Swiss School Students Create Crowdsourced Apple iPhone App

For the past few months some 80 international students of more than 20 different nationalities who currently study at IMI University Centre in Luzern, Switzerland have collected data to create the the world’s first crowd-sourced student guide. The iPhone App is a collaboration with Luzern Tourism which also has its own tourism city guide and [...]

Green Hotels – Marketing and Profitability Advantages of Environmentally Friendly Practices

Going Green Again – The marketing (and profitability) advantage of environmentally friendly practices By Jennifer Rodrigues, TravelInk’d It may be hard to remember, but not too long ago environmental awareness was the hot topic in the hospitality industry. Everywhere you looked there were hotels and restaurants ‘going green’ and executing ‘sustainability’ campaigns. Then, of course, the recession [...]

Hotel Public Relations – Marketing Against External Factors like the BP Oil Spill

With the BP oil spill in mind, how can hotels effectively market themselves amidst factors beyond their control? By Jennifer Rodrigues, TravelInk’d The BP oil spill has dominated headlines lately for many good reasons. It is the largest environmental disaster in the history of the United States; it has caused untold ecological destruction to wetlands, [...]

Dealing with the Downturn

A verdict comes in on how hotels handled the demand conditions caused by the recession By Jennifer Rodrigues, TravelInk’d The Cornell Center for Hospitality Research issued a report last week that indicated that though discounting was the most prevalent tactic used to offset the demand-killing effects of the recession, hotels were unlikely to repeat this [...]

Hotel Marketing and Public Relations Myth Busters

Mythbusters, TravelInk’d Style By Jennifer Rodrigues, TravelInk’d A confession: I engage in plenty of guilty pleasures. Among the cheaper ones (that is, discounting my yearning for Miu Mius and beachside mojitos) is an irrational affinity for the Discovery Channel’s Mythbusters. I suppose the show’s a bit more high-concept than The Office, but it certainly doesn’t [...]

Why Hotels Should Be Marketing to Boomer Women – Reaching Your Best Customers

By Jennifer Rodrigues, TravelInk’d The Baby Boomers- that generation defined as having been born between 1946 and 1964, the oldest of whom are turning 64 this year- are far and away the most influential consumer segment the country has ever seen.  Most hoteliers have long acknowledged this, and have tailored their marketing strategies accordingly.  In [...]

8 Things that Won’t Happen in 2010

By Jennifer Rodrigues, TravelInk’d If you’re anything like me, you’re probably getting very sick of reading new predictions released daily about what 2010 will bring for the hotel industry. Have you noticed a theme in all of them yet? I have, and it goes something like this: bad news, bad news, bad news and more [...]