Laffitte Conseil

Travel 2.0 In China: Sina and Qunar jointly launch travel blog platform

The two companies will launch "Free Talk Travel", a blog publishing platform that will allow Chinese travelers for the first time to share their travel experiences in an innovative and interactive way.

Sina.com, China’s largest portal with over 100 million monthly unique visitors, announced a strategic cooperation with Qunar.com, China’s largest travel search engine and second largest travel media with over 8 million monthly unique visitors.

The two companies will launch “Free Talk Travel”, a blog publishing platform that will allow Chinese travelers for the first time to share their travel experiences in an innovative and interactive way. “Free Talk Travel” is expected to be one of China’s most popular blog platforms and an asset to online travelers everywhere in China.

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Web Reputation Monitoring Tools

Several vendors have recently launched “Web Reputation” monitoring tools for hotels. The cost ranges from the absurd for more enterprise-level applications, and some come at a cost of about $150+/month. Supposedly these new tools automate the process of monitoring who says what about the hotel on as many as 25 million consumer-generated sites, plus they claim to automate the hotelier's response to such postings (e.g. negative customer reviews on TripAdvisor).

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Web 2.0 vs. Search Engines: Are Search Engines Becoming Obsolete in the Web 2.0 Frenzy?

Web 2.0 continues to generate much attention in the online travel industry. Inquiring hoteliers want to understand the status and future of search engine marketing and other Internet marketing formats in this new Web 2.0 environment. Are search engines becoming obsolete? Are Web 2.0 sites going to replace the search engines as an advertising media? Will online travel consumers abandon Google as a travel planning and research tool and shift their attention to Web 2.0 sites such as TripAdvisor.com and social networks like YouTube.com? Must a hotel engage in such strategies?

Web 2.0 is the second-generation of web-based communities and hosted services (Wikipedia). Web 2.0 reflects a utilization of the Web in a new way, by both developers and Internet users. Especially of interest to hoteliers is the Internet user aspect of Web 2.0—also known as Consumer-Generated Media (CGM) or User-Generated Media or Social Media. CGM is online content created by Internet users and made available to other Internet users via Web 2.0 interactive technology applications. 

This new dynamic has caused a degree of confusion and many hoteliers are unsure about the implications of Web 2.0 on more "traditional" Internet marketing formats such as search marketing, email marketing, and display advertising. This article details the roles of Web 2.0 and search engines and their significance, as well as supporting data and case studies on how search engines remain of strategic importance long-term in online marketing and distribution.

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Social Media & Travel

At last week’s Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International Hotel Sales Strategy Conference, a panel focusing on this emerging trend delved into the radical changes ahead. These industry insiders are already seeing the effects social media is having on current business models and are warning others to follow their lead.

“Customer engagement is a more effective way of getting business, but it s not a next day thing,” said Cindy Estis Green, Managing Partner of the Estis Group. “If you do it well you’ll reap benefits for years, but there is a ramp up period that will be a challenge.”

Tim Peter, Managing Director of Leading Interactive Reservations said that this paradigm shift is altering the current state of the web as a monologue provided by a specific company. Communication, it seems, is becoming a two way street and those that are doing the chatter want attention.

“If your customers are talking about your brand, it’s better to engage in a dialogue with them,” said Peter, who added that it’s important to speak directly to potential clientele. “Social sites are about authentic dialogue. Corporate speak and sales spiel will get you mocked brutally. Speak plainly or don’t talk to them.”

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Social Networks, Tweens and Ads

Over seven out of 10 US children ages 9 to 17 visit social networking sites weekly, according to the Alloy Media and Marketing-commissioned "Social Networking and Advertising" paper. The study was underwritten by Microsoft, News Corporation and Verizon, and fielded by Grunwald Associates in March 2007.

The study also revealed over half of teens had participated in some kind of advertiser-branded activity like visiting company profile pages in the past month.

Nine in 10 tweens and teens said they would like to hear about one or more types of entertainment products on social networking sites. About a fifth said they were willing to add branded content to their own sites.

Over 30% of teens also wanted to hear about college information or educational products from social networking sites.

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Votre avis : Votre principal usage professionnel des réseaux sociaux...

Trouver un nouvel emploi, recruter un collaborateur ou un nouveau client : tels sont les trois usages clés des réseaux sociaux professionnels pour les lecteurs du Journal du Net. (16/05/2007)

Les réseaux sociaux professionnels ont la cote. LinkedIn compte 9 millions de membres et Viadeo plus d'un million. Largement de quoi identifier et rencontrer des profils intéressants quels que soient ses centres d'intérêts. Interrogés à ce sujet en mars 2007, près de 40 % des lecteurs du JDN indiquaient d'ailleurs utiliser ces nouveaux outils dans le cadre de leur activité (lire le sondage du 28/03/07).

Près de la moitié des 205 lecteurs qui ont répondu à notre sondage utilisent ces réseaux sociaux pour recruter des collaborateurs ou trouver un nouvel emploi. Un résultat en ligne avec les conclusions de l'enquête 2006 sur la mobilité de cadres réalisée par l'Apec, qui indiquait que 40 % des cadres ont trouvé en 2005 un emploi grâce à leur réseau relationnel et que 26 % d'entre eux en ont trouvé un grâce à Internet. Le cocktail Internet + réseau semble donc des plus détonnants.

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Teens and Young Adults Spread the Word

Want to promote something? Enlist a Millennial.

Call them Gen Y or Millennials or just "people ages 13-24." Whatever the name, this group spreads the word quickly on things it likes and enjoys user-generated content, according to the "State of the Media Democracy" report commissioned by Deloitte & Touche and conducted by Harrison Group.

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Marketing to Social Networking Sites, Targeted

One in four adult Internet users in the U.S. regularly visits popular social networking sites, according to “iProspect Social Networking User Behavior Study,” a report sponsored by iProspect and conducted by JupiterResearch.

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