NB: This is a guest article by Brian Fitzgerald, vice president of digital strategy at O’Rourke Hospitality.
Over the last few months I have been very disappointed by hearing several hotel Internet marketing companies dismissing mobile applications as part of a hotel’s mobile marketing strategy.
Frankly, I feel as though these companies are downplaying mobile apps because they don’t have an app solution. They seem to be trying to fit every hotel into the solution set they have available to sell.
Full disclosure, we make mobile app products. However, the goal here is not to convince you that you need an app.
Your hotel may benefit from a mobile app or a mobile app might be completely wrong for your hotel, this is a decision that you need to make yourself.
My aim here is to make sure that hotels have the full breadth of available information when they are making decisions about their mobile marketing strategy.
So, let’s review some of the realities of mobile apps:
1. Apps are NOT expensive
If you were to try and build an app from scratch, on your own, through a company that doesn’t have a lot of app experience, then yes it could be expensive. However, this approach is not your only option.
There are options out there for you to build an app for a nominal setup fee and an ongoing monthly subscription fee. If you are part of a collection of hotels this can help to reduce the cost even further by sharing the setup and monthly fees across the collection.
2. Apps can be build for cross-platform
Another misconception that I’ve seen is that when you are building a mobile app you need to build separate apps for each platform.
This is no longer the case as there are now technologies that allow developers to build an app once and it is created for both iPhone and most Android versions.
What about Blackberry you might ask? Blackberry’s market share continues to plummet. According to data from Gartner, Blackberry’s market share dropped from 13% in Q1 of 2011 to 6.9% for Q1 of 2012.
It doesn’t make sense to invest in a platform like this.
According to the same Gartner data, Android and iPhone combined represent 79% of the market, so it makes a lot more sense to build it once and address 79% of the market.
3. Apps and mobile websites are two completely different things
In today’s world consumers are going to use whatever channel and whatever device they want. The Think With Google studies from Google report that the average travel shopper uses 10.2 information sources before buying.
The studies also report (big surprise) that more and more of those sources are mobile. What is being ignored or missed by many is that some of those sources are mobile apps.
An additional study from Think With Google highlights that, in the US, the average smartphone user has 28 apps installed and has used 11 of them within the last 30 days.
What this data tells me is that there is indeed an app audience for the travel industry, in addition to the mobile web audience. I believe that if you want to properly address all of the channels that consumers are using for research, you need to consider BOTH a mobile website and a mobile app.
4. Apps have better features and functions than mobile websites
The next level for mobile in the travel landscape is twofold, 1. Truly enhance the guest experience 2. Enhance it across all stages of the customer journey (pre stay, during stay, post stay).
This is where apps, at least today, have a leg up by being able to offer features and functions that can’t exist through a mobile website. There are already a handful of mobile app offerings out there that integrate with PMS systems.
This means that guests can check-in, checkout, receive messages, order room service and request housekeeping services all through a mobile app on their smartphone. Apps also allow for features like keyless guestroom entry through technologies like OpenWays.
Last, but certainly not least is the functionality of push notifications that apps have. This means that you can send a push notification post stay to remind past guests about your property or you can send them a push message when their extra towels have been delivered.
These push messages help keep your hotel top of mind when guests are not on-property and help keep guests informed when they are.
5. Marketing your app is easy
Could you spend a ton of money marketing your app? Sure. Do you need to? No.
There are plenty of simple, grassroots methods that can be used to market your app. Here are 15 ideas, that cost little to nothing, on places and channels where you could promote your mobile app
- a banner on your website homepage
- a Facebook post
- a Twitter post
- an email blast
- a press release
- a YouTube video
- your email signature
- guest confirmation emails
- post stay emails
- folio printouts
- a lobby poster
- an elevator poster
- an in-room tent card
- a message on the HSIA login screen
- coasters in F&B outlets.
Doing all or some of these tactics will easily increase downloads of your mobile app.
Summing up
Overall, make sure that you evaluate every opportunity and gather all the available information. Don’t make the mistake of taking one company’s opinion as the final answer.
I hope this post achieved my goal of helping to make sure that hospitality professionals have ALL the necessary information as they plan their mobile marketing strategies.
Look forward to your comments and discussions.
NB: This is a guest article by Brian Fitzgerald, vice president of digital strategy at O’Rourke Hospitality.
NB2: Mobile app explosion image via Shutterstock.
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Point 4 i disagree with – a fully optimised well built mobile website can beat an app for functionality and user friendliness any day, at least that’s our market experience. A lousy mobile website is just another ;lousy piece of marketing collateral.
Robert – I agree with your note that a mobile website can beat an app – except for the use case described above with NFC or any other similar scenario.
But when you install the app it’s always with you, mobile website – you need to remember url, enter it…
Nothing a good bookmark won’t cure. Agree that mobile websites are the way forward unless you want to invest (yes it is expensive) in a rich UI/UX because you have an engaged audience with a high propensity to use the app frequently – and you can monetize the interactions!
You still have the challenge of competing for real estate space with 10s of other apps and competitors…
I agree that mobile apps for hotels are an underplayed marketing opportunity. I think, however, that their uses are very hotel specific. A mobile optimized hotel website is going to be more versatile with greater marketing collateral. An app, I think, should have a specific purpose–like including a taxi card, or giving guests an easy way to order room service. I see them more as a nice extra bonus for guests, not as an overly effective way to market your hotel.
Now, if a hotel hired a marketing firm to create a clever but useful app that may not be all about the hotel, but is a handy app in-and-of itself (like Spielberg did for his movie Super 8), then that could potentially be a useful viral marketing tool.
Very much agree with Brandon’s points
It may be pretty to surf but frankly toggling between sites is a pain on my Ipad & Iphone whilst I may look I’ll never book on them, I’ll stick to my computer where I know I can print, save, e-mail and enter my cc details on a secure site.
Apps no doubt offer a good mobile experience, it’s naive to think that it would work with all customers. Even at the low costs for development, a hotel app can never be created once and run for next 3 years – the mobile tech development is faster than that to make it outdated in 6 months flat. Plus, there is no guarantee that you booking engine provider is up to date with mobile technology – a major fail if this app doesn’t work with your current booking engine.
Way out? Go for a HTML5 responsive design site – it will work irrespective of mobile type, OS or screensize. And, hey – ask your booking engine provider if they offer mobile optimization. Big surprises in there
To part echo what Brian said in his article and other comments so far, you need BOTH app and mobile site, but these two also need to exist in the context of the full website. In other words, you need all three, AND they to be need to be approached in a holistic manner, rather than think that an app can replace a mobile site, which in turn can replace a full blow site.
Admittedly, a single/small hotel operator might not have the funds for all three (a large chain might and should). And if so, I would urge them to consider a mobile site to compliment their full website – there’s only incremental work involving front end development, rather than back end dev. Then the mobile site can be also be packaged as an app (with additional videos or any heavy files you dont want the user to be frustrated trying to download) and submitted to the Appstore or Android Market, in order to further your reach.
Carl, it amuses me how people speak/write as if money grows on trees. No matter how desirable a mobile site and a mobile app may be, these have to be budgeted for in the general run of marketing priorities. I don’t think it sending out the right signals to say a hotel must have both an app and a mobile site.
Furthermore, a top quality properly built and fully optimised mobile website which is a great mobile user experience is most certainly not just ‘only incremental work involving front end development’ – we are building these for hotels every day and I can assure you that they present a considerable and continuous development challenge if they are to be done properly.
Probably more important than anything is for especially the s,mall hotel to ask how their hotel website renders on a tablet, as going forward this may be the most potent channel of all. (in fact it virtually already is). We are looking at how we can apply our research to the development of custom built tablet sites, optimising the tablet user experience.(not responsive web design, as this relates to style, not usability and optimisation for devices such as tablets and mobiles/smartphones.
Hi Robert, I also share your amusement – I agree that it’s one thing to speak in concept and a totally different one when it comes down to the real life practicality involving money (and time, let’s not forget). Which is why I made the point of differentiating my comments for a large hotel chain versus a single/small hotel. I thought it was fair that I made that differentiation. Moreover, I chose my words carefully to say that for single/small hotels I ‘urge’ them, rather than saying that they ‘must’ have. It all comes down to semantics, I guess : )
As for my comment that it is ‘only an incremental work’ – whilst Im not in the trade of building mobiles sites for every day, we are going through the process of building our own mobile site, so I’m talking from our own experience. Moreover, as a Usability practitioner and Information Architect the user experience has been at the forefront of our requirements for our mobile site. For us it hasn’t been so challenging as yet (touch wood), and we’re making great progress between myself, our graphic designer and our front-end developer and expect only minimal work with back-end dev. Im just speaking from our own experiences, Robert. I think what is important that the full website on which the mobile site is based on needs to be in good order. If this is wrong, then the mobile site will be challenge, as you suggest. We might be in the fortunate situation that we’re revamping our site together with building the mobile site – yes we are suckers for punishment : ) (FYI, the company I work for is MyDestination.com).
One interesting point about your comment is that you describe the mobile site/app as part of marketing priorities. I dont agree with this. I believe they should be product development. Even if the hotels website is for lead generation, I think the hoteliers need to consider their website not in terms of marketing activity but as part of their core operation. And I believe this perspective is echoed in the other readers’ comments (Martin, Mario and Brandon) in terms of how to best utilise mobile.
Carl, thanks. I work in the real world, not with concepts! We are a respected specialist Uk hotel on line full service company, our clients don’t expect us to woffle about concepts, they just want results!
I don’t think for a hotel, a mobile website is part of their core operation. A hotel is not in the business of building mobile websites! And for all the groups and chains i work with, mobile falls in to the area of responsibility of sales/marketing/ecommerce, not operations – are you saying they got this wrong?
Right down to eg getting the Sabre CRS API so that we could engineer it and integrate the booking engine rendered for mobile into the hotel mobile website so that the user gets a seamless ecommerce experience also, you bet there is necessary back end development for HOTELs (i can’t speak for other businesses) to have a fully optimised mobile website which is as great user experience.
Hi Robert,
I couldn’t agree with you more that a fully optimised website which is a great user experience is important; and as a client I sure as the next person expect results not waffle – we’re saying the same things.
And yes hotels are not in the business of building mobile websites which is why there are specialist companies like yours – I think the whole mobile industry is grateful for that. Our system doesn’t integrate with Sabre or the like, although we do have some heavy duty back-end, but pleasantly it has integrated exceptionally well with our mobile endeavours, both effort-wise as well as the user experience. Whilst we don’t deal predominantly with hotels, we’re obviously in the travel space and as such I think it’s worthwhile sharing our experience and views, together with yours. Cheers.