

These article and study explain that many travelers use internet to prepare their trips, to choose their hotels. In this sense, today, when we prepare our travel, we will gather some information from internet search engines (such as Google, Yahoo, ...); social media sites (such as Facebook, Twitter,...); meta-search websites (such as Expedia, Priceline...). It is important to keep in mind that there are other sources of information such as recommendations from friends, family, colleagues... 

In regard to this study, based on responses of 2830 recent travelers, it exists some differences in travelers' hotel search process depending on the type of the travel (business or leisure). Indeed, the differences between leisure and business travel are considerable.
In this sense, according to this article and the study, a leisure traveler uses many more sources for hotel information (recommendations from his friends and family, internet search engines, travel related websites, meta-search websites, social media channels, social networks...) than do a business traveler (his company's recommendations or his colleagues' recommendations and, eventually, some research on internet search engines).

Usually, when I prepare a trip, I speak first of all with my friends and family to gather their recommendations (I can do this with facebook, twitter, or in another way), and, then, I make many reseach on Internet (hotel reviews on TripAdvisor ; travel guides; websites as booking.com ; blogs ; ...). I use more and more internet when I prepare a trip.

And you, how do you prepare your stay? Do you use internet to make your hotel choice decision?