Kokua Hospitality Managing Grand Historic Venue; Vizergy® Delivering Online Presence to Match

April 16th, 2013
Companies Expect 100% RFP Increase at Premier East Coast Meeting Venue

Vizergy, a leading hotel Internet marketing company, has designed a new custom website for the iconic Grand Historic Venue. The site showcases the unparalleled beauty of this recently restored landmark in downtown Baltimore. In May of 2012, Kokua Hospitality, LLC management group selected Vizergy as their digital marketing provider to provide a powerful online presence and increase profits for their diverse portfolio of hotels. In addition to custom website designs, Kokua is receiving SEO, mobile and social strategies, and is utilizing Vizergy’s proprietary Hotel Web Management Platform for The Grand Historic Venue, The Allerton Chicago, and Inn of Chicago among others.

“The direction for this site was like no other,” said Karen Wiley Vice President of Sales & Marketing for Kokua Hospitality. “It had to push the limits of most new builds and had to match the beauty of the venue, providing the viewer a similar experience when accessing the site, as if they are actually there.  Vizergy accomplished this 100%, by not only meeting our expectations, but exceeding them. We couldn’t have asked for more… I consider this an award winning site. Vizergy’s partnership throughout the process was extraordinary. I have worked with many e-commerce companies throughout my career, but none provide the service and the attention to detail that Vizergy does. I can’t wait to see what they do with the new Embassy Suites website.”

Read More

Is on-page optimization that important to travel websites?

April 15th, 2013
 By: Billy Jefferson, Senior Analyst, Natural Search

“Yes, absolutely,” says Joe Hyman, President & CEO of Vizergy Digital Travel Marketing.  “The world’s most striking hotel website design—even with proper alt text on images—misses the target entirely without professional on page optimization elevating organic search rankings.”

Today, we see more and more travel specific websites, namely independent hotel and resort websites, that lean more towards image heavy design with less—and sometimes almost no—content.  This means they count almost exclusively on extensive link building and alt text for their optimization strategies – strategies that often fail to deliver desired natural search rankings for more than a handful of terms in this ultra-competitive marketplace.  This issue brings to light the extreme importance of old fashioned on page optimization.

Read More

Friday 5: The Latest Emerging Website Design Trends

April 12th, 2013
Website Design Trends in 2013 & How They Compare to 2012

Last July we discussed How the Latest Hotel Website Design Trends Benefit Your Bottom Line, and wanted to give you a brief update of how these trends have changed and what’s new in 2013. The four hotel website design trends last year were as follows:

  • Fewer flash elements
  • Large imagery
  • Scrolling
  • Vibrant, contrasting colors

Read More

Google Display Remarketing for Your Hotel

April 3rd, 2013
Building a Display Remarketing Strategy
By: Carla Elvir, Senior Paid Search Analyst 

What is display remarketing and how does it work?

Display remarketing is a type of Google display advertising that allows you to show ads to online visitors who have previously visited your website. When a user visits your site, a cookie is placed on their browser. These cookies are used to create remarketing lists that allow you to re-engage prospects as they browse the web. This article will focus specifically on advertising on the Google Display Network.

Read More

The Changing Landscape of Google’s First Search Engine Results Page (SERP)…

March 28th, 2013
And what it means to Hotels and Resorts
By: William Bellis III, Senior Corporate Marketing Manager

Before we dive into the details of the changes, take a minute to study the following first SERP for “jacksonville, fl hotels.”  Can you recognize some of the changes?  How has this page evolved over the last several months?

Note – This screenshot does not contain certain functionality that Google includes on devices, like the map floating down the page as you scroll.  Please conduct this same search on your devices for a live example.

Read More

Friday 5: TripAdvisor Reviews On the Rise

March 22nd, 2013
Recent TripAdvisor Changes to Affect Hoteliers

TripAdvisor is the first travel site to reach 100 million reviews. With  more than a 50 percent increase year-over-year, they are now covering over two million tourism businesses in more than 116,000 destinations worldwide. They recently acquired a new iOS photo app, called Tiny Post, that allows users to make stories out of their photos with the ability to write over the images. So… how do the recent TripAdvisor changes affect hoteliers and what do you need to start doing now?

Read More

Boutique & Lifestyle Lodging Association (BLLA) Selects Vizergy® as Strategic Partner

March 20th, 2013
Vizergy is “Exclusive Website Design Supplier” for BLLA Member Properties

Vizergy, a leading hotel Internet marketing company, has partnered with BLLA, a prominent association that unites a worldwide collection of boutique and lifestyle properties and acts as a hub by connecting properties with various hospitality industry suppliers.  BLLA needed a strategic online marketing partner, and chose Vizergy because of the company’s unique approach to custom hotel website design, natural search, and strategic guidance. Vizergy’s 12 year history as a successful online marketing provider and independent hotel ecommerce expert made them an ideal partner for BLLA. Vizergy recently revamped BLLA’s corporate website and will provide design and marketing services and strategic guidance to BLLA members.

Read More

Friday 5: Your 2013 Social Strategy

March 8th, 2013
Develop A Social Strategy to Best Suit Your Property

Social Media is becoming more and more important for hoteliers in this ever changing world of E-commerce. Social Media Outlets are constantly updating their sites making it harder for hotels to keep up. In today’s latest update, Facebook is in the process of revamping the look of their News Feed to become more visual by incorporating bigger photos and richer video on profiles.

With changes happening all of the time it is important to be aware of the time and resources your property is willing to devote to Social Media efforts. Once a dedicated role of Social Media Manager has been assigned, deciding which Social Media outlets will work best for your particular property is the next step. Below is a diagram of  how often your property should be posting to each outlet per month. This varies per property as each property type and market is entirely different. It is merely a guideline, but is a great starting point to gauge what will work best at your property.

Read More

Vizergy® Next Generation Hotel Web Management Platform Makes Hoteliers’ Lives Easier

March 8th, 2013
New Upgrade Accommodates Complex Needs by Simplifying Management of Online Presence

Vizergy, a leading hotel Internet marketing company, recently released updates to their Hotel Web Management Platform. The next generation platform has taken cloud based computing to the next level, by allowing hoteliers to manage their entire online presence at a single point of access, in a manner that’s faster, smarter and more user-friendly than ever before.  Recent enhancements result in a faster overall platform, simpler processes to change website content, improved navigation and several new reporting capabilities that provide even more transparency in digital marketing.

Read More

301 Domain Redirects: The Multi Domain Issue

March 1st, 2013
Google Suggests 301 Redirects to Avoid Losing Natural Search Authority

By Melissa Lyons: Senior Analyst, Natural Search

Over time, websites gain authority with search engines. That authority that is built will help your ranking in the natural/organic search results.  Natural or organic search results are the listings on search engine results pages (SERPS) that appear in order of their relevance to the terms searched, as opposed to results whose placement is paid for. Once you have built solid placement in the organic results for the terms relevant to your website, you do not want to lose it. This is where multi-domain issues with 301 domain redirects can come into play…Today one of our Senior Analysts will help explain the rationale of why properties should use Google 301 redirects.

Read More