Category: Marketing

The Roger Smith Hotel Case

Chris Brogan about the Roger Smith Hotel case at the Web 2.0 conference (Web 2 Expo).

Update

Some quotes of Chris Brogan in this presentation:

  • Use Twitter Search. It’s a gold mine!
  • I had to be in New York City and asked on twitter: “Where should I stay?” Two well known twitterati answered: “The Roger Smith hotel” and then The Roger Smith hotel answered itself: “We would love to welcome you. We have a blogger Special” They reached out to me….
  • Look at the Four Seasons Hotel a couple of doors from The Roger Smith Hotel and compare the (lack of) action there with the action at the Roger Smith Hotel.
  • Sometimes the management and the Doorman of the Four Seasons have a look outside and wonder how The Roger Smith succeeds in getting so much more action than they are able to get. The answer is that Roger Smith has a live voice, communicating with us on the social platforms.
  • Listen 12 times more that talk. Talk about other people 12 times more than about your self. You get so much more back than when you broadcast only.
  • Ask yourself. How do we share?
  • How do we extend experiences and relationships?
  • How do we collaborate?
  • How do we build relationships that yield?
  • Do not go the road that is already there, but make a new road..
  • And don’t forget to check out Brogan’s Case Study links at Del.icio.us

Via Etourism.

Note this was Posted by Chris November 20, 2009. I wonder how he would look at Facebook now…

My First ever Weekly Newsletter has landed

Savvy bloggers know that some readers prefer an e-mail wrap up of recent posts of blogs they occasionally read over having them in their newsreader.

I looked into several possible variants of Email Marketing Software for Newsletters for Bloggers and asked around. Other than doing a time consuming in depth study of each program I mentioned, I decided to go for the advice of Josiah who runs the excellent Hotel Marketing Strategies blog and choose for Mailchimp:

  • Because I’m not sure what I’m heading into, I like the fact that Mailchimp has a full featured free version, but also has variable pricing with a ticketing system.
  • Because Josiah’s Newsletter looks very clean and simple, and it turned out very easy to create a simple look and feel in line with the look and feel of this blog
  • Because it goes fully automated: The e-mail regurgitates the posts I’ve published the previous week
  • Because it has an easily accessible archive of e-mails sent. I’d put the date of today into the template just to see how accurate the pickup would be and it is accurate. For those of you who had tried the link in the subscription widget: There was no archive until today.

I’ve stealthily inserted the e-mail subscription widget in the sidebar. Some of you have subscribed already. Thank you for that.

In the meantime I have cropped the banner in the newsletter and the next one will look better than this first.

Would you like to subscribe to my Weekly Newsletter?

Email Marketing Software for Newsletters for Bloggers

Some of my travelblogger friends send newsletters on a more or less frequent basis. Since I’m revamping my Haagsche Suites Sites, I would like to have a possibility to send newsletters that integrate blog posts. So I’ve been asking around and thus far came across the following possibilities which I will check:

Off course you can have your readers subscribe via Feedreader e-mail subscription, but I don’t like to get an email of every post somebody posts, and believe my readers here nor my future readers of Haagsche Suites will need or like that.

Maybe you have other suggestions.

Update:

Ah reader suggestions:

Last edited by Happy Hotelier on February 11, 2010 at 1:24 am

Travel and The IPad – Some preliminary Thoughts


In an impressive presentation Steve Jobs introduced the world to the IPad.

What influence will it have on travel? Some preliminary thoughts:

In the preamble Steve explained that Apple is by now bigger than Nokia, Samsung and Sony profitability wise in mobile devices…It may be assumed that it will be rolled out big 60 or 90 days from now.

  1. My main question is: Will you be able to leave your laptop (or eee netbook) home for an Ipad? If so, it is a must have. You can e-mail, write, calculate and make key note presentations with it, browse the web, watch photos and videos with it and listen to your music library. It will depend on its touch screen typing capabilities, but even if that is substandard Apple has thought about a docking station with type pad.
  2. It seems that by its sheer browsing capability it will enable the travel community to forget about the hassle of adapting their websites to mobile devices with various operating systems.
  3. One aspect is that -as Steve Jobs puts it “standing on the shoulders of Amazone’s entry into reading e-books with its Kindle – It incorporates e-book reading. On the basis of the well known Itunes shop model, Apple has lined up 5 major book publishers to sell books through a new IBook shop. As of yesterday it will be start negotiating with many other book publishers. Hurray, back to downloading the good old travel guides onto your Ipad before you go. When I go on holiday, I usually take a couple of good books with me. Now I can carry those in my IPad, which will spare me a couple of kilos weight in my luggage: Poor Airlines who are just trying to get us used to surcharges for our luggage.
  4. Apparently Apple is also trying making a dent into the augmented reality scene. With a built in GPS and leaning on Google Maps, it will be amazing how fast you will get a bearing and will be able to collect tidbits in an efficient manner about the location where you are.
  5. First I published this photo on my significant other blog because it shows clearly you don’t have to sit at a desk to play/work with your computer properly anymore. I see it as the same sort of liberation the mobile phone brought us. No more desk sitting to await a telephone call. Now you can pute in the park – provided the park has WiFi off course:-)
  6. And you know what? No more need for a paper photo album anymore…you’ll now have a wedding album/slideshow/video on your IPad..and can carry it around the world with you.
  7. Less travel by it’s undoubted future video conferencing capabilities?…no more sitting in studios for those…
  8. No more need for hotels to provide papers to their guests…

Interesting times.

Added:

  • Excellent tool for on the road board games! Via Rembuco
  • Would it influence the way News is spread? See Nieman Lab

Last edited by Happy Hotelier on January 30, 2010 at 12:15 pm

Happy 2010 – Looking forward to 365 nights in Amsterdam Hotels

Vincent van Dijk DSC9108_lr

Happy 2010, the start of a new decade!

A new web 2.0 social media hotel review project:
Amsterdam counts 350 hotels and Vincent Van Dijk starts his dedicated blog Amsterdam Slaapt (i.e. Amsterdam Sleeps). Each day of 2010 he will tell us about his adventures in one of those 350 hotels, as each day of 2010 he will be sleeping out of his suitcase in one.

As Vincent uses to live and work in The Hague I’m really curious what his experience will be. Especially as my slogan is always: You should party in Amsterdam, but you should sleep in The Hague!

Nevertheless it is an interesting initiative which I will be following closely as he seems to plan to be reporting in Dutch only.

Here is Victor’s first Tweet as @AmsterdamSlaapt

@Amsterdam-Slaapt

“On January 1, 2010 I’ll start start the hotel project Amsterdam Sleeps in

Parkhotel Amsterdam

the stylish Parkhotel Amsterdam.

About Vincent van Dijk
Vincent van Dijk is a food and life style trend watcher and co owner of The Hague (Scheveningen) based ad agency HBMEO. He is a restaurant spotter for the Dutch Restaurant Guide SpecialBite err SpecialBite.com.

Sources in Dutch: Een jaar slapen in A’damse hotels – AT5 Nieuws and Misset Hotel.