Hotel Blogs

A recent study has shown that so-called rich media, like 360-degree views of hotel rooms, increases online bookings.

The results of the study confirm that viewing rich media significantly increases the likelihood of a booking. Overall, consumers who viewed an Omni hotel’s rich media were 67% more likely to book than those who did not. Importantly, the richer the media viewed by the consumer, the higher the impact on look-to-book conversion rates. The increase in conversion rate for consumers who viewed a hotel video was 2.9 times that for consumers who only viewed virtual tours. The increase was even greater (3.6 times) for consumers who viewed both virtual tours and video. Interestingly, there was no material difference in the effectiveness of full-motion videos and VFM’s more cost effective photomontage videos.

VFM is VFM Interactive, a company that specializes in producing rich media for hotels and which conducted the study. Given VFM's vested interests here, perhaps it is wise to take the results with a grain of salt. Yet, the results do make intuitive sense.

So what does this portend for home-based travel agents? Alarmists might think that all this means is more bookings slipping away to the dreaded Internet. But I see an opportunity as well.

Given the increased ease of "embedding" video in web sites (think YouTube) and the low cost of entry for home-based travel agents creating their own web sites, I see no reason why home-basers can't harness this new technology for thier own use.

For example, say you're promoting a cruise on Cruise Line X. Why not have a video tour of the ship on your site? Or a 360-degreee shot of the balcony suites you're pushing?

This video can come from two sources: you or the cruise line.

Cheap digital video technology and equally affordable video editing software has turned millions (or at least many thousands) of people into Steven Spielbergs). And it's easy to get your home-cooked video online. Again, think YouTube and similar services that are now mushrooming on the 'Net. And what a great reason to take another fam trip!

Video produced by the cruise line will have the advantage of being slicker. Creating those 360-degree views, for example.

I see no reason why a cruise line would not let one of its "partners" use this material. Talk to your RSM about how to make this happen.

The nifty little blog The Tourism and Hospitality Diaries has an extremely helpful rundown on the latest wrinkle in 'Web 2.0" as it applies to the travel industry.

With the discussion raging about Web 2.0 applications in the hospitality, travel & tourism industry (with hotels slowing catching on), the subject of much enthusiasm in the Travel 2.0 game now seems to be Video! Moving beyond the original Travel 2.0 phenomenon (e.g.TripAdvisor, which now features over 6 million user reviews on hotels, destinations and local attractions), new sites are now focusing on the logical next step...combining reviews & ratings with videos of the actual hotel product.

Here are some of the sites T&HD tracked down. (Quotes are from that blog):

Trivop. "One of the early pioneers of the hotel video review revolution."

TVTrip. "Tvtrip.com is based in Paris and Brussels, and claims to work with a wide range of travel experts world-wide and are developing new, advanced functions that will allow users to set their own preferences plus also share videos."

Travelistic. "The site hosts all kinds of travel videos, including user uploads, professional content, and tourist board videos. "

TravelerVideos. "Claims to be the internet’s largest human indexed traveler video directory."

Many more sites are linked from the original article, which is worth reading in full.

These sites and others like them are excellent research tools for the home-based travel agent. They will let you talk with a certain "been-there-done-that" assurance that you otherwise might not be able to summon up.

But be careful! The usual caveats about the reliability of what you read on the Internet apply. Glowing reviews can be posted by "sock puppets" for the property in questions. Likewise, slams can be the work of competitors.

Of course, video doesn't lie.

Or can it?