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Vertical Spotlight: Search And Social Media For Travel Advertisers

Ritesh Gupta interviews Barbara Pezzi, director of Webmarketing and E-commerce at Swissotel Hotels & Resorts, offering insight into the way hoteliers and other travel advertisers are utilizing search and social media.

For organic search, Pezzi said that Swissotel had recently revamped its Web site with SEO in mind. She also said that the company's strategy was to target a mix of broad and long tail keywords--while always keeping one eye on the budget and the upscale perception of the brand. And she advocated use of negative keywords.

"I always include a high number of negative keywords in our PPC campaign to appear in the most relevant search results and at the same time reinforce our brand strategy," Pezzi said. "For example, even if I was running an SEM campaign to promote a tactical promotion, 'cheap' would always be a negative keyword, even if it is a popular search term for 'special offers.'"

As for social media, Pezzi said that the hotelier's marketing team stayed on top of review sites and responded to online complaints whenever possible.

Read the whole story at m-Travel.com »

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