Welcome to the Digital Marketing Inner Circle

Within my role at SinoTech Group, I am fortunate to be able to speak with many Sales and Marketing folks that work within various Hotel and Airline Groups. It is somewhat surprising to me but there is many that don't have a formalize online marketing campaign or if they do, it is rather unsophisticated and generally limited to some keyword buying on Google (SEM). There is of course some notable exceptions to this and some of the bigger hotel chains are doing an exceptional job (such as Accor Group by combining Search and Affiliate programs to increase online room sales).

For example, many hotel groups that I speak with, agree that they aim to have a stronger direct online booking channel. Currently, significant sales in China for hotels come via CTrip, eLong, Qunar etc and although these are great channels most hotels (with 4-5 star ratings) would like to increase the volumes going direct. To highlight this point, eMarketer reports that by 2010 roughly 46 percent of total travel sales will be booked online, second only to computer hardware/software in the B2C category. Wow.. significant and I bet hotels and airlines are anticipating more direct sales online than through their partner channels- why?.. because of the great profits by having customers come direct.

Since the Beijing Olympics last year, SinoTech Group has seen many more online marketing campaigns for travel companies. For travel companies, we usually recommend an integrated approach using Search Engine Optimization to improve natural search rankings, and Pay Per Click to give flexibility to the campaign, enabling travel companies to respond to seasonality in their businesses or to world events. Further, depending on the program we often combine this with Affiliate & Social Media.

Another channel is eDM (Email Marketing) for travel companies which is seeing a good return on investment. Our email marketing campaigns focus on building a long term dialog with our clients' customer base. We do this through quarterly, 'informational' emails with new journey ideas, new destinations or people's own experiences, along with the more normal 'special offer' or 'late deal' emails.

Just a note on Affiliate Marketing in China. This channel is much less mature than Western markets, although that said we have a number of hotel companies working with some of our affiliates and they are seeing some positive returns, This channel though requires constant efforts to keep campaigns fresh and Affiliates motivated (to continue supporting outcome based marketing programs).

I expect going forward we will see a great amount of attention on social media marketing (SMM). This channel has already proven to be very effective with influencing buying and purchasing decisions so it is without doubt another digital channel to be leveraged in the travel/hospitality sector. Not just for assisting in developing viral campaigns but as a way to build a discourse and discussion with current and potential clients. (If you are in Beijing or Shanghai then come to the Dr3 Event which will have Dr Grace Pan cover off this subject much better than I).

I am excited about the opportunities for digital marketing to make a real difference in selling more rooms in hotels and more seats on planes. It may take some marketing champions within the organizations to look outside their current programs and test these ideas but once they have started I am confident the evidence will show this as a highly effective channel.