The hotel and travel industry is suffering from one of the most aggressive issues of online brand and reputation attack, which is rooted firmly around the value of hotel brands and search phrases.

This is seen within primary search results, where 80% or more of branded search traffic on keywords directly related to a hotel’s brand are stolen by directory and trip review sites such as Orbitz, Expedia, TripAdvisor, Priceline, Hotwire, Hotels.com, and TravelPost. There are dozens of smaller sites and sub-properties involved in this marketplace attrition model, high-lighting an ongoing and growing problem.

Needless to say, that this is a monumental issue.

If we want to apply real world numbers to this problem, we can establish a baseline value of traffic redirected by encroaching on branded terms by looking at the monthly unique traffic of the top travel sites dealing with hotels and comparing those numbers against the percentage of traffic originating from search engines.

The chart below list some of the top sites involved in leeching off organic traffic through brand related hotel terms:

What is the real cost?

The real cost is that over 13,500,000 monthly unique hotel and travel prospects are being aggressively lured into competing business models where they are price-shopped, sold alternative options, or left to simple confusion. If a hotel values an average visitor on a cost-per-click model of $1 to $5 per visitor, the total monthly traffic value being lost above is $13.5M to $67.5M per month.

Disruption of the sales funnel.

Consumers who are searching for a specific hotel name are either repeat customers or consumers who have been branded well enough that they enter the  hotel by name. In either case, these are high-value prospects that are much further into the sales/conversion funnel and are actively looking to purchase.

The real value of a repeat customer (lifetime value)

The lifetime value of a repeat customer varies depending on the service are and the niche serviced by a hotel chain. If we extract a basic example:

• One evening stay $150
• Guest stays approximately six times per year.
• Guest remains with hotel chain for 5 years.
• $4500 Total lifetime value

In some instances, the value of a lifetime customer at a hotel is radically increased if we look at high-frequency business guests who may be staying in a hotel chain 100 to 200 evenings a year.

What happens when a prospect is lost to a search and review directory?

1- The consumer is presented with a discounted price to incent them into registering at the review site. At the hotel level, this causes an erosion of the profit margin as the review site keeps a percentage of the booking price, and it creates a loss of perception related to who really “owns” the guest. (I.E. if you book an evening at the Seattle Hilton through TripAdvisor, do you consider yourself a customer of one or both? Do you feel better knowing that you will receive twice the amount of “special offers” in your inbox the next day?)

2- The consumer is presented with competitive hotels in an effort to win the over. If they choose competitive accommodations, you have lost a repeat customer and the entitled lifetime value.

3- The consumer becomes confused by options and information overload, disregarding the original search intent to purchase and beginning a consideration phase at a later date.

This type of scenario is present in many other industries (automobile, local businesses, professional services.)  This article only skims the surface of why hoteliers are constantly challenged by aggressive online marketing tactics. If you have questions or specific examples of this situation, please leave a comment below or contact us with additional information.

If interested in our solution: examine our hotel reputation and casino reputation services or get in touch.

As our team is formalizing some niche segments with unique reputation issues, one of the unusual models of reputation is within businesses that have an inherent percentage of alienated consumers.

Casino reputations are one such example. Regardless of who visits the casino, a certain percentage of the consumer marketplace will always lose at the gambling table.

There are other business models like this:

• Limited seating concerts: if you have ever been “Johnny come lately” to performance, you have probably experienced at least one instance of feeling left out and alienated when the doors closed right in front of you. While many individuals simply walk away and try again another time, a small percentage of people turned away at the door lash-out and demand specialized attention. Even after jumping through a few extra business hoops and offering additional value, many businesses find angry prospects complaining online.
• High-risk financial funds: if you knew anyone with an investment portfolio through 2007 to 2010, there were probably a few times when you saw some numbers on your monthly statement you weren’t especially happy with. In times of stress and high-monetary value, many investment consumers take our the frustration against brands, analysts and investment firms for lack of performance.
• Premium vs economy models: (airlines are famous for this) – every consumer wants fair and equitable treatment, but some models of business have preset levels of service that the community at large doesn’t always agree with. The most common example is airlines who have 1st class, business, and economy levels of service. The perceived value of service vs the delivered level of service in these cases is often exaggerated and causes a high probability of online complaints.

An excerpt from our casino reputation page details some other issues:

Casino reputations are particularly interesting, as the entire model of many casino braands has transformed from games of risk into family event destinations. When it comes to where we choose to take risks, reputation has always been a key influencer for controlling where consumers spend hard-earned dollars.

As unique niche properties, Casinos have the basic challenge that a percentage of customers will loose at the table. This isn’t due to the lack of integrity by the casino, but the perception of gambling is that casinos need to provide honest and fair terms. If the perception of the digital consumer is influenced to indicate the casino or its executives are dishonest, the entire business model suffers painful revenue losses.

When businesses are operating in high-risk scenarios that require complex customer service and management structures, our team at SMR is immediately alerted to potential areas of business impacts that can occur in the online marketplace.

After reading this, give some thought to the actual business model and process structure. You should give special attention to your top ten percent and bottom ten percent of clients. In many instances, the bottom ten percent of your clients should detail the prospects that you didn’t service (either through choice, business model, or circumstance.)

When examining the top/bottom ten percent, create a simple bullet list of pros/cons for each segment and ask yourself these two questions:

• Does this pro/con get communicated online?
• What can we do to prevent a bad item from becoming more severe, or leverage a good component as a free exposure tool?

Like any asset, there are hundreds of unforeseen risks that are associated with online reputation. A common viewpoint shared by many business executives is that they don’t know how to gauge how virtually explosive different aspects of their business model are. If you don’t know what smoke is, you probably can’t justify cost of fire insurance.

The cost and risk are real.
(Let us use a little example below)

As the size of a business increases, an exponential multiplier of risk is applied to the digital model:

• more consumers increase opinionated reviews
• more employees increase HR related violations
• more marketplace share increases chance of competitive arson
• exposure to social networks increases chance of
  • confidential leaks and privacy disclosure (family, friends, bedroom talk.)
  • ethical misbehavior (executive compensation, regulation violations)
  • employee / x-employee complaints (unions, disgruntled employees)

Keep in mind these risks are only risks. They are not guaranteed occurrences, merely quantifiable and avoidable impacts to the business.

If we compare professional reputation to the idea of a business burning down, a smart owner doesn’t remodel the entire location or spend the entire budget on high-risk insurance policies during a crisis. Educated decision makers update the property to reduce the chance of fire and minimize damage if a it does occur.

Some example actions they might take:

• Trim the hedges back from the building.
• Establish clear emergency routes for staff.
• Work on fire-drills for quick and decisive actions.
• Train team members to take care of dangerous situations.
• Create back-up plans for mission critical business functions.
• Memorize the 911 number to immediately contact the experts.

The totally honest truth:
there is no 911 number for your digital business model.

The closest thing you can have in an emergency is an  experienced team who has taken the time to build, manage and protect the unique aspects of your business assets.

The Institute for Crisis Management reports that 65 percent of the crises companies face are of the “smoldering” variety. The companies are aware of problems that could erupt, but they avoid taking necessary actions to prevent a flash fire and the risk-cost is often associated with management neglect. The only 35% of crises are “sudden” and while painful, could have been minimized through proper planning. Example situations that can cause smoldering crises are lay-offs, consumer recalls, customer service, executive misconduct, and stock performance.

What can an expert team do for your reputation?

• prepare for probable high-risk scenarios
• establish priority matrix for cost vs. risk scenarios
• take long-term, cost-effective strategies instead of high-cost tactics
• educate stakeholders, leveraging internal and external support mechanisms

Pro-active strategies allow for tactical campaigns to be launched without costly delay:

• create strategy around competitor’s risk and opportunity matrix
• minimize loss when company or executive brands are under attack
• safeguard high-priority revenue channels, limiting casualties to niche channels instead of entire markets
• address libelous and opinionated rumors before they contaminate marketplace

CASE STUDIES

• Supermedia, Idearc, Verizon, GTE,
• United Airlines

REPUTATION RESOURCES

• Reputation Toolbox
• Executive Reputation- Digital Trust in the Enterprise

Just as with any crisis, reputation management in the digital world needs to have a plan in place with the proper assets allocated to support it. Without a plan, critical time delay creates a recipe for disaster.

Can you think of some additional actions that make sense to prevent a digital flash fire?

Just a few years ago, the traditional business professional didn’t need to worry much about digital conversations said about them. In today’s modern marketplace, your online reputation controls many of your professional opportunities. So far that online reputation is overtaking the traditional credit score as a means to identify if you are a worthwhile business partner. *If you would like to read more detail, you can read this four page whitepaper about reputation value or my CEO blog article on reputation score vs credit fiasco.

With that said, this reputation toolbox is a collection of resources to help you establish, maintain and protect your “online reputation score.”

Why should you read this? My company provides online reputation management services to executives and corporations. We believe that a good online reputation company doesn’t hide behind dozens of secrets or manipulative strategies to keep clients in the dark: if a professional wants to self-train themselves on hundreds of overlapping technical points and spend hours refining an expertise as a digital reputation specialist… they can.

We  also believe that digital presence extends across multiple cogs that include brand, relationships, search optimization, time frame and scale. In terms of business reputation it also affects sales conversion, customer care, liability, industry buzz, recruiting, public relations and marketing. Each element is simply a cog on a larger gear working in conjunction with another gear to drive a specific result. In some cases gears are incredibly simple. In clock work however: simple gears become extraordinarily complex.

Simply said: digital reputation and healthy online presence works with dozens of other cogs. When functioning properly a good digital presence provides the ability to overcome both negative impacts (poor search results, bad publicity, etc) AND places you in the right place at the right time (search branding, network referrals, competitive intelligence, etc.)

The articles collected below represent different portions of our services that we often charge thousands of dollars for. Any singular cog is very simplistic. We urge clients (and our readers) to perform the elements they can properly implement. It is only when we collect dozens of interlocking components that begin affecting business and revenue opportunities… or escalate in scale to include dozens or thousands of employees… that we are happy to provide the expert level of service.

Before jumping into tactical issues that require some thought, we need to make sure you are properly oriented on how your digital presence and real world life intersect. This requires some thinking about two basic items: personal and professional contacts.

To think of this in the most basic level, you probably have different clusters of friends and professional contacts that do not often socialize together… yet in the online world you will need to hold yourself to a professional bar at all times. Personal friends and family must be restricted to a professional level of interaction.

We must always keep in mind: there is no erase button for your digital actions. You usually don’t get too many second chances.
If we use the proper ideology… you must always have your game face on.

This doesn’t mean you can’t have a personal life. You just need to be aware that personal lives are incredibly findable in today’s online age. You don’t know when a conversation may become public, when a photo may be posted by a friend, or when a moment of haste is permanently placed online.

If you value your reputation (and you should!) then grab a cup of coffee and spend a moment reading the following articles. At the bottom of this article are three additional one-page guides to Twitter, Search Engine Optimization, and Google Alerts that can assist in streamlining your digital life.

Executive Branding and Reputation - executives have a requirement to not only be professional, but lead. Every individual in business yearns to be a subject matter expert and be able to communicate that value. This article includes several slide decks that help clarify and spotlight that expertise.

Executive URLs and personal domains – many social sites are taking possession of YOUR NAME. You need to understand this and TAKE IT BACK. As a professional, your name is your most critical business asset.

5 Tools for Free Reputation Management - reputation management doesn’t need to cost a lot of money. If you want some simple tools that are entirely free, this article includes several benefit rich options.

Social Media Profiles for Professionals – If you only have enough time to create a presence on a few locations, this article covers the top sites you should focus on first.

ONE PAGE GUIDES

Earlier this month (February  2010),  Comcast made the announcement of shifting over several products to a new brand: Xfinity. The downside to the brand revamp appears to be a spiral effect of news channel, industry critics, and industry peers passing along a series of criticisms trying to rebrand reputation.

Unfortunately it isn’t going so well for Xfinity. Starting with Reuters article “Comcast Seeks Reputation Change with Xfinity brand“, critic after critic is asking big questions about the rebrand effort.  In essence, the brand was not what was the target of the change (its reputation was.)

This is a digital issue we have covered before (Supermedia, Idearc, Verizon, and GTE) , as companies continue to re-brand business units in an attempt to fix areas of concern in online reputation and real world business issues.

A core problem of these rebrand efforts is the digital portion, where conversations connect old brands to new brands, along with some related problems on the side of search engine results.

An example of this can be seen in the “Xfinity Buzz” (image left), where the new brand has a sentiment value of 3:1 – meaning that every 3 positive mentions has 1 negative. For a “new” brand, having negative mentions about the brand is only caused by the relationship established with the old brand in the consumer mindshare.

A second example can be seen in the Google auto-complete search function, where Google directs your search to like-minded search phrases before you have the chance to click submit. When searching for “Xfinity”, the second result provided is “xfinity comcast” (disabling the ability to separate the two brands online.)

A third example resides on the contaminated results of Google, where the lack of strategy in digital brand management opened an invitation for negative press coverage to continually drain on potential positive spin, while degrading the overall value of the new brand.

A screenshot of Google’s search results for “Xfinity” show that roughly fifty percent of the results are negative (highlighted in red.) Included in the top Xfinity’s top Google Results are some pretty damaging headlines, including Time Magazines article “Comcast to Xfinity: does name change conjure porn?” that blasts Comcast with brand expert statements such as:

“It’s a complete and total waste of time and resources,” says Rob Frankel, who has consulted for companies like Disney, Burger King and Sony. “Nobody has a clue as to why they did this or what the name means. If you are going to rebrand, it should communicate a strategy. Now you’ll just say, ‘The old Comcast guys f_____ up my cable.’ “

Other results on the first page come from high-traffic news sites including Endgadget, The Baltimore Sun, Gizmodo, PC Magazine, and the Seattle Times.

• Endgadget- Comcast smears the Xfinity brand across all its services
• Gizmodo – Comcast Rebrands Itself as Xfinity. Seriously? That’s…. That’s All You Got?
• The Baltimore Sun -Xfinity, it’s Comtastic!
• PC Magazine – Comcast Rolling Out ‘Xfinity’ Brand to 11 Markets
• Seattle Times – Comcast says new name Xfinity is sign of innovation

This information all leads back to an introductory statement made by Comcast CEO Brian Roberts “the company will rebrand its cable products under the banner “Xfinity” in an effort to reinvent its relationship with customers …”

As a high-tech, digital provider servicing customer who are net-enabled…. the lack of presence planning within the digital footprint of the new brand simply left the door open for a high percentage of the rebranding dollars to be lost within the digital marketplace. This can be seen in the timeline display (click image below to enlarge), where the first real sighting of the rebrand occurred in early December and was followed by a month and a-half of silence from Comcast.

The end result of this mistake in digital rebranding will have untold long-term ramifications:

• continual customer service issues
• reduction in sales conversion
• potential stock impacts
• increase to digital marketing costs
• long-term restoration project for an entirely new brand.

What do you think Comcast could have done with Xfinity to have avoided this wrong turn?

Join the conversation on Twitter using hashtags #comcast and #xfinity