Tracking Your Business Listings Activity

If you have a Business Listing, you’ve made it much easier for travelers to get in touch with you directly and book. But which points of contact perform best for your property?  Tracking your Business Listing activity is a critical part of making the most of your subscription. Knowing which channels generate the most contacts or what Special Offers resonate best with guests allows you to make small adjustments that make a big difference.

The first way to track your Business Listings activity, as well as your property’s overall TripAdvisor performance, is with the Property Dashboard in the Management Center. This dashboard is available exclusively to Business Listings subscribers and shows market trends, competitor metrics and more. You can use this information to develop and execute more effective strategies for your property. Check out this tip sheet for the 5 things you should monitor each week in the dashboard.

To further evaluate your Business Listings Activity, track each piece of contact information that’s included:

• Link Activity: Use Google Analytics to track all incoming traffic to your website, including referrals from TripAdvisor. You can also track conversions and measure the sales revenue that’s attributed to your Business Listings.
• Telephone Activity: Work with a third party company to track calls to the number included on your listing (for a fee). You can also track phone activity for free by systematically asking all callers where they found your number and recording the results.
• Email Activity: Set up a unique email address for use on TripAdvisor to track how many people are contacting you via that channel.
• Special Offer Activity: Try driving clicks to a unique page on your website. You can then use Google Analytics to track how many people visited that page. Alternatively, you can associate a unique voucher code with the offer on TripAdvisor and require it at the time of booking. Then, you can count how many times the code was used.

Need more help? Check out our guide for more details and instructions.

2013 Certificate of Excellence winners share the news

The 2013 Certificate of Excellence Award winners have been announced. And properties across the world, of all sizes, are celebrating the thrill of victory!

From intimate B&B’s…

To upscale resorts…

From high above the earth…

Back at sea level…

…and below the surface.

From casual eateries…

To luxurious restaurants…

Businesses everywhere are sharing their news.

Congratulations to the 2013 Certificate of Excellence Award Winners. Go ahead and celebrate – you’ve earned it!

Winners can download a Certificate of Excellence Award widget for their websites at www.tripadvisor.com/widgets

Are you following mobile website best practices? (part 1)

These days, 51% of mobile web users research travel options using smartphones or tablets.*

Want to encourage more bookings? Follow the best practices that other hoteliers are adhering to on their mobile sites. For instance, Thompson Hotels’ mobile site meets the unique needs of travelers using a smaller handheld device instead of a computer screen and fingers and thumbs instead of a mouse.

And that means an easier to use – and likely more profitable – mobile website for Thompson Hotels.

To get the same results, start by optimizing your mobile homepage.

1. Consistent branding
Big (but not too big) “Thompson Hotels” reinforces you’re in the right place. Subtle background carries through branding elements from desktop site.

2. Big navigation
Primary navigation is pared down to key actions mobile users are interested in, and the big text and links are easy to tap, even with a thumb. Secondary navigation at the bottom provides access to Thompson Hotels’ Twitter and Facebook pages.

3. Essentials only
Eliminate distraction to encourage conversion. The rotating slideshow of images from the desktop homepage? Removed to save room and minimize page load time. The 20-word “about us” description is gone.

And while Thompson Hotels chose to move the booking form to its own internal page for mobile, some hoteliers prefer a homepage that prominently features the form. What you make the focus of your homepage is up to you, based on your property’s approach to web design, goals and branding.

Now that you know these tips…
If you have a mobile homepage, how does yours compare and what could you do differently now? If you don’t have a mobile site yet, what are the three to five key actions you want users to focus on right away?

Next week we’ll share more mobile best practices when it comes to your most important internal page: the reservation/availability form.

In the meantime, for more on mobile websites, check out Mobile Marketing: How to Get Your Share of $8 Billion in Mobile Bookings and 12 Tips for Boosting Bookings on Mobile.

*PhoCusWright, Traveler Technology Survey (December, 2012)

Certificate of Excellence: By the numbers

As you can imagine, a lot of work goes into determining Certificate of Excellence winners. We examined the data and wanted to share some facts around this year’s group of proud recipients.

For instance, did you know that the biggest property to win a Certificate of Excellence has over 6,000 rooms?

Here’s some more 2013 Certificate of Excellence trivia we thought you might be interested in:

First country (alphabetically) with winners: Albania (22 winners)

Last country (alphabetically) with winners: Zimbabwe (42 winners)

Winners by business type:

• Accommodations: 40%
• Restaurants to win: 50%
• Attractions to win: 10%

New winners this year: 49%

Repeat winners this year: 51%

Smallest property to win: Tie between approximately 300 properties with 1 room

Biggest property to win: LK Renaissance in Pattaya, Thailand with 6,044 rooms

Smallest country with a winner: Monaco

Congratulations to this year’s winners, and best of luck to your property for 2014! To help increase your chances for next year, check out our tip sheet How to Earn TripAdvisor Awards.

Indian property “growing day by day” with TripAdvisor presence

The Singh family owns two small properties in Jaipur, India – one with 25 rooms, and one with just 10.  They’ve found big success on TripAdvisor with both, though, earning Travellers’ Choice Hotels for each location in 2013.  Through their exposure on the site, their business has also steadily grown.  Hear how they’ve parlayed their TripAdvisor presence into industry success:

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Top Tips for Review Express Success

We recently launched a shiny new tool to help you collect feedback from past guests. With Review Express, you can create review reminder emails in just minutes – and it’s free to use!

This post includes some of our favorite tips for powering up your Review Express strategy. Try them out today:

-        Ask for guest email addresses: Avoid sending email to the wrong place by keeping your records up to date and accurate.

-        Send emails regularly: Ask guests for their feedback within a few days – while your amazing service is fresh in their minds.

-        Set expectations: Let guests know you’ll be sending an email to collect their feedback, and that you would really value their input.

-        Test, test, test: Try something new each time you use Review Express: a different subject line, image, or “from” address could change your results.

Can’t get enough? Check out all ten tips.

Visit www.tripadvisor.com/ReviewExpress to use these tips or check out our handy step-by-step video guide to learn more.

Mobile spotlight: User feedback improves Starwood’s app

Listening to traveler feedback isn’t just for your client-facing staff. It’s also a great way to improve your mobile marketing channels.

Just ask Starwood, who recently updated their SPG: Starwood Hotels & Resorts iPhone app (and launched a new Android app) based on what users requested.

New feature: You can securely store your credit card info.
How that helps users: Easier checkout. No more typing in that long credit card number, especially annoying on a phone.

New feature: You can store your corporate SET account number.
How that helps users: Easier checkout, just like above.

New feature: Multiple rates are displayed on one screen.
How that helps users: More convenience when deciding which option to choose.

Here’s what some actual users have to say about the updated iPhone app:

“Been waiting for some of the updates in this release. Nice job.” – Eyeedea

“Finally!! I have been waiting for this update which stores both the [credit card] and [corporate account] #.” – Clarence M.

With 4.5 stars on the App Store and 4.5 stars on Google Play, it looks like travelers are pretty happy with Starwood’s mobile app. So if you’re thinking about developing an app, or already have one, remember that apps are a long-term commitment. Listen to your users, dedicate the resources needed to make improvements and you’ll win over some of your most frequent and valuable guests.