Aspen inaugura empreendimento de US$ 1 bi em tempos de crise econômica

28/12/2008 - 09h30 - CHRISTIANNE GONZÁLEZ

Em meio à crise econômica que derrubou as bolsas de valores no mundo e elevou em cerca de 40% o valor do dólar em 2008, a pequena cidade de Aspen, no Estado do Colorado (EUA), dá início a um empreendimento de US$ 1 bilhão no setor de turismo e esportes de inverno.

Em Snowmass, uma das quatro maiores áreas de esqui da região, localizada a 20 minutos do centro de Aspen, foi aberto ao público este mês um complexo de lazer com teleféricos, creche, bar, restaurante, lounge, lanchonete e 91 apartamentos de um, dois e três quartos.

Avaliado em US$ 100 milhões - 10% do investimento total do empreendimento, a "Base Village", representa a primeira parte do projeto de ampliação da estação de esqui Aspen/Snowmass.

O empreendimento fica na base da montanha de Snowmass - uma das mais populares da região, que compreende também Aspen Mountain, Highlands e Buttermilk. Os apartamentos de três dormitórios do condomínio Hayden & Capitol Peak Lodges têm diárias que chegam a US$ 3.000 por noite (preço para Natal e Ano Novo) e comportam de seis a oito pessoas com conforto.

CheapTickets.com Reveals Top Budget Friendly Destinations for New Year

18 December, 2008

Finding the best deal is all about choosing the right destination at the right time. Forecast suggests savings of up to 59 percent if one makes the right choice.

CheapTickets.com, a leading online travel agency that knows “the less you pay, the better it feels,” today announced its 2009 Value Travel Forecast, an in-depth analysis of 2008 hotel pricing trends that projects the destinations expected to offer the most value to travelers in the New Year.

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APRIL: Brazil – Looking to take a break this spring but want to avoid the spring break madness? In April, the summer surge of tourists in Brazil is complete, which means fewer crowds, but the same great tropical weather.

The Best Helping Hand for Last Minute Travel

18 December, 2008

For impulsive travelers who want to get away on the fly, Kiplinger and Travel+Leisure rate lastminute.com as the best site to book a quick getaway. In Kiplinger's 2008 Best List, the personal finance and business forecast site named lastminute.com the Best Web Site for Last-Minute Travel while the last second deals site made T+L's Top Travel Websites of 2008 as the best place to go when searching for package deals one week out.

Using specialized technology, lastminute.com locates unsold airline seats, hotel rooms and rental cars and assembles them into packages known as last second deals, which can be purchased from 21 days to several hours before departure.

The Secrets of Marketing in a Web 2.0 World

Consumers are flocking to blogs, social-networking sites and virtual worlds. And they are leaving a lot of marketers behind.

DECEMBER 15, 2008 - By SALVATORE PARISE , PATRICIA J. GUINAN and BRUCE D. WEINBERG

For marketers, Web 2.0 offers a remarkable new opportunity to engage consumers.

If only they knew how to do it.

That's where this article aims to help. We interviewed more than 30 executives and managers in both large and small organizations that are at the forefront of experimenting with Web 2.0 tools. From those conversations and further research, we identified a set of emerging principles for marketing.

But first, a more basic question: What is Web 2.0, anyway? Essentially, it encompasses the set of tools that allow people to build social and business connections, share information and collaborate on projects online. That includes blogs, wikis, social-networking sites and other online communities, and virtual worlds.

Putting your website design in context

Adapting your website for the wireless age is about more than formatting -- it's about meeting the unique demands of your mobile users. Here's what marketers need to know.

December 11, 2008 - Seth Rosenblatt

I'm sitting in the railway station / Got a ticket for my destination
On a tour of one night stands / My suitcase and guitar in hand
And every stop is neatly planned / For a poet and a one man band
Homeward bound / I wish I was homeward bound...
-- Simon & Garfunkel, "Homeward Bound," 1966

Even though this song is four decades old, it still rings true for me. Substitute "airport" for "railway station" and "phone" for "guitar," and Paul and Art's timeless classic could be referring to a lot of us. In fact, sometimes I catch myself humming that tune during my travels for Interwoven.

As a 21st century road warrior, I spend a lot of time with my Blackberry. My wife refers to it as my "mistress" since the device supposedly gets more attention than she does. Such is the curse and the blessing of today's technology to enable secret and obsessive rendezvous to check email whenever and wherever. I love that I can have a mobile email/web/GPS/text/phone/address book/to-do list/calendar/gaming device that is with me all the time. How else would I know how to avoid traffic on my route home or keep myself busy while waiting somewhere during my travels?

Recession Forces New Marketing Paradigm for Resorts

Holy demolition, Batman, what now??

4 December 2008 - Steven Herron, Strategic Marketing Manager, HyperDisk Marketing, Inc.

You are ranked well in relevant keyword searches. You have allocated dollars to PPC and you manage your exposure and visibility. You have well placed banner advertising on highly targeted portals that historically have delivered excellent ROI. You are feeling pretty good about your strategic plan with tactics designed to deliver specific business and increases in revenue.

But it is not working!!! Room nights, revenue, and most importantly, profit, are all trending downward, along with group, transient, and leisure business. There is increasing pressure to cut rate even though that strategy has proved futile, and a losing proposition in the long term.

What now???

Google’s official SEO Starter Guide

Google created a compact guide that lists some best practices that teams within Google and external webmasters alike can follow that could improve their sites' crawlability and indexing.

December 04, 2008 | Internet Marketing

Google’s Search Engine Optimization Starter Guide covers around a dozen common areas that webmasters might consider optimizing.

The company felt that these areas (like improving title and description meta tags, URL structure, site navigation, content creation, anchor text, and more) would apply to webmasters of all experience levels and sites of all sizes and types.

Online Marketing Secrets Revealed

Here's how to avoid the common mistakes when playing in the online marketing arena.

Tuesday, December 02, 2008 - Tom Griffin

Online marketing is quickly changing. Web 2.0 and the rising promise of social media that comes with it is creating a new paradigm from which hoteliers can create business. Emerging technologies and social networking are reshaping the landscape for the hotel industry and smart operators and marketers are embracing this virtual world of opportunity.

As you consider the most effective ways to reach out to your customers, it’s essential to review the critical mistakes most hoteliers in order to avoid falling into these pitfalls and vanish into the marketing abyss.

Six Economic Survival Steps, Sans Discounts

With the U.S. economy in a recession and much of the world expected to follow, marketers must respond to changes in demand and preferences.

Dec 2, 2008 10:50 AM, By David King

It is clear that promotions and discounts will rule until the economy improves, but there are opportunities for smart marketers to avoid the rush to the bottom and use other strategies in addition to discounts.

Highflying days over for online travel sites

Web site traffic tumbles on steep decline in passengers

By Julie Johnsson - December 1, 2008

Not only are Americans flying less as the economy tanks, they're spending less time scouting the Internet for travel deals, creating an unprecedented drop in traffic for online travel agencies like Chicago-based Orbitz Worldwide Inc.

As days shorten and the air chills, consumers typically start to plan winter getaways, making October one of the busiest months of the year for Internet travel sites, analysts said.

Not this year. As consumer confidence reached historic lows in October, the volume of visitors to Web travel portals declined 14 percent, year over year, to 38.2 million, according to ComScore Inc. Web traffic fell for nearly every major airline site.

Hardest hit were the three online powerhouses that have dominated bookings for much of this decade. Web traffic at Expedia Inc. sites plunged 25 percent, to 18.2 million visitors, while Travelocity.com LP and Orbitz saw 16 percent and 23 percent drops, respectively.

Consumers switch, shout and sulk over hotel entertainment

Most homes these days are equipped with an array of advanced technologies, as a result, three-quarters of us expect hotel entertainment systems to at least match their home set-up, according to a not so unbiased study sponsored by Samsung.

December 01, 2008

Research by Samsung has revealed that consumers are increasingly promiscuous and outspoken about dated hotel entertainment systems. In-room technology is a major part of the hotel experience, with 66 per cent of us saying the standard of their in-room entertainment is a major part of our hotel choice.

Pammi Mudhar, European B2B Sales Director, Samsung said: “Despite the slowing economy, consumer expectations for a ‘home from home’ hotel experience are rising. Most homes these days are equipped with an array of advanced technologies, as a result, three-quarters of us expect hotel entertainment systems to at least match their home set-up, with over one in four (26 per cent) expecting an even higher standard.”

Hip Hotels Meeting 21st Century Traveler Needs

Here's our guide to what hotels guests are starting to expect from hotels in regards to technology.

Mr. David Vernon Wilkening

Question: Are hotels getting hip to the needs of 21st century travelers? The answer: Yes, in both large and small ways.

“The goal always is to improve on the lifestyle someone already has at their office or home, and perhaps even give them things they don’t get there,” says Tom Parke, director of marketing for the Hilton Orlando Bonnet Creek and the Waldorf-Astoria, both scheduled to open next year.

Perhaps no surprise, but tech is definitely in these days.

TripAdvisor wants your hotel website

Once again, the company makes an effort to get its review panel or award badge on hotel websites. The reviews panel or widget can be customized to include snippets of the most recent guest reviews, ratings and photos of the business or destination from TripAdvisor.

November 20, 2008

TripAdvisor launched a suite of tools for owners and managers of hotels, restaurants and attractions to bring the proven power of user-generated reviews and ratings to their own web sites. Unbiased user-generated reviews have been proven to turn lookers into bookers by leveraging the trust consumers place on the opinions of travelers like themselves.

In a 2007 survey of 360 e-commerce companies, sites that added user reviews reported very positive results(1):

- 56% lifted conversion
- 77% raised traffic
- 42% increased the average shopping basket

The disturbing inaccuracy behind Google Analytics

It is critical to know how any web metrics package calculates its numbers, even Google. You cannot assume, no matter how big the company, that the numbers will be correct.

Brandt Dainow - November 18, 2008

Google Analytics is probably the most popular web analytics tool in use today. It is certainly the best tool you can get for the price -- it's free and worth every penny. Unfortunately, like every web analytics tool, it is not 100 percent accurate. There are reasons why it is impossible to build perfectly accurate web analytics software, which I have covered previously in "Things that throw your stats," so we should not blame Google for this. However, Google Analytics is different from other products in that it has been intentionally designed by Google to be inaccurate over and above the normal inaccuracies that are inevitable. These inaccuracies are so glaring that most people are getting a very false picture of what is happening in their sites. This article will explain where these inaccuracies lie and provide methods to correct for them.

Value, Value, Value

Demand may be down, but that doesn’t mean you should discount. Guests want value and here’s how you can give it to them and maintain profits.
Friday, November 14, 2008 - Glenn Haussman

Value is king, consumers are saying. And this new ideal has the potential to shake up the way hoteliers need to think about the leisure side of their business. It’s a trend that’s been slowly emerging during the past couple of years, but now a jittery economy is pushing travel buyers into creating this rising new normal.

Fortunately, value doesn’t necessarily mean cheap. So operators that utilize this trend to their benefit have the opportunity to maintain market share even as demand slips. It’s also a great way to protect rate integrity. That way when the market does return it’ll be easier to push rates.

The concept boils down to this: Give consumers more for their basic room rate, or create pricing packages that gives your potential customer a good sense of how much their total spend will be when they’re staying at your hotel.