• Hotel Interactive, Wednesday, September 24, 2008 2 PM

Mariana Mechoso serves up the dish on how most hotel franchisees are leaving money on the table by not tapping into the local search market. She argues that while hoteliers often run stellar national PPC campaigns, they can't capitalize on the various flavors of local traffic.

For example, there are the people traveling locally (i.e. the drive-in market), people on the hunt for accommodations near local attractions, those searching for a room in conjunction with a sporting event/conference, etc. -- and the list continues. "No major hotel chain can adequately address and capture these local business opportunities via its national marketing campaigns," Mechoso says.

Mechoso suggests a number of tactics, including link-building on a property level (as opposed to the main brand page), as well as email marketing and cross-promotional events with local businesses. Of course, she also says that hoteliers should be buying locally targeted keywords.

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