2012 is already off to a busy start. To help you keep up with all the news we will continue to publish our weekly roundup blog every Monday to share last week’s interesting articles and blogs on marketing, social media, hotel distribution and other hospitality topics. Below we listed a few highlights from last week’s news that we found worth sharing.

Near Field Communications

Today mobile technology is one of the major trends and big opportunities exist for the hospitality industry to take advantage of it. Near Field Communications (NFC) make it possible for hoteliers to spice up many common items in the hospitality world and hereby also add convenience to your guests’ stay. This article gives a clear description of what NFC can mean to hoteliers in the near future, and can contribute to easier processes like check-in, check-out, mobile bookings, accessing the room and enjoying amenities.
How Will NFC Impact the Hospitality Industry?

Re-design of Hotel Websites

Many hotel websites are still Flash based and are not mobile friendly. It would be best to start thinking about a re-design of the hotel website. The article below gives a list of key elements that should be taken into account. Today’s visitors expect the website to be fast, easy to navigate, and accessible through their mobile device:
Does and Don’ts of Hotel Website Redesigns

Website’s Rich Visuals

We already knew that quality visuals leave a positive impression of your property, which will therefore impact the customers’ decision where to book their stay. This fact now proves itself as studies show that with these quality visuals, total unique visitors to your hotel’s website increase 13%, and keep these visitors more engaged with your property:
How Rich Visuals Generate More Travel Bookings

Marketing Priorities

A great article has been posted by Daniel Edward Craig describing the needs of today’s traveler in this fast changing world. He clearly describes what you should do to determine where best to allocate your marketing resources. Hoteliers should make sure that they offer useful information, by mixing their own content with content produced by their guests. Also, they can’t ignore the OTAs anymore and should look into more mutually beneficial relationships with them, without your direct channels being undersold:
What Do Travelers Want? Setting Hotel and Travel Marketing Priorities in 2012

Social Media

The use of social media to promote your brand is growing and growing. Therefore it’s wise to start thinking about how to leverage the power of social media channels on you website. Out of the nine tips in this article we feel that including share buttons to guests’ reservations can add value for your hotels, and integrating social on you hotel’s website, which can also be a live stream of reviews posted by visitors:
9 Tips for Integrating Social Media on Your Website

Image source: Tnooz