Last week Htel Serviced apartments reached the number 1 spot on Tripadvisor on specialty lodging. And we’d like to celebrate this with them. 

‘We went through a metamorphosis’, Ingmar starts. ‘I do not have any other words for it. Obviously, our guests have always been extremely important to Htel Serviced Apartments. However I remember well, at the start of 2010, we had lost track of where our online consumers were. We were not even sure if they existed, and we were definitely not connecting with them on Social Media platforms’.

Ingmar continues: ‘Tripadvisor is right in the center of our Social Media Campaign. This is where guests actually take the step to sharing online with Htel, and with other consumers. And Xotels shows us, hands on, how to connect with our guests on the platform. Tripadvisor is proving to be huge for us. Not only is Tripadvisor a travel website with millions of unique visitors each month, it’s also like a social accelerator. More reviews, more guests, more responses by me, better reviews, more and more guests’

For more information click here: Hotel Internet Marketing

To read the full article I was asked to write for the latest edition of Hospitality Upgrade magazine, visit buhlerworks.com

 

What’s your Twitter handle?  Perhaps you don’t have a good handle on what Twitter really is and all the ways to use it?  (its ok really…we are all still learning).

Twitter is above all else a communications tool, a vehicle for any business or person to build buzz, discuss topics of interest with like-minded people, a place to engage in a conversation with your customers and colleagues, a customer service tool – and a way to increase reach much quicker than traditional media.

Unlike Facebook and other Social media channels, Twitter is about forming new connections with people you don’t necessarily know (or will ever know) in person.

Twitter can be used to push out content (new blog posts, articles of interest, photos and videos), to stay up to date on trends, and to drive awareness to brands and businesses, and most importantly – the people behind the brands.

Twitter’s greatest power, once you have developed a twitter tone, a good following – and you have figured out how to provide your followers with valuable, engaging content – is its ability to communicate quickly to large numbers of people.

Twitter is a great tool for crisis communications, for extending customer service online, and above all, a great tool for building brand personality and credibility.

Not a place for pushed out marketing messages, Twitter allows you to communicate and engage with your target audiences. Use twitter to draw attention to other places where your brand lives such as a company website, or Blog, or even your company Facebook page where there is more room for expanded messages.

You will need time and resources to set up and manage a good twitter account, and not having a Twitter strategy will certainly lead to poor ROI and possibly some mishaps along the way.

Twitter Tips from the Chicks:

• Make sure your Twitter handle (your Twitter name) is reflective of your brand, and ensure the bio is more personalized to the Tweeter

• Be strategic when developing your tone – be conversational and add value to the ecosystem

• Share and RT (re-tweet) newsworthy or quality content. It is a good practice to “return the favour” with re-tweets and thank those who RT your content

• Use @username (the Twitter handle!) when referencing another person in Twitter

• Mark positive feedback as “Favorites” in Twitter

• In general, follow people who follow you – but not always. It is not about how many followers you have on Twitter – tweeters will look to who you follow as an indication of who you are.

• Tweet interesting news and info related to your company and industry, and follow colleagues, industry associations and even competitors.

• Twitter lists allow you to categorize Tweeps (Twitter people) and better organize how you follow their content

• Use Hash Tags # to index and label your event or content in Twitter. ie. #TwitterTips and #Socialmedia for this Blog post will ensure that this content will appear in a Twitter stream of content related to using Twitter – and may then be seen by more people

• Set-up scheduled updates and manage your Social Media postings through tools like www.hootsuite.com

• Use tools like www.twitalyzer.com to track community engagement, and hootsuite.com

There are so many great resources we recommend including mashable Twitter Guide book, and Chris Brogan’s Power Tips.

Twitter takes time and commitment but can open you up to brand fans, brand champions, and new customers far beyond traditional marketing communications channels.

Be authentic, show some personality, don’t sell, make sure to drive traffic back to your transaction point (your website, a phone number, email sign up, Blog etc) use Twitter as a part of your overall marketing communications efforts – and have fun – it is ‘social’ media after all!

Esme Vos who I interviewed in 10 Questions for (7): Esme Vos of Mapplr, met Forest and introduced us. So here is my 40ieth interview with the creator of a great product for hoteliers.

1) Who Are you?

My name is Forest Key. I’m the founder and CEO of a new company called buuteeq which makes a system for hotels to manage their online marketing. I’m a father of 2 great kids and together with them and my wife, an absolute travel junkie (have lived long term in Chile, China, Spain, and done many long extended trips throughout the world). I started my career in film and technology and was a editor and CGI artist for George Lucas’ company “ILM” – Industrial Light and Magic (yes, I actually worked on Star Wars and other blockbuster style movies, was a lot of hard work but a lot of fun). Together with another ILM guy I co-founded a company that made tools for the visual effects industry (my first experience as an entrepreneur)—our product “Commotion” was used on many of the most important movies of the era, including Gladiator, The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, and the Star Wars prequels. More recently I was the product manager for Flash (I was responsible for designing many of the video capabilities in the platform) and then worked at Microsoft for 6 years in charge of marketing for various web development technologies, before leaving to start buuteeq.

2) What do you like about what you do?

With my current job I am blessed to have many of my favorite things rolled into every day of the work week—buuteeq combines my passion for travel, technology, and starting companies and working with great people. This is not by accident: I founded buuteeq because I wanted just such a combination, and am very happy to say that things are playing out to plan so far.

3) What don’t you like about what you do?

Well, up until a few weeks ago I would have told you that I hate having to spend so much time raising money for my business, because I spent a good part of the first half of 2011 raising cash for buuteeq so we could expand our sales organization to better sell buuteeq to hotels in far flung parts of the world—raising money is very time consuming and takes time away from actually running the business and looking after hotel customers’ needs. However, as of May we actually completed a $3.5m round of funding, and are now all set to get back to 100% focus on our actual business.

4) Please tell us all about your blog and your aims with it.

buuteeq’s blog aims to elaborate on digital and online marketing subjects that are intimidating and confusing to hotel owners. A lot of our blog of course will mention our product and service and how we specifically address digital marketing for hotels, but we know that to write a great blog we have to rise above pure “commercial-tainment” content, and I’m proud of the articles that we’ve been producing that cover subjects of Hotel SEO, Google Places, The Evils of Flash (for hotel websites), and other content that we can help the community to understand given our strong technical expertise in these areas.

5) Your top 3 destination experiences you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

Salar de Uyuni, Bolivia. This dry salt lake at 14,000+ ft (4000+ meters) of elevation is just incredibly beautiful—the horizon is filled with volcanoes, the sky is bluer than blue, and the white salt that pervades the ground forms an incredible image that is surreal and unique in my travel experiences. The 2-3 day jeep tour of the Altiplano, which covers the Salar itself as well as several amazing lakes that are dotted with pink flamingos and alpaca/llamas, is definitely at the top of my travel experiences.

Ranakpur Jain Temple, Rajastan, India. This Jain temple is the most beautiful temple of worship that I have seen—better than any Catholic church in Europe for sure. 100s of granite columns sustain this multi-story building, which you can traverse in your socks (no shoes allowed) while you contemplate the architecture and listen to the prayers from the many pilgrims. Great photographs are impossible to miss, so many lovely angles including those in the minds eye!

Anapurna trek, Himmalayas, Nepal. When I was just out of college I did a 3 week trek in the Himmalayas, “around Anapurna” route, which was such an indulgence! At the time I of course naively thought that being able to take that much time off to just hike in the mountains and stay at tea-houses would be a common occurrence in life—then adult responsibilities such as work and family intervened and I have yet to replicate the experience. I hope to make my boys back to this magical part of the world to complete the trek together once they are old enough for the rigorous hiking.

Huangshang (Yellow Mountain). Sorry, couldn’t pick just 3. Yellow Mountain is a super well known and developed national park for Chinese locals, but foreigners are clueless as to this wonderful playground of amazing paths built into the impressive vertical mountains. My wife and I did a 8 hour hike that was up and down and around the most amazing staircases, really something to be seen to be believed!

6) Your top 3 accommodations you’ve ever stayed to date and why?

LiAn Lodge, Guilin, China. This exotic lodge was the inspiration for my new business—the most beautiful hotel/location-for-a-hotel, with what was formerly a really bad website to market the property (the hotel now has a great website!) The 4 story building is built using traditional Chinese construction (no nails, just tongue and groove assembly of interconnecting timber!), and the views and sounds of nature at night are unsurpassed in my many years of travelling. It is not the most luxurious, or opulent—but the combination of classy design and amazing location make it the most unique.

Park Hyatt Seoul South Korea. This hotel is my favorite “traditional brand hotel”—the design of the rooms, especially the lovely bathrooms with rain showers and floor to ceiling windows out on the city, kept me coming back every few months during my two years living in Asia and working for Microsoft. I’ve shared this hotel with many friends who are passionate about design and architecture and we all agree, this is one very special hotel!

Elquimista Cabins, Valle del Elqui, Chile. I have to call this hotel one of my favorites because my family and I rented one of their cabins for 3 months and lived in the charming town of Pisco Elqui while I wrote the business plan for buuteeq. This town is in the middle of the Andes Mountains, near the Rio Claro valley which is home to wine and table grape producing farms that are surrounded by the drier than bone hills of the desert that surrounds the valley. A truly magical place on earth, and these 4 unique eco-cabins and the lovely proprietors were a wonderful place for my family and I to gaze at the valley from our porch and at the southern stars in the evenings.

7) Your top 3 most memorable food / wine experiences to date and why?

French Laundry, Yontsville. Took 5 years to get a reservation, amazing meal (my wife got sick—too much rich/cream, she doesn’t like French food in general)—but just the build up to the experience and the 5 bottle of wine that our party of 4 consumed during our 3 hour meal… very memorable!

Los Ceviches, Lima Peru. I love ceviche (fish and other critters from the sea, marinated in lemon juice), and when in Lima, this chain of cevicherias is a no brainer choice for huge plates of fresh, spicy, delicious ceviche.

Jin Din Xuan, Beijing China. Beijing has such amazing food choices, but this low-rent chain of dim-sum and “late night party food” has the best dish I’ve ever eaten, the “ranmien” noodles—basic noodles drenched in the spiciest “ma-la” hot sauce that you’ll ever want to eat. The mellow spiciness starts off warm in your mouth and will stay with you for 24hrs in your belly!

8) Your 3 worst destination/ accommodation /food experiences to date and why?

I don’t usually care to remember bad food or hotel accommodations, as I aim to cleanse myself as quickly as possible and move on. However, on thinking of this the first that immediately came to mind was the horrible meal and experience we had at Che Pannise, in Berkley California USA. This purportedly amazing restaurant was a bust for us—our friend who had travelled to San Francisco specifically to eat at this restaurant (she is a foodie) was heartbroken when her “vegetarian” option consisted of a plate of spaghetti with butter on it (I’m not kidding, that’s literally what she was given) as a main course! As for bad hotels—any hotel in Las Vegas, I’ve been to most of them on the strip, and they are all just horrible. No matter how shinny and new they are, Las Vegas hotels are just without souls.

9) Can you offer the readers 3 destination/ food / accommodation / things to do tips about the city you are currently living in?

In Seattle, the best breakfast in town is at Lola’s (famous chef owner, lunch and dinner are fine, but the breakfast is really remarkably good!), if you like oysters (and I do!) try The Walrus and the Carpenter which is a hot new place in seattle’s most fun walk-able old neighborhood (Ballard), and my favorite of the current batch of “mobile truck restaurants” (whereby the restaurant is in the back of a trailor truck, and parked in different neighborhoods from time to time) is the Rancho Bravo Taco Truck which has yummy Mexican fare. As for hotels, as with most locals, I know almost nothing about my local hotel market because I never stay in them nor do my friends and family (who stay with us)—however, I do know a few B&Bs that are both customers of buuteeq, and places that our employees frequently stay: the Bacon Mansion Bed and Breakfast, Bed and Breakfast on Broadway, and right near my house (and lovely views of Greenlake), the Greenlake Bed and Breakfast.

10) Any Question(s) you’d expected me to ask that you would like to answer?

I’m surprised you didn’t ask me what my favorite hotel/restaurant/city/etc. in Holland is?! My wife and I love Amsterdam and have been there 5+ times for vacations and business trips. I was there most recently with Microsoft for a team off site — we had the most fun doing various team activities in the city, including a night of cooking as a team (at a cooking school) which was a great morale event. The hotel we stayed in was crummy/mediocre, but it was right near the Anne Frank House in a great old neighborhood full of character.

My Take

A pleasure to meet you, @Forest, and an impressive result with your @buuteeq funding!

I noticed you lived 3 months in an adobe in Chile and couldn’t resist to pinch one of their photos. Adobe as eco building material has my special interest.

10 Questions For (40): Forest Key of buuteeq is a post from: Happy Hotelier. Would you like to subscribe to my newsfeed, or my weekly newsletter?

Just look.

Passion: Korea’s Got Talent – Sung-bong Choi is a post from: Happy Hotelier. Would you like to subscribe to my newsfeed, or my weekly newsletter?

YOU

• Fun loving
• Open to new experiences
• Not commitment phobic
• Possess writing skills significantly greater than just the ability to send a text in under 10 seconds, in complete sentences
• Resourceful at utilizing the Internet to find more than the latest update on Survivor
• Independent. Not clingy or seeking that special someone to hand hold you all day
• Would eagerly anticipate that a team call will include discussion on the latest YouTube rage
• Recognize politics are best left to politicians and not the water cooler
• Appreciate that the board room can sometimes be poolside

US

• Ooze fun times while working hard
• Believe all relationships should have learning’s
• Able to offer a valuable experience to prepare you for after our time together is over
• Respected for our ability to deliver the goods for our clients
• Encourage growth and development to assist you on your career path
• Recognized by industry associations with shiny awards that say we’re a company of our word and good at what we do
• Possibly open to making this a long term arrangement if we all get along
• Appreciate that the board room isn’t always poolside

Responsibilities include:

Facilitating updates to company and client social media sites, assistance in building social media communities on various social media sites, researching topics for company blog, and quarterly newsletter, assistance in writing blog topics with experience in SEO, web writing etc.

The not so fun administrative work may include:
Document task assignments from client work back schedules, and management of content in internal systems.  You might also have to make Coffee (it’s a Tassimo – no training required).

No Filing – we are a virtual company! (Bonus)

This internship will be paid, and you will be required to work out of Chick headquarters in Port Credit (Mississauga).  Not a bad place to spend the summer!  If you think you’re the kind of person who can excel in this environment then we’re a match made in heaven.

Please contact us via email with your resume and tell us why you are the one for us! We’re waiting to hear from you!