PDF for Marketing Hospitality

Sell All Rooms, Everyday! AN EXTRAORDINARY BOOK to enhance your Hotel success through Website Design, Internet Marketing & Social Media Optimization

Jigna Patel & Priti Patel

About The Author

Jigna Patel is an Internet Hotel Marketing veteran with over 3 years experience in successfully consulting global hoteliers on implementing effective

Internet

Marketing

strategy.

Jigna’s

passion

is

to

enable

independent and franchise hotel owners to use the power of Internet and Search Engines and win the Internet Marketing Game. She works with missionary zeal on educating Hoteliers and Small business owners on harnessing the power of their website. She has done her graduate studies in Commerce and Business Management from University of Mumbai. Priti Patel is a creative artist gifted with special skills to create attractive and result-oriented websites. Priti artistically blends her natural creative talent with her proven expertise on technology to create stunning websites. Her work has built the brand equity of many independent and franchise hotels. She enables even a small hotel owner to get a website that will compete with luxury hotel. Her passion is to put the advances in technology to the service of small business owners. She has completed her graduate studies in Commerce and Business Management from University of Mumbai.

Feedback

CGS Infotech SEO Service has substantially increased hit and helped godrej to sell its projects. – “Business India” CGS Infotech offers Indian trade & Industry an unique opportunity to be successful. – “Daily News & Analysis (DNA)” We found that CGS provides reliability & consistency. This is reflected in the proactive & creative input that we receive from your team. – “Jasubhai Digital Media Group. Digit Magazine”

“This is to let you know that we, at HDFC Realty, are satisfied with the services rendered by you.” – Amit Joshi – HDFC Realty Mumbai, India. “They have done a great job, their design and development team is fast, efficient, and quality is outstanding.” – Dennis Patel – General Manager Best Western, Minden, LA, USA. “I have recommended their services to all my relatives and friends and everyone has appreciated my suggestion.” – Anil Patel. – Rodeway Inn. CA, USA. “I am happy with your company. Your company has achieved significant success in designing and promoting website for hotel owners.” – Bhagubhai Patel – President, Surti Leuva Patidar Samaj of SC, USA.

Also By Jigna & Priti Patel

The Art & Science of SEO Link Building Google Adwords – Goldmine or Death Trap Email Marketing – Turn 1 Dollar into 57 Dollar

Book Title

Sell All Rooms, Everyday!

AN EXTRAORDINARY BOOK to enhance your Hotel success through Website Design, Internet Marketing & Social Media Optimization

Copyright Notice

The right of Jigna Patel & Priti Patel to be identified as the Editor of the work has been asserted by them in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 2008

Acknowledgement

The project of this nature is possible only with the help of dedicated team. So many people influenced this book that it would be impossible to mention them all. We would like to mention the names of all the people who took this journey with us. First of all I wish to acknowledge our mentor Ms. Anjali Gandhi for her detailed and painstaking review of the book and making important changes. We want to express of gratitude to Ms. Hema Rathod for her precision and accuracy in co-ordinating with difference agencies for the successful publication of this book. We want to thank Mr. Sharad Bhatt for his creative work in designing the cover-page and type-setting expertise. We appreciate the extraordinary commitment of Santosh, Sarveshji, Jiteshji, Jayesh Gajjar & Radhika is providing strong support in creating this book. Finally, we want to thank over thousands of global clients who gave us the extraordinary opportunity to work on their businesses. It has been truly an experience of profound honor to create a new level of success for so many companies around the world. We want to thank all staff members of CGS Infotech for its empowerment and inspiration.

- Jigna Patel & Priti Patel.

Dedication

This book is dedicated to every Hotelier with a big dream and strong commitment to grow in the hospitality industry.

Sell All Your Rooms, Everyday! Contents 1.

Introduction to Website Design

2.

Key Issues in Website Design 2.1 Multidisciplinary Requirements 2.2 Flash 2.3 CSS Versus Tables 2.4 How it Looks vs. How it Works 2.5 Accessible Web Design

3.

Website Planning 3.1 Purpose 3.2 Audience 3.3 Content 3.4 Compatibility and Restrictions

4.

Search Engine Optimization 4.1 What is online marketing? 4.2 What is Search Engine Optimization? 4.3 What is dynamic optimization? 4.4 What is link popularity? 4.5 Why should you consider internet marketing? 4.6 How do search engines work? 4.7 Additional Suggestions & Ideas

5.

Pay Per Click

6.

Hotel Keyword Research for SEO & PPC

7.

Hotel Link Building for SEO 7.1 Why Search Engines Measure Links 7.2 An Introduction To Link Building 7.3 Why Build Links? 7.4 How Do Search Engines Measure Link Quality? 7.5 Searching the Engines for High-Quality Links 7.6 Competitive Link Research 7.7 The Art & Science of Direct Link Acquisition

8.

Travel Technology – An Introduction 8.1 Online Hotel Reservation 8.2 Global Distribution Systems 8.3 Hotel Technology Next Generation

9.

Travel Reviews

10.

Social Media Optimization

11. Hotel Online Success Tools 11.1 Permission Email Marketing 11.2 RSS and Blogs 11.3 Online Directories for Bed and Breakfasts 11.4 Local Searches - Why, What, How 12.

Offline Hotel Marketing

13.

Hotel Brand Management

14.

Hotel Management & Guest Service

Annexure-1: 15.

Overview of Hotel Industry

16.

Corporate Information – Choice Hotel

17.

Corporate Information – Best Western

18.

Corporate Information – Wyndham Worldwide

19.

Corporate Information – Intercontinental Hotels Group

20.

Corporate Information – Marriott International

21.

Corporate Information – Hilton Hotels Corporation

22.

Corporate Information – Expedia.com

23.

Corporate Information – Travelocity.com

24.

Corporate Information – Orbitz.com

25.

Corporate Information – Hotels.com

26.

Corporate Information – Tripadvisor.com

27.

Corporate Information – Priceline.com

28.

Introduction to CGS Infotech Inc.

29.

Smart-SELL Package

30.

Contact Us

1. Introduction to Website Design Web design is a process of conceptualization, planning, modeling, and execution of electronic media content delivery via Internet in the form of Markup language suitable for interpretation by Web browser and display as Graphical user interface (GUI). The intent of web design is to create a web site -- a collection of electronic files that reside on a web server/servers and present content and interactive features/interfaces to the end user in form of Web pages once requested. Such elements as text, bit-mapped images (GIFs, JPEGs, PNGs), forms can be placed on the page using HTML/XHTML/XML tags. Displaying more complex media (vector graphics, animations, videos, sounds) requires plug-ins such as Flash, QuickTime, Java run-time environment, etc. Plug-ins are also embedded into web page by using HTML/XHTML tags. Improvements in browsers' compliance with W3C standards prompted a widespread acceptance and usage of XHTML/XML in conjunction with Cascading Style Sheets (CSS) to position and manipulate web page elements and objects. Latest standards and proposals aim at leading to browsers' ability to deliver a wide variety of media and accessibility options to the client possibly without employing plug-ins. Typically web pages are classified as static or dynamic. Static pages don’t change content and layout with every request unless a human (web master/programmer) manually updates the page. Dynamic pages adapt their content and/or appearance depending on enduser’s input/interaction or changes in the computing environment (user, time, database modifications, etc.) Content can be changed on the client side

(end-user's

computer)

by

using

client-side

scripting

languages

(JavaScript, JScript, Actionscript, etc.) to alter DOM elements (DHTML).

Dynamic content is often compiled on the server utilizing server-side scripting languages (ASP, JSP, Perl, PHP, Python, etc.). Both approaches are usually used in complex applications. With growing specialization within communication design and information technology fields, there is a strong tendency to draw a clear line between web design specifically for web pages and web development for the overall logistics of all web-based services.

2. Key Issues in Website Design A Web site is a collection of information about a particular topic or subject. Designing a website is defined as the arrangement and creation of Web pages that in turn make up a website. A Web page consists of information for which the Web site is developed. A website might be compared to a book, where each page of the book is a web page. There are many aspects (design concerns) in this process, and due to the rapid development of the Internet, new aspects may emerge. For typical commercial Web sites, the basic aspects of design are:  The content: The substance, and information on the site should be relevant to the site and should target the area of the public that the website is concerned with.  The usability: The site should be user-friendly, with the interface and navigation simple and reliable.  The appearance: The graphics and text should include a single style that flows throughout, to show consistency. The style should be professional, appealing and relevant.  The visibility: The site must also be easy to find via most, if not all, major search engines and advertisement media. A Web site typically consists of text and images. The first page of a website is known as the Home page or Index. Some websites use what is commonly called a Splash Page. Splash pages might include a welcome message, language/region selection, or disclaimer. Each web page within a Web site is an HTML file which has its own URL. After each Web page is created, they are typically linked together using a navigation menu composed of hyperlinks. Faster browsing speeds have led to shorter attention spans and more

demanding online visitors and this has resulted in less use of Splash Pages, particularly where commercial websites are concerned. Once a Web site is completed, it must be published or uploaded in order to be viewable to the public over the internet. This may be done using an FTP client. Once published, the Web master may use a variety of techniques to increase the traffic, or hits, that the website receives. This may include submitting the Web site to a search engine such as Google or Yahoo, exchanging links with other Web sites, creating affiliations with similar Web sites, etc. 2.1

Multidisciplinary Requirements

Web site design crosses multiple disciplines of information systems, information technology and communication design. The website is an information system whose components are sometimes classified as front-end and back-end. The observable content (e.g page layout, user interface, graphics, text, audio) is known as the front-end. The back-end comprises the organization and efficiency of the source code, invisible scripted functions, and the server-side components that process the output from the front-end. Depending on the size of a Web development project, it may be carried out by a multi-skilled individual (sometimes called a web master), or a project manager may oversee collaborative design between group members with specialized skills.

2.2

Flash

Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash) is a proprietary, robust graphics animation/application development program used to create and deliver dynamic content, media (such as sound and video), and interactive applications over the web via the browser. Flash is not a standard produced by a vendor-neutral standards organization like most of the core protocols and formats on the Internet. Flash is much more restrictive than the open HTML format, though, requiring a proprietary plugin to be seen, and it does not integrate with most web browser UI features like the "Back" button unless a hyperlink is programmed to link a new html page from the Flash file, in which case the animation of the previous page would reset. However, those restrictions may be irrelevant depending on the goals of the web site design. According to a study,[2] 98% of US Web users have the Flash Player installed,[3] with 45%-56% (depending on region) having the latest version.[4] Numbers vary depending on the detection scheme and research demographics.[5] Many graphic artists use Flash because it gives them exact control over every part of the design, and anything can be animated and generally "jazzed up". Some application designers enjoy Flash because it lets them create applications that do not have to be refreshed or go to a new web page every time an action occurs. Flash can use embedded fonts instead of the standard fonts installed on most computers. There are many sites which forgo HTML entirely for Flash. Other sites may use Flash content combined with HTML as conservatively as gifs or jpegs would be used, but with smaller vector file sizes and the option of faster loading animations.

Flash

may

also

be

used

to

protect

content

from

unauthorized duplication or searching. Alternatively, small, dynamic

Flash objects may be used to replace standard HTML elements (such as headers or menu links) with advanced typography not possible via regular HTML/CSS (see Scalable Inman Flash Replacement). Flash detractors claim that Flash websites tend to be poorly designed, and often use confusing and non-standard user-interfaces. Up until recently, search engines have been unable to index Flash objects, which have prevented sites from having their contents easily found. This is because many search engine crawlers rely on text to index websites. It is possible to specify alternate content to be displayed for browsers that do not support Flash. Using alternate content also helps search engines to understand the page, and can result in much better visibility for the page. However, the vast majority of Flash websites are not disability accessible (for screen readers, for example) or Section 508 compliant. An additional issue is that sites which commonly use alternate content for search engines to their human visitors are usually judged to be spamming search engines and are automatically banned. The most recent incarnation of Flash's scripting language (called "ActionScript", which is an ECMA language similar to JavaScript) incorporates long-awaited usability features, such as respecting the browser's font size and allowing blind users to use screen readers. Actionscript 2.0 is an Object-Oriented language, allowing the use of CSS, XML, and the design of class-based web applications.

2.3

CSS Versus Tables

Back when Netscape Navigator 4 dominated the browser market, the popular solution available for designers to lay out a Web page was by using tables. Often even simple designs for a page would require dozens of tables nested in each other. Many web templates in Dreamweaver and other WYSIWYG editors still use this technique today. Navigator 4 didn't support CSS to a useful degree, so it simply wasn't used. After the browser wars subsided, and the dominant browsers such as Internet Explorer became more W3C compliant, designers started turning toward CSS as an alternate means of laying out their pages. CSS proponents say that tables should be used only for tabular data, not for layout. Using CSS instead of tables also returns HTML to a semantic markup, which helps bots and search engines understand what's going on in a web page. All modern Web browsers support CSS with different degrees of limitations. However, one of the main points against CSS is that by relying on it exclusively, control is essentially relinquished as each browser has its own quirks which result in a slightly different page display. This is especially a problem as not every browser supports the same subset of CSS rules. For designers who are used to table-based layouts, developing Web sites in CSS often becomes a matter of trying to replicate what can be done with tables, leading some to find CSS design rather cumbersome due to lack of familiarity. For example, at one time it was rather difficult to produce certain design elements, such as vertical positioning, and full-length footers in a design using absolute positions. With the abundance of CSS resources available online today, though, designing with reasonable adherence to standards involves little more than applying CSS 2.1 or CSS 3 to properly structured markup.

These days most modern browsers have solved most of these quirks in CSS rendering and this has made many different CSS layouts possible. However, some people continue to use old browsers, and designers need to keep this in mind, and allow for graceful degrading of pages in older browsers. Most notable among these old browsers are Internet Explorer 5 and 5.5, which, according to some web designers, are becoming the new Netscape Navigator 4 — a block that holds the World Wide Web back from converting to CSS design. However, the W3 Consortium has made CSS in combination with XHTML the standard for web design.

2.4

How it Looks vs. How it Works

Some web developers have a graphic arts background and may pay more attention to how a page looks than considering other issues such as how visitors are going to find the page via a search engine. Some might rely more on advertising than search engines to attract visitors to the site. On the other side of the issue, search engine optimization consultants (SEOs) are concerned with how well a web site works technically and textually: how much traffic it generates via search engines, and how many sales it makes, assuming looks don't contribute to the sales. As a result, the designers and SEOs often end up in disputes where the designer wants more 'pretty' graphics, and the SEO wants lots of 'ugly' keyword-rich text, bullet lists, and text links. One could argue that this is a false dichotomy due to the possibility that a web design may integrate the two disciplines for a collaborative and synergistic solution. Because some graphics serve communication purposes in addition to aesthetics, how well a site works may depend on the graphic designer's visual communication ideas as well as the SEO considerations. Another problem when using lots of graphics on a page is that download times can be greatly lengthened, often irritating the user. This has become less of a problem as the internet has evolved with high-speed internet and the use of vector graphics. This is an engineering challenge to increase bandwidth in addition to an artistic challenge to minimize graphics and graphic file sizes. This is an on-going challenge as increased bandwidth invites increased amounts of content.

2.5

Accessible Web Design

To be accessible, web pages and sites must conform to certain accessibility principles. These can be grouped into the following main areas:

 Use semantic markup that provides a meaningful structure to the document (i.e. web page). Semantic markup also refers to semantically organizing the web page structure and publishing web services description accordingly so that they can be recognized by other web services on different web pages. Standards for semantic web are set by IEEE  Use a valid markup language that conforms to a published DTD or Schema provide text equivalents for any non-text components (e.g. images, multimedia)  Use hyperlinks that make sense when read out of context. (e.g. avoid "Click Here.") don't use frames  Use CSS rather than HTML Tables for layout.  Author the page so that when the source code is read line-by-line by user agents (such as a screen readers) it remains intelligible. (Using tables for design will often result in information that is not.) However, W3C permits an exception where tables for layout either make sense when linearized or an alternate version (perhaps linearized) is made available.

3. Website Planning Before creating and uploading a website, it is important to take the time to plan exactly what is needed in the website. Thoroughly considering the audience or target market, as well as defining the purpose and deciding what content will be developed are extremely important. 3.1

Purpose

It is essential to define the purpose of the website as one of the first steps in the planning process. A purpose statement should show focus based on what the website will accomplish and what the users will get from it. A clearly defined purpose will help the rest of the planning process as the audience is identified and the content of the site is developed. Setting short and long term goals for the website will help make the purpose clear and plan for the future when expansion, modification, and improvement will take place. Also, goal-setting practices and measurable objectives should be identified to track the progress of the site and determine success. 3.2

Audience

Defining the audience is a key step in the website planning process. The audience is the group of people who are expected to visit your website – the market being targeted. These people will be viewing the website for a specific reason and it is important to know exactly what they are looking for when they visit the site. A clearly defined purpose or goal of the site as well as an understanding of what visitors want to do/feel when they come to your site will help to identify the target audience. Upon considering who is most likely to need/use the content, a list of characteristics common to the users such as:  Audience Characteristics  Information Preferences  Computer Specifications

 Web Experience Taking into account the characteristics of the audience will allow an effective website to be created that will deliver the desired content to the target audience.

3.3

Content

Content evaluation and organization requires that the purpose of the website be clearly defined. Collecting a list of the necessary content then organizing it according to the audience's needs is a key step in website planning. In the process of gathering the content being offered, any items that do not support the defined purpose or accomplish target audience objectives should be removed. It is a good idea to test the content and purpose on a focus group and compare the offerings to the audience needs. The next step is to organize the basic information structure by categorizing the content and organizing it according to user needs. Each category should be named with a concise and descriptive title that will become a link on the website. Planning for the site's content ensures that the wants/needs of the target audience and the purpose of the site will be fulfilled. 3.4

Compatibility and restrictions

Because of the market share of modern browsers (depending on your target market), the compatibility of your website with the viewers is restricted. For instance, a website that is designed for the majority of websurfers will be limited to the use of valid XHTML 1.0 Strict or older, Cascading Style Sheets Level 1, and 1024x768 display resolution. This is because Internet Explorer is not fully W3C standards compliant with the modularity of XHTML 1.1 and the majority of CSS beyond 1. A target market of more alternative browser (e.g. Firefox and Opera) users allow for more W3C compliance and thus a greater range of options for a web designer. Another restriction on webpage design is the use of different Image file formats. The majority of users can support GIF, JPEG, and PNG (with restrictions). Again Internet Explorer is the major restriction here, not fully supporting PNG's advanced transparency features, resulting in the GIF format still being the most widely used graphic file format for transparent images.

Many website incompatibilities go unnoticed by the designer and unreported by the users. The only way to be certain a website will work on a particular platform is to test it on that platform.

4. Search Engine Optimization 4.1

What is online marketing?

Online marketing, also referred to as Internet Marketing or Emarketing, is the marketing of products or services over the Internet. The interactive nature of Internet marketing, both in terms of instant response, and in eliciting response, are unique qualities of the medium. Google alone has over 3 billion websites and making sure that visitors find your site is a tough challenge. Competition is fierce for the top listings, yet without regular visitors your site might as well not exist. Finding the right Internet Marketing partner is essential for the success of your website, and for this having an effective online marketing strategy is essential for every business. If you need answers to the following questions, you need CGS …  Why do some websites rank more highly than others?  Why isn’t my website ranking on the search engines?  Which search engines should I target?  What key-words/phrases are my potential customers searching for?  How do I avoid banned techniques that could get my site blacklisted?  Should I be using Search Engine Optimization, Pay-per-Click advertising, or both?

4.2

What is Search Engine Optimization?

Search Engine Optimization (SEO) is a strategic combination of techniques designed to raise a website’s ranking in the search engines’ natural listings. In other words SEO is the process of increasing the amount of visitors to a Web site by ranking high in the search results of a search engine. The higher a Web site ranks in the results of a search, the greater the chance that that site will be visited by a user. These techniques need to be continually revised and refined as the main search engines regularly update their ranking criteria. To ensure your site ranks as highly as possible, CGS will perform a combination of the following SEO procedures: Website Audit : The site will go through a thorough SEO review. Here, skilled SEO experts will analyze the website, identify areas which could be improved in order to increase traffic and make recommendations for changes to content, code and any other issues that may affect the site’s performance. Competitor Analysis : This offering includes study of the on page and off page optimization factors of the competitor’s website to help in knowing how the competitor is faring on the search engines. (If specified by the client) It also helps in identifying the phrases which the competitor’s are targeting. This will help you finalize your preference of key phrases and reach the target set for Search Engine Marketing purposes. Key Phrase Identification : Key Phrase is combination of keywords. One key phrase may contain up to five key words. Using our powerful research tools CGS analyses your suggested key phrases to identify the levels of traffic and competitiveness. Based on this research you can then decide on a set of key phrases that will bring your site more awareness. CGS will thoroughly research key phrases for relevancy and competitiveness in order to settle on a target set that will bring in relevant traffic to the site.

Making the site search engine friendly : Search Engines live and die by their ability to produce relevant results for their users. By employing specific guidelines they crawl through their huge databases of sites to identify the websites that are most relevant to the searcher’s key phrases. A combination of the following procedures are undertaken to optimize your website: 1. CONTENT OPTIMIZATION Content optimization is the modification and reorganization of site content in a way that makes it more accessible and better represented to the World Wide Web, search engines and users. Skilled SEO content writers at CGS optimize your website’s content to enhance the keyword density on the pages that need it. 2. SITE-MAP UPDATE / CREATION Site maps act as the roadmap of your website for search engine crawlers. The more of your website a search engine can see the better chance you have of ranking higher in a search result for a certain topic. A full text based site map is crucial in making the site search engine friendly. 3. TAGGING CGS creates the Title, Keyword and Description tags for individual page of your site based on the package you have opted for. This means we can target different key phrases for different pages and increase the levels of traffic from a greater range of key phrases. (Higher the package you go for better is the ranking.) 4. ADDITIONAL NAVIGATION BAR Ideally, we should give the spider as many ways of reaching a page as possible – a couple of navigation bars, links from images, links from content, etc. This increases the chances of a page being reviewed and indexed. The easier and more convenient it is for search engines to get in and scan your website, the more traffic they are going to deliver to your website. The pages

that are to be promoted need to offer more entry points to spiders to ensure that these pages get indexed. The target pages should link to all the pages of your site. This can be achieved simply by implementation of a textual navigation bar (at the bottom of each page). 5. HTML CODING VALIDATION & CORRECTION Search engine crawlers prefer W3C standards with respect to HTML coding standards. If a website has been made on the basis of the W3C standard, it positively influences the search engine rankings especially in MSN. 6. ROBOTS.TXT Search engines will look in your root domain for a special file named "robots.txt" (http://www.abc.com/robots.txt). The file tells the robot (spider) which files it may spider (download). This system is called, The Robots Exclusion Standard. 7. IMAGE OPTIMIZATION All websites should comply with W3C standards (http://www.w3.org) and regulations for making sites accessible for people with hearing, motor or visual disabilities. In order for websites to be accessible, every image on the page should have an ALT tag that describes the image exactly, and also repeats any text that is in that image. 8. INBOUND LINKS Ideally, we should give the spider as many ways of reaching a page as possible. One of the ways this can be done is by giving links from content. 9. GOOGLE SITE MAP Google Sitemaps is to inform and direct Google search crawlers to the website pages. Webmasters can place a Sitemap-formatted file on their Web

server which enables Google crawlers to find out what pages are present and which have recently changed, and to crawl your site accordingly. Website Statistics : Website Statistics is a unique feature in our services, which entails the use of statistics to identify and highlight the trends in the Internet traffic with reference to your site. This encompasses details of the number of users, the frequency of the web pages visited and sessions, browser details and the likes. Users can define and track conversions, or goals. Goals might include sales, lead generation, viewing a specific page, or downloading a particular file. There are currently over 80 distinct reports, each customizable to some degree. It also offers three dashboard views of data Executive, Marketer, and Webmaster. It also provides some more advanced features, including visitor segmentation and custom fields. Primarily, the system lays stress on illustrative graphical representations for all sections to enhance comprehensibility of the statistics. Manual submissions The most commonly used search engine is Google, however it is important not to ignore other search engines such as Yahoo, AOL, MSN and Ask Jeeves. By manually submitting your web pages to all the major search engines we make sure that the pages are properly indexed and stand the best possible chance of reaching the top of the rankings.

Link popularity Most of the top search engines use link popularity in their ranking algorithms. Google uses it as one of its most important factors in ranking sites. Increasing the amount of quality inbound links to your site makes your site appear more important and more relevant to the search engines, resulting in a higher Page Rank and higher positions. CGS helps increase the link popularity of your website. CGS has its own popular portals and tradedirectories. Other option is by approaching webmasters of other high ranking popular sites, and trading links with them. CGS offers ONE WAY LINKING for the website. Under ONE WAY LINKING, the website is submitted in relevant category and directory having good PageRank. ONE WAY LINKING covers the following: • Directory Submission • Creation of Blogs and submitting in relevant blog websites Maintenance Ongoing improvements to existing key phrases in response to changes in search engine technologies, new techniques and increased competition for listings. How Search Engines Operate ======================================= Search engines have a short list of critical operations that allows them to provide relevant web results when searchers use their system to find information. 1.

Crawling the Web

Search engines run automated programs, called "bots" or "spiders" that use the hyperlink structure of the web to "crawl" the pages and documents that

make up the World Wide Web. Estimates are that of the approximately 20 billion existing pages, search engines have crawled between 8 and 10 billion. 2.

Indexing Documents

Once a page has been crawled, it's contents can be "indexed" - stored in a giant database of documents that makes up a search engine's "index". This index needs to be tightly managed, so that requests which must search and sort billions of documents can be completed in fractions of a second. 3.

Processing Queries

When a request for information comes into the search engine (hundreds of millions do each day), the engine retrieves from its index all the document that match the query. A match is determined if the terms or phrase is found on the page in the manner specified by the user. For example, a search for car and driver magazine at Google returns 8.25 million results, but a search for the same phrase in quotes ("car and driver magazine") returns only 166 thousand results. In the first system, commonly called "Findall" mode, Google returned all documents which had the terms "car" "driver" and "magazine" (they ignore the term "and" because it's not useful to narrowing the results), while in the second search, only those pages with the exact phrase "car and driver magazine" were returned. Other advanced operators (Google has a list of 11) can change which results a search engine will consider a match for a given query. 4.

Ranking Results

Once the search engine has determined which results are a match for the query, the engine's algorithm (a mathematical equation commonly used for sorting) runs calculations on each of the results to determine which is most relevant to the given query. They sort these on the results pages in order from most relevant to least so that users can make a choice about which to select.

4.3

What is dynamic optimization?

The obvious goal of any e-commerce or dynamic database driven site is to make sales as well as get properly listed on the search engines also. The technical oxymoron, however, is that as soon as an ecommerce element or a dynamic database driven module, or shopping cart is added, a Website ceases to be search engine friendly, putting an end to all hopes of search engine listings, ranks, traffic and, therefore, sales! CGS offers a never-before solution to this vicious circle. We have engineered a technology so that database-driven Websites become search engine friendly and soar up the ranking ladder! What is Dynamic Content? Dynamic content is information that is delivered to the Web browser in a different form from that which exists on the server. It is usually pulled from a database and created on a single template, on the fly at the server level through CGI programming, ASP, PHP, JSP etc or by any customized content management system. Solutions Offered by CGS The solution we offer for optimization of Dynamic Content is unique in the sense that it does not require any changes to your site’s functioning and yet, ensures you leverage against the SEO advantages of Static websites. Your site will continue to function internally with database-driven content while the URLs begin to look like a search engine friendly URL.

4.4

What is link popularity?

Link Popularity is basically a measure of the number and quality of inbound links to your website. It refers to the total number of links or "votes" that a search engine has found for your website. It is one of the best ways to measure a website's online awareness and overall visibility. Coming on top of search engine is like a winning a democratic election in USA or UK. There are many parties, candidates trying to be on top. But, the party or candidate that gets the maximum votes wins the election. Similarly the web page that gets maximum VOTES or Links wins the Internet Game and gets listed at top. That's the straightforward explanation - it's actually a little more complicated than that. Search engines will also look at the quality and ranking of the sites that link to yours… in addition to other factors. (In some instances, they'll even look at the words being used to provide the link.) Some Search engines use this assessment when determining rank and positioning. One very important search engine that has placed a great deal of emphasis upon link popularity is Google. This excellent search engine uses what it calls PageRank as an indicator of a page's value. PageRank relies on the uniquely democratic nature of the web by using its vast link structure as an indicator of an individual page's value. In essence, Google interprets a link from page A to page B as a vote, by page A, for page B. But, Google looks at more than the sheer volume of votes, or links a page receives; it also analyzes the page that casts the vote. Votes cast by pages that are themselves "important" weigh more heavily and help to make other pages "important." Without a good Google PageRank, you are unlikely to appear high in Google search results. And, since Google is such an important search engine, it's essential that you strive for a site with good link popularity if you're looking

to attract visitors. Some of the other leading search engines which use link popularity criteria are AltaVista, Excite and HotBot. CGS offers ONE WAY LINKING for the website. Under ONE WAY LINKING, the website is submitted in relevant category and directory having good PageRank. ONE WAY LINKING covers the following: • Directory Submission • Creation of Blogs and submitting in relevant blog websites

4.5

Why should you consider internet marketing?

Marketing online is more effective than traditional marketing and costs less! Consider these facts: 1. Over 60% of all first time visits to a Web site occur as the result of a search! Search engine marketing, getting your Web site at or close to the top of search engine returns, is therefore the single most effective marketing that a company can do. 2. These visitors are pre-qualified leads to your business! Even more important than the amount of traffic received is the quality of traffic - the visitors that arrive as the result of a search are pre-qualified. They are already looking for the products and services your company offers. 3. Contextual Internet advertising costs pennies and returns dollars. That's why "pay-per click" advertising, advertising that presents itself as a search result, is now bigger than banner ads! Search

Engine

Marketing

has

a

higher

ROI

than

Traditional

Marketing A report indicates that the most popular websites deliver audiences that are larger than the audiences delivered by the average episode of the most popular prime time TV shows and are often comparable in size to the most popular consumer magazines audiences. SEM is something even better than traditional advertising because most advertising is interruption advertising. While the interruption model is widely used and does work offline, online users want the info without the ads. Search engine marketing is very effective as a non-interruption information source. Research shows that Internet users expect the Web to be the

provider of answers to simple queries, and they do not want to sift through advertising to get what they want. SEM is more commonly viewed akin to traditional public relations because the "advertising" is the content that the audience came for. A search engine listing is more like a referral because the end user is asking a trusted source for an answer. The answer is the search result. Another clear advantage is that SEM evens out the playing field for savvy marketers to compete with established brands and household names. This is because SE position is not based on the size of your company or annual revenues. It's based on the depth of your content. You don’t have to match your bigger competitors advertising $ for $ because SEM is proven to have the lowest cost of acquisition of any advertising vehicle. It provides a very high return on investment (ROI) because of its high conversion ratio of visitors to buyers and its relatively low cost per lead. This chart proves that you can get just as much advertising mileage out of SE for a fraction of the price of direct mail or even banners.

4.6

How do search engines work?

A search engine is a giant database of internet sites and pages. A search for the keyword ‘Monopoly’ on Google will search their entire database and return a list of websites that mention ‘Monopoly’ in order of relevance. A search engine such as Google will judge a site’s relevance according to a wide combination of criteria. CGS uses extensive and detailed knowledge of these criteria to optimize your website to become as relevant as possible. The majority of internet search engines (Google included) use automated software ‘spiders’ to collect sites for their listings. Search engine ‘spiders’ crawl the internet looking for websites that meet their criteria for inclusion in their databases. The Yahoo! Directory differs from the majority of search engines in that a member of the Yahoo submissions team checks all websites that are submitted before they can be included.

4.7

Additional Suggestions & Ideas

Pay Per Click Advertising Pay-per-click advertising is a form of online marketing where you (the advertiser) pay a fee every time your online ad is clicked on by a browser. You can bid on keywords/phrases that are relevant to your business, and when the browser searches for your keyword, your advert is displayed. Your pay-per click account is only charged when the visitor clicks on your advert, and the amount paid for each click is set by you, and can be changed at any point.

5. Pay Per Click Pay per click (PPC) is an advertising model used on search engines, advertising networks, and content websites/blogs, where advertisers only pay when a user actually clicks on an ad to visit the advertiser's website. Advertisers bid on keywords they predict their target market will use as search terms when they are looking for a product or service. When a user types a keyword query matching the advertiser's keyword list, or views a page with relevant content, the advertiser's ad may be shown. These ads are called a "Sponsored link" or "sponsored ads" and appear next to or above the "natural" or organic results on search engine results pages, or anywhere a webmaster/blogger chooses on a content page. Pay per click ads may also appear on content network websites. In this case, ad networks such as Google AdSense and Yahoo! Publisher Network attempt to provide ads that are relevant to the content of the page where they appear, and no search function is involved. Pay-per-click advertising is quickly becoming a necessary feature of any successful web presence. When used correctly, this form of advertising can prove to be extremely profitable, and not only boost online revenue, but also increase exposure and market awareness. By targeting certain key words (example: luxury hotel kensington london) to display your ad, you ensure your ad is displayed only on the most relavant searches. As mentioned above all keywords are based on a “per-click” cost, which is determined by a bidding system, allowing you to determine the best possible use of your online budget, and to place your ad in the top listings of key search terms. Furthermore, PPC advertising allows for the ability to track all details regarding your campaign. Detailed statistics reveal who saw you ad, who clicked on your ad, and ultimately, who made a reservation through your ad! Using this data to further refine your campaign ensures the most affective

and efficient campaign. Using primary distribution networks for PPC advertising, your ad is visible to over 90% of active internet users. While many companies exist in this space, Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, and Microsoft adCenter are the largest network operators as of 2007. Depending on the search engine, minimum prices per click start at US$0.01 (up to US$0.50), these prices are often referred to as Costs Per Click (CPC). Very popular search terms can cost much more on popular engines. Arguably this advertising model may be open to abuse through click fraud, although Google and other search engines have implemented automated systems to guard against this. Categories PPC engines can be categorized into two major categories "Keyword" or sponsored match and "Content Match". Sponsored match displays your listing on the search engine itself whereas content match features ads on publisher sites and in newsletters and emails. There are other types of PPC engines that deal with Products and/or services. Search engine companies may fall into more than one category. More models are continually evolving. Pay per click programs do not generate any revenue solely from traffic for sites that display the ads. Revenue is generated only when a user clicks on the ad itself. Keyword PPCs Advertisers using these bid on "keywords", which can be words or phrases, and can include product model numbers. When a user searches for a particular word or phrase, the list of advertiser links appears in order of the amount bid. Keywords, also referred to as search terms, are the very heart of pay per click advertising. The terms are guarded as highly valued trade secrets by the advertisers, and many firms offer software or services to help advertisers develop keyword strategies. Content Match, will distribute the

keyword ad to the search engine's partner sites and/or publishers that have distribution agreements with the search engine company. As of 2007, notable PPC Keyword search engines include: Google AdWords, Yahoo! Search Marketing, Microsoft adCenter, Ask, LookSmart, Miva, Yandex and Baidu. Google Adwords AdWords is Google's flagship advertising product and main source of revenue. AdWords offers pay-per-click (PPC) advertising, and site-targeted advertising for both text and banner ads. The AdWords program includes local, national, and international distribution. Google's text advertisements are short, consisting of one title line and two content text lines. Image ads can be one of several different Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB) standard sizes. Microsoft adCenter Microsoft adCenter (formerly MSN adCenter), is the division of the Microsoft Network

(MSN)

responsible

for

MSN's

advertising

services.

Microsoft

adCenter provides pay per click advertisements. Yahoo! Search Marketing Yahoo! Search Marketing is a keyword-based "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo!. Yahoo began offering this service after acquiring Overture Services, Inc. (formerly Goto.com). Goto.com was an Idealab spin off and was the first company to successfully provide a pay-for-placement search service following previous attempts that were not well received. As a full-service internet marketing provider, our specialized team would be happy to provide you with additional information, as to our process, our

philosophy,

and

documentation.

even

share

with

you

samples

of

our

standard

6. Hotel Keyword Research for SEO & PPC 6.1.

Introduction: The Value of Keyword Research

Keyword research, an important facet of search engine optimization and Internet marketing, draws a distinct parallel to traditional market research. Just as successful ad campaigns contain content that appeals to their target demographic, successful websites implement keywords that have the highest relevance and conversion rates. Each search engine uses its own unique algorithm that is made up of various ranking factors. These factors determine which web pages to display for a particular search. While the engines purposefully do not reveal all of the factors that make up their ranking algorithm, they do acknowledge that an extremely important element of the ranking formula is a site's placement and prominence of keywords. The search engines employ text matching to help them determine relevance. Thus, when a user searches for “green eggs and ham,” a web page with that precise text is far more likely to rank well than a page containing the synonymous “lime-colored hen spawn & pig parts.” Employing popular keywords and phrases (terms that users frequently search for at the major engines) on your website and in your marketing will attract the highest levels of traffic and potential customers. Researching keywords for your website is integral to your Internet marketing campaign for three core reasons. First, it brings valuable search traffic to your site. Secondly, providing relevant keywords to searchers will enhance their user experience. Lastly, keyword research is a great way to find other areas of opportunity for your site's success. 6.1.1 Search Traffic ComScore Networks reported that Americans conducted 6.7 billion searches online in December 2006

Furthermore, in July 2006 OneStat.com reported that of all the search phrases worldwide, most people (28.91%) use two word phrases when conducting a search, followed by 3 word phrases (27.85%), 4 word phrases (17.11%), and 1 word phrases (11.43%). Based on this data, it’s clear that search engine users overwhelmingly choose a few select words in their quest to find information, connections, or products. While millions may be searching for products or services that you offer, they won’t find you if you’re not targeting the same keywords they’re using to conduct their searches. In addition to wanting to find what they’re looking for, users also want to find relevant results quickly. JupiterResearch and iProspect published a study in May 2006 that found 62% of searchers click a listing on the first page of search results, and 90% click on a result that’s listed on the first three pages. Therefore, if you’re not optimizing your site and ensuring that you’re targeting relevant keywords, it’s likely that your site won’t be listed within the first few pages of relevant search results, meaning most searchers won’t find your site, product, or service when they perform a search. 6.1.2 User Experience A positive search experience is important to users, search engines, and the websites that appear in the search results. Although search engines have become increasingly salient many search engine users still don’t know how to conduct successful searches that return the desired results. Thus, it’s essential to research keyword combinations relevant to your business’s website in order to instill confidence in your readership and create a positive search experience. 6.1.3 Finding Areas of Opportunity Keyword research is a great way to discover your users' interests. When planning content or brainstorming new ideas to expand your site or

business's offerings, the keywords your users search are a goldmine of information. You'll be able to see exactly what topics interest your customers, what ancillary topics are of value and which products or services are more/less popular than others. The applications for keyword research are limitless – write a new article, design a new product, launch a clever marketing campaign, find forums where users discuss related topics and services, build a relevant tool, or even expand your business to serve new regions or demographics.

6.2

Brainstorming Keywords

The first stage of researching keywords for your site is generating a list of terms and phrases relevant to your Hotel/Motel and what your site or Hotel offers.

The brainstorming phase should ideally result in a list of several

dozen to several hundred keyword searches that will bring relevant, qualified visitors to your site. 6.2.1 Initial independent brainstorming recommendations While there’s no wrong way to brainstorm, these recommendations should help determine an initial course of action: List all of the most important words and phrases currently on your siteRecord important/valuable words and phrases on your competitors' hotels Put yourself in the mindset of your customers, Visitors, Travellers, and your industry professionals; what would they search for to find the content you provide? Use a thesaurus to research synonyms for your core keywords. Create taxonomy of all the areas of focus in your industry. It can be helpful to imagine creating a directory for all the people, projects, ideas, and companies connected to your site. 6.2.2 Keyword Estimate and List Generation Sources The following is a list of resources that provide keyword suggestions and search estimates. Keyword suggestions are any terms and phrases a tool provides that are related to your hotel, Motel or the services that your Hotels provides and to your existing list of keywords. Search estimates are the number of searches for a keyword in a given amount of time (one day, thirty days, ninety days, a year; the time frame varies with each tool). Don't think of these counts as accurate—each tool pulls data from different sources, so

it's impossible to say which has the “most accurate” count; rather, you should think of search estimate figures as a relative way to see which keyword is searched for more often than others. For each site, we’ve provided general information about its data sources, membership fees/usage costs, the type of information displayed, and how you can use it when brainstorming keywords. Researching keywords and keyword phrases is one of the most important elements in a well rounded search engine marketing campaign. There are a variety of keyword suggestion tools available and we've listed a few of those here. 

Overture Keyword Selector Tool : Not sure what search terms to bid on? Enter a term related to your site and Overture will show you; related searches that include your term and how many times that term was searched on last month.

 Wordtracker : Wordtracker helps you find all of those keywords and keyword phrases that relate to your business, product and/or service, many of which you might never have considered. 

Google AdWords Keyword Tool Estimator : Get ideas for new keywords that can help you improve your ad relevance.



Google AdWords Traffic Estimator : recommends keywords based on a keyword you enter or a URL you have the tool analyze

 Yahoo! Search Marketing : Yahoo! Search Marketing is a keywordbased "Pay per click" or "Sponsored search" Internet advertising service provided by Yahoo!. 

Keyword Discovery : KeywordDiscovery compiles keyword search statistics from over 180 search engines world wide, to create the most powerful Keyword Research tool. KeywordDiscovery can tell you the search phrases people use to find products and services, as well as the search terms that drive traffic to your competitors.



Microsoft AdCenter Keyword Generation Tool : The Keyword Generation Tool also allows you to research keyword performance to determine which keywords of interest are used more often by Live Search users, as well as provides additional data charts about audience demographics and keyword cost.



Google Trends : Google trends can offer a lot of valuable information on search activity, aiding our keyword research. The tool shows trends among 1 or more search terms since the beginning of 2004. As well, the tool shows popular news items that relate to those search terms along the way, possibly explaining spikes in data in the past 2 years.

 KeyCompete.com : KeyCompete is an online keyword research tool that identifies the keywords your competitors are using in their payper-click campaigns. KeyCompete also identifies the competition that is bidding on your keywords. 

Spyfu.com : SpyFu offers free website and keyword analysis for organic and paid searches. It has more than 20 times the amount of data than its predecessor, GoogSpy, and tons of other features.



Hitwise – KeywordIntelligence.com : Hitwise is a keyword suggestion service, which informs marketers of the best 'keywords' to use in search marketing campaigns. Developed for small businesses, this service provides search marketers with the ability to generate lists of quality keywords that have been proven to drive traffic to websites in specific industries.

6.3

Targeting Clickthroughs and Conversion Rates with Search Ads

When optimizing your paid ads to target specific keywords, we recommend including the appropriate keyword(s) in the following context: 6.3.1 Ad Title The title of your ad will be the first thing users see – it must draw the user into the ad to encourage a read of the ad content. Ad titles that contain the exact text that a user searched for is far more likely to get a click. Thus, it's wise to create ads with as much specificity as possible. Although many ad programs will let you create one ad targeting many different 6.3.2 Ad Copy Employing your targeted keywords in your ad copy results in higher clickthrough-rates. Don't stuff the keywords in needlessly, though – use them in an intelligently-written fashion in well-crafted copy for best results. 6.3.3 URL Search marketing programs allow you to use a display URL that differs from the actual URL the link refers to. Use this as an opportunity to craft a short, user-friendly, and keyword-laden URL. 6.3.4 Click-Through Rate (CTR) In Google Adwords (and Yahoo! Search Marketing), click-through rate heavily influences your ad's position, the price you pay and your propensity to be displayed in the results. All of the factors mentioned above, along with creativity and rigid testing can help you to drive up your ad's CTR. There are a number of ways to improve your clickthrough rates (CTR), below are some tips to help you get started.  Target your ads to the right Audience. You do this by selecting keywords and phrases which are relevant to your product or service.

Avoid keywords that are too general because although they generate a large number of impressions, they often generate very few clicks. To improve your CTR, use more descriptive phrases so that your ads will only appear to prospective customers searching for what you have to offer.  Use the correct keyword matching option(s). Google offers four different methods of targeting your ads by keywords: Broad Match, Phrase Match, Exact Match and Negative keyword. By applying the most focused matching options to your keywords, you can reach more targeted prospects, improve your CTR, reduce your cost-per-click and increase your return on investment.  Target your ads by location and language. When creating your adwords campaign target your ads by location so that you maximise your sales and improve your CTR. Target the right audience by selecting the language and countries that you want to reach.  Use your main keywords in the Title or Body Text of your ad. By using your keywords in the title or ad body text of your ad, it will stand out from your competitors and grab the eye of your prospective customers.  Create different Ad Groups for different search phrases/keywords. This will allow you to refine your ads and test them for relevance and therefore maximise your clickthrough rates. For example, if your service offers loans, you can create different ad groups for home equity loans (and all other phrases that incorporate this phrase), consolidation loans, student loans and so on.  Calculate what you can afford to pay for each clickthrough. You will find that more focused keywords and search phrases have a higher conversion ratio than other more general keywords. It's a good

strategy to pay more for clicks from keywords or phrases with a high conversion ratio than from the more general keyword groups.  Use highly targeted Keywords and search phrases. Be specific when selecting keywords and search phrases for your campaign. General keywords will be more expensive and will result in lower clickthrough rates. If you're bidding on general keywords that are relevant to your site consider using the Exact match and the Phrase match keyword matching options in order to increase your CTR.  Test and monitor your ads to get the best clickthrough rates. Refine and fine-tune your ad to maximise click throughs. With Google you can do this in real time. You can do this by creating different ads for each ad group and then checking which ads have the best clickthrough rates.  Give Google users a compelling reason to click on your ad link. The easiest way to do this is to provide something of value for free. You can also achieve this if you tailor each keyword to your offer and use relevant terms/ words in both the title and the ad body. Use a different ad for each keyword group or search term. This increases relevance and the likelihood that Google users will click on it. 6.3.5 Landing Page Quality Google (and perhaps Yahoo!) is using landing page quality to approve/deny ads, measure how relevant landing page is and determine price and position of ads in their search results. Keywords used, quality of site design, relevance to the topic and user experience all figure into this somewhat subjective and secretive scoring mechanism. 6.3.6 Conversion Rate Google, Yahoo and MSN all offer integrated analytics to track conversions. When you set up a PPC account, you insert code from the service onto the

page and it will track the unique “actions” (i.e. an “add to cart,” form submission or signup). Higher conversion rates, like landing page quality, will influence cost per click prices, placement in the results and how often your ad is displayed.

6.4

Targeting Keywords in the Organic Results

When optimizing your site to target specific keywords in the organic search results, we recommend including the appropriate keyword(s) in the following context: Title Tags : Appearance in Search Engine Results It’s not a good idea to jam keywords into your pages’ title tags. Users see title tags primarily in search results, and if the title tags are stuffed with keywords, they’ll appear spammy and can discourage people from clicking through. We also don’t recommend targeting too many keywords in one title tag; rather, focus on including the keywords that are most relevant for that particular page. It’s also important to keep in mind that in the SERPS (search engine results pages), title tags cut off after 66 characters. Lengthy title tags that cut off mid-sentence do not look appealing in search results; therefore, it’s important to maintain a balance of brevity and relevance when writing your title tags. If Google has problems spidering your site, they will use the DMOZ description of your site as your pages' title tags. If your site has not been submitted to DMOZ, then Google will use your page’s URL as its title tag. Either instance can be problematic, as the keywords you’re targeting in your title tags aren’t being seen by either the search engine or by searchers. To tell Google to exclusively use the title tag you’ve provided, include a “NOODP” tag () in your page’s code, and the title tags you’ve written for your site will be used. Yahoo! and MSN also support the “NOODP” tag, and Yahoo! recently started supporting the “NOYDIR” tag ( , or ), which tells them not to use Yahoo! Directory titles or snippets for your URLs in their search results.

Meta Description Tags The meta description is the little blurb that describes the content of the page listed in the search results. The meta description is only visible in the SERPs (and to users who view the source code of your pages), and the description cuts off after around 155 to 170 characters. While the meta description tag doesn't need to be optimized for search engines, it is nonetheless extremely valuable in that, to searchers, it acts as your page's ad copy. Therefore, it's important to ensure that each of your pages has a unique meta description so that users can differentiate one page from the next in search results. Targeting the same keywords over and over again in multiple meta descriptions can result in keyword cannibalization and will confuse searchers as to which of your pages is most relevant to their search. Again, the purpose of the meta description is to compel the searcher to click on your result in the SERPs; in this sense, it is foolhardy to stuff keywords into your description tag because to a user the description of your page will look spammy. Like the title tag, if the search engines cannot effectively crawl your site, they will use the ODP or other directory description instead of the one you have written. To tell the search engines to exclusively use your meta description tag, make sure to include the NOODP and NOYDIR tags in your code. Header Tags Header tags display text in a larger size than the rest of the text on your site, so it’s logical to make sure that you include important keywords in them. Furthermore, when search engines crawl your site, they’ll consider the content within header tags to be especially important, meaning searchers are more likely to see your site’s page when they search for keywords that are included in your page’s header tags.

On Emerald City Boat Tours' website, their page about the different types of tours offered could have the following phrase displayed in an H1 tag: Seattle Tour Packages That way, “seattle,” “tour,” “seattle tour,” “tour packages,” etc. are all keyword combinations that can lead searchers to the site’s Tour Packages page. Including each page’s most important keywords in header tags is a great way to let search engines know that these terms are particularly relevant. Text Content Another simple way to optimize your site for specific keywords is to include them in the body of your site. Emerald City Boat Tours would logically want to include the words “seattle,” “tours,” and other related keywords throughout their site. The search engines will pick up on the fact that because these words are consistently found throughout your site, they must be associated with your business. Do not worry about keyword density, which is making sure that a particular keyword appears a certain amount of times on one page. If you mention the keyword too often on a page, search engines may suspect your site of spamming. Instead, write naturally and be conscious of using your keywords a few times throughout the page. Search engines' analyses of on-page text content has become exceptionally advanced; thus, writing great copy with the user in mind will deliver far more benefit than stuffing keywords into your text. URLs Having one or two keywords in your domain is a great way to tell search engines that your site explicitly relates to the keywords embedded in the domain. For example, a perfect domain name for Emerald City Boat Tours would be www.emeraldcityboattours.com. Search engines will see that

“emerald,” “city,” “boat,” and “tours” are three keywords that are relevant to the site because they’re all found in the site’s domain. Notice that “seattle” isn't in the domain name. Even if your site already has a domain registered that doesn’t include your top search terms, you can still include them in your URLs. Emerald City Boat Tours can still target “seattle” in its URLs. For example, the site's tour packages URL can look like www.emeraldcityboattours.com/seattle-boat-tour-packages. That way, search engines and users can see that “seattle,” “boat,” “tour,” and “packages” are all relevant keywords. The last thing the site would want to do is have a URL that looks like this: http://sfgate.com/cgibin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/02/22/NSG8FO6DLF1.DTL&type=food. What's wrong with this URL? 

The site is missing out on a prime opportunity to target its top keywords in its URLs. If a user is searching for the article, a better URL would be http://sfgate.com/articles/food/critics-picksshh-quiet-sounds-appetizing, which targets the title of the article in the URL.



Users who look at the URL won’t have any idea what page it will serve up, which weakens the site’s usability. Another URL option would

be

http://sfgate.com/articles/food/noise-rating-in-

restaurant-reviews, which tidily sums up the article for the searcher. 

The URL has unnecessary dynamic parameters.



The

URL

has

an

unnecessarily

deep

folder

structure.

Http://sfgate.com/articles/food/critics-picks-shh-quiet-soundsappetizing makes logical and appropriate use of two folder structures, “articles” because the page contains an article, and “food” because the article is food-related.



It has an unfamiliar extension (.dtl).



It employs both lower and uppercase letters. It's standard to stick with one convention (either lowercase, which is more widely accepted s being the standard, or uppercase) rather than mix and match the two.

URL structure should be both search and user-friendly. Appropriately including your keywords in your URLs tells search engines that your site has relevance to those keywords, and it tells users that your site offers information on what he or she is searching for. Internal Anchor Text When linking to other pages within the site, you want to avoid writing anchor text that says “Click here to see our rates.” Search engines assign some relevance to words that are hyperlinked, so you want to make sure that you’re using your keywords in your anchor text. Some internal links on Emerald City Boat Tours' site could be “Most Popular Tour Packages,” “Types of Seattle Tours,” “Tour Rates,” “Sightseeing Specials,” etc. Each of these internal links contains one or more relevant keywords, so when a search engine spiders the site it will see the links and is likely to associate your site with the keywords embedded in them. External Anchor Text When buying or building links and submitting your site to directories, you want to make sure that the links pointing to your site contain relevant anchor text. Include your keywords in a way that the links will read as informative and not spammy. Which of these two links would you rather click on? “Emerald City Boat Tours sightsee seattle tour city touring downtown” “Emerald City Boat Tours—fun boat tours of Seattle”

The second link looks more trustworthy, legitimate, and professional, and it still fulfills the function of implementing keywords in the external anchor text.

6.5

Final Thoughts: Best Practices for Keyword Research &

Targeting The practice of keyword research seems straightforward at first – type a few relevant terms into a tool, get some results, target the good ones on your site, and watch the traffic roll in. In practice, however, the intricacies of every portion of this process make it invaluable to know the ins and outs of keyword search marketing. The most important Points are: 6.5.1 Keyword

Tools

Provide

Relative

Numbers,

not

Accurate

Predictions Be wary of using the keyword tools to forecast exactly how much traffic will come to your website. The vast differences in the estimations provided and the disparity of sources can mean that even the highest rankings won't bring in the level of visitors predicted. Use the tools to determine which phrases are more popular than another, but don't trust anything but real numbers garnered through test campaign experience to predict real volume. 6.5.2 Brainstorm Terms Cautiously Remember to think about the value of a visitor who's come to your site via or phrase you target. The more specific the query, the higher the chance of conversion, so don't rule out less voluminous searches. The keyword tools can be great sources of brainstorming material, but they all require a solid starting point, and it's up to you to know enough about your industry to determine what keyword niches will provide value. 6.5.3 Keyword Targeting Title tags, URLs, headlines, and text content are all good places to put your important terms, but beware of spamming – the engines may penalize your site. It's also wise to remember that anchor text can have a huge impact on rankings – make sure to include keyword in anchor text when relevant. 6.5.4 The Long Tail Oftentimes, the greatest amount of value in search referrals comes from the “long tail” of rarely-searched, low volume keywords. You can attract these

visitors by writing consistently fresh, updated content on your site in the form of a blog, wiki, article list, newsletter, or even user-generated content. 6.5.5 Keyword Cannibalization A common problem in keyword targeting is to attempt to attract the same search terms on many different pages on a site. While occasionally targeting the same keywords on a couple pages is unavoidable, be wary of using the same terms on every page's title tag and header. Instead, write more detailed pieces to target long tail terms and link back to the high-level, targeted page with the proper anchor text.

7. Hotel Link Building for SEO 7.1

Why Search Engines Measure Links

PageRank and Links as Votes: Larry Page and Sergey Brin publicly pioneered the use of link measurement as an indicator of search relevance when they created the Google search engine. The initial idea behind their legendary PageRank system was that a link to a particular page is equivalent to a vote by the linking page for the linked-to page. As the theory goes, by measuring not only the keyword relevance on a page, but also the number of “votes” it had, you could accurately determine which pages were considered by the web’s users to be most valuable for the given search terms. Furthermore, links from web pages with high PageRank would be more valuable (considered more authoritative and reliable) than links from low PageRank pages. This initial model, while revolutionary, didn’t consider the quality of on-page content, trust metrics or semantic relationships and was thus extremely vulnerable to manipulation. Improvements in Link Quality Scoring: Over the years all of the major search engines adopted the link-based ranking model with some stylistic variation from engine to engine.

The

technology, quality and “intelligence” of the various search algorithms continually evolve in an effort to improve the quality of returned search results. Anchor text is now considered when evaluating the relevance of a given link to the given keywords. If a site about Seattle Boat Tours has lots of links pointing to it with anchor text written as ‘Seattle boat tours’, those links will provide greater value to the link recipient than links with anchor text such as

‘click here’ (at least for searches on “Seattle Boat Tours”). We will discuss anchor text in greater detail in the next section. Semantic attributes the of on-page text surrounding links is also analyzed. For instance, if a link to Seattle Boat Tours is in the middle of a page about theoretical physics as it relates to the study of Scientology, that link won’t be considered as valuable as the same link with adjacent content about Seattle, tourism, boating, etc.

Seattle.gov tourism page, this would be highly relevant for ‘Seattle Boat Tours’

Search algorithms also consider relationships between linked sites.

By

analyzing things like IP addresses, reciprocal links and domain registration information, the engines try to determine if the links are valuable organic links, or if they are manipulative, artificial links created solely for ranking purposes.

Links as Quality Control: By using the methods discussed above to measure link quantity and quality, the search engines create a ranking system that is much harder to manipulate than one based solely upon on-page factors. That is not to say, however, that page structure and actual content are not evaluated. The linkbased model simply places more importance on links based upon the theory that only well-designed, content-rich pages will get high-value links from reputable sources. Trusted Domains: Link factors such as anchor text, semantic relevance and page relationship certainly

matter,

but

perhaps

no

factor

matters

as

much

as

the

trustworthiness of the domain providing you with your link. A single link from CNN or The New York Times is worth more “link-juice” than dozens of similar links from no-name blogs and MySpace pages. Trusted domains have proven over time (ironically, through the acquisition of thousands of trusted links) to be worthwhile and reliable sources of quality information about their given subject matter.

As such, when the search

engines see that these sites link to you when discussing your area of focus, they pay attention. This tells the engines that a reliable and trusted source thinks you are an expert and you offer content that’s extremely relevant to the topic. Think about it this way: If the Weekly World News runs the headline ‘Twoheaded Dragon Boy Born in New Jersey,’ would you take it seriously? No? What if the same headline was on the cover of Time magazine? In nearly everyone’s mind, the Time link to ‘Two-headed Dragon Boy Born in New Jersey’ is far more valuable and credible than the same story from the Weekly World News.

This is why we don’t go into a state of shock when we see bizarre WWN headlines every week in the grocery checkout line: they’re simply not reliable for anything other than a laugh. In the online world, the search engines use their artificial intelligence algorithms to make similar determinations. Thus, 50 links from Moe-does-Mortgage.com is not nearly as valuable as one link from Bankrate.com or CNN’s money.com. This is a self-perpetuating process on the web. The more trusted, valuable links your site receives, the more trusted and valuable your site (and the links you give) becomes.

7.2

An Introduction to Link Building

Fundamental Properties of a Link: If you’re reading this (and you are) then chances are you know what a link is. As such, we’re going to skip the lecture on HTML and the structure of the Internet (it’s a series of tubes). What we will discuss are the important onpage and structural characteristics of links that can help make them most effective: anchor text, link location and link intention. Anchor Text: Anchor text is the actual text that visitors click on to follow a link. Below are three examples of anchor text for a link to the CyberwebHotels homepage: For great info about search engine optimization, check http://www.cyberwebhotels.com For great info about search engine optimization click here. Here’s a great resource for info about search engine optimization.

out

Of these examples, both 1 and 3 have distinct advantages over number 2. Number two provides a link (which is good) but it offers absolutely no semantic value.

Cyberwebhotels isn’t a respected resource on “click” or

“here.” These aren’t keywords or search terms anyone would use to find Cyberwebhotels, therefore there’s no keyword benefit conveyed by this anchor text. Example 1 does contain Cyberwebhotels’s name (since it’s in the domain name). This helps some, but chances are we wouldn’t need much help if someone were searching for ‘Cyberwebhotels’ directly.

Note though that

constructing concise, relevant URLs for the pages on your site can help, not only for links of this style, but for keyword relevance in search engine spidering.

If

an

article

page

has

the

URL

www.seattleboatours.com/article/121.html, it conveys no value about the

content

of

the

article,

www.seattleboatours.com/articles/holiday-cruises.html

whereas provides

context and relevance to anyone searching for “holiday boat cruises.”

Example 3 is certainly the best of the three because it not only provides the link but it also offers additional semantic relevance. If the search engines see that a lot of links to Cyberwebhotels use anchor text such as ‘search engine optimization,’ they will quickly recognize that other web pages think Cyberwebhotels is a relevant source for information related to those keywords.

Whenever possible, links that carry semantic value (such as

example 3) are preferable.

URL Location: This refers to where in a site’s page structure your link is found: shallow or deep. Shallow links are links to your site’s homepage or top-level category pages. Deep links, on the other hand, are links to more specific pages such as individual articles, blog posts, tools or other content. Deep links are usually the result of people finding your deep page content useful and wanting to share it with their visitors. Search engines like these types of links; they’re natural and often more valid. Shallow links, when too prevalent, tend to look spammy to the engines. If hundreds (or thousands) of sites are linking to you, and more than 80% link exclusively to your homepage, the search engines may cast suspicion on the “validity” of those links. Aggressive link builders would be wise not to abuse homepage-only linking. Keep in mind that this is much more important for larger sites since small sites do not have much inherent depth. You can check your deep link percentage by visiting Yahoo! and performing a link search. Type in the search as “linkdomain: www.yourhomepage.com” using your homepage URL. Yahoo! Site Explorer link data for the entire Cyberwebhotels site and homepage only, respectively:

In the screen captures above you’ll see that Cyberwebhotels has 304,262 links

to

the

entire

site

but

only

32,034

to

the

homepage,

“www.cyberwebhotels.org.” As such, almost 90% of links to Cyberwebhotels are to deep content pages. Also important is the location of the link on the linking page. Are you being linked to from someone’s homepage, an advertising page or a relevant, highquality content page? Links from a link directory or advertising pages are often paid, reciprocal or otherwise externally influenced and therefore less legitimate than deep links from within actual content or more specific, topical pages.

Conversely, the more popular, specific and well-linked-to the page is that links out to you, the more valuable that link will be. Link Intention: What you should always keep in mind when considering the relative search engine value of a given link is: how will the engines view this link’s value to searchers? What is the linking page’s intention? If it’s a link indicating you as a source or a reference on a particular topic, the value is high. If it’s sending someone to you for more information or to buy something, it could be valuable depending on the needs of the searcher. If it’s one link of many in a directory, it may be helpful (depending on the exclusivity and trust of the directory). If it’s a link influenced by money, relationships or other less trustworthy motivations, search engines will try to find algorithmic ways to prevent it from passing value. That’s not to say it won’t help your ranking now, but over time, engines have gotten better and more efficient at measuring the quality and intention of link patterns.

7.3

Why Build Links?

As we’ve just discussed, many link building efforts in the SEO world are done to improve a site’s search engine rankings: Links as votes, as trust, as rankbuilding influencers, etc. There are, however, other reasons to build links as well Gaining Direct Traffic: Oddly enough, search engine spiders aren’t the only ones that see links to your site. Web users visiting sites can and (hopefully) do click on those links, generating direct traffic to you. Once again though, it’s worth your while to focus on quality links from relevant pages. How often have you actually clicked on a link you found on an extremely spammy, worthless page? If the original page is garbage, you assume anything it links to is probably garbage as well. It should come as no shock that humans passively analyze page quality when assessing link value. After all, the search engines ultimately try to algorithmically reproduce the results a human would provide if they had the time to editorially rate every single page in existence. As such, you will get higher volume and better quality direct traffic from pages that are not only popular and highly trafficked themselves, but relevant to your content. Visibility, Branding & Influence: What happens when every time someone looks around online for information about boats, tours or Seattle they see not only links to your site, but comments about you in every prominent blog on the subject? You become an authority in the field.

By participating in the community around your

niche and building content worthy of links and discussion within said community, you gain visibility, branding and influence. How you want your image to manifest though is entirely up to you. This is just one more example where quantity may be easy to come by, but quality is what really counts. Do you want to have visibility as that guy who always

has useful information, the one everybody should check out if they’re interested in Seattle boat tours? Or do you want to be the Weekly World News of your niche, always complaining of a Loch Ness-like monster in Puget Sound? As people within (and even outside of) your community begin to recognize and respect your image and your brand, they will reference you and link to you as a resource. Links bring traffic, links bring search results, links bring passion…make your users passionate about your site. 7.4

How Do Search Engines Measure Link Quality?

We’ve already spent a good bit of time extolling the virtues of high-quality links. That’s because search engines take great pride in their ability to have literally hundreds of algorithmic components to evaluate link quality. Some of the important factors they consider that we’ve already looked at include: Visibility, Status and Trust of Linking Domain (Time vs. Weekly World News) Semantic Value of Anchor Text (search engine optimization vs. click here) Location of Link in Site Structure (Deep, Natural Links vs. Shallow, Spammy Links) In addition to these elements there are other advanced factors the engines apply when determining link value: Location of Link on Page: Page segmentation visually breaks a page into content blocks and—based on layout convention and actual content—determines whether or not the block contains internal navigation, ads, useful content, etc.

Based on this structural evaluation, links from content areas are considered more valuable than links from other areas of the page. While search engines certainly are not perfect at implementing this metric, the take-away is that it’s better to have links integrated into relevant content (with good anchor text) than to have them stuck in a sidebar list or on the bottom of the page. Relevance of Domain & Page: Terms in your page URL and Title tags are extremely valuable when helping search engines determine the nature of your page content. As we discussed earlier, using deep page URLs that describe the page are valuable in this regard (www.seattleboatours.com/articles/holiday_tours.html). Search engines use semantics to determine the likelihood of content relating to search query terms. For example, a Google search for ‘allintitle: dog & canine’ (which lists all sites with both “dog” and “canine” in the title) yields 80,300 results, whereas ‘allintitle: dog & shovel’ yields only 50 results.

Similarly, ‘allinurl: dog &

canine’ (which lists all sites with both terms in the actual URL) yields 15,500 results and ‘allinurl: dog & shovel’ yields zero results. While this example is painfully gratuitous, the point is clear: the engines know that if you search

for ‘dog’, pages with the word canine in the URL or title are much more likely to be relevant to you than pages with the word shovel. Conversely a page with the term ‘shovel’ featured prominently in the URL may not be as reliable a source for content with the keywords dog and/or canine. There is a whole science behind semantic indexing, but all you need to know is this: Page domains and titles that offer semantic relevance to your content convey an impression of reliability and relevance. Similarly, links to you from pages

with

semantically

related

content

and

or

titles/URLs

create

consistency and relevance that the engines will reward. Visible vs. Invisible Links: All the links in the world won’t do you any good if the search engines cannot see them.

Many sites use tactics to prevent the engines from following

certain links on their pages in an effort to avoid spam. Links

embedded

as

java

script,

tagged

with

a

nofollow

command

(rel=”nofollow” following the href URL), included on a page with a meta nofollow or blocked by robots.txt may not be visible to the search engines and, accordingly, pass no link value. Before you expend too much time or effort building links on a certain site or page, make sure you will get credit for them from the search engines.

Indications of Spam or Manipulation: While high-quality, relevant links will get you a healthy bump in search rankings, spammy, manipulative linking tactics are a good way to get your site flagged for deceptive practices. If most of your links are from ads, linkfarms, domains you own or IP addresses suspiciously similar to yours, the engines will take notice. Cheap link buys, reciprocal links and brokered links aren’t necessarily bad for getting your numbers up; but the engines can easily detect and discount a pattern of low-quality links from irrelevant pages.

All of the algorithm

technology exists not only to reward all of the great content and links you’ve built, but to recognize the abundance of useless pages on the web as well and keep it from influencing the search engine results pages (SERPS). This guide does not cover manipulative link practices in depth; rather, we will focus on illuminating tactics that will provide both short and long-term benefits.

7.5

Searching the Engines for High-Quality Links

Now that you understand the importance of attracting quality links, you’re almost certainly wondering exactly how you’re supposed to find them. Fear not, dear reader. In this section we’ll look at how to identify quality links for acquisition (the process of actually getting those links is covered later on). The most basic way to find valuable sites is to simply run searches on the major engines (Google, Yahoo!, MSN and Ask) for the keywords/phrases you’re targeting. The top 50-100 results obviously have some pull when it comes to those terms, making them good candidates for link acquisition. There are, however, many more targeted options for identifying solid links. Using Search Modifiers: All of the search engines allow you to perform advanced searches to identify pages where your keywords appear in page elements such as page title, anchor text, URL or body text. Using Google (although you should try these searches at all four major engines), let’s look at how the search results narrow for advanced queries for the term ‘blue suede shoes’: Search

Finds Term In

Results Returned* 869,000 859,000

“blue suede shoes” allintext: “blue

Anywhere on page suede Only in page text (not title or

shoes” allintitle:

URL) suede Only in page title

17,500

suede Only in link anchor text

12,200

shoes” allinanchor: shoes” allinurl:

“blue “blue “blue

suede Only in page URL

3,090

shoes” *Results numbers are only estimates and generally only useful for purposes of comparison. Using these advanced search modifiers will progressively narrow down the results for your keyword searches, usually identifying pages that are more

and more closely related to your topic. However, as the results narrow, the number of truly valuable pages also thins out (i.e. the top one percent of 859,000 is 8,590 pages, but the top one percent of 3,090 is only 31 pages). The top 30-50 results in both basic and advanced query searches are usually strong link acquisition targets. Google results for the search ‘allintitle:”blue suede shoes”’:

7.6

Competitive Link Research

We’ve just discussed how to ask the search engines where they think the valuable links are, but now it’s time to find out where your successful competitors are actually getting the links that are putting them at the top of the SERPs. Identifying Primary Competitors: As Sun Tzu said so long ago, “Know thy self, know thy enemy.” In order to compete for search results in your niche you need to know a couple of things: 1. Thy Self, i.e. the terms you want to rank for; 2. Thy Enemy, i.e. the sites that are already where you want to be for those search terms. Once you have this list, search the terms at Google, Yahoo! and MSN, paying attention to the top 20 results at each. Make note of sites that consistently

rank in the top 20 for your terms. Pay extra-special attention to those sites that consistently rank in the top five: they are thy enemy. Now, let’s get to know them… Link Search Methods: Keeping with the Sun Tzu theme, let’s say your site is www.suntzu.com and a couple of your Holy Grail search phrases are ‘land war in Asia’ and ‘Chinese general’. Your competitive research has shown that two of your arch nemeses are www.generaltsao.com and www.chairmanmao.com. How will you recruit their forces for your own quest of SERP domination? Gather intelligence on what they’ve got that you want. First, find out where their links are coming from. You can perform direct link searches at Google, Yahoo! and MSN, although Google is essentially useless because they intentionally give incomplete link data. Yahoo! and MSN tend to list more important links ahead of less valuable ones and, thus, the top 100-200 links are the really powerful ones you want to focus on. To check direct links for www.generaltsao.com, you would perform the following searches: Search

Command

Result

Engine At Yahoo!:

linkdomain:generaltsao.co

Shows all links to the domain

At MSN:

m linkdomain:generaltsao.co

generaltsao.com Shows all links to the domain

m – site:generaltsao.com

generaltsao.com, links

At Google

link:www.generaltsao.com

(pointless):

from

the

generaltsao.com Shows a small random

links

excluding

to

site

sample the

of

page

www.generaltsao.com These searches, Google notwithstanding, will show you all of the inbound links to the site you’re searching for.

On Yahoo!’s standard engine as well as MSN, you can search for keywordembedded links: those that use particular anchor text in links to your competition. You can run these searches for any or all of your key terms/phrases: Search Engine At Yahoo!:

Command linkdomain:generaltsao.co m

At MSN:

Result

“Chinese

general”

–

site:generaltsao.com linkdomain:generaltsao.co

Both searches find all links to the domain generaltsao.com that

contain

the

specified

m “land war in Asia” – anchor text (site excluded). site:generaltsao.com Yahoo! and MSN also allow searches for extension-specific links and direct-path-to-inclusion links. The former are links with a specific type of domain extension such as .edu or .gov. The latter are links to pages where you can easily add your site for inclusion in a directory or list of some kind: Website Y! or MSN:

Y! or MSN:

Command linkdomain:chairmanma

(edu can be changed to gov, com,

o.com site:edu

org, net or whatever else you’d like

linkdomain:chairmanma

to look for) (‘submit site’ could be replaced by

o.com “submit site”

several

other

inclusion”

common

keywords

“path-tosuch

as

‘directory,’ ‘add url,’ ‘suggest a link,’ or ‘suggest site’)

You can also search for hubs that carry lots of information and links about your area of focus. These sites are often easier to get links from as they already mention several of your competitors. Both Yahoo! and MSN allow multiple-competitor link searches which will identify pages with links to both (or all) of your competitors, but not you: Search

Command

Result

Engine At Yahoo!:

linkdomain:generaltsao.co m linkdomain:chairmanmao.c om

Both

searches

show

that

link

to

pages both

generaltsao.com At MSN:

-linkdomain:suntzu.com (linkdomain:generaltsao.co

chairmanmao.com,

AND but

NOT

suntzu.com

m linkdomain:chairmanmao.c om) (-linkdomain: suntzu.com) If you’re desperate for something (anything) from Google; you can perform some clever, normal search queries to get an idea of domains linking to your competitors: Search Engine At Google:

Command generaltsao.com

Result -suntzu Shows pages with the keyword

-site:generaltsao.com

‘generaltsao.com’

but

not

‘suntzu’ excluding pages from At Google:

the domain generaltsao.com generaltsao chairmanmao – Shows pages with the suntzu

keywords ‘generaltsao’ and/or ‘chairmanmao’

At Google

but

not

‘suntzu’. chairmanmao -suntzu -site: Shows pages with the keyword chairmanmao.com

‘chairmanmao’

but

not

‘suntzu’ excluding pages from At Google

the domain chairmanmao.com "Chinese Shows pages with the

generaltsao general"

-suntzu

generaltsao.com

-site: keywords ‘generaltsao’ and/or ‘Chinese

general’

but

not

‘suntzu’ excluding pages from the domain genraltsao.com

By applying several of the various link search methods outlined above, you should be able to get a very good idea of your competitors’ in-links and where you’ll need to focus your efforts in order to vie for top rankings in competitive search terms. Now that you know what links are, why they’re important, how engines use them and how to find good targets for them; it’s time to talk about how to actually get them. The rest of this guide will discuss the various avenues for acquiring links from the sites that will benefit your traffic and rankings.

7.7

The Art & Science of Direct Link Acquisition

Asking for Links: Asking for links seems like it should be the easiest, most direct way to get them. In fact, it’s often the most difficult and frowned upon. As you can imagine, domains that have the ability to give valuable links are bombarded constantly by pages of widely varying quality begging for links. There are, however, a few ways you can increase your chances of getting a favorable response to your link requests: As with any human interaction, people are more willing to help out friends than strangers. Spend some time participating in blogs and forums on sites that could help you. Get some visibility and the powers that be will be able to put a face (or at least an avatar) to a name when you send an e-mail pitching your site. Your ability to become a high-profile participant on a site has something to do with your knowledge of the subject (but the sites you’re targeting should be related to your niche anyway, right?). Much more of it has to do with personal charisma and your ability to market yourself. Unfortunately, that’s something very difficult to teach and it’s definitely beyond the scope of this guide. Without delving too deeply into How to Make Friends and Influence People territory, it’s always advisable when endearing yourself to a web community to project an image of humility, warmth, sharing, curiosity and honest (read: non-commercial) intent. Offer advice where you have it, ask questions where you’re interested and even feel free to make an occasional joke if you’re funny. Who/How/Where to Ask for Links: As you surf the web for potential links, you'll often run up against sites where link acquisition can be difficult. If the site doesn't provide a clear path to getting a link, don't be discouraged, there are a variety of tactics you can employ, including:

Search for Other Outbound Links : If you can find a page on the site that's linking out to other relevant sites, either as advertising or direct referral, you can generally use that as a good entryway to your link acquisition. When you call or email, mention your interest in being listed on that page along with their other outbound links - you can offer a trade in services, direct payment or pitch the value of your content. Look for an Advertising or Affiliate Page : Any page that lists a contact for advertising or affiliates is ripe for targeting. Be prepared to pay for these types of links, as they are almost always part of a site's monetization strategy. Check for a Blog : Blogs are excellent sources for links, and can often be pitched with content (discussed in the next section). Locate a Relevant Email Address : Emails for sales contacts and support are not nearly as helpful as website managers, webmasters, directors of online operations or, in many cases, business owners. You need to find someone who has decision-making authority about the content of the website, which in many cases requires an owner (in the event of a small business) or a manager (in larger companies). When in Doubt, Call a Phone Number : There's no harm in calling whatever phone numbers you can find, asking to be routed to the person who handles website content or website advertising and making your case. Be Friendly, Honorable & Persistent : Many times when making link requests, you'll get initial pushback (from un-returned phone calls and emails to flat-out negative responses). Your best move in these cases is to be as genuine and affable as possible and search for a way for to have the site owners make you an offer. The practice of finding a link contact can be arduous, but over time, you'll become more and more familiar with the format of websites in your industry. Depending on how valuable or important you consider the link to be, it can be worth a good deal of time and energy to negotiate an acquisition. Offering Compensation:

Sometimes you may ask for a link and receive a convoluted set of conditions, reciprocations and other such hullabaloo in response. While you may want to go through all of these hoops to get the link, at times it will be easier (once some sort of link has been offered) to simply offer to pay for the link. How much you offer is up to you and should be commensurate with the quality and value of the link. A fair price for a link could be anywhere between $20150 per month depending on the strength of the site, where they’re linking from, relevance of content, anchor text, etc. Jim Boykin has written a helpful article about link valuation on his blog. Targeting Content: Perhaps the most subtle and effective way to “ask” for a link is to create some content on your site that you think would be of interest to the site you want a link from. After all, this is exactly what the search engines consider the intended use for links. If you write an article, build a tool, make a great design and send an e-mail to the webmaster of the target site essentially saying, “Hey, I recently did a post/built a tool that I thought you might find interesting. If you’d like to check it out, you can find it here. I’d appreciate any feedback you have,” there’s a good chance they’ll look at your content and, if they like it, write about it and link to it. When writing this type of correspondence it helps to be specific, introduce yourself as a reader of their site and contextually relate your content to theirs. This is especially effective if you can create a piece of content relevant to a recent topic or discussion (either on or offline) in your subject area or a recent article by the individual you’re requesting a link from. It should no longer seem surprising that relevant, topical, quality content is the most effective way to get quality links. Putting it in front of the right eyes just helps the process.

8.

Travel Technology – An Introduction

Travel technology is a term used to describe applications of Information Technology (IT), or Information and Communications Technology (ICT), in travel, tourism and hospitality industry. Travel technology may also be referred to as tourism technology or even hospitality automation. Web 2.0 is a current buzzword in the travel technology community, used to describe various social software applications. XML is an increasingly important aspect of travel technology for handling metadata toward the semantic web. The biometric passport may also be included as travel technology in the broad sense. Travel technology includes the computer reservations system; it also represents a much broader range of applications. Travel technology includes virtual tourism in the form of virtual tour technologies. Travel technology may also be referred to as e-travel / e-travel or e-tourism / e-tourism (eTourism), in reference to "electronic travel" or "electronic tourism". In other contexts, the term "travel technology" can refer to technology intended for use by travelers, such as light-weight laptop computers with universal power supplies or satellite Internet connections. That is not the sense in which it is used here. Travel technology includes many processes such as dynamic packaging which provide useful new options for consumers. Today the tour guide can be a GPS tour guide, and the guidebook could be an audioguide, podguide or ITours, such as City audio guides.

8.1

Online Hotel Reservation

Online hotel reservation is becoming a very popular method for booking hotel rooms. Travelers can book rooms from home, using online security to protect their privacy and financial information, and using several online travel agents to compare prices and facilities at different hotels. Prior to the Internet, travelers could write or telephone the hotel directly, or use a travel agent to make a reservation. Nowadays, online travel agents will have pictures of hotels and rooms, information on prices and deals, and even information on local resorts. Many also allow reviews of the traveler to be recorded with the online travel agent. Online hotel reservations are also helpful for making last minute travel arrangements. Hotels may drop the price of a room if some rooms are still available. There are several websites that specialize in searches for deals on rooms. Hotels face several challenges in selling online directly to consumers. There are numerous electronic distribution "channels", and connecting to them, then managing the room inventory and rates to be offered online is essential. Large hotel chains typically have direct connections to the airline global distribution systems (GDS) (Sabre, Galileo, Amadeus and Worldspan) that in turn provides hotel information directly to the hundreds of thousands of travel agents that align themselves with one of these systems. Individual hotels and small hotel chains cannot afford the expense of these direct connections and turn to other companies to provide the connections. Several large online travel sites are, in effect, travel agencies. They send the hotel's information and rates "downstream" to literally thousands of online travel sites, most of which act as travel agents so that they can receive

commission payments from the hotels for any business booked on their websites. Lastly (oddly enough), persons can book directly on an individual hotel's website. An increasing number of hotels are building their own websites to allow them to market their hotels directly on the web. Non-franchise chain hotels require a "booking engine" application to be attached to their website to permit persons to book rooms in real time. To improve the likelihood of filling rooms, hotels tend to use several of the above systems. The content on many hotel reservation systems is becoming increasingly similar as all the hotels sign up to all the sites. Companies thus have to rely on specially negotiated rates with the hotels or hotel chains, or trust in the influence of search engine rankings to draw in customers. The ultimate service provided by these companies to the hotels and the online consumer, is that they provide a single database from which all reservation sources draw immediate room availability and rates. It is very important that hotels integrate with all the supply channels so that their guests are able to make accurate online bookings.

8.2

Global Distribution Systems

A computer reservations system (CRS) is a computerized system used to store and retrieve information and conduct transactions related to travel. Originally designed and operated by airlines, they were later extended to travel agents as a sales channel; major CRS operations that book and sell tickets for multiple airlines are known as Global Distribution Systems (GDS). Airlines have divested most of their direct holdings to dedicated Global Distribution System companies, and many systems are now accessible to consumers through Internet gateways for hotel, rental cars, and other services as well as airline tickets.

Major systems NAME Amadeus (based on Eastern Air Lines' SystemOne)

CREATED BY

ALSO USED BY

Air France Iberia Lufthansa SAS

on-line travel agencies including

   

   

MARKET SHARE* 9.20%

ebookers Expedia lastminute.com Opodo

Over 400 airlines Over 120 airline websites Over 80,000 travel agencies Over 75,000 hotels SABRE (Partnership with Abacus and Qantas' Fantasia)











American Airlines All Nippon Airways Cathay Pacific Airways China Airlines Singapore Airlines

 

Expedia Travelocity

Over 20 airlines

44.70%

AccelAero by JKCS

Internet Booking Engine(IBE) by JKCS



Air Arabia and JKCS



JKCS



Mihin Lanka TransMaldivian Airlines Over 2 airlines and LCCs

Unknown

Qatar Airways Sri Lankan Airlines SAS Braathens Mercator

Unknown

 

 

 

Over 3 airlines Galileo by Travelport (based on United Airlines' Apollo, merged with Ansett's Southern Cross)

   

   



Worldspan by Travelport

  

Aer Lingus Air Canada Alitalia British Airways KLM Swissair TAP United Airlines US Airways Delta Northwest Trans World Airlines

19.70%



CheapTickets ebookers Ixeo

   

Expedia Orbitz Hotwire Priceline

26.50%

 

CRS airline bookings, 2002. In December, 2006, Travelport which owns the Galileo CRS agreed to buy and merge with the Worldspan GDS. The combined company would then control a 46.2% market share using 2002 airline booking data. Worldspan Marketshare is 16.9% globally and 31% in the U.S. using 2006 MIDT airline transaction data. For other systems, see List of global distribution systems.

The following is a partial list of global distribution systems, which are computer reservations systems which sell tickets for multiple airlines. See Computer reservations system for a list by market share.  1A Amadeus  1B Abacus (Asia/Pacific)  1E Travelsky (China)  1F Infini (Japan)  1G Galileo International  1J Axess (Japan)  1P Worldspan  1S Sabre (previously 1W)  1U ITA Software  1V Apollo (Galileo)  Navitaire  Atraxis (ex-swissair now EDS)  sNOWsh sNOWsh independent GDS  Topas (Korea)  Fantasia (South Pacific)  N1 Nextres' Iridian Project (Scandinavia)  SITA's Gabriel  F1 Farelogix (International)  Ix-Hotel (International)  TechSpan  eTravelStores.com

8.3

Global Distribution Systems

Hotel Technology Next Generation, commonly referred to as HTNG, is a global, non-profit trade association serving hotel companies and technology providers. It was founded in 2002 and is governed by a board of directors consisting

of

senior

technology

executives

from

hotel

companies.

Membership is open to companies and individuals involved with hospitality technology. The organization's stated objective is to promote interoperability of the many technology

systems

used

in

the

hotel

industry,

such

as

Property

management systems, point-of-sale systems, telephone systems, building control systems, guestroom entertainment system, security and access control systems, and many others. The organization's members meet regularly in small workgroups, where hotel companies and vendors work together to design interface standards (often using XML), reference architectures, network designs, and hospitality-specific network devices. HTNG holds regular member conferences in North America and Europe. HTNG

operates

a

certification

program

for

selected

specifications,

administered by The Open Group. HTNG is incorporated in the State of Washington, and is classified as a 501(c)(6) non-profit organization by the US Internal Revenue Service.

9. Travel Reviews Almost 87 % of American travelers use Internet review and ratings website to make decisions about their travel. The typical decision making process of your potential guest is as follows: 1. The guest will type property name in the search engines such as Google, Yahoo, AOL etc. 2. The search engines will usually show Travel Review websites such as travelpost, sidestep in the top 10 results. The top 7 Travel Review websites are under: 2.1)

Travel.yahoo.com

2.2)

Sidestep.com

2.3)

Hotel-rates.com

2.4)

Hotel-guides.com

2.5)

Travelpost.com

2.6)

Trails.com

2.7)

Google.com

3. The guest will visit any of the travel review site and read about the reviews of the hotel listed on those travel review portals. 4. Travel review portals also give ranking to all hotels based on the reviews written by the guests. 5. The guest will book the hotel which has highest number of positive reviews. The guest will also prefer the hotels that are ranked as # 1 by the travel review portal.

When the guest go online and read negative reviews about your hotels from angry guests, they are likely to go to your competitors. You lose significant business because one dis-satisfied guest or (may be your competitor) has posted his or her own version of experience about your hotel. It is like you losing a battle even without given a chance to defend yourself. In every business, some clients will be happy and small minority clients will be unhappy. Right now, let us say all unhappy guests are reporting negative reviews about hotel property. We defend your online reputation. We are guardian of your brand name in the cyber-space. We do the following: 9.1

Build positive reviews:

We give you & your guest the clear understanding of online travel portals such that your satisfied guest’s positive experiences are reported online. We recommend that all your satisfied guest’s experience must be online so that other potential guests can view them. 9.2

Neutralize Negative reviews:

We scan all leading portals and search engines. We support you to communicate with the guest who has written negative review. We enable you to post management response to negative reviews and at the same time we can help you to resolve the guests concerns. If we find the review is actually written by your competitor to defame you, we raise objection and complaint with appropriate decision makers in search engine.

All the reviews written on the Internet are stored permanently. So a bad review written by a guest 3 year back, might be affecting your business today. We support you to minimize the impact of negative review. Similarly, all the positive review and rating will be on the Internet permanently, helping you to get more guests easily and effortlessly.

10. Social Media Optimization Social media optimization (SMO) is a set of methods for generating publicity through social media, online communities and community websites. Methods of SMO include adding RSS feeds, adding a "Digg This" button, blogging and incorporating third party community functionalities like Flickr photo slides and galleries or YouTube videos. Social media optimization is a form of search engine marketing. Social media optimization is in many ways connected as a technique to viral marketing where word of mouth is created not through friends or family but through the use of networking in social bookmarking, video and photo sharing websites. In a similar way the engagement with blogs achieves the same by sharing content through the use of RSS in the blogsphere and special blog search engines such as Technorati. Five Rules for conducting Social Media Optimization are:



Increase your linkability



Make tagging and bookmarking easy



Reward inbound links



Help your content travel



Encourage the mashup

11.

Hotel Online Success Tools

11.1 Permission Email Marketing Permission marketing is a term used in e-marketing. Marketers will ask permission before they send advertisements to prospective customers. It is used

by

some

Internet

marketers,

email

marketers,

and

telephone

marketers. It requires that people first "opt-in", rather than allowing people to "opt-out" only after the advertisements have been sent. Permission must be granted. Permission cannot be assumed. This general rule is probably the best measure of email marketing permission. Truthfully ask yourself if the names on your list have actually granted you permission to email them, or if you assuming they want to receive messages from you. Marketers feel that this is a more efficient use of their resources because advertisements are not sent to people that are not interested in the product. This is one technique used by marketers that have a personal marketing orientation. They feel that marketing should be done on a one-to-one basis rather than using broad aggregated concepts like market segment or target market. WIIFM (what's in it for me?) Recipients need to understand "what's in it for me" You'll have a much more effective and content audience if you consider their needs in your permission process and your email campaign. Permission can be revoked. Recipients need the ability and have every right to be removed from your list. The easier and clearer you make this process, the more loyal your list will be. Permission cannot be transferred. Just because you have permission from someone to send them an email, that does not give you the right to provide their name to any other entity. This includes your distributors, parent organizations, associations, etc.

Permission is NOT granted- If I throw a card in a fishbowl at a trade event. Just because you have people throw their cards in, that does not mean they have given you permission - unless you clearly state that by doing so, they give you permission to send them specific information. Ways to Gain Permission- ASK! The golden rule: just clearly ask for permission. You?ll be amazed at how people will positively respond if they understand the situation, and what they'll receive as a result. Again think of the WIIFM rule! Opt-in: Click here if you would like to receive our email newsletter. This is the standard, and most common, method of permission. Opt-out: Click here if you do NOT want to receive our email newsletter. This method is frowned upon, and is somewhat deceiving to the recipient. Opt-out methods are quickly becoming associated with SPAM techniques. Double opt-in: Click here if you would like to receive our email newsletter, then receive a verification email that you must respond to in order to double opt-in. Although this method is lengthy, and your list size grows at a slower rate, the people who double opt-in are giving you a very strong permission to email to them.

11.2 RSS and Blogs RSS known as "Really Simple Syndication" is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines or podcasts. An RSS document, which is called a "feed", "web feed", or "channel", contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with their favorite web sites in an automated manner that's easier than checking them manually. RSS content can be read using software called an "RSS reader", "feed reader" or an "aggregator". The user subscribes to a feed by entering the feed's link into the reader or by clicking an RSS icon in a browser that initiates the subscription process. The reader checks the user's subscribed feeds regularly for new content, downloading any updates that it finds. The initials "RSS" are used to refer to the following formats: Really Simple Syndication (RSS 2.0) RDF Site Summary (RSS 1.0 and RSS 0.90) Rich Site Summary (RSS 0.91) RSS formats are specified using XML, a generic specification for the creation of data formats. Blogs A blog (a portmanteau of web log) is a website where entries are commonly displayed in reverse chronological order. "Blog" can also be used as a verb, meaning to maintain or add content to a blog. Many blogs provide commentary or news on a particular subject; others function as more personal online diaries. A typical blog combines text, images, and links to other blogs, web pages, and other media related to its

topic. The ability for readers to leave comments in an interactive format is an important part of many blogs. Most blogs are primarily textual, although some focus on art (artlog), photographs (photoblog), sketchblog, videos (vlog), music (MP3 blog), audio (podcasting) are part of a wider network of social media. Micro-blogging is another type of blogging which consists of blogs with very short posts.

11.3 Online Directories for Bed and Breakfasts Bed & breakfast is a term, originating in the UK, but now also used in North America, for a place that offers bed accommodation, and breakfast in return for payment, but usually does not offer other meals. Typically, especially in the UK, bed and breakfasts are private homes with only one or two bedrooms available for commercial use. A boarding house is different from and has a longer history than a bed & breakfast. The boarding house was for longer term stays, bed and breakfast was for people travelling through the area on short stays. The Bed & Breakfast Directory offers easy access, further information and contact details for Bed and Breakfast accommodation around the world. The Directory recently enjoyed its first birthday and as time progresses we hope to be able to show more and more B&B's from a wider range of locations across the world. Many of the Bed & Breakfast accommodation listed include feedback from past guests to give you an idea of the quality of service and facilities you can expect from the respective B&B. If you yourself have been a guest at a B&B listed on the Bed and Breakfast Directory, please leave your own feedback or comments for other visitors to the site. Many entries also have their own photographs posted for a visual idea of what to expect. For all Bed and Breakfast accommodation listed on the site there is quick and easy contact information and you can even enquire online. The level of detail in the information, such as price, facilities, ratings and locations on each bed and breakfast or guesthouse is dependent on the information provided by the Guesthouse themselves.

11.4 Local Searches - Why, What, How Buyers want both online and local information about where to buy. Most small businesses are local in nature, serving people who live nearby. Their customers found them through traditional methods like the Yellow Pages or newspaper ads. So far, the Internet hasn't figured prominently in their marketing efforts. That's about to change, as Local Search methods become more widespread. Even for buyers expecting to spend their money close to home, more and more of them go to the Internet to locate desired products and services. They rely on search engines to find suitable vendors in the fastest, easiest way. Local Search combines the search query word or phrase with specific geographic terms, like city or zip code. That way, search results only include enterprises in that local area. Instead of information about a small enterprise being lost among millions of pages of search results, it shows up in a small pool of local providers. That's good for them, as well as the person looking for what they provide. Small operations can easily be located by a whole new group of buyers Consumers don't simply go to the Yellow Pages when ready to buy - as they once did. Studies show that an astonishing 36% of online searches are conducted to find local businesses. About a quarter of all Internet users already conduct local searches. They'd do even more of it, if the desired small business data were more complete. Local enterprises need to prepare for the impact of changing customer habits. An easy first step is to include your business in Internet Yellow Pages (IYP), along with the printed Yellow Page directory. That puts your enterprise on the radar screen. Learn how your business can make the most of Local Search by visiting http://www.yellowpagesage.com. You'll find reliable advice

from experts in Yellow Pages and Local Search so you can get more mileage from your promotional dollars. Start by getting comfortable with search concepts, and improve your odds of being found when people search online for what you offer. You don't even need your own Web site to benefit from Internet Yellow Pages and Local Search.

12.

Offline Hotel Marketing

Hotel Marketing is marketing based on relationship and value. It may be used to market a Hotel. Marketing a Hotel-base business is different from marketing a product-base business. There are several major differences, including: 1. The buyer purchases are intangible 2. The Hotel Service may be based on the reputation of a single person 3. It's more difficult to compare the quality of similar services 4. The buyer cannot return the service 5. Hotel

Marketing

mix

adds

3

more

p's,

i.e.

people,

physical

environment, process service and follow-through are keys to a successful venture. The major difference in the education of Hotel marketing versus regular marketing is that instead of the traditional "4 P's," Product, Price, Place, Promotion, there are three additional "P's" consisting of People, Physical evidence, and Process. Hotel marketing also includes the service scape referring to but not limited to the aesthetic appearance of the business from the outside, the inside, and the general appearance of the employees themselves. Hotel Marketing has been relatively gaining ground in the overall spectrum of educational marketing as developed economies move farther away from industrial importance to service oriented economies. What is marketing? Marketing is the flow of goods and services from the producer to consumer. It is based on relationship and value. In common

parlance it is the distribution and sale of goods and services. Marketing can be differentiated as:



Marketing of products



Marketing of services

Marketing includes the services of all those indulged may it be then the wholesaler retailer, Warehouse keeper, transport etc. In this modern age of competition marketing of a product or service plays a key role. It is estimated that almost 50% of the price paid for a commodity goes to the marketing of the product in US. Marketing is now said to be a term which has no particular definition as the definitions change everyday. "Managing the evidence" refers to the act of informing customers that the service encounter has been performed successfully. It is best done in subtle ways like providing examples or descriptions of good and poor service that can be used as a basis of comparison. The underlying rationale is that a customer might not appreciate the full worth of the service if they do not have a good benchmark for comparisons. However, it is worth remembering that many of the concepts, as well as many of the specific techniques, will work equally well whether they are directed at products or services. In particular, developing a marketing strategy is much the same for products and services, in that it involves selecting target markets and formulating a marketing mix. Thus, Theodore Levitt suggested that "instead of talking of 'goods' and of 'services', it is better to talk of 'tangibles' and 'intangibles'". Levitt also went on to suggest that marketing a physical product is often more concerned with intangible aspects (frequently the `product service' elements of the total package) than with its physical properties. Charles Revson made a famous comment regarding the business of Revlon Inc.: `In the factory we make cosmetics. In the store we sell hope.' Arguably, service industry marketing merely approaches the problems from the opposite end of the same spectrum.

13. Hotel Brand Building Hotel Brand management is the application of marketing techniques to a specific Hotel. It seeks to increase the Hotel's perceived value to the customer and thereby increase brand franchise and brand equity. Marketers see a Hotel brand as an implied promise that the level of quality people have come to expect from a brand will continue with future purchases of the same product. This may increase sales by making a comparison with competing Hotels more favorable. It may also enable the Owner to charge more for his Hotel. The value of the brand is determined by the amount of profit it generates for the Hotel Owner. This results from a combination of increased sales and increased price. The annual list of the world’s most valuable brands, published by Interbrand and Business Week, indicates that the market value of companies often consists largely of brand equity. Research by McKinsey & Company, a global consulting firm, in 2000 suggested that strong, well-leveraged brands produce higher returns to shareholders than weaker, narrower brands. Taken together, this means that brands seriously impact shareholder value, which ultimately makes branding a CEO responsibility. Principles : A good brand name should: 

be legally protectable



be easy to pronounce



be easy to remember



be easy to recognize



attract attention



suggest product benefits (e.g.: Easy-Off) or suggest usage



suggest the company or product image



distinguish the product's positioning relative to the competition.

14. Guest Service A hotel is an establishment that provides paid lodging, usually on a shortterm basis. Hotels often provide a number of additional guest services such as a restaurant, a swimming pool or childcare. Some hotels have conference services and meeting rooms and encourage groups to hold conventions and meetings at their location.[citation needed] In Australia or Canada, the word may also refer to a pub or bar. In India, the word may also refer to a restaurant since the best restaurants were always situated next to a good hotel.

Hotel Guest Services Representatives A typical day might find guest services workers in hotels tracking down tickets to a hot concert in town, making reservations at a hip new restaurant, picking up dry cleaning, carrying luggage, welcoming guests, opening doors, or booking reservations. But whatever their exact duties or job titles, guest services representatives have the basic task of making hotel guests feel welcome, relaxed, and even pampered. As front desk people, guest services representatives are the "public face" of a hospitality enterprise. Guests often get a good or bad feeling about where they are staying within the first few minutes of their stay, and this opinion is often based on the helpfulness and friendliness--or the unhelpfulness and unfriendliness--of the up-front people. When a concierge goes out of the way to get information for a guest, or when a reservation agent is especially courteous and helpful, it can ensure that a first-time guest becomes a regular. While hotel and resort guests love excellent service, providing it is not always easy. Guest representatives must remain courteous, tactful, calm, and helpful, even when hotel guests are rude and demanding. If a concierge or desk clerk blows his cool, the hotel's reputation--and the concierge's or desk clerk's job--may suffer. Even after a horrendously long day, guest representatives must be as friendly and helpful to the last guest they encounter as they were to the first one. "How may I assist you?" is a phrase practically stamped on these workers foreheads. And even if a hotel is teeming with guests on the busiest weekend of the year while five staff members are out sick with the flu, guest representatives must remain as unflustered, serene, and peaceful as Zen monks. Needless to say, these jobs require a certain type of personality for success.

Specific tasks vary by specialization, but all guest services representatives do the following:



Greeting guests, offering assistance, and recommending hotel and area services



Keeping an eye out for problems, from unsatisfied customers to untidy restrooms, and making sure they're reported to those who can fix them



Reporting and documenting safety hazards, conditions, or unsafe practices



Providing service with a smile

SPECIALIZATION In very large hotels, the front office is usually subdivided into sections such as reservations, the front desk, bell service, telephone, concierge, and guest transportation. Many people may be employed in each area, with managers and assistant managers to supervise them. In small hotels one or two guest services representatives may handle all of these responsibilities. In this case they are usually called front-desk agents. In very small hotels, inns, and bed and breakfasts, one person may handle these and many other tasks, from housekeeping to food service to maintenance. ► Reservations agents keep up with hotel booking. They handle group room-contracts negotiated by the sales department and correspond with groups and travel agents to answer special requests for rooms and rates. They enter information into the computer and retrieve it when needed. They see that the front desk, housekeeping, and other departments, such as food service, receive daily information on expected arrivals and departures. ► Front desk agents work behind the main desk, where guests register when they arrive and check out when they leave. They make sure that guests have the rooms they booked, take payments, ask about any other needs the guests have, and generally try to sell and promote hotel services. ► Bellmen assist guests with luggage. ► Doormen open the hotel door for guests entering or leaving. They also assist guests with luggage, call taxis, and direct traffic moving in front of the hotel.

► Concierges perform many services for guests, including arranging hotel

services,

recommending

local

amenities,

and

booking

transportation, restaurants, and tickets. At business and conference hotels, they also have to know a considerable amount about business services, like where to find legal secretaries, translators, or computer repair. ► Guest transportation agents drive guests in hotel vehicles. They usually drive to and from the airport or between hotel outbuildings, but some hotels provide more extensive transportation services. ► Telephone operators take incoming calls and direct them to the proper room or department. They also take messages for guests and answer simple questions. SKILLS & KNOWLEDGE



Being consistently pleasant and polite



Dealing with complaints tactfully, calmly, and politely



Handling unexpected situations calmly



Relating to a wide variety of people



Teamwork



Record-keeping

In addition to career-specific skills, everybody needs these basic skills:



Reading



Math



Writing



Speaking & listening



Computer literacy



Problem-solving & decision-making



Understanding the broader picture



Working with people



A strong work ethic



A positive attitude



Independence & initiative



Self-presentation

15. Overview of Hotel Industry http://www.ahla.com/products_info_center_lip.asp Hotel Industry has witnessed tremendous boom in recent years. Hotel Industry is inextricably linked to the tourism industry and the growth in the tourism industry has fuelled the growth of hotel industry globally. The thriving economy and increased business opportunities have acted as a boon for hotel industry. The arrival of low cost airlines and the associated price wars have given domestic and global tourists a host of options. For example in India the 'Incredible India' destination campaign and the 'Atithi Devo Bhavah' (ADB) campaign have also helped in the growth of domestic and international tourism and consequently the hotel industry. In recent years government of all the countries has taken several steps to boost travel & tourism which have benefited Global hotel industry. These include the abolishment of the inland air travel tax, reduction in excise duty on aviation turbine fuel; and removal of a number of restrictions on outbound chartered flights, including those relating to frequency and size of aircraft. The government's recent decision to treat convention centres as part of core infrastructure, allowing the government to provide critical funding for the large capital investment that may be required has also fuelled the demand for hotel rooms. Substantial investments in tourism infrastructure are essential for hotel industry to achieve its potential. Business Travelers One major market segment for the hotel industry is business travel. Hotels in all price ranges compete to attract these guests and keep them as clients. Employees who have sales and marketing experience can help a hotel compete successfully. Hotels seek business travelers by providing special features or services designed to make it easier to work away from home. During the 1980s many

hotels built business centers that included computers and copiers. Portable technology has lessened the popularity of these centers, and now many business travelers prefer to work in their rooms using their own notebook computers. By the early 2000s popular hotel amenities included free newspapers, a complimentary breakfast, a large work desk, high-speed or WiFi Internet access, and exercise facilities. Efficiency is a primary concern for all business travelers whose tight schedules require quick service. Many hotels provide computerized services for speedy check-in and check-out. Employees are trained to help visits run smoothly and to handle problems swiftly. As in any service industry, pleasing the customer is of foremost importance. Some business-oriented hotels offer facilities for companies to conduct extended staff meetings. It is also common for businesses to schedule "retreats" where employees stay at the same hotel and discuss business strategies

in

designated

meeting

rooms,

then

spend

time

together

participating in leisure activities such as golf, tennis, or swimming. Many hotels are designed to cater to these meetings, especially those at popular resort destinations. Earning customer loyalty is a key feature of serving business travelers. If a hotel satisfies a business client, the long-term return can be great. One way that hotels promote customer loyalty is through frequent-guest programs. Travelers earn points for every dollar they spend at the hotel. When they have accumulated enough points, they can redeem them for gifts such as free lodging or a vacation at an exotic resort. Like all aspects of the hospitality industry, business and convention travel was hit hard by 9/11 and the sagging economy. From 1998 to 2003, business and convention travel experienced a 14 percent drop-off; however, business travel grew more than 4 percent in 2004 and should experience even more growth in the next few years, according to the Travel Industry Association of America.

Conventions Guest rooms are only one source of revenue for many hotels. They can make large profits by renting meeting rooms and exhibition space and by hosting banquets and receptions. Trade shows and conventions draw hundreds of customers at a time to a hotel. Many different industries and business organizations hold trade shows and conventions each year. Political, civic, religious, and social organizations also have

annual

meetings.

Hotels

hire

convention

planners

to

attract

conventions, to help businesses plan events, and to negotiate prices. During a convention service managers supervise every stage of the event. Because a hotel's reputation for efficiency and good service is often the key to its success in attracting conventions, the work of the convention staff is critical.

16. Corporate Information Choice Hotel Choice Hotels International is one of the largest and most successful lodging franchisors in the world. CHI is built on the foundation of the venerable Quality Inn® brand a pioneer in consistent mid-priced lodging. Publicly traded since 1996 (NYSE:CHH), Choice Hotels continues to lead the lodging industry as an innovative and growing company. Choice Hotels has led the industry with many innovations, being the first to:

•

Offer total wall-to-wall carpeting in all hotels (1952)

•

Offer in room telephones and 24 hour desk service (1954)

•

Guarantee Reservations (1963)

•

Offer 24 hour, toll-free reservations (1970)

•

Offer non-smoking rooms in every hotel (1984)

•

Offer internet reservation services (1995)

Choice Hotels International Type Discount Hotel Chain Founded 1939 Headquarter s Silver Spring, Maryland, USA No. of locations 5500 Area served World Wide • • •

Key people

• • •

Charles Ledsinger, Vice Chairman and CEO David White, CFO William Carlson, Senior Vice President of Marketing Bruce Haase, Senior Vice President of Brand Operations and International Mary Beth Knight, Senior Vice President of E-commerce Gary Thomson, Senior Vice President, CIO

Industry Lodging/Travel • • • •

Products

• • • • • •

Comfort Inn Comfort Suites Quality Inn Sleep Inn Clarion Cambria Suites Mainstay Suites Suburban Extended Stay Hotel Econo Lodge Rodeway Inn

Revenue 544.6 Million Net income 112.8 Million Slogan We'll see you there. Website www.Choicehotels.com

17. Corporate Information Best Western Best Western International Inc. is THE WORLD'S LARGEST HOTEL CHAIN®, with 4,200* independently owned and operated hotels. Based in Phoenix, Ariz., Best Western employs 1,076 people and offers more than 316,095 quality guest rooms located in 80* countries and territories throughout the world. Best Western was founded in 1946 by M.K. Guertin, a California-based hotelier with 23 years of experience in the lodging industry. Best Western International began as an informal referral system among member hotels. By 1963, Best Western was the largest chain in the industry, with 699 member hotels and 35,201 rooms. In 1964, when Canadian hotel owners joined the system, Best Western took the first step toward global expansion. Best Western entered Mexico, Australia and New Zealand in 1976, further establishing its international presence. Best Western's "Gold Crown" logo was introduced in 1964 and would continue with a few minor revisions over the next 30 years until it was replaced by the current blue and yellow logo in 1994. Best

Western

also

handles

reservations

through

its

website

at

www.bestwestern.com®. Special site features include a complete hotel guide, trip planner and a section for travel planners. As of the 2006 summer travel season, consumers booking at www.bestwestern.com were able to view five distinct virtual tours for every Best Western hotel in the U.S., Canada and the Caribbean. Each property features a 360-degree display of the hotel’s exterior, a standard guest room, and a deluxe room/suite, in addition to two other areas representative of the property, such as a pool, meeting room or restaurant. On average, bestwestern.com has been booking $1 million in revenue per day for the hotel chain since January 2005.

Best Western has a strong focus on marketing the brand. Some of the company’s key marketing partners are NASCAR and driver Michael Waltrip, American

Automobile

Association/Canadian

Automobile

Association

(AAA/CAA), AARP and MasterCard. Airline partnerships are also critical to the brand’s success. Best Western partners with a number of major airlines around the world including: Air Canada, Alaska, Alitalia, America West Airlines, Asiana Airlines, American, China Southern, Continental, Delta Air Lines, Lan Chile, Northwest Airlines, SAS, TAM, and Thai Airways. Best Western Overview

•

Based

on

distribution

and

number

of

locations,

Best

Western

International is the largest hotel company operating under a single brand name with 4,200* independently owned and operated hotels.

•

Headquartered in Phoenix, Arizona, Best Western employs 1076 people and offers 316,095 quality guest rooms located in 80* countries and territories worldwide.

•

The independent advantage offered through Best Western has been a cornerstone in U.S. markets for 61 years and in Europe for 31 years.

•

All Best Western hotels in the United States, Canada and the Caribbean offer free high-speed Internet access to guests as of year-end 2004.

•

In April 2006, Best Western renewed its partnership with NASCAR for another three years, extending its role as the sport's Official Hotel through the 2009 season. This unique sponsorship helps generate new consumer and business-to-business opportunities for the company.

•

Best Western International is the most unique brand in the industry. Nowhere else will you find hotels that were formerly castles built by Napoleon or hotels consisting of homes for rent.

•

Best Western operates consolidated reservations centers in Phoenix, Arizona; Milan, Italy and Manila, Philippines.

•

Best Western’s worldwide sales offices are located in Atlanta, Bangkok, Buenos Aires, Chicago, Dallas, Hong Kong, London, Los Angeles, Mexico City, Miami, Milan, New Delhi, New York City, Orlando, Rio de Janeiro, San Diego, Santiago, Seattle, Seoul, Singapore, St. Louis, Taipei, TelAviv, Tokyo, Toronto and Washington, DC.

•

American

Automobile

Association

and

Canadian

Automobile

Association rate 90 percent of Best Western hotels in the US and Canada; more than 1,000 of these properties receive a three-diamond rating

•

More than 90 percent of our hotels in Europe have three or four-star ratings.

•

Recently, Best Western added Premier hotels in Finland, Ireland and India.

•

Best Western offers members the unique advantage of retaining their independence

while

providing

the

benefits

of

a

full-service,

international lodging affiliation offering a global reservations system, marketing, advertising, purchasing, training and quality standards.

•

Best Western was one of the first lodging brands to provide booking capabilities to Internet users around the world when the hospitality giant

added

this

service

on

Dec.

19,

1995.

On

average,

bestwestern.com has been booking $1 million in revenue per day for the hotel chain since January 2005. *Numbers are approximate and can fluctuate.

18. Corporate Information Wyndham Worldwide Wyndham Worldwide (NYSE: WYN) is the holding company for Wyndham Hotels & Resorts, Group RCI and other lodging brands. It was spun off from Cendant Corporation in July 2006. Wyndham Worldwide, based in Parsippany, New Jersey, is one of the world's largest hospitality companies across six continents. It offers individual consumers and business customers a broad array of hospitality products and services as well as various accommodation alternatives and price ranges through our premier portfolio of world-renowned brands. Wyndham

Hotel

Group

is

the

world’s

largest

lodging

franchisor,

encompassing nearly 6,500 hotels under 10 brands on six continents. Wyndham Hotel Group's TripRewards® loyalty program is the largest in the lodging industry as measured by the number of participating hotels. Lodging management services are provided to upscale properties through Wyndham Hotel Management. The company is based in Parsippany, New Jersey. Wyndham Hotel Group Brands • • • • • • • • • •

Amerihost Inn Baymont Inn & Suites Days Inn Howard Johnson Knights Inn Ramada Super 8 Motels Travelodge Wingate Inn Wyndham Hotels & Resorts

Wyndham Hotel Group offers membership in its TripRewards® loyalty program, the largest in the lodging industry based on the number of participating hotels. In conjunction with the acquisition of the Wyndham Hotels and Resorts brand in 2005, the company established Wyndham Hotel Management Company, a lodging management services subsidiary.

Wyndham Hotel Group International, another subsidiary, franchises hotels in 48 countries outside of North America under the Days Inn, Howard Johnson, Ramada and Super 8 brands. Wyndham Hotel Group, based in Parsippany, N.J., employs 1,500 worldwide.

19. Corporate Information Intercontinental Hotels Group InterContinental Hotels Group PLC (IHG) (LSE: IHG NYSE: IHG) is a multinational company which operates several hotel brands. It is the largest hotel company by number of rooms (556,000 as of March 2007), and is headquartered in Windsor just outside Greater London. It is listed on the London Stock Exchange and is a constituent of the FTSE 100 Index. Business Model IHG is primarily engaged in managing hotels owned by other parties and in franchising its hotel brands. That is, it sells its expertise in hotel management, systems, and marketing, while leaving investment in real property, which is far more capital intensive, requires different skills, and has a different risk profile, primarily to its partners. This is not an unusual arrangement in the hotel industry. As of 2007 it franchises over 3,200 hotels, manages over 510 and owns only 24. The owned hotels do however include many of the key properties of company's flagship InterContinental brand. History InterContinental Hotels Group can be traced back to 1777 when William Bass began a brewery in Burton-upon-Trent. In 1876 their red triangle trademark was the first registered in the United Kingdom. In 1989 the British Government limited the number of pubs brewers could directly own, so Bass began to grow their small line of hotels. In 1990 they purchased Holiday Inn International from Kemmons Wilson, expanding themselves

into

North

America.

In

March

1998

they

acquired

the

InterContinental brand, expanding into the luxury market. In 2000 the company sold its brewing assets (and the rights to the Bass name) to the major Belgian brewer Interbrew for £2.3 billion and changed its name to Six Continents PLC. IHG was created in 2003 after Six Continents PLC split into two daughter companies: Mitchells and Butlers PLC, to handle restaurant assets and IHG to focus on hotels and soft drinks. Britvic, the

company's soft drinks division, was retained by IHG until December 2005, when IHG sold its interest in the company by an initial public offering.

InterContinental Hotels Group Type Public (LSE: IHG NYSE: IHG) Founded

15-Apr-03 (Origins trace back to 1777)

Headquarter s Windsor, England, UK •

Key people

• •

David Webster, Chairman Andrew Cosslett, Chief Executive RIchard Hartman, EMEA

Industry Hotel Brands include: • InterContinental Products • Crowne Plaza • Holiday Inn Revenue £960m GBP (2006) Operating income £258m GBP (2006) Net income £405m GBP (2006) Website www.ihgplc.com

20. Corporate Information Marriott International Marriott International, Inc., is a leading lodging company. Its heritage can be traced to a root beer stand opened in Washington, D.C., in 1927 by J. Willard and Alice S. Marriott. Today, Marriott International has more than 2,900 lodging properties located in the United States and 67 other countries and territories. Marriott International, Inc. (NYSE: MAR) is a worldwide operator and franchisor of a range of value and luxury hotels and related lodging facilities. Marriott currently has 2,300 accommodation properties in North America alone. Marriott's operations are grouped into the following five business segments: • • • • •

Full-service lodging - 65% Select-service lodging - 11% Extended-stay lodging - 5% Timeshare - 15% Synthetic fuel - 4% (primarily a tax shelter) Marriott International Type Public (NYSE: MAR)

Founded May 15, 1927 in Washington, D.C. Headquar Bethesda, Montgomery County, Maryland, ters United States Key peopl e

 

J.W. "Bill" Marriott, Jr., chairman and CEO William Shaw President and COO

Industry Hospitality, Hotels, Tourism Products hotels, resorts Revenue ▲$15.14 billion USD (2004) Employee s 143,000 (2006) Website www.marriott.com

Marriott Lodging operates and franchises hotels under the following brands: 

Marriott Hotels & Resorts



JW Marriott Hotels & Resorts



Renaissance Hotels & Resorts



Courtyard by Marriott



Residence Inn by Marriott



Fairfield Inn by Marriott



Marriott Conference Centers



TownePlace Suites by Marriott



SpringHill Suites by Marriott



Marriott Vacation Club International



Horizons by Marriott



The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, L.L.C.



The Ritz-Carlton Club



Marriott ExecuStay



Marriott Executive Apartments



Grand Residences by Marriott

21. Corporate Information Hilton Hotels Corporation Hilton Hotels Corporation is one of the leading global hospitality companies. As of April 2007 there are 2,645 hotels and 485,000 rooms employing 105,000 people in more than 80 countries. It was founded by Conrad Hilton in Cisco, Texas and now has headquarters in Beverly Hills, California. Aiming to offer top class service to its guests, Hilton has become a leader in the hospitality industry. The company is around 5% owned by the founding family. The original company was founded in 1919 by Conrad Hilton. The Hotels Statler Company was acquired in 1954 for $111,000,000 in what was then the world's largest real estate transaction. On July 3, 2007, Hilton announced plans to merge with the Blackstone Group in an all cash deal valued at $26 billion USD. The merger was completed on October 24, 2007. Hilton Hotels Corporation Private, Subsidiary of Blackstone Type Private Equity Founded Cisco, Texas, USA Headquar ters Beverly Hills, California, USA Key peopl Christopher J. Nassetta, President and e CEO Industry Hotels Revenue $8.162 billion USD (2006) Employee s 105,000 Slogan be hospitable Website www.hiltonworldwide.com

The company owns, manages or franchises a portfolio of brands: 

Hilton Hotels



Conrad Hotels



Doubletree



Embassy Suites Hotels



Hampton Inn



Hampton Inn & Suites



Hilton Garden Inn



Hilton Grand Vacations Company



Homewood Suites by Hilton



The Waldorf-Astoria Collection



LivingWell Health Clubs operates health and fitness clubs in the group's hotels. It also includes a chain of standalone clubs, which are mainly in the UK, but has a small number of branches in other countries.



Hilton HHonors

22. Corporate Information Expedia.com Expedia.com is an Internet-based travel agency and a part of Expedia, Inc.. It books airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rentals, cruises, vacation packages, and various attractions and services via the World Wide Web and telephone travel agents. The site uses the Sabre and formerly Worldspan as their main Computer reservations system(s), with the adjuncts of Pegasus and their own Canadian connectivity company for hotels that are not listed in Worldspan. Expedia delivers consumers everything they need for researching, planning, and purchasing a whole trip. The company provides direct access to one of the broadest selections of travel products and services through its North American Web site, localized versions throughout Europe, and extensive partnerships in Asia. Serving many different consumer segments — from families booking a summer vacation to individuals arranging a quick weekend getaway, Expedia provides travelers with the ability to research, plan, and book their comprehensive travel needs. Expedia-branded Web sites feature airline tickets, hotel reservations, car rental, cruises, and many other in-destination services from a broad selection of partners. Expedia can be found on the Web at www.expedia.com. In 2006, Expedia.com was awarded a Webby Award in the area of "Best In Travel Websites", a Stevie Award from the American Business Association for "Most Innovative Company", as well as the top rating in customer satisfaction across online travel agencies by the American Customer Satisfaction Index. URL www.expedia.com Commerci al? Yes Type of site travel agency Registrati No

on Owner Expedia, Inc. Created Rich Barton and Lloyd by Frink

23. Corporate Information Travelocity.com Travelocity is an online travel agency operated by Travelocity.com LP. Travelocity is a wholly owned subsidiary of Sabre Holdings Corporation, which was a publicly traded company until taken private by Silver Lake Partners in March 2007. Travelocity is based in Southlake, Texas, with additional offices in New York City, San Francisco, and abroad. According to Sabre Holdings, Travelocity is the sixth-largest travel agency in the United States, and the second-largest online travel agency. In addition to its primary US consumer site, Travelocity operates a full-service business agency, Travelocity Business, and comparable websites in Canada, Germany, France, the Scandinavian countries, and the United Kingdom, and is a partner in Asian travel hubs Tabini and Zuji. Other brands include Site59.com, a last-minute travel technology and content provider; World Choice Travel, a travel affiliate marketing program; and Showtickets.com, a tour and ticket broker in Las Vegas. History American

Airlines

began

offering

customer

access

to

its

electronic

reservation system, SABRE, on the CompuServe Information Service in the 1980s, under the "Eaasy SABRE" brand name. This service was extended to America Online in the 1990s. Travelocity was created in 1996, as a subsidiary of Sabre Holdings, itself a subsidiary of American Airlines and was run by long-time Sabre I.T. executive Terrell

B.

"Terry"

Jones.

As

one

of

the

pioneers

of

web-based

disintermediation, Travelocity.com was the first website that allowed consumers themselves not only to access Sabre's fare and schedule information, but also to reserve, book, and purchase tickets without the help of a travel agent or broker. In addition to airfares, the site also permits consumers to book hotel rooms, rental cars, cruises and packaged vacations.

Travelocity gained momentum after the AOL keyword Travel became associated with the brand in 1999. In 2000, Sabre negotiated a merger of Travelocity with another early web travel company, Preview Travel. The resulting company was independently quoted on the NASDAQ exchange, with Sabre continuing to own around 30% of the combined company's stock, but around 70% of the voting rights. In 2002, with Travelocity's fortunes suffering from competition including Expedia and Orbitz, Sabre consummated a tender offer for the remainder of the outstanding shares in Travelocity and remerged the business into Sabre as a subsidiary. Jones left the company shortly afterward. In 2005, Travelocity acquired lastminute.com to take in excess of 30 more brands under its banner in the UK. Under current CEO Michelle Peluso’s leadership, Travelocity has developed and launched a merchant hotel business, dynamic packaging functionality, and a private-label (ASP) distribution network, the Travelocity Partner Network. As of early 2005, many members of Peluso’s former management team at Site59 now hold senior management positions at Travelocity; namely, Jeffrey Glueck (Chief Marketing Officer), Damon Tassone (Deputy CEO, lastminute.com), Tracey Weber (COO, North America), Richard Harris (Senior Vice President, Strategy and Business Development), Josh Feuerstein (Group Manager Director at lastminute.com and Senior Vice President and Hotel Segment Manger for Sabre Holdings), Josh Hartmann (Vice President, Software Development) and Jonathan Perkel (Vice President & Deputy General Counsel).

24. Corporate Information Orbitz.com Orbitz Worldwide is an Internet Travel Company headquartered in Chicago, Illinois. Orbitz, along with all other Cendant travel businesses, was sold to a subsidiary of the Blackstone Group in a deal worth over $4.6 billion, forming a new company called Travelport. Orbitz is a leading online travel company offering leisure and business travelers a wide selection of low airfares, as well as deals on lodging, car rentals, cruises, vacation packages and other travel. The site was created to address consumers' need for a comprehensive display of fares and rates in a single location. Orbitz - The Travel Site 

Award-winning flight search engine makes it easy to find the lowest fares on hundreds of airlines.



Comprehensive selection of hotel rates, including discounted Low Price Guarantee rates.



Comprehensive rates from a wide selection of car rental companies in one place on the Internet



Special deals on cruises available online.

Orbitz' inventory includes hundreds of airlines, more than 80,000 hotels worldwide and 13 rental car brands. Orbitz search results are presented in an easy-to-use matrix that displays a vast array of travel options. OrbitzTLCSM Orbitz is the first and only travel site with a seasoned team of experts that monitors nationwide travel conditions for our travelers around the clock, every day. At our command center, the OrbitzTLC Team gathers and interprets FAA, National Weather Service and other data to provide you with travel intelligence - real-time information that travelers won't find elsewhere.

At Orbitz, the customer relationship doesn't end when you hit the "purchase" button. The OrbitzTLC Team is on the case 24/7 while you're on the road, providing automated OrbitzTLC Alerts via your device of choice: mobile phone, pager, PDA or e-mail. Orbitz is there to make your journey as easy as possible,

providing

the

latest

information

on

flight

delays,

weather

conditions, gate changes, airport congestion or any other event that might impact your travel.

Contact Details Corporate Office Orbitz 500 West Madison Street Suite 1000 Chicago IL 60661 312-894-5000 voice 312-894-5001 fax Exchanging Paper Tickets Orbitz Ticketing Department 1961 Premier Drive Suite 320 Mankato MN 56001

25. Corporate Information Hotels.com Hotels.com is an operating company of Expedia, Inc. that provides reservation services for hotel rooms and other places to stay. Hotels.com (formerly Hotel Reservations Network) wants to transform the Internet into the inn-ternet. The company books rooms at more than 70,000 properties in more than 400 markets throughout Asia, the Caribbean, North America, and Europe through several Web sites. It also accepts reservations through its toll-free call centers. With about 33,000 Internet and call center affiliates, Hotels.com offers rooms at discounts of up to 70%. The company has room supply agreements with hotel chains such as Hilton Hotels, Best Western, Radisson, and Sheraton. Barry Diller's IAC/InterActiveCorp folded Hotels.com into its Expedia subsidiary in 2005, just before spinning Expedia off into a separate company. The company was founded in Dallas, TX in 1991 as Hotel Reservations Network (HRN) by Dave Litman and Bob Diener as a toll-free telephone service, offering consumers a one-stop source for discounted hotel rooms in major cities. In 2002 HRN introduced Hotels.com and the brand 1-800-2Hotels. Officers: VP Business Development: Sunil Bhatt President, Expedia North America: Paul Brown VP Customer Experience and Online Marketing: Joe Megibow Contact Information: Hotels.com, L.P. 10440 N. Central Expwy., Ste. 400 Dallas, TX 75231 TX Tel. 214-361-7311 Toll Free 800-219-4606

Fax 214-361-7299

26. Corporate Information TripAdvisor.com TripAdvisor.com is a free travel guide and research website that offers reviews and information to help plan a vacation. Users research places to visit and hotels to book, primarily by browsing the thousands of reviews posted on the website each week by other travelers. TripAdvisor is an example of Consumer Generated Media. TripAdvisor makes its money from advertising. TripAdvisor.com covers more than 270,000 hotels and attractions in over 30,000 destinations worldwide. It features hotel, attraction, and restaurant reviews written by travelers; a wiki for users to provide facts and tips on destinations, similar in concept to a travel guidebook; "goLists", where users list what to see or what to do, somewhat like travel itineraries; interactive maps based on the Google Maps engine; and "TripAdvisor Forums", a traveler message board area. With more than 10 million reviews and opinions and nearly 30 million unique visitors a month, TripAdvisor claims to be the largest travel community on the web. The site has been criticised for allowing users to publish fraudulent reviews. In response, they claim that all reviews are moderated by their staff, and they have algorithms to detect abuse. TripAdvisor was founded in February 2000, and was purchased by InterActive Corporation in 2004. Original financing was obtained from Flagship Ventures, the Bollard Group, and private investors. TripAdvisor is now owned by Expedia, Inc..

27. Corporate Information Priceline.com Priceline.com (NASDAQ: PCLN) is a commercial website which helps users obtain discount rates for travel-related items such as airline tickets and hotel stays. The company is not a direct supplier of these services; it is similar to a web portal, providing comparative pricing from an assortment of service companies. It is headquartered in Norwalk, Connecticut, United States. Priceline is the brainchild of venture capitalist Jesse Fink and of digital entrepreneur Jay Walker; the company's origins were closely tied with Walker's company Walker Digital. Hong Kong company Cheung Kong Holdings later purchased a significant portion of Priceline's stock. It first gained prominence for its Name Your Own Price system, where travelers would name their price for airline tickets, hotel rooms, and car rentals. The price would be compared to undisclosed prices in the Priceline database, with the purchaser knowing the location and name of the rental car company, airline, or hotel only after the purchase had gone through, with no rights to cancel. (According to the web site, the no-cancellation no-refund policy is because Priceline offers the price to the hotel, airline, or car rental agency with the promise that the service would be sold and the seat or hotel will be filled, or the car will be rented.) Priceline's cut of the proceeds was the difference between the price an individual named and the price charged by the service establishment. More recently, it has moved to a more traditional model where travelers are presented prices and are also told the name of the establishment. Travelers can still choose to name their price but the number of participants in that program has significantly diminished. Priceline.com also experimented with selling gasoline and groceries under the Name Your Own Price model in 2000, at the height of the dot-com bubble, through a partially owned affiliate, WebHouse Club. Priceline also got into the online auction business with Priceline Yard Sales, where individuals would use the Priceline system to haggle for various second hand items and trade them in person. Priceline also sold long distance telephone service and automobiles under the Name Your Own Price model. All of these experiments

were terminated in 2002. Another experiment, the Name Your Own Rate system for home loans, continues under a license with EverBank. In 2002, Priceline licensed its “Name Your Own Price” travel system to eBay. Priceline returned to its original focus on travel products, such airfares and rental cars, with the addition of cruise sales and a special emphasis on hotel bookings in its commercials. During November 2007, Priceline “permanently” eliminated all booking fees on published airfares. For years, Priceline's official spokesperson was William Shatner, who agreed to do the spots for free in exchange for stock in the company. The arrangement turned out to be quite profitable for Shatner, who sold much of the stock shortly before its value plummeted in the dot-com bust. An early ad campaign featuring Shatner had him belt out popular songs in spoken word, in the style of his album, The Transformed Man. He was "replaced" in 2004 by his Star Trek co-star, Leonard Nimoy. Shatner still appeared in spots for Priceline, running into Nimoy as his replacement. When that campaign ended, Shatner again became Priceline's sole spokesperson.

28. Introduction to Cyberweb Hotels Company Background: Cyberweb Hotels is owned by CGS Infotech, Inc. CGS Infotech is a global information technology & media company serving customers in 40 countries since 1995. CGS Infotech is an ISO 9001:2000 company with precisely documented processes to deliver consistent quality of service. CGS Infotech’s mission is to “Create a New Level of Success” for its clients and partners worldwide. CGS Infotech is a debt-free, profit-making public limited company with a goal to achieve revenue of US $ 10 million in next 5 years. Infrastructure: CGS Infotech operates out of spacious software development center & call center with capacity of 100 people in Mumbai, India. CGS Infotech has multiple redundant Internet connectivity and dedicated leased line. CGS call center are buzzing with activities 24 hours a day, 365 days a year. All centers of CGS Infotech are equipped with high-speed computers, routers, switches, high-performance software and productivity tools. CGS Infotech owns and manages high-end Windows and Linux servers in most reliable data-centers in Tampa, Florida and Mumbai, India. People: CGS Infotech staff members are energetic technocrats with vast experience in software, internet and web technologies. Each of the CGS staff members go through rigorous training on customer service, communication, leadership and producing effective results along with the latest technical training on range of technologies. CGS Infotech has 53 senior full-time staff members, project leaders and customer service representative. CGS Infotech staff members are committed to create a new level of success for its clients. Services:

CGS Infotech offers outstanding Software Development, Business Process Outsourcing, Website Design and Internet Marketing services. The company’s vast array of services are designed the enable clients to reduce cost, increase profits, protect their business and build the brands. B2b Directories and Portals: CGS Infotech owns popular high-traffic Internet Yellow-pages, B2b directories and portals such as Mumbaipage, TradeIsha and Indiafashion. Clients: Super 8 Motel, Howard Johnson, Comfort Suites, Hampton Inn, Days Inn, Quality Inn, Americas Best Value Inn & Suites, Sleep Inn, Best Western, Regency Inn, Rodeway Inn, Country Hearth Charlotte, Holiday Inn, Comfort Inn, Econo Lodge, Super Lodge. http://www.starwoodhotels.com/westin/common/components/content/global_ footer_brand_popup.html http://www.marriott.com/aboutbrands/default.mi http://www.hilton.com/en/hi/info/family_brands.jhtml?adId=fob,hihomepage,3 0 Global Partnership: CGS Infotech is having partnership with Network Solutions, Inc and NTT Verio. Susan Baron (Manager - VeriSign - Now Network Solutions) has expressed following sentiments to describe their relationship with CGS: "Cyberweb Global Services (CGS) is our Premier Partner since 1996. We are certain that you will be as pleased with the performance of CGS Infotech as we are." We

are

registered

with

Government as Contractor:

Dun

&

Bradsheet

and

US

Federal

CGS Infotech is a company incorporated and having registered office in Delaware. Our Employee Identification Number is - EIN-98-0421775. We are registered with Dun and Bradsheet and US Federal Government as registered contractor. Our Dun and Bradsheet number is 624759036. We have an offshore development center in Mumbai, India with 65 staff members. CGS Infotech has always supported the associations such as AAHOA, AHLA and SLPS. Some of the leading members of these associations are our satisfied clients. We have also provided valuable service to some of these associations.



LPS



Nash Patel



Godrej



HDFC



Reliance



Gujarat Times



Business India



DNA Money

29. Smart-Sell Package Charges for Website Design and Search Engine Optimization Static Website Design Package Our website design charges are $ 249 for a small 5 page static website. The package includes Domain Name Registration and 100 MB Webspace on highspeed US server. The cost of this package is only $ 249 per year. Flash Website Design Package The cost for designing a 5-page website with Macromedia Flash images will be US $ 499 The cost of this package is only $ 499 per year. Social Media Optimization (SMO) Social Media Optimization refers to the technology of boosting your websites popularity on Web2.0 websites such as Digg, Delicious, Stumple Upon, Myspace, Facebook and other portals. The cost of all-inclusive SMO package will be US $ 1299 per year. Search Engine Optimization Package Search Engine Optimization is the process of listing your website at top in Search Engine such as Yahoo, Google, AOL and other top search engines. We will promote 5 pages of your website under 15 top keywords. We will also send you Ranking Report that shows the ranking of your website on major search engines every quarter. The cost of SEO-PRO package is US $ 900 (7 Keywords and 3 pages) The other SEO packages are:

N o 1 2 3 4 5 6 7

SEO Package Name SEO Basic SEO Plus SEO PRO SEO Premium SEO Gold SEO Platinum SEO Sapphire

Keyword s 7 12 16 20 30 50 400

WebPages 3 6 8 10 15 25 200

Link 10 12 16 25 50 150 800

Annual Investment $ 900 $ 1475 $ 2249 $ 4550 $ 8950 $ 32750 $ 146999

Internet Brand Protection (IBP) Under IBP Package, we will scan all major 8 portal and alert you on any negative review that you might have. We will also help you to build the positive reviews. The cost of IBP package will depend on the time spent on communicating with your guests and enabling you to get positive reviews and management responses to negative reviews. IBP packages start at US $ 399 per year. IBP-Basic - Supporting 3 guests to post positive reviews. US $ 399 IBP-PRO - Supporting 15 guests to post positive experience. 799 IBP-Premium - Supporting 35 guests to post positive experience. 1299

US

$

US

$

Special discounted all-inclusive package for Hotel Owners - SMARTSELL PACKAGE "Smart-Sell" is an all inclusive Travel E-Commerce package that consists of: Domain Name. Web-Hosting on high-speed servers 5-Page website design with Flash. Web-Promotion and Listing your site at top positions in Yahoo! and Google - 3 pages and 7 keywords Education and strategic support to build positive travel reviews - 3 Reviews Basic social media optimization for Digg and Delicious. The cost of this package is only $ 950 per year.

30. Contact Us Mumbai : 201, Gundecha Industrial Estate, Next to Big Bazaar, Akurli Road, Kandivali (East), Mumbai – 400101. Phone : 2885 2015

Fax:- 2885 1689

USA : 501 Silverside Road, Suite 105, Wilmington, DE 19809. Phone : 302-351-2434. Fax: 302-351-6292. UAE : Building 3, Ground Floor, Green Community, Dubai Investment Park, P. O. Box - 212880 UK Address: Gainsborough House, 81 Oxford Street London W1D 2EU United Kingdom Phone : +44-808-238-1330 South Africa: West Wing, Birchwood Court Montrose Street, Vorna Valley P. O. Box 11666, Midrand 1686 Australia: Level 18, Riverside Centre 123 Eagle Street, Brisbane Qld 4000

Australia Phone : +61-290-370-230

Cyberweb Hotels Advertisement designed by Nirmal Raval