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Posted on Nov 25th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Like it or not, Christmas is approaching fast and if you want to maximise festive bookings, you need to start preparing right now. Tempted to put it off a bit longer? Don't be! Take a look at our quick guide below and make the busiest time of year work...
Posted on Nov 20th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
If you want to increase Likes and shares and get noticed in your guests' social newsfeeds, you need to create plenty of fresh and engaging content on a regular basis. But running powerfully effective social content campaigns needn't take a huge toll on yo...
Posted on Nov 16th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Online Travel Agents have become the first port of call for guests searching for a great deal on their next night away. Sites like Expedia and booking.com allow consumers to compare and book the best deals on hotel rooms within a few clicks, which means f...
Posted on Nov 4th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
With more than 74 million installs worldwide, Wordpress is the most popular CMS and blogging system available on the web. It's not surprising it has become so popular. After all, the tool is freely available, easily customisable and simple for almost anyo...
Posted on Oct 29th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
When it's time to build or redesign a website, price is top-of-mind for most hotels. Your resources are limited, and you want to get your new website up and running as quickly as possible without completely blowing your marketing budget....
Posted on Oct 23rd 2015 by Bryan Marsh
In a bid to climb the search rankings and attract more customers to their websites, businesses are creating more content than ever before. But although publishing lots of new content to your resort's website and social media pages is important, quantity a...
Posted on Oct 14th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Travel shoppers visit your hotel's website to learn about your property and get a feel for the holiday experience you offer. In today's digital age, it's the virtual 'front door' your guests use to take a look around your resort before they book. Your web...
Posted on Sep 21st 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Search engines, and particularly Google, remain one of your guests' favourite tools for researching and planning their breaks online. This means creating and maintaining an effective SEO campaign is a huge component of building a successful internet prese...
Posted on Sep 10th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Image-based posts are some of the best performing types of content when it comes to driving Likes, comments, shares and click-throughs on Facebook. Are your resort's image posts performing as well as you'd like? Maximising engagement for the pictures you...
Posted on Sep 2nd 2015 by Admin
Search engines have come a long way since the early days of the internet, which means search marketers have had to change their game plans quite drastically in their attempts to master them. Keywords remain important, but you'll need to do far more than...
Posted on Aug 25th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Are you trying to boost your hotel's Facebook engagement rates? If so, you'll need to get familiar with Facebook Audience Insights. The tool offers a treasure trove of demographic information and other data which will help you tailor your content for your...
Posted on Aug 19th 2015 by eTourism Support
eTourism has released a new update to our market leading reservations software eTourism Online. We have built a "Closed to Arrival" (CTA) and a "Closed to Departure" (CTD) functionality to enable managers to administer their inventory and maximise their o...
Posted on Aug 17th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Last month Facebook made some adjustments to the way they calculate cost-per-click (CPC) on their ad platform. Following the changes, the social media company will no longer include all click actions such as likes, comments and shares in its CPC calculati...
Posted on Jul 20th 2015 by eTourism Support
Due to popular demand - eTourism is pleased to announce that we have now created 2 new pieces of functionality to assist in selling your rooms online: ADVANCED PURCHASE & NON-REFUNDABLE RATES!...
Posted on Apr 9th 2015 by Lee Tester
The internet is becoming more mobile by the day, and unsurprisingly, it's Google that is leading the way. In just two weeks, the search company will launch its biggest shake-up of mobile search to date, as it begins using mobile friendliness as a signal w...
Posted on Apr 8th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
With a world of opinions and information right at their fingertips, it's now a given that your guests will check out a fair number of reviews before making a booking. So how can you make sure that you're using these reviews to your best advantage? Of cour...
Posted on Apr 2nd 2015 by Bryan Marsh
You know what's even more important than creating great content to engage and inform your guests? Making sure they can actually find it! A successful content creation campaign is all about publishing high quality content regularly, and putting the extra w...
Posted on Apr 1st 2015 by Bryan Marsh
2014 saw an upsurge in travellers using their handheld devices not only to browse and plan their breaks, but also to book. Although it does not yet rival desktop when it comes to booking volume, mobile has become a major distribution channel which hotels...
Posted on Mar 25th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Today's travellers are researching, planning and booking their breaks online, and more than ever before their using their Smartphones to help them do it. It's a trend that is only set to escalate according to data specialists Euromonitor, who predict that...
Posted on Mar 24th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
With masses of businesses and brands vying for your audience's attention on Facebook, how can you make sure your content breaks through the noise? Visual storytelling might be the answer. By creating posts with an emotional pull and eye-catching visual ap...
Posted on Mar 18th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Content creation is one of the most effective ways you can connect to your guests on a deeper level, without eating too much into your marketing budget. A successful content marketing campaign will help you stay visible in search results, drawing guests t...
Posted on Mar 17th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Your email contact list has a pretty short shelf life. It degrades over time as your contacts decide to opt-out of email communication, forget their passwords, or simply abandon that old email account they only set up to fill in website forms. That's why...
Posted on Mar 12th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Partnering with OTAs can be pretty addictive. After all, they get your property seen by a wide online audience and can generally be relied on to generate a steady stream of bookings with minimal input on your part. But as all hotel marketers know only too...
Posted on Mar 11th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
As you've probably heard, Google recently made an announcement stating its intention to use mobile-friendliness as a ranking signal from April this year. In case you still needed it, this news should be the final push you've been waiting for to make a mob...
Posted on Mar 4th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Want to reach a wider audience with your resort's website content? All it takes is a few simple steps to maximise the appeal of your site's content and facilitate quick and easy sharing on the most popular social media channels. Here are three tried and t...
Posted on Mar 3rd 2015 by Bryan Marsh
SEO has come a long way. Following the Hummingbird algorithm update of 2013, Google has been placing less value on keyword matching, focusing instead on context, uniqueness and quality in an attempt to serve up the most relevant results for its users. So...
Posted on Feb 24th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
However many marketing goals you've made for 2015, chances are increasing the number of bookings made directly through your website, growing your online audience and increasing guest engagement are pretty near the top of the list. Let's take a look at som...
Posted on Feb 24th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
More and more of your guests are taking to social media to make enquiries, leave glowing reviews and also, inevitably, to make their views known when their holidays failed to live up to expectations. How well are you fielding their questions, comments and...
Posted on Feb 17th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Content marketing is one of the most important ways to catch your guests' attention and drive more bookings online. It's also one of the most difficult skills to master. If you know you need to up your content game, but you're not sure where to start, her...
Posted on Feb 17th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
A high bounce rate is bad news for any email marketing campaign. Not only does it mean a high percentage of your messaging is not reaching the people it's meant to, it can also tarnish your sender reputation and damage the deliverability of future campaig...
Posted on Feb 10th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
In the past couple of years, Google has put a big emphasis on the link between "quality content" and ranking highly in the search results. But what exactly does quality content look like? Put together using Google's guidelines and our own experience, here...
Posted on Feb 10th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Valentine's Day happens this weekend, and according to some experts, the emotionally-charged occasion is second only to Christmas when it comes to consumer spending. If you haven't yet started planning how to capitalise on this year's event, it's not too...
Posted on Feb 3rd 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Email marketing is one of the best ways to connect with your guests, drive traffic to your website and generate bookings. It also offers the best ROI of all the digital channels, making a creative, ongoing email campaign a necessity for any business that...
Posted on Feb 3rd 2015 by Bryan Marsh
While likes and comments on your Facebook page are good for your engagement rates and visibility, if you really want to increase your reach on the world's most used social network, its shares you need to chase. The platform's algorithm gives more weightin...
Posted on Jan 27th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
In the last week, Google has been sending out emails to sites which are not currently mobile-friendly, warning webmasters that their content will not rank highly for smartphone users. The email notifications, which have been sent out on a mass scale via W...
Posted on Jan 27th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Google has changed search dramatically in the last couple of years, transforming it from a system that could be 'tricked' with poor quality, keyword-stuffed content, into a personalized search engine that draws on semantics to deliver the most relevant re...
Posted on Jan 20th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
If you're anything like us, you've probably grown pretty bored of all the promotional emails that ended up in your inbox over the recent Christmas break. It's highly likely that some of your guests feel the same, which is why this is a great time to bring...
Posted on Jan 20th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Marketers, much like almost everyone else, are under pressure to do more. Sign up to more social media platforms, publish more blog posts, create more email campaigns, drive more results. Often, doing more works. Emailing your guests on a more regular bas...
Posted on Jan 16th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Creating an effective SEO campaign is an ongoing commitment " you should be continuingly revisiting your strategies to ensure your site ranks highly in the SERPs and gets clicked-on by your guests. Now that the New Year celebrations are over, why not take...
Posted on Jan 13th 2015 by Bryan Marsh
Now that we're nearly two weeks into 2015, take a moment to think about the marketing goals you hope to achieve in the year ahead. Have you identified what's already working for you and the areas you need to adjust to make this year's campaigns just as su...
Posted on Oct 29th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
It has happened to all of us. You've created the perfect email message for your guests. You've polished each sentence to address their needs and engage their interests. You've taken time to pick the most compelling subject line you can think of....
Posted on Oct 29th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Do your guests review your property on Facebook? The social platform's star rating system encourages users to share their positive and negative brand experiences with others by leaving a short review and a rating out of 5. If you choose to display them,...
Posted on Oct 22nd 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Is your content campaign generating the results you need, or does it seem to be falling flat? Creating content has become a central component of every business's online campaign. It's one of the most important ways to reach your guests, build authority wi...
Posted on Oct 22nd 2014 by Bryan Marsh
In a recent blog post we took a look at some of the most important on-page SEO elements and how often they need to be updated to keep your website ranking highly and bringing in lots of organic search traffic. It's now time to turn our attention to the of...
Posted on Oct 16th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Perfecting your SEO strategy is not a one-off task; it's an ongoing commitment. After all, Google is reported to make more than 500 algorithm tweaks annually, many of which have the potential to impact your website's ranking, the amount of organic traffic...
Posted on Oct 16th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Your guests might be stocking up on sweets for trick-or-treaters, but it's time for you to think slightly further ahead and start strategising your resort's Christmas email campaigns. Email continues to be one of the most effective ways to reach your audi...
Posted on Oct 8th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Do you track your resort's website metrics consistently? Perhaps you're unsure how to best put the data to use to maximise your marketing efforts? To understand which aspects of your content strategy are working, and which are falling flat, you need to lo...
Posted on Oct 7th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Running tests on your blog is essential if you want to discover the best strategies for driving more blog visits, and turn more of those visits into subscribers and bookings. Fortunately, you can run tests on practically every aspect of your blogging camp...
Posted on Sep 24th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
There's no denying it: you need a mobile-optimised site. With global mobile internet usage expected to hit 90% by 2017, failing to make your content easily accessible across all devices won't just cause a headache for your guests, it'll lose you masses of...
Posted on Sep 24th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Images and video have appeared in search results for some time now, but often, rich media of this type is very much an afterthought when it comes to search engine optimisation. Although optimising text content is integral to any successful SEO strategy, p...
Posted on Sep 22nd 2014 by Bryan Marsh
The Apple Watch was unveiled in a live event in California last week, alongside a preview of the iPhone 6 and 6 Plus. Set to go on sale early next year, the highly anticipated product is Apple's first all-new design since the original iPad in 2010....
Posted on Sep 15th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Responding to your guests on social media is now an essential component of customer service and your online reputation hinges on getting it right. Are you delivering the best customer service possible for your guests on Facebook and other social platforms...
Posted on Sep 11th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Google Analytics is one of the best tools out there for getting to grips with your website metrics, but if you haven't set it up correctly, all you'll achieve is inaccurate data and incorrect conclusions about how your organic traffic converts. Here are 5...
Posted on Sep 10th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
In life, old habits die hard. And in blogging, they can be just as difficult to break. If your current campaign isn't generating the traffic and bookings you'd like it to, it's time to identify bad habits so you can break free of your blogging rut and sta...
Posted on Aug 12th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
At the end of July, Google introduced a major change to its local search algorithm, informally nicknamed 'Pigeon.' The update is designed to improve local search results by integrating them more closely with traditional search features and ranking signals...
Posted on Aug 6th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Successful SEO is about much more than keyword rankings. If you want your resort's website to survive algorithm changes, avoid Google penalties, and get noticed on a web saturated with content, here are 5 critical SEO mistakes you need to avoid....
Posted on Aug 5th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Who needs Google? Well, we all do. Ranking for important keywords is an undeniably powerful way to get your resort's name in front of your guests and drive streams of relevant traffic back to your website ready to make a booking. But with Google constantl...
Posted on Jun 25th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Email opens on mobile devices have soared from just 11% in 2011, to a steady 45% of all email opens in 2014. As email opens on mobile grow and grow, desktop and webmail opens are rapidly falling, leaving email marketers who want to reach their audience no...
Posted on Jun 24th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Are you doing everything you can to maximise your social media marketing efforts or merely covering the basics? By taking just 3 simple steps, you can build on your current social media routine, make your accounts work harder for you and bring in greater...
Posted on Jun 24th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Do you know which page gets viewed the most on the average website? Yep, you guessed it " it's the homepage. That's not surprising when you consider: It's probably the oldest page on your site (and has therefore gathered the most inbound links) and its UR...
Posted on Jun 18th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
From social media to blogging and email marketing, there are so many strategies available to improve your resort's online visibility that it's easy to overlook one of the oldest, yet most effective. After all, link building is dead, isn't it? The answer t...
Posted on Jun 18th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
There's no doubt about it: if you want to climb the search results, capture valuable relevant traffic and send it to your resort's website, you have a lot of work to put in. You need to design a strong SEO strategy, implement it successfully into your sit...
Posted on Jun 17th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
The abundance of analytics tools available online have made it easier than ever to measure the impact of content campaigns. But away from valuable metrics like click-through rates, bounce rates and traffic volume, there are other, less tangible benefits o...
Posted on Jun 11th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Email remains one of the very best ways to reach your guests online. But that's only if you're reaching people that actually want to hear from you. Low quality, outdated contact lists will seriously hamper your online marketing campaign, so if you can't r...
Posted on Jun 11th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Up until now you've probably been investing most of your resort's social media energy and resources into building your fan base on Facebook. Now, with Google+ getting bigger and more important by the day, it's time to do the same on Google's own social ne...
Posted on Jun 10th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Google+ does not yet command the colossal membership numbers enjoyed by Facebook and Twitter, but thanks to its close integration into many other Google products, the platform is perhaps more crucial to your SEO success than any of the other social networ...
Posted on Jun 4th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Optimal content length is something which has always been hotly debated among online marketers. Although there are no concrete rules regarding length, there are general guidelines you can use to inform your content creation efforts and ensure you strike t...
Posted on Jun 4th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Polling is a powerful but often overlooked tool than can help you gather feedback for your resort, build a community, create fresh content and even increase your website traffic. Best of all, it can easily be worked into your social media strategy simply...
Posted on Jun 3rd 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Running a successful online marketing campaign is pretty demanding. Most of us are juggling multiple social media accounts, scheduling new content, creating email campaigns, optimising for Google, constantly analysing datathe list goes on. With so much to...
Posted on May 29th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
With most people receiving around 81 emails a day, the average inbox is a pretty crowded place. Sending out highly targeted, carefully crafted messages that offer real value to your guests is essential if you want to compete against this clutter and hold...
Posted on May 29th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
The power social media and blogs have to raise brand awareness is no longer disputed, but what about their power to inspire action? What is the value of all those impressions if your guests aren't following through and making a booking? Working a compelli...
Posted on May 27th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Reviews have an immense impact on your online reputation and a knock-on effect on booking rates. According to recent research from TripAdvisor, as many as 93% of travellers around the world say their holiday decisions are impacted by the reviews they read...
Posted on May 21st 2014 by Bryan Marsh
As we discussed in a recent blog, Google+ looks certain to grow and grow as Google seeks to incorporate the social platform into all its most popular products. Now that Google+ is still relatively 'young', it's a good time to make sure you've mastered its...
Posted on May 20th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Some rules are made to be broken, and social media rules are no exception. That's not to say you should let chaos reign on your account, but if you're sticking to the following code of conduct too rigidly, you could actually be limiting your campaign's po...
Posted on May 19th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
With 29 million unique visitors on desktop every month, and 41 million on Smartphones, Google+ has doubled in size year over year. Despite these figures, it's still a relatively small social network in terms of membership, not least when compared with Fac...
Posted on May 14th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Even now that most of us have had a few years practice, keeping on top of Facebook marketing can be a challenge. Sometimes it helps to go back to basics and remind yourself of a few of the best practices that can be relied on to drive Likes, comments an...
Posted on May 14th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Engaging with your audience is all about knowing your audience. By using data drawn from Google Analytics, you can find out the key information you need to create strong guest personas for your social media audience, helping you formulate content that is...
Posted on May 13th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Nothing is more important to a successful email marketing campaign than a high open rate. After all, what good is crafting a powerful and personalised message you think your guests will really love, if it simply sits there, unopened once it drops into the...
Posted on May 7th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Your page stats show that people are viewing your blogs, but why aren't they clicking your calls to action? Why aren't they commenting? Most importantly, why aren't they booking? If your guests are failing to engage with your blogs, it's time to identify...
Posted on May 7th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Thanks to its integration with other Google products like YouTube and search results, Google+ provides more opportunities to interact with your audience and drive web traffic than any other social platform. But to drive this traffic, you must first get yo...
Posted on Apr 30th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Last year, Google caused (another) shake up in the marketing world by removing organic keyword data from Google Analytics, replacing it with the words 'Not Provided'. Since then, speculation has been rife that the search company plans to start blocking p...
Posted on Apr 29th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
In an ideal world, all your fans and followers on social media would head straight to your resort's website to find out more about your property, sign up to your mailing list and get ready to book. In reality, most of them need a gentle push. These 3 tips...
Posted on Apr 28th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
The world of Search Engine Optimisation can appear complex and sometimes baffling, so it's not surprising that even in 2014, some people still cling to ideas and practises that are no longer relevant, misjudged or simply obsolete. Listening to these SEO m...
Posted on Apr 16th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Content has become one of the most important ways to reach and build a relationship with your audience in recent years, but developing an effective content strategy isn't easy, even for multinational brands with huge marketing budgets. With Google constan...
Posted on Apr 16th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Social media is constantly evolving, and as we all strive to keep pace, it's inevitable that a few mistakes get made along the way. With this in mind, here are five big social media blunders you might be guilty of, and how to avoid making them again....
Posted on Apr 15th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
When marketers first wised up to the crucial link between content and better search rankings, everyone was trying to create as many new pages to fill their site and share on social media as they possibly could. Unsurprisingly, this lead to the publication...
Posted on Apr 9th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
It's less difficult, and less expensive, to generate a booking from an existing guest than it is to convert someone new, yet this simple fact often gets overlooked in the race to reach a wider audience online. Hotels can retain more guests and save money...
Posted on Apr 9th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Google's accommodation search and comparison service Hotel Finder is slowly but surely gaining momentum in the US, and will create another valuable opportunity for you to promote your resort online when it gets rolled out fully over here in the near futur...
Posted on Apr 7th 2014 by Lee Tester
The world of social media is constantly evolving, and most of us are just trying to keep pace with a steady stream of fresh content to engage our fans. But although focusing on the message is vital to audience engagement rates, it's also important to set...
Posted on Apr 2nd 2014 by Bryan Marsh
You know that positive guest reviews are essential to your property's success, and as we covered in a recent post, the public is becoming increasingly savvy when it comes to spotting hotels' false attempts to accumulate this all-important feedback online....
Posted on Apr 1st 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Photos are one of the most effective tools out there for increasing traffic and driving shares, and now that almost everyone has a Smartphone in their pocket, there's no need to do all the hard work setting up great shots yourself. Each time your guests c...
Posted on Mar 31st 2014 by Bryan Marsh
How much value do your guests place on the opinions of others online? Have they lost trust in review sites or do they still form a crucial component of the booking process? A new study from ITB Berlin and the Worms University of Applied Sciences has looke...
Posted on Mar 26th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Towards the end of 2012, Google began rolling out its one-stop accommodation planning tool Hotel Finder into standard search results worldwide. Two years on, let's take a closer look at how the service has evolved and its impact on the online travel secto...
Posted on Mar 26th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Almost every year, the same message can be heard resonating from marketing circles: SEO is officially "dead" or at least changed so fundamentally that it's completely unrecognizable from what it once was. The truth is, search engine optimisation is alive...
Posted on Mar 26th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Sending out an email newsletter is a great way to stay in regular contact with your guests, alert them to new offers, increase engagement and drive booking rates, but if you're not staying on top of the hard data, how can you be sure all your hard work is...
Posted on Mar 19th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
However well you've done your guest persona research, it's not always easy thinking up blog topic ideas that are highly relevant and exciting to your audience each week. Fortunately, within just a few simple steps, you can identify the kind of blog posts...
Posted on Mar 19th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Social media has broken down the barriers between hotels and their guests, allowing properties of all sizes to engage with their audience in a way that is less corporate, more human and more engaging. Whatever your platform(s) of choice, succeeding in the...
Posted on Mar 19th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Where once, someone might share a positive customer service experience over a chat and a coffee with a few friends, people are now taking to social media in their droves to share photos, write reviews and publish their personal experiences with an audienc...
Posted on Mar 13th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
Noticed anything different about the Google search results lately? In the last few days the search company has begun rolling out a new design which changes the way organic search results and ads are displayed to desktop users....
Posted on Mar 12th 2014 by Bryan Marsh
You know you need to post to your property's social media accounts regularly to keep your audience engaged, but how often is enough? Is there such as thing as too often? And what's the best time of day to post for maximum results?...