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.

The Internet and its promise of instant profitability is potentially the biggest problem in the coming years for many businesses in the retail and hospitality industries.

Revenue managers want to use the Internet as a distribution channel to sell more product or in the case of hotels, put more heads in beds, yet at the same time an over reliance on the Internet could actually have the opposite affect, eroding already faltering profits. The fact is that by aggressively competing on features and price, it’s difficult for your business to create meaningful and lasting differences from your competitors.

Your customers benefit from price wars by saving money, but also get confused when choice is confined to price. In many instances the customer is in effect buying a commodity and has no sense of brand loyalty because little is known about the company making the product or about service after the sale.

As such, branding has never become more important, and its time your Internet pricing models need to be addressed. There is a danger of your product or hotel being perceived as a commodity. In the Internet world, if you can make your product different from a commodity you can get the pricing differentiation.

Branding should therefore be a key aspect of every business Web site, but remember your brand is not just your logo, tagline, packaging or the “look and feel” of your ads and your website. These are all graphical parts of your brand identity and are often narrowly, and incorrectly, referred to as “branding”.

Your brand resides within the hearts and minds of your customers and prospects. It is the sum total of their experiences and perceptions of your product, company and service, some of which you can influence, and some you cannot.

We are all aware that the Internet has caused price transparency and made it harder to raise prices, but when it comes to either retail stores or leisure travel hotel operators, you can create pricing power by offering the intangibles the competition can’t compete with.

Without that differentiation for the product you are selling, it will be viewed as homogenous by the consumer, thus a commodity and consumers will be driven solely on the price factor and by offering a differentiated product you will create pricing power even over the transparency of the Internet.

By employing a direct branding strategy from your website, you will be able to get out in front of the profit siphoning discount websites and make a pitch directly to people viewing websites for information on your product or geographic region and offering them the information, differentiation and comparisons necessary to influence their purchasing decisions.

For too long we have been training customers to look for deals and lowest price online and as businesses we need to smarten up and begin to focus on a direct web channel marketing strategy as a means to educate potential consumers into what exactly they are getting for their money.

There’s only one way to know whether or not your website is doing its job and, that is, to check the number of reservations it’s generating. If you have an independent hotel, this is an easy task; your booking engine’s analytics should tell you. If it’s franchised, it’s a little harder because most brands don’t want you to know how much your proprietary site is contributing to bookings. Many don’t want you to have a proprietary site at all.

Unfortunately, many franchises still discourage the use of proprietary websites and/or measuring your own site’s production. It’s a matter of self-preservation; they’re afraid you won’t need them, I guess. A big hooray for enlightened brands like Hilton and Preferred Hotels, which support the use of proprietary sites for their hotels. It makes common sense; proprietary sites can do what franchise sites cannot. Only a little more than 20% of searches are performed by brand name, anyway.

Is Your Website Producing Business? (Do you know?)

More and more hoteliers are turning to the Internet to sell their hotel rooms, food, beverages, and other facilities. But, the question is just how effective is that website to attract visitors and book business? It is amazing how many hoteliers have no idea whether or not their site is actually producing business and appear satisfied with only knowing how many visitors the site gets.

Would you hire a sales person and not measure how much business he or she books? Would you be satisfied just knowing how many people they talk to? I doubt it.

More than just the way they look, too many hotel sites are not designed to be found through generic search nor are they designed to drive reservations. In the last few years, many website designers have gravitated towards building websites for hotels. Unfortunately, many of them have no hands-on experience with hotels to understand how and why people choose a hotel online. It’s also sad that many of them don’t know how search engines work either.

Destination-focused Websites

In several past articles, I referred to some hotel sites as nothing more than online brochures. A hotel online brochure is a site, which only covers information about the hotel itself; that makes it dead-in-the-water from a search standpoint. Someone who designs such a site, doesn’t understand how travelers use the Internet to find and book rooms.

Few people choose a hotel before choosing a destination. The fact is that most travelers first select a destination, attraction, or activity, then select a hotel within the scope of that destination. Hotel online brochures mention little, if any, information about the destination features nearby. Yet, this is the most important search findability information on your site. Selecting a hotel is most often the “second” decision made by travelers.

A Matter of Value

The location, not the address, of a hotel plays a very important role in the process of determining value. Most travelers do not choose a hotel by facilities and rates alone, it’s value that counts. How convenient the hotel’s location is, as compared to where they need or want to be, is their primary value decision.

It’s Also a Matter of Search Findability

Just designing a website that looks great is a small part of a site designer’s responsibility; almost any site designer can make an attractive site. You’ve read a lot about a site’s search ability or findability; to me, the most important part of any site. Many site designers appear to have been enlightened about the use of title and description meta tags; important search elements, but we still see a lack of understanding about keyword search tags.

Many search engines, like Google, search for keywords within the body text of each web page. This is why keywords are useless unless they have been incorporated within the site’s content. Remember, content is king. Researching and using popular keywords is essential to generic search. Generic search incorporates location attributes; trip types, such as meetings, weddings, etc; and popular attractions or activities.

Getting on page one of generic searches is an achievable goal for all hotels; the ultimate goal is to be within the first three generic search results. Pay-per-click advertising is a great tool for sponsored search results, but is too costly if generic search is ignored.

Competition has never been keener than it is today and the vast majority of travelers are using the Internet to decide where to go and where to stay. There is markedly less incidental travel since the recession started; making productive hotel websites more important than ever before.

Promoting your hotel through the Internet does not end with the publication of your website on the web, it only begins at that time. There are many hoteliers that are successfully marketing their hotels online through packaging, special promotions, holiday activities, and guest comments. Are you?