Tour and Travel

About las vegas, well who doesn’t know this city. It’s one of the notorious city at Nevada. Some call it city of sin, but hey, it’s much fun there!.

The history began when Raphael Rivera, first European visit Las Vegas Area in 1829. In that time, areas of the valley contained artesian wells that supported extensive green areas (Vegas mean green areas).

In 1844, Las Vegas was still part of Mexico. But on 1855, Las Vegas was annexed by the United States, after that day, United States assigned 30 missionaries to convert the Paiute Indian population to Mormonism. Later, Mormons abandoned Las Vegas in 1857, during the Utah War.

Las Vegas was re-established as a railroad town on 1905, when 110 acres owned by the San Pedro, Los Angeles and Salt Lake Railroad was auctioned off in what is now downtown Las Vegas. Then Las Vegas became an city on March 16, 1911 and Peter Buol was assigned as the first mayor.

Enough for history lesson, now it’s the fun news. According to my friend, there’s a lot of Las Vegas Club and Casino at that city. All of that club and casino have unique landscape and design. And my lucky friend even go to strip club just for fun and prove to me that’s Vegas really had strip club, ha ha. When I ask him, why he didn’t go to Casino, he told me that it’s already seen on film so it’s no fun to go to casino.

There have been torrents of articles and webinars extolling the virtues of social media for hotels. Social media is certainly applicable for hotel franchise brand-building, but this writer is still unconvinced about the marketing value of social media for individual hotels. Social media has been a boon for retail product sales because items can be of interest to people at any time, but the same principle is not true for hotels.

Interest is the key. Few people have any interest in a particular hotel unless it happens to be where they are traveling or planning an event. The exception is travel-oriented social media, which is a viable tool to promote individual hotels because consumers can search comments about the specific hotel in which they have an interest at the time.

Second-party endorsement of products and services has always been a powerful sales tool. There was a time when most hotels sought the coveted stars and diamonds of AAA and Mobil to demonstrate their value to travelers. Today, travel-oriented social media has intensified hotel endorsement by providing traveler user-generated comments to guide the hotel selection process. This is powerful marketing.

Packages and Promotions Promote Search & Sales

For individual hotels, Internet search is still the most effective tool to drive travelers to your website to drive reservations, yet there are still so many hotel websites which are not being utilized to maximize search results or promote new sales. Simply presenting your hotel’s facilities and services is not nearly enough. Every page on your website should be a possible landing page.

Many hotel sites are not taking advantage of even the most basic of tactics to improve search results and sell more rooms. Packages and promotions can serve both masters. If packages are based upon local attractions and events, they invite the use of additional search keywords to expose your hotel. Remember search results are based upon the content of your website.

In addition, this economy has amplified traveler appetites for real travel deals; those like a well developed package or promotion. People want a deal and buy value, not rates. Packages are a means to mask rates so as to maintain your hotel’s rate integrity. They are also an instrument to connect your hotel with the attractions and unique destination attributes in your marketplace.

Create an Extranet For Your Best Clients

Keeping good clients isn’t always a matter of reducing rates or adding expensive amenities; sometimes, adding a service convenience can be a strong tool. One of these services is to offer an exclusive page, accessed only from your site, which is totally devoted to the client. You can provide your client with a password-accessed page(s) to display negotiated rates, special amenities, area or client-oriented information, etc.

Along with this client-devoted page, you can provide them with a direct link to their own page on your website in the form of an computer icon which leads to your website. This can be a powerful “partnership” tool.

Thinking outside the box can also apply to the most powerful sales tool in your possession, your website. These tactics are not new, not exclusive, and not unique, but they can make a significant impact to your website booking results.

It’s amazing how easily myths are born. One origin of many myths is the reality that many technical people out there do their best to promulgate confusion about the Internet; making it appears too complicated and too intricate for the average person to fully understand. They even use technical language to describe simple tasks just to stir-up the confusion still more; it’s simply not that complicated.

Many web site designers tend to be right-brain directed people who use their creative side to build a visual masterpiece instead of a functioning site to sell visitors and deliver reservations. This has created a gap between marketing people who believe that “Content is King”, that a site must conform to search engine parameters, and techies who feel that all they need do is to make a site visually appealing to the hotel manager or owner, who hired them.

These people have little or no concern about how and why people choose hotel rooms because few of them have any experience in the hotel industry. Hoteliers know that their hotel’s location is the primary selection consideration, yet we see site after site, which provide no clue to the hotel’s location; please note that your hotel’s location is not simply its address.

We still see many independent hotels without a booking engine, leaving site visitors frustrated that they cannot make a real-time reservation online. We see unusual and strange site navigation schemes; visitors should not have to learn how to use your site. We see many sites with far more images than text; yet search engines only see text.

We see more and more use of flash elements where they are not necessary with a lack of well-written text; leaving the site nearly invisible to search engines.

Myth:

We Already Have a Web Site, So All We Need Now is Search Engine Optimization

Many people, including some site designers, share this delusion; the fact is that the site design has everything to do with its ability to be ranked and found by search engines. Search engines have some very specific guidelines to enable web designers to maximize search results; all they need do is follow them.

Your web site needs to be prepared to comply with search engine guidelines; well researched title, description, and search tags; search words/phrases which are incorporated into the sales text on your site; content is king. Submitting a poorly designed web site to search engines is a complete waste of money.

Myth:

Animation Looks Cool and Creates Interest

This is one of my favorites among all hotel web site myths. The danger with this myth is that it appears to make sense to the uninitiated. Techies love flash because it does look cool, but the fact is that there are several problems with this thinking.

First, since a site needs to be found before it can be viewed, search engines can’t “see” flash. Second, for the many people, still on slow Internet connections, flash takes forever to load. The need to double-click navigation links, instead of the traditional single-click, is annoying and confusing to visitors. Morphing photos do absolutely nothing to enhance a commercial web site; if they morph too fast, one cannot properly view the images, too slow, some images are never seen. Do the images simply repeat over and over again or do they stop on the most important image?

Since content is king, why not simply post static images so visitors can focus on those of interest? I won’t even comment on hotel web sites designed entirely in flash…rubbish.

Myth:

Search Engines Don’t Use Meta Tags Anymore

The fact is that the most popular search engines use Meta Tags, in various ways, to crawl and rank web sites. The description tag is certainly the most important tag, yet we see many sites without one. Key word/phrase Tags set the stage for search key words and phrases to be used within the body of text.

In my opinion, if only one search engine used Meta Tags, that’s reason enough to have them; they are free to use and can positively affect the performance of your site.

Myth:

My Hotel Web Site is My Hotel’s Online Brochure

The fact is that your hotel’s web site should be far more than simply an online brochure; it’s your online selling piece which enables visitors to make real-time online reservations. This makes it critical that your site has good selling text with all the necessary who, what, why, when, and where information; capped-off with a call-to-action…to make a reservation.

Designing a web site is like sculpting an elephant out of stone; merely chip-away everything that doesn’t look like an elephant. With a hotel web site, chip away everything that doesn’t lead the user to make a reservation.

It’s important to understand that, with few exceptions, people don’t travel to stay at your hotel; they travel to visit an area or attraction, conduct business in an area, attend a meeting, or other such reasons; they merely stay at your hotel. Your site should provide reasons to stay at your hotel when they travel to your area. No matter how beautiful your hotel, that’s not a good enough reason to stay at your hotel; provide the reasons why your hotel is the perfect place to stay when they visit the area.

Myth:

People Who Use the Internet Are Only Looking for the Lowest Rates

Any attempt to put all Internet users into one neat market segment is short-sighted and fool-hardy. With the exception of destination resorts, people will shop for the best overall value within a chosen market. This is often falsely interpreted as rate shopping. Few people shop for the lowest rate alone; most people look for the best deal, which includes the location and facilities they want…, at the best rate. This is shopping for value, not rate.

Hotels with the lowest rates within a market area are often viewed as “poor choices” among shoppers. Low rates are often interpreted as “unbelievable or too good to be true”. Your web site should “position” your hotel within the market. If it’s available in your market, use Smith Travel Research’s STR Report and a good competition analysis to determine your hotel’s position in the market; it’s worth the time and effort.

Your rates should reflect your position in the market, even if they are the highest. Showing the best overall value, with rates that show demonstrate that value, sells rooms.