RESERVATIONS AND THE DIGITAL WORLD: Going mobile
In the final installment of our three-part series exploring the changing landscape of reservations, we find out how to make the most of mobile and implement a successful strategy for smartphones and tablets
In the two previous months, Hotelier Middle East has brought you guides to developing SEO and implementing an effective online booking system with the aim of improving direct hotel bookings through your website. However, with the growing dominance of mobile, getting a presence on smartphones and tablets is an increasing concern.
One fifth of all online traffic is now coming through mobile devices, according to research from Latitude — a UK-based digital marketing company. The firm has also reported smartphone penetration in the Middle East is currently standing at 66% — higher than in both the UK and US markets.
“That’s a really big deal,” says Latitude COO Richard Gregory. “More of the world is going mobile. We know everyone’s talked about mobile for years, about it being just around the corner. It’s here now.”
Many hotels make the mistake of just assuming that a regular website can be accessed on smartphones and tablets, so they don’t need to invest in creating a dedicated site for the new devices.
“There really needs to be separate campaigns for regular desktop and then mobile,” explains Lee Mancini, managing director at Dubai-based SEO company Sekari. “People use mobile in a completely different way than they use desktops.”
Michael Innocentin, director, internet marketing, Fairmont Raffles Hotels International, says: “While responsive design is becoming increasingly popular, and organisations such as Google recommend it, it does require a complete rebuild of your website to implement.
Depending on the size of the site and the age of it, it can prove challenging to get funding and consensus to redesign an entire site.”
“I have pleaded with clients to push mobile sites up the queue,” Gregory says. “It can take six to 12 months for a large site, but we really need that now. Even just a landing page, rather than a big beast of a site that you can’t navigate on a mobile device that one in five people see.”
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Last minute bookings
Ramada Downtown Dubai has realised the importance of separating desktop and mobile platforms, and is on the verge of launching its first mobile app. Roshna Raj, marketing executive, says: “The biggest advantage is mobility, especially with last minute plans and instant bookings.
Guests today have changed the traditional mode of travel and it is an advantage to book while you go. Just having a standard desktop site might limit your options to having last moment bookings via FIT.”
“When people are looking for a hotel, what we have seen in some Middle East markets, the bookings that are made on mobile phones are for the same day or the next day,” agrees Google’s head of travel for the Gulf, Maria de Ducla.
“It’s really people booking hotels when they’re on the go, and when they’re on the go, they only have phones or tablets with them. If you’re not present on mobile, you’ll lose a lot of business to your competitors, so it is very important that they also optimise their mobile sites.”
Gregory offers a great piece of advice for hotels about to break into mobile or updating their current site. “A simple acid test is when reviewing a mobile site, stand outside in the daylight, walk and try to use it with your right thumb.
That’s it — if you can do that, it passes the test, but most don’t. You need to think about high contrast colours, using buttons rather than pull down menus and putting things on the right hand side.”
Devices
Just one mobile site nowadays, however, is becoming an outdated concept — hotels should have dedicated campaigns for desktop, smartphone and tablet. “Even then, break out to a device and operating system — one for iOS, one for Android — the experiences are different. You need to separate them out, as they’re all worth different amounts to you,” says Gregory.
At Ritz-Carlton, a new mobile app was launched in May which utilises the GPS functions on a smartphone — on the road or out in a city, the app will include information about any selected Ritz-Carlton property, and the ability to book a room.
However, when a guest enters one of its hotels and opens the app, users are offered highly specific information, as well as tips from the property’s concierges and special offers that are accessible only when in the hotel.
Christoph Heyn, senior manager, global e-commerce and mobile strategy at Ritz-Carlton, says: “We see this customised experience as being part of our brand promise to deliver personalised service. As a result, the usage of our app provides direct benefits to our guests, which will then increase the likelihood that they will also use our mobile platforms to book their next Ritz-Carlton stay”.
As much as some companies go all out on a global mobile app, many hotels simply don’t have the resources. In that case, all is not lost, says Gregory: “When you look at people’s experiences on mobile sites, they don’t go as deep into a site as they might on tablet or desktop.
They don’t have the time to look around. You only look at one or two pages. Just get the landing page right and really focus on getting the action out of them there and then. And if you can’t do it — don’t forget, these things started out as phones. You can still make a call with them. Instead of sending them to a page, put a link on there to call you.”
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Marketing
In terms of advertising your smartphone site, there are also benefits, due simply to the lack of well designed mobile platforms that companies want to spend money advertising. According to Latitude, the cost of pay per click advertising is around 30% less for a mobile site on smartphone compared to desktop. The company has also found that unless your site is number one in the organic search results, a pay per click result is better.
“People look at the top of the page, see what’s there, and then flick, skipping everything in the middle, going straight to the bottom. Position 10 on mobile organic is really good, but everything in the middle is kind of wasted, it’s not a gradual move down,” explains Gregory.
Sekari’s Mancini agrees that an SEO strategy especially for mobile is essential: “The penetration of mobile in the Middle East is massive, so you need to optimise your different sites in different ways. People on mobile want to book instantly and generally at the last-minute, so the keywords and PPC campaigns need to reflect that.”
Talking Tablets
While smartphones are the predominant platform for mobile sites and apps, tablets, our experts agree, is where the focus will, and should already, land. Google’s Ducla says: “People who own tablets have a higher income and we have seen that the average market price of hotels for people who have tablets is high, so it makes sense to work on their presence, and increase the amount spent, on tablets”
Gregory agrees, adding that while it may “balance out” when more entry levels tablets start entering the market, “right now there’s a big opportunity there in tablets, so it is worth it in terms of time and effort.”
Heyn says this has already been proven in Ritz-Carlton’s own research: “We see that especially leisure travellers tend to use tablet devices to discover our hotels online. As a result, we actually see a higher ADR for reservations made through tablets compared to the ADR originating from desktop computers.
We designed RitzCarlton.com specifically in a way to provide tablet users with a rich and intuitive experience — an investment that pays off since the traffic from tablet devices is steadily growing for our website.”
If for no other reason, Jeff Strachan, VP sales and marketing, Marriott International, Middle East & Africa, says that having dedicated mobile platforms gives the users the choice of which to use, while still having a great experience either way.
“It is important that we provide the solution that the customer requires, when they require it. If we have all of the solutions then at the very least the customer can choose their preferred method of searching and booking. We don’t want to push a customer down a certain channel, we want to have the channel connected that they want to use,” he comments.
Innocentin agrees: “Consumers expect that the brands should make it easy for them to do business together. If consumers are not able to complete their tasks using their preferred browser they will look to competitors that can fill that need.”
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Design
For tablet sites, the main difference in design doesn’t come down to what the users want to get out of it, how deep they go into the site or if they’re there to browse or book, but instead, how they use it.
Customers are using one finger to select things, the same with most smartphones, so buttons need to be big, drop down menus need to be scrapped and it’s important to realise that tablet users like to swipe — the most innovative and successful tablet sites are horizontally designed, breaking away from the conventional vertical-scrolling pages, explains Gregory.
Whether on tablet or smartphone, the way forward for some of the most advanced apps is integration — not with your other platforms, but with other people’s and other companies’. Seatwave is an online ticketing marketplace, and its app is created using application programming interfaces (APIs) — essentially building blocks for different functions.
These building blocks are then made available to third party developers. One block is its straight-forward ‘Purchase API’ — third parties, such as music blogs and fan sites can use it in their apps, which drives traffic and bookings to Seatwave.
This same concept can just as easily be implemented by hotels — if a travel blog or website is covering a hotel or hotel company, then they could use an API to integrate the hotel’s booking application into their own pages.
The next stage
However, the experts urge that while tablet and smartphone sites and apps are the most pressing issue to deal with, hotels should look to the future — they have discovered how long it takes to get a new platform off the ground and so should be looking at what customers will need in the next year or two, and start planning.
Google TV is currently being launched around the world, which will see websites need to be optimised for a much larger screen, while Google’s Project Glass is likely to be launched in 2014.
“While we’re all doing mobile and tablet work, why not throw new technologies into the mix? If you’re going through a developer, then give them other dimensions to develop your site to. Then you’re ready and you can be the first one there rather than being up to a year behind the surge,” concludes Gregory.
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CASE STUDY 1
THE HOTEL CHAIN: InterContinental Hotels Group
Objectives
• Develop booking apps and mobile features to engage with guests.
• Connect with guests at all touch points throughout their travel planning and stay.
Strategy
• Provide consumers with easy-to-use functionality to find and book hotel rooms, check rates, and give them the flexibility to manage their reservations and view member details through the new Priority Club Rewards app for the iPad.
• Provide location-based alerts about specific property offers and notifications for check-in, promotional offers, etc.
• Create apps which are available on a number of different platforms – IHG’s new Priority Club Rewards app is available for Kindle Fire, Google TV, Android Tablets, Windows Phone, and Android phones.
Results
• Hotels within IHG’s system are now generating more than US $20 million a month in revenue from mobile bookings – double the figure from July 2011.
• Consumers can now access redeemable offers available at the hotel where they are staying through mobile solutions, such as apps for all seven IHG brands on iPhone.
• Corporate partners now have the ability to have a customised IHG-branded app with their corporate ID embedded, so they can easily view and book hotels at their negotiated rates.
CASE STUDY 2
THE HOTEL CHAIN: MARRIOTT INTERNATIONAL
Objectives
• Give smartphone users the ability to find nearby hotels using GPS functionality, book rooms, check upcoming reservations and get details about their hotel.
• Create an app which was multilingual – it is available in English, French, German, Spanish and Chinese.
Strategy
• Create one app which incorporates all of the group’s 13 brands, across 71 countries.
• Enable Marriott customers to enrol in Marriott Rewards and check their loyalty point balance through the app.
• Create apps for different platforms – iPhone, iPod Touch, Blackberry and Android.
• Add a call function, so that users can call a hotel to get help immediately with reservations via phone.
Results
• In the week of release, the app reached number four on iTunes App Store’s free app list, and was number one for travel apps.
• Mobile platforms generated US $21 million in hotel-level revenue and garnered almost 2.6 million visits a month, as of June 2011.
• In 2011, close to 1 million Marriott apps were downloaded.
• The Mobile 400 list by Internet Retailer named Marriott in its top 10 for 2012.
CASE STUDY 3
THE HOTEL CHAIN: Fairmont Hotels & Resorts
Objectives
• Create a greater integration of Fairmont’s social media sites and the adoption of a new web analytics solution.
• Deliver rich hotel content online in environments that are user-friendly, seamless, convenient and efficient.
• Redesign the website Fairmont.com to be fully compatible with iPads and other tablet devices.
Strategy
• Revitalise Fairmont.com with a dynamic new look that is both clean and compelling.
• Implement larger visuals, user-submitted photography, high definition hotel videos, a greater selection of interactive maps, and links to brand and hotel specific social feeds.
• All photo galleries, virtual tours, videos, banners and maps are touch enabled and optimized for mobile devices.
• Hotel-level social media accounts were integrated into the new site to fully leverage and share unique and engaging content posted to property-level social feeds, while at the same time photos and stories from past guest visits are now being pulled directly from EveryonesAnOriginal.com, the brand’s online community portal, into the Fairmont.com site.
Results
• Tablet usage has increased by more than 300% this year.
• Page views and time spent on the site have both grown and conversion rates are up by more than eight percent.