Ever since a Ukrainian friend mentioned them I regularly drop in on the website of Art Lebedev Studio, Russia’s leading design studio.

Whether it’s their constitution, product design (see Optimus Maximus Keyboard, GLONASS Satnav) or their diversity of work there is always something inspiring to browse. Of particular interest is the process section that accompanies each project.

Their less than common approach (”The only principle we follow is just two words: No bullshit.”) has not hindered success or size. A team of +200 work with the country’s largest corporates including Yandex (largest portal and most popular search engine) and Gazprom (largest company in Russia).

Both sites proudly display Art Lebedev’s logo and link at the bottom of their pages. I like the way these projects sit equally alongside fridge magnets or an identity for a baby club in their portfolio.

The studio founder has clearly succeeded in passing down and maintaining his design ideals and approach to running a company. I’d like to know how they juggle their approach with client’s differing views on online marketing. The only interview I could find points to a negative attitude to SEO and marketing.

Most recently I was drawn to a website design for a luxury hotel, the Felix Zawojski. The site has been crafted with wonderful attention to detail.  Take a look at these sketches and renderings, view panoramas or watch footage of The Great Train Robbery in every room.

The identity creation points to guests feeling as though they belong to a royal family – the website design certainly serves up a luxurious experience. However, you won’t find an online booking facility, e-newsletter sign up or special offers.

Perhaps that lends itself to the exclusivity. Although, with such care taken to educate and pamper the visitor, surely these features would further help retain and convert site prospects?

(“Design Will Save the World” is the studio’s motto)

These are tools to help monitor who is saying what about your brand.

And opportunities to monitor product/destination keywords and then provide information/feedback to those networks and online communities.

For some background, read this article for an introduction to online reputation management.

And the three tools:

• Google Alerts – free and will help you gain an idea on what level of paid tool suits you.
• Online Reputation Monitor – three pricing levels starting from £5/month. Free trial.
• trackur – One of the more feature full programs. Free trial available.

I’ve not tried these yet but here are two tools specifically aimed at hotels.

• Review Analyst
• Hotel Protect

10 Reputations All Hotels, Resorts & Inns Should Monitor Online

Any others you’d recommend?

• The blogosphere has been awash with iPhone 3G talk for the last few weeks. No doubt one of the most exciting things to keep an eye on will be the travel applications and GPS tie ups. To date there are 139 apps listed on the Apple site, although this should increase quite quickly as I’ve read there is a backlog of apps waiting to be cleared. Plenty of releases from the usual suspects with some suffering from poor reviews, perhaps as a result of rushing them out.

• Tim at Maastricht Hotel School is carrying out academic research on how the hospitality industry is using online marketing. As well as finding out what techniques are being used, he is trying to determine the perceived benefits of the different methods. You can complete the survey at www.rshotels.com/survey.

• As part of its regular series, E-consultancy reviewed Travel.co.uk, the recently launched package holiday comparison site. They followed up a few days later with an interview with the marketing manager. Alex at Musings also ran a detailed review ‘10 things about the travel.co.uk website‘.

Email marketing case studies from the Hotel and travel industry from Email marketing reports.

“Travel 2.0 – As the Internet evolves, latest tactics and new rules change the way hotel marketers reach customers.”

It looks at a number of examples that demonstrate the importance of online experiences that add value to hotel web sites and build communities.

In this post I’ve pulled together some of these examples and a few others. Unfortunately the article does not link to the external sites mentioned.

For those interested to read more on hotel marketing, Travolution ran a series of articles in Issue 8 earlier this year.

For an introduction or a refresh, there are two whitepapers worth reading. They both look at web 2.0 for the travel and tourism industry.

1. Web 2.0 for the tourism & travel industry – from Reactive
2. Web 2.0 and the travel industry – from Ellion

Even with the improvement of hotel sites getting the basics right sometimes gets lost with the myriad of new technologies and buzzwords.

This should include:

> Easy navigation
> Searchable and accessible content
> Lots of excellent images
> Reassuring and simple booking engines
> Up to date offers

According to an emarketer.com survey earlier this year, only 17% of hoteliers believe emerging media (blogs, user generated content, video etc) result in a high return on investment.

Many of the examples below are from larger hotel groups. This may be explained by greater budgets or that certain approaches are more suitable to the type and scale of the business.

However, there are plenty of opportunities and benefits for the smaller hotels to adopt and experiment with their online strategies.

As the common bond of social media grows, more information arrives on the screens of viewing prospects. And with it many new ways to connect with customers, build strong communities and increase revenues.

Emerging technologies combined with the power of user generated content will help level the playing field and promote trustworthiness over marketing budget.

Blogs

> Starwood assembled a team of travel writers for The Lobby
> Active Hotels
> The Fowey Hotel in Cornwall
> Opus Hotel in Vancouver
> The Hawthorne Hotel in Salem, Massachusettes
> A day in the life of a Scottish Hotel – The Isle of Eriska

I’d like to see more blogs from smaller hotels. The ability for hoteliers to connect by way of more personal stories is a great advantage over bigger hotel groups. Blogs like the Hawthorne Hotel (updated daily) or The Fowey Hotel (updated more or less monthly).

People readily relate to a story and they create emotion. Not to mention the ability to enormously raise the hotel’s profile online due to the extremely search engine friendly nature of blogs.

RSS

> Superbreak
> Marriot eBreaks
> MGM

Podcasts

> JCasts by Jumeirah
> MGM
> Kimpton Hotels – An impressive series, unfortunately the links are not working for me at the moment.
> Red Carnation Hotels



Video

> MGM Grand Las Vegas – a very polished award winning video demonstrating the experience and facilities at the hotel.

User-generated content and social networking

> The Sheraton web site – encourages visitors to share stories, advice and photos relating to their travel experiences and favourite destinations.
> A different approach is taken by Affinia where they link directly to their TripAdvisor page.
> Joie de Vivre Hotels’ online community, California Connect. Travelers share travel tips, write blogs/reviews and upload photos.

Desktop

> Best Westerns KnockKnock desktop download to keep up to speed with the latest offers.
> Kimpton’s Hotels