HOTEL TRAFFIC Comparison Magazine for Major UK Hotels
Travel Lodge
Premier Inn
Holiday Inn
Ibis
A Re-Ignite Media Publication 2014
Contents
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Introduction The Editors Hotel Market Situation Primary Research Email Primary Research – Online PR Primary Research – Mobile App Primary Research - Online Advertisements Focus Group Questionnaire Travelodge Results Premier Inn results Holiday Inn Results IBIS Results Opt in Email Online Advertising Pay Per Click Advertising Online PR Mobile Search Engine Results SEO Statistics Conclusion Bibliography Appendices
1 2 3 4 6 8 10 12 13 14 15 16 17 20 21 22 28 31 32 34 36 38
Introduction
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
The main aim of this report is to evaluate the traffic building techniques of the Premier Inn, Holiday Inn, Travelodge and Ibis hotel chains. Within the report, research will be stated to provide evaluations regarding the quality of the emails the companies’ use, the mobile applications, the social network platforms and the banner advertisements used by the four hotel chains. To provide further evaluations of the different traffic building techniques, a focus group will be arranged and the feedback provided by the focus group members will be summarised and used to crease further opinions and analyses. Conclusions will be made to summarise each of the chains techniques and how successful the focus group and team re-ignite conclude them to be. Comparisons will be made between the four hotels to rate the hotels in order quality of their traffic buildings techniques.
www.travelodge.co.uk www.holidayinn.co.uk www.ibis.co.uk www.premierinn.co.uk
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The Editors
James Watts
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Bernard Johannesen The Editors are a group of 2nd year students studying various Business degrees: Three are studying Business Management & Enterprise and the other is studying Business & Digital Media Communications. For this module (Digital Media Marketing) we are now producing A ReIgnite Media Publication part 2. Part 1 of this series can be found here http://issuu.com/bernardjohannesen/docs/a_reignite_media_publication.pptx
David Farrar
Cain King
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Hotel Market Situation The market trend in the UK is always increasing and is estimated to do so for the next 5 years. Hotels - UK - October 2013 Market Size and Forecast
2008 2009 2010 2011 2012 2013 2014 (fore) 2015 (fore) 2016 (fore) 2017 (fore) 2018 (fore)
Total hotel/motel/gues Total hotel/motel/gues thouse (nights)* thouse (trips)* M M 50.9 139.8 52.6 141.3 53.2 143.5 58.1 151.8 59.8 156.2 61.4 160.2 63.2 164.7 65 168.8 66.8 172.1 68.7 175.5 70.5 178.9
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Premier Inn is the UK’s largest hotel chain by both number of hotels and rooms, operating 655 hotels and 51,671 rooms across the UK as of February 2013. Premier Inn re-launched its iPhone app and also launched its first app for iPad in April 2013. The iPhone app has become one of the brand’s most important channels since its launch in 2011, with over 2 million downloads to date. Travelodge is the UK’s second largest chain hotel with over 500 hotels in the UK, supplying over 37,000 rooms across the UK. IHG have around 275 hotels with around 28,000 rooms operating in the UK. They have sub brands of Holiday Inn and Holiday Inn express in the UK. Ibis operates under the main company name Accor, and operate 88 IBIS hotels in the UK.
As you can see from the table above, the total numbers of trips are increasing year by year and are expected to increase by almost 10 million stays between 2012 and 2018. That’s 10 million extra stays in 6 years so an expected growth of around 1.67 Million hotel stays per year in the UK. There is an expected growth of around 4% in the volume of hotel stays during 2014. The market is always growing with increased number of hotel rooms and stays every year. This year there is an expected growth of around 4% in the volume of hotel stay. Hotel trips are expected to increase by around 8%by 2018.
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Primary Research - Email
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Travelodge
The hotel emails were the first section for traffic building to be assessed by the focus group, assessing the image quality, email layout and call to action.
Premier Inn
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Primary Research - Email
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Holiday Inn
IBIS
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Primary Research - Online PR
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Travelodge
This section of the focus group relates to the social media sites used by the companies, plus ratings to show appealing the page looks and how likely they are to follow the page.
Premier Inn
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Primary Research - Online PR
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Holiday Inn
IBIS
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Primary Research – Mobile application
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Travelodge
The next section of the questionnaire requires the focus group members to give opinions on the hotel companies mobile application.
Holiday Inn
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Primary Research – Mobile application
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Premier Inn
This section of the questionnaire requires the focus group members to give opinions on the hotel companies mobile application and also to rate the layout, colour scheme and how likely they are to use the application.
IBIS
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Primary Research - Online Advertisements/Banners
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Premier Inn
This section of the questionnaire relates to the online advertisements and banners used by the 4 hotel brands. The focus group will rate the colour scheme,
IBIS
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Primary Research - Online Advertisements/Banners
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Holiday Inn
Travelodge This section of the questionnaire relates to the online advertisements and banners used by the 4 hotel brands.
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Focus Group - Questionnaire
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
The focus group was arranged and conducted to receive responses to the questionnaire created by team re-ignite. Focus groups allow the team to record initial responses and data reflecting on personal preferences to different parts of the hotel website, mobile application and banner adverts. The members of the focus group were asked to answer questions using a Likert scale of 1-5 “which is the most widely used scale� (Mcleod, 2008) . 1 being very poor and 5 being very good.
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Travelodge Results - Questionnaire
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Within the focus group the members were asked to rate the quality of the Travelodge’s emails. The average score was 4/5, which reflects a good standard of quality for the Travelodge emails. Emails are one of the main ways companies can reach out to their customers and inform them of the latest news and deals available. If the email quality was poor, potential customers may chose to opt out of the emails and this could have a negative effect on the hotels booking rates.
This table represents the following results for the questions regarding This table shows that out of 8 votes, 5 emails with purple (4/5) being the main was scored 3/5 and 3 votes scored 2/5. response.
Travelodge
The second part of the focus group was to rate the social media platforms that the firm use. Travelodge use both Facebook and Twitter and the results showed on the average the most popular vote was 3/5 with a showing of average quality. Comments where added that the Twitter page was dull and boring from the focus group. Having an average social media page can definitely affect the likeliness of people buying with a company. The competition is so great that if another company has a fun, colourful page with funny tweets from the company and a swift response rate, people are likely to use that company instead.
The responses regarding the Travelodge’s mobile application provide an overall rating of 3/5, average quality. Mobiles are one of the most easiest, convenient and popular way to book hotel rooms now. Having a good quality mobile application is vital to ensuring your company is a success. Travelodge rating is average so recommendations should be to improve the colours and speed of the application. Overall the focus group graded most of the areas with Travelodge as average and basic. This reflects with the budget hotels morals with low price budget rooms with the minimum.
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Premier Inn Results - Questionnaire The first questions answered by the focus in regards to the Premier inn is they’re the emails they send out to their customers. The results were very positive with the average rating being 4/5, good quality. The focus group liked the colours, big bold titles and ease of obtaining the offer. This is a positive reflection for Premier Inn as they can be confident that customers will use their email system to full effect.
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
The second area of the Premier Inn analysed by the focus group was the social media pages. The focus group really like the Premier Inn’s Facebook and twitter page with the photos, background and overall design of the page reflected the principles of a high quality, relaxed service. The average response was again 4/5 reflecting the high quality comments.
Premier Inn’s mobile application system was the next area to be analysed by the focus group. The majority of the reviews where positive again with the colours, layout and ease of use being stated as good. The rating was again 4/5 agreeing with the past ratings of a high quality service. The ratings reflect the Premier Inn motto of a high standard and relaxed service. The mobile app, email system and social media networks are all high quality with customers being happy to use their systems to book rooms with.
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Holiday Inn Results - Questionnaire
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
The first question was to rate the quality of an email sent out by holiday inn. The layout is pretty basic but seemed effective as all respondents rated the quality 4/5 which is a good score for an email layout. The focus group seemed to like the simplicity as it would reflect how easy to book a hotel would be as instructions are clear and easy to follow.
This table shows that 3 respondents voted 4/5 and 1 respondent voted 3/5
The next section focused on social media and the focus group liked the twitter page scoring 3 votes at 4/5 and 1 vote 3/5, again they commented on the simplicity look of the twitter page. The third section is about the mobile versions of the Holiday Inn website. The focus group thought the layout of the mobile site was simple and resulted in half the votes scoring 3/5 and the other half scoring 4/5. They said they are unlikely to use the mobile app again being split votes 2 scoring 2/5 and 2 scoring 3/5. The final section of the focus group looks at a holiday Inn banner ad. The focus group thought the ad was good but as it was placed right next to where the search bar is they thought it was a bit pointless and should be to a more accessible area. The results were 3, scoring 3/5 and 1 at 4/5 because they thought it would be quicker to search a hotel on the left hand side.
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IBIS Results - Questionnaire
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
The focus group looked at Facebook instead of twitter, as Ibis does not have a twitter page. The Facebook page seemed dull and not very appealing and was scored 3/5 by 3 respondents. This table shows that the results were 50/50 with 2 respondents scoring 2/5 and 2 respondents scoring 3/5.
The second section is about Ibis mobile website, the focus group said that Ibis mobile site lacked a professional look and looked like it was made quickly in a rush and was poor quality. Scoring it an even 2 votes at 2/5 and 2 votes scoring 3/5. They said they were less likely to use this mobile app than any other hotel in the focus group, scoring 2 votes on 1/5 and 2 votes at 2/5. It is clear that of all hotels premier inn is the largest and most popular in the UK. Premier Inn and Holiday Inn had the highest quality emails based on the focus group results. IBIS scored the worst score on the mobile site, saying it lacked a professional look compared to Holiday Inn’s simple, yet effective mobile site. The focus group were most likely to follow premier inn and Holiday Inn on social media because they had the most professional Twitter website and have verification ticks to show they are the official twitter pages of that brand where as IBIS and Travelodge don’t have these.
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Email Using email to create customer personalisation is an effective way to push online communications. Before being able to send an email you have to get potential customers on your list which can be achieved from having a landing page which is specifically designed to get people to sign up. An example of this is with the Premier Inn you are persuaded to sign up to get future vouchers or discounts as a loyalty bonus. This will mean that the customer is enticed to join and this is one example of how traffic building is created. All companies now realise that it is illegal to send emails with out opt in consent.
Example of why Email in traffic building is so important
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Even though there has been a recession E Consultancy (E consultancy 2014) has found that email marketing has increased by 24% last year to £274 million, this means that most businesses are trying to reach out to potential and current customers by email. Opt in email is one of many tools used by businesses to connect with its customers and to attempt to create more sales and has proven to maintain customer loyalty. It is an effective method as it is a low cost tool and can be used at a broad scale. You can store customer’s data when they register giving previous information from their email address. “The figures for the value of email marketing are the following. Personalised emails improve click-through rates by 14% and customers that receive these emails spend 83% more when online shopping” (Brandwatch, 2013) This is an example of how beneficial it can be using Opt in email.
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HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Why Hotels use Opt in Email Email marketing can create a look with many styles, colours and fonts which allows to hotels to use their brand image and style and create the email to connect with their company. It is an effective way at reaching out to all customers within seconds as opposed to calling customers which is a costly and lengthy process. Email is an effective push communications method, email – essentially, has to be an opt-in form of promotional activity otherwise this is considered illegal SPAM (Smith, 2013) When customers receive communications through emails from companies that they have opted into, this may form the basis of an on going relationship and the client will be able to receive promotional pushes from the company. More customers year by year are using online facilities, so Opt in Email is a crucial tool for the travel industry to maintain, not only is it a cheap method it is also time and cost effective.
Example of Travelodge attempting to get a customer to sign up for future promotions
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HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Advantages of Opt in Email The advantages of using email as a form of traffic building is that you can create a more personal feel to the emails as you will have the customer’s information so can improve future relations through email. It improves your brand marketing and creates more awareness. Can be used to recruit new customers as well as keeping current ones. For some customers it may spark a thought to arrange a weekend away with one of the hotels that they may not have done if they had not received this Opt in Email.
Here is an example of the use of email for traffic building. If you click on this option when registering with the Travelodge it will send you future emails for promotional offers and other information.
Disadvantages of Opt in Email Cold email is an example of how Opt in email can have a negative effect on customer relations as it is a constant annoyance to receive junk email, (spam) which can result in the company losing custom as it causes an irritation.
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Online Advertising Online advertising is a crucial part of traffic building for any company and is considered one of the most important. Banner advertising is widely used as it stands out to the customer and will usually result in a discount if clicked on. Not only does banner advertising improve sales but it also helps to strengthen the brand image as the same colours as the brand logo will usually be used. The success of banner advertising is usually judged on two main factors and these are the following. How the banner looks itself is important as you want to catch the eye of the customers and increase sales. The second factor is that there is no point having an attractive eye catching banner if it is not in the correct place so location is just as important. Many sites use eye tracking software on their sites so that they can see which part of the page gets the most attention, so usually they will place banners or brand logos in these areas.
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
There are 7 points used by companies that use banner advertising and they are the following: Attention Promise of benefit Credibility Persuasiveness Interest Desire Action (max5025, 2013)
Example of online advertising
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Pay Per Click Advertising
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
PPC advertising is where an advert is displayed for free until clicked through on websites, through the use of google ad sense or Microsoft content ads. PPC occurs when certain keywords are typed into a search engine and ads appear on the side or below the search. (Chaffey,2013) A quick search of premier inn hotel comes up with a text advertisement which google will receive money for each time a customer clicks the link in the yellow box. This is a common form of PPC. The image on the right shows that the ad is based on my current search terms meaning I have matched key words related to holiday inn that they use to advertise. They will pay Google a certain price depending on the popularity of the keyword.
Companies can pay in excess of £10 depending on the keyword. (Chaffey,2013) The company will place a bid of the maximum amount they are willing to pay for an /advertisement and the higher the bid the better position the ad will be in. E.g. a quick search for budget hotels shows that Premier Inn appear top in the advertisements. On the left whereas Travelodge appears 3rd highest on the sponsored ads below. Around ¼ to 1/3 of a companies traffic building comes from PPC adverts as they are at the top of the search and drive a lot of business towards the companies advertising. (Chaffey, 2013) Don’t confuse with CPC (cost per click) which is a similar idea to PPC however the ads for CPC are not paid to be displayed.
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Online Public Relation (PR)
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Public relations are a very important method that can determine the reputation of a company. Online PR can persuade customers to pick a certain company over another so it is very important that each company tries to have a good PR system in place. Online PR is now a common method used by nearly every business, small or large. Businesses use online PR to help promote their business, interact with possible customers, to improve their reputation and increase their customer base.
The different methods used by companies to increase their online PR scheme is blogging, creating Facebook and Twitter pages where they can interact with their customers and also monitoring discussions to do with their business in case of scams or complaints and many other methods to help build a good reputation. The audience are now connected to organizations. People can now contact the companies instantly by sending tweets (twitter) or by sending Facebook messages. All 4 of the hotels have Facebook pages where people can send queries, complaints and see the latest news and offers. Ibis is the only chain that does not have a general Twitter page, however Ibis has many separate pages for local Ibis hotels.
All of the chains have a Facebook and Twitter page , except Ibis, with regular updates on their offers, competitions and an easy way for customers to get in contact. They have these pages running so customers can get in contact with them and build customer relations, which will hopefully result in return custom.
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Online Public Relation (PR)
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Premier Inn has an efficient twitter page with over 29,000 followers proving that the page is popular and appreciated by customers. Premier Inn pride themselves on meeting the customers needs and by having a good Facebook and Twitter page this will help meet demands of some of their customers.
The Travelodge Twitter site has nearly half the amount of followers that the Premier Inn site has however, the Travelodge page is very efficient with the page responding to different queries, both good and bad. The page responds on a regular basis making it easy for customers to get in contact and ensure they feel valued.
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Online Public Relation (PR)
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Holiday Inn has around 47,000 twitter followers on their page and they regularly respond to queries allowing customers to get in contact easily and efficiently.
The Ibis hotel chain does not run one general Twitter page. Instead, the chain runs many different smaller twitter pages for each of the local hotels. This could be beneficial as people who have specific queries with a specific hotel could get a more efficient response. Ibis do run a general Facebook page where they post the latest offers and respond to enquiries which helps people get involved with the business.
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Online Public Relation (PR)
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Its evident in the pictures that customers use these sites to get in contact with the brands for different information and help. “Today, a company’s activity can be discussed and debated over the Internet, with or without knowledge of that organization.� (Chaffey, 2013) The members of the audience are now connected together. Hotel companies are always being discussed and compared by customers who are debating which hotels are the best and which hotels to stay in. Unlike on Facebook and Twitter the company can not delete abusive messages or messages that could be damaging to the brands reputation. However if a hotel is of a high quality, discussion forums can be a very good and free way of online marketing for the hotel. If there are many positive reviews, customers will choose to stay in that particular hotel rather than others with a bad review.
Here you can see reviews of the Premier Inn In London. The large majority of comments and feedback are all positive. This is very good Online PR for Premier Inn. Potential customers may choose this hotel over others. All 4 of the hotel brand are discussed on Trip advisor and other comparison websites, giving customers the best guidance on what hotel to book.
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Online Public Relation (PR)
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
This image illustrates the different areas regarding online PR. All the different areas and methods of online PR all link back to the main aim of attracting new visitors and hopefully increasing your customer base. With relations to each hotel, they all use different methods in each of the 4 sectors with the sole aim to increase awareness and sales. Some companies use blogs to help create a buzz over their brand and increase awareness by proving detailed information in blogs. The benefit of blogs is that the company controls what is said within the blog so they can create the blog to portray a certain reputation.
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Online Public Relation (PR)
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Summary After assessing all of the information regarding the online PR from the four different companies. It is obvious different hotel brands rate the importance of online PR different to others. Premier Inn are the masters at online PR from the information gained, both their Facebook and Twitter pages are run with quality and class. Premier Inn updates the pages regularly with their latest deals and competitions and also respond to different queries promptly. The number of followers reflects their great service. Travelodge only have half of the amount of followers that Premier Inn do however they do run a very efficient page, responding to queries (mostly complaints) very quickly. By having an efficient service if someone does have a question or complaint, by dealing with it quickly will help increase the chances of the customer returning.
The Holiday inn run their page very similar to Travelodge. They run their page to mostly respond to questions and complaints rather than interacting with customers regarding competitions and deals. Ibis does not have an overall Twitter page just many individual pages where if customers have stayed In a hotel they can contact the specific twitter page which is good for lost items or specific questions regarding the area. they do run a main Facebook page where they post their latest offers. Overall Premier inns Facebook and Twitter pages have been voted the highest scoring amongst their rivals, beating the others with their posts and high quality colour schemes, they are ranked the best by Re-Ignite.
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Mobile
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Types of mobile advertising SMS – companies are only allowed to send text messages via SMS when customers have opt in when giving details, common examples are dominos and Papa Johns where by ordering by phone, they add your number to their database and send you text messages with promotions. Branded Apps –all 4 hotels have branded apps, with a few reviews for each app on how effective the app is as a whole. The apps available on iPhone via the Apple market and some are compatible with the iPad as well, whereas some apps are not.
Location – Geo-location, allows companies to advertise to customers within their proximity each mobile site and app wants to know the current location of the mobile phone, allowing them to track user location and can gain data on their customers geographical location.
Social Networks- A lot of companies advertise via social networks; which are easily and commonly accessed through mobile phones worldwide everyday. Bluetooth – there are some developments with Bluetooth and hotels. There is now an app that allows you to connect to your room door via Bluetooth and allows you to open it, potentially cutting out the traditional hotel check in.
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Mobile
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
In a study by Ofcom of consumer phone usage (Ofcom, 2013) according to the statistics gathered, 33% of all users questioned use their phone for internet usage, the sample group claimed to access the internet more than 10 times per day. This information illustrates the growing trend in internet use by mobile phone. The Hotels in this study are having to deal with and link traffic building with customer retention. Do the four Hotels in question make mobile apps or link sites to traffic building?
The mobile site landing page for the Travelodge opens onto a, quick book page, this enables the user to enter details such as, Hotel, place, postcode or motorway. In this test the user entered A40, this came up with no rooms available on 26 January 2014 for 1 room with 1 adult. This mobile site has not utilised the use of traffic building into their mobile site, with no option to gather any of the user’s details – not ideal to build customer relation not to mention customer retention witch ultimately leads to traffic building.
Holiday Inn has a 2 page step to get to the mobile site page, and then the user (if using a Blackberry) is given the instruction to enter IHG.com in the web browser on their phone. Below is the 2nd page in the 2 step process. The landing page opens and a pop-up Cookie usage and Settings message appears, the user then has to accept to go any further, this is somewhat convoluted for a user in a hurry. Of over 4000 respondents interviewed by Kandar for Ofcom, 71% stated the most important aspect of internet usage on mobile phones was placed on using the internet around places they go regularly outdoors (Ofcom, 2013) This information shows the importance placed on Business to utilise and incorporate, efficient use of traffic building techniques into the mobile site market.
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Mobile
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
This is an example of excellent use of live mobile marketing used within the O2 Arena to promote exclusive entry to their Priority moments lounge and Blue room facilities.
Travelodge use geo tagging for local hotel booking, this locates the customer and directs them to geo specific Hotels in their area. All hotels should look to apply a similar app as illustrated above, and possibly should, be used to offer geo specific promo offers.
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Search Engine Results Page (SERP’S)
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Google search on 15 February throws up Travelodge at number three on the first page of the Search Engine Results Page (SERPS) this result has been achieved through Search Engine Optimization (SEO) (Google, 2014).
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SEO STAT Trust Flow – This number predicts how trustworthy a URL might be based on a backlink’s proximity to trusted domains. Links from within trusted neighbourhoods are more trustworthy than links from spammy neighbourhoods (Palocsay, 2014).
Page Rank – This number shows the ranking that Google gives hotels in relation to their Search Engine Results Page.
Citation Flow – This number predicts how
The document title tag -
influential a URL might be based on the number of sites linking to it. The more links that the site has, the higher it’s Citation Flow.
for example Travelodge title is: Travelodge | Cheap hotels throughout the UK & Ireland, see appendices.
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Social Media stats
ISTICS Title length - This is the length of the title tag and – ideally should be less than 75 characters, all hotels have less than this number
Meta description & length – This should be below 150 characters in length. Only one hotel goes above this number, Travelodge.
From data analysed we can see that Travelodge and the Premier Inn have the highest ranking citation and trust flows, with a score of 62 and 52(Travelodge) 61 and 58(Premier Inn) at the lower end of the scale we have 32 and 33(Ibis) with 30 and 42(Holiday Inn) this highlights the comparative differences in citation trust flows and the need for further input from the hotels at the lower end of the spectrum with regards to improved SEO monitoring. (Statistics gathering using Majestic SEO)
From the numbers shown we can see that The Premier Inn and Travelodge have a much better grasp on the SEO of their respective sites, and obviously monitor and evaluate them accordingly (stats gathered 15 Feb 2014). The Holiday Inn is a close third in this study behind Premier Inn and Travelodge with Ibis coming bottom, Ibis has a lot of catching up to do on their rivals in the competitive marketing strategy of Search Engine Optimization/Marketing.
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Conclusion
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
The four hotel websites researched for this study have all utilised similar traffic building techniques. The hotels all have varying degrees of success with Travelodge being the leader in terms of Google rankings, back links, trust flow, citation and their use of Meta tag data. Premier Inn are the largest in this sector in terms of size, and are in front with their utilisation of Facebook, Twitter etc. These statistics show a close comparison with Travelodge in terms of the figures illustrated within the SEO statistics. Holiday Inn and Ibis have a lot of ground to catch up on if they want to be as successful as the top two in this budget hotel sector. All of the methods used show that Travelodge constantly monitor and evaluate their SEO and traffic building techniques, with outstanding results whereas Premier Inn have the best results with regard to the focus group findings and social media status.
Email: The focus group results for email show that Premier Inn is the leader in terms of quality, layout and call to action (likelihood of customers clicking on to a particular request). Premier Inn received 4/5 for all three actions and was deemed to have the best layout of the four Hotels. Travelodge came a close second with the call to action being scored one below The Premier Inn, Holiday Inn and Ibis were third and fourth respectively.
Social Media: The Premier Inn scored the highest here with a score of 4/5 on how appealing their Twitter page looks; the call to action was also rated high with 4/5 on the likelihood of customers to follow their page. Similar patterns were present in relation to the previous scoring of emails by the focus group, as the Premier Inn scored highest with Ibis trailing behind; Ibis has no Twitter page at present therefore their Facebook page was used to determine the focus group results, they did not fare any better here with the focus group, showing low scores on looks and potential to follow them.
Mobile application: The focus group were asked here to score the Hotels on the layout, colour scheme & design, and the likelihood of potential customers to use their mobile application. Holiday Inn has shown great usage here and has scored better here and is in the same position as Premier Inn and Travelodge. Ibis has scored the lowest here again with a score of 2/5 on all three sections.
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Conclusion
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Online PR: This encapsulates all mediums, Twitter, Facebook. Premier Inn are the masters at online PR from the information gained, both their Facebook and Twitter pages are run with quality and class. Premier Inn updates the pages regularly with their latest deals and competitions and also respond to different queries promptly. The number of followers reflects their great service. Travelodge only have half of the amount of followers that Premier Inn do however they do run a very efficient page, responding to queries (mostly complaints) very quickly. By having an efficient service if someone does have a question or complaint, by dealing with it quickly will help increase the chances of the customer returning. The Holiday Inn runs their page very similar to Travelodge. They run their page to mostly respond to questions and complaints rather than interacting with customers regarding competitions and deals. Ibis does not have an overall Twitter page just many individual pages where if customers have stayed in a hotel they can contact the specific twitter page which is good for lost items or specific questions regarding the area. They do run a main Facebook page where they post their latest offers. Overall Premier Inns Facebook and Twitter pages have been voted the highest scoring amongst their rivals, beating the others with their posts and high quality colour schemes, they are ranked the best by Re-Ignite.
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Bibliography
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
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PA. (2012). IHG create 3000 UK Jobs. Available: http://www.independent.co.uk/news/business/news/intercontinental-hotels-groupcreating-3000-uk-jobs-7291784.html. Last accessed 15th Jan 2014. Mintel. (2013). Hotel Market 2013. Available: http://academic.mintel.com/display/682797/. Last accessed 18/02/2014. Mintel. (2013). Hotels October 2013. Available: http://academic.mintel.com/display/682805/. Last accessed 12/02/2014. Woollaston, B. (2014). The end of the hotel check in?. Available: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2548234/The-end-hotel-check-App-letsbypass-reception-use-phone-room-key.html. Last accessed 30th Jan 2014. E Consultancy [online]. Find out more. Available from: https://econsultancy.com/ [Accessed: 28 February 2014]. Online public relations promises faster, more effective PR by driving online visibility of your company to thousands of media web sites and blog users. (Wire, 2013) Public relations are about reputation - the result of what you do, what you say and what others say about you. (Relations, 2013)
Acknowledgments The editors would like to acknowledge the use of Majestic SEO, all statistics are reproduced with the kind permission of:
http://www.majesticseo.com/
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Appendices
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Table 1: Referring domains monthly
Table 2: Backlinks reviewed monthly
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Appendices
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
Table 3: Referring domains discovery yearly
Table 4: Backlinks discovery yearly
39
Appendices
HOTEL WEB Comparison magazine for major UK hotels
70 60 50 40 30 20 10 0
CitationFlow TrustFlow
Table 5: Citation & Trust Flow
40