Comptoirs du eTourisme Marseille Travel Massive - DMOs, Bloggers and Digital Marketers working together.

Last week I participated in Marseille's #Travelmassive organized by my friend @claudebenard of Hotelitur. It was a fun and interactive chat among Keith Jenkins, blogger extraordinaire of VelvetEscape fame, the sweet and brilliant Fabienne Wintle of Untanglemyweb and myself. We connected to the event via Group Skype, and even thought we had a couple of technical glitches, we did have a great time. Our task was to address the question of how can digital marketers, travel bloggers, hoteliers and destination management organizations (DMOs) best work together? Not an easy topic to summarize because there are many variations on the theme. For example we talked about the different types of travel bloggers and their different objectives. A professional blogger working for a large organization (like Conde Nast, for example) would not have the same objectives that a blogger who does note depend on his or her blog to generate revenue. We commented as well on the different projects a digital marketer might encounter. Fabienne, for example specializes in assisting, training, educating and helping small tourism businesses in Australia on the various topics related to digital and social media marketing. Her challenges are very different than those a digital marketer/consultant working for a large DMO or a multi-national hotel chain might face.  Keith addressed the issue of fees for blogging - something that might have been taboo 2 years ago, but something that's very important. Some bloggers are quite happy with getting travel invitations from destinations and blogging about them without getting paid for this content hoping that they will generate revenue through advertising. Other bloggers are offering sponsored blog posts thereby getting fees per post.  Still other bloggers are now getting speaking fees at various conferences and events.

My conclusion after our very interesting chat is that there are great opportunities for bloggers, digital marketers, hoteliers and DMOs to work more effectively and strategically to achieve the ultimate goal - more satisfied visitors and guests.  One of the points we touched on was international collaborations wherein we could share our audiences with each other, offer a syndicate of bloggers (guest blog posts as well) to destinations, access our different networks to offer clients more bang for their marketing dollars - bring in our Facebook and Twitter followers.  For example, I offer my clients campaigns that include display advertising, blogging, tweeting, facebooking which reach Hispanic travellers everywhere. What if when I am pitching to them I can offer increased reach by offering them coverage from Keith who reaches another audience altogether. Destinations do this all the time with bloggers. A group of bloggers (Kim Mance, Wendy Perrin, and Shannon Hurst Lane), were invited to Toronto for Canada-e-Connect 2010 in Montreal. Since they  were going to be in Montreal, Ottawa invited them to visit there before or after the conference. So destinations and bloggers can reach out to each other to maximize social media and digital marketing opportunities. 

As for Travel Massive Marseille, I hope a group of us bloggers get together in Marseille in the near future under a strategic digital marketing plan from the DMO there. We can certainly get some traction in the blogosphere. En Français, in English y en Español.

Bon voyage,

Jaime

A Twitter customer care experience from a brand that cares about its customers - IHG again

In my previous post I wrote about the great experience I had at the InterContinental Le Grand Paris. Speaking of IHG brands, on our last night in Paris we stayed at the Holiday Inn Express Charles de Gaulle Airport in order to be at our departures gate with plenty of time to check in the next day. As I mentioned in the previous post, I usually look for IHG hotels whenever I travel, but especially when I am not very familiar with the destination. And so we booked a room at this Holiday Inn Express. But this experience did not meet my expectations. It felt short. However, the post-stay-Twitter-customer-care experience made up for it and it's a great example of how a global brand in hospitality is looking after the brand and its customers.

We arrived in the afternoon and checked in. The front desk attendant was very friendly, polite and professional and she gave us an upgrade to an executive room because of my loyalty card status, which was great. Only thing was, this executive room's bed is awful. I was not surprised that the room is very small (as they tend to be in many hotels in Europe), but my wife and I were surprised that the bed in this executive room is a Murphy bed (wall bed). The bed has two metal feet jutting out on either side which one can keep bumping into on account of very little space between the bed and the wall. But we took that in stride and even thought it was a funny thing since we kept bumping into them (as long as we didn't hit a toe, it would be alright). 

But then we tried the bed and this bed is very uncomfortable – uneven – like Murphy beds and pull out couches can be.  We decided to ask for a different room and – coincidentally at that point – there was a blackout at the hotel. All electricity went out. We went to the front desk and waited for Rommie, the front desk manager, to have a minute since she was really trying to do something about the blackout (she was on the mobile phone speaking to someone about it).  Once we were able to talk to her, she understandably told us that she couldn't tell if she had another room to do the switch because her computer was down.  Being close to dinner time – and not knowing if the electricity was coming back any time soon – we decided to go to Paris for supper and deal with the room upon our return to the hotel.  When we returned Rommie had gone home and we told the front desk person in charge about the bed and that we would like another room.  Unfortunately by then all he could offer was a regular smoking room. My wife thought that room could be worse than the exec room (because the smoking room might smell of smoking, which we don’t like at all).  So we kept the exec room and slept there as best we could.  When we checked out and the attendant asked us how our stay was, we said – ok, “but the bed in that room is terrible, really bad.” She did not know how to react and just gave us the bill for € 221.20. 

Before we left for the airport, I tweeted that the bed in question was the worst I had ever slept in at any hotel. We flew back home and several hours later when I checked my Twitter account I saw a reply by IHGCare "We would like to assist w/ your exp..." inviting me to email IHGCare to explain. So I did. Very soon after I sent the email, I got a very nice response and apology for the inconvenience from Global IHG care indicating that they would forward my comments to the appropriate people at the CDG HIE. They also said they would credit my loyalty program account with a few thousand points.  

As I said in the first paragraph, this experience is a great example of using Twitter strategically to protect and enhance a brand's reputation and of showing customers that they are important to the business. IHG is out there listening and responding to customers concerns and doing it in a timely fashion. This ensures that customers remain engaged with the brand and hopefully satisfied.  However, having said all this, I do think that in cases such as this one, it would be much better to empower front line workers to deal with issues like these. The front desk person in charge should have been able to apologize on the spot and to offer me the loyalty program points. If I wasn't a loyalty program member then she should have been able to offer a discount on the rate right there. Many customers are not on Twitter and might not be inclined to try and escalate the issue. You would just lose those customers.  So the moral of the story is: yes, use Twitter to listen, engage, respond and promote, but you should also empower your front line workers to do the same in person and on the spot.

Happy travels.

Jaime

www.cactusrock.com