On day 2, after a beautiful run in 70-degree sunny weather to start the day, I had the oppty to attend a few interesting sessions as well as meet many leaders in the travel industry. Two of the sessions I attended were about Blogging and about Customer Experience. Way too much info to give you a detailed summary, but here are some key points I took notes on and apply to online vacation home rentals:
Blogging. Couple of takeaways that I thought might be useful to you.
- When creating, or starting, or continuing a blog, these are the critical questions to ask:
Why are you blogging?
Who is your audience?
What value are you delivering? (you cannot use this as a promotional tool)
New ‘online tools’ that were discussed were Facebook and Twitter. Honestly, no one could come up with a compelling use of Twitter. As cool and as fun as it may be.
Be significant, meaningful, less data and more structured information.
Customer Experience: Some interesting notes.
In the past year, 9 out of 10 online customers experiences problems shopping online.
41% of those abandoned the website right away.
47% of those attempted to contact the website company for help.
Only 50% of those 47% were able to resolve their issues. (75% of these will never return to the site)
80% will share their negative experience. 58% sharing online and 80% sharing offline.
More to come from LA. Stay tuned.
Ralf
Tags: online vacation booking, vacation home rental, vacation property management, vacation rental, vacation rental software