Personas do a poor job of representing demographically diverse but homogenous users. We say that a focus on values provides a much better foundation to build a solution around.

Recently there’s been a growing concern over website accessibility. We are often asked what it takes to be compliant with the current WCAG 2.0 and (upcoming) 2.1. Here at Wallop, we’ve crafted a thorough three-step process to meet this demand for travel and hospitality clients.

The General Data Protection Regulation, or GDPR, is an upcoming regulation in the EU that was created to protect data and privacy for EU citizens. It comes into effect on the 25th of May.

Storytelling – it’s been around for ages, and the vehicle we’ve used to record a lot of that history. It’s endured and effective in almost every industry because of its qualities.

Data facilitates understanding. Storytelling facilitates emotion. Learn how you can bring these two worlds together to better enlighten and engage your audience.

Are you advertising on Google AdWords? Have you also considered Bing Ads? Bing offers a proven and growing alternative, or addition to, Google’s AdWords.

Have you ever visited a website only to have it take what feels like ages to load? I certainly have. While I’d love to say that patience is among my many virtues, it’s not. The longer a page takes to load, the more likely I am to abandon it.

Google recently began contacting website owners directly through Search Console (formerly Google’s Webmaster Tools) with a somewhat cryptic message about Google Chrome security warnings and SSL Certificates.

Martin will discuss the role of video and storytelling in marketing experiential travel brands at the Independent Lodging Congress in Brooklyn.

Though I have a vested interest in supporting hotels (I run an agency that works primarily with a lot of hotels), I often stay in an Airbnb when I’m paying for travel. The reasons are common among people who use Airbnb. There are some great takeaways for Hoteliers, so I’ll outline them in this post.

Facebook’s seen its fair share of controversy lately. But what does this mean for luxury travel brands? Take a look at Facebooks current advertising offering and explore it’s growing (yet controversial) potential.

The typical path from research → engagement → purchase has been completely disrupted by smartphones. Hoteliers are now faced with a quickly evolving channel to find and convert new guests.

“We are doing great sales from the website and the films in particular are helping to sell the dream. The loop on the homepage is the crown of it all. We love it!”

In this article we examine the current state of Airbnb, its impact on the market, and where it’s going.

Luxury travel is a $350 billion industry. This niche sector is extremely valuable, so what can you do to reach affluent travelers? We’ve curated data about UHNW individuals to help luxury hoteliers inspire travel to their properties.

Video is a highly effective medium and vehicle for marketing high end real estate. Learn how a creative 30-second spot was used for pre-roll ads, showroom screenings, and direct outbound marketing, to successfully reach and appeal to potential buyers.

A singular theme stuck with me after the Skift Forum in NYC last month: the robots are here, and they are bringing their friends. It was made abundantly clear, during those 2 days at The Lincoln Centre, that personalization through Artificial Intelligence and voice-based search will fundamentally change the way human beings search for, purchase, and experience travel.

The key theme of the Partners Connect presentation was mobile. Insights included consumer behaviour, micro-moments, and the opportunities with mobile experiences. We’ve summarized the 3 most compelling takeaways and relevant resources.

As a marketer of a luxury hotel, you’ve likely struggled with how to allocate your digital marketing budget. There are some interesting challenges around how to spend those precious digital marketing dollars.

Working in the hotel industry, we hear a lot of gripes about OTAs (Online Travel Agencies) like Expedia, Hotwire, Booking.com, Hotel Tonight etc. And for good reason.

What if I told you there was something you’re exposed to multiple times a day, without even realizing it?

A global audience of marketers attended or watched the livestream of the Google Performance Summit on May 24 2016.

The Canadian Internet Marketing Conference (CIMC) brought over 1,200 new visitors to the beautiful town of Squamish between April 14 – 15, 2016.

By better understanding why we travel, we can improve our approach to marketing travel experiences on the web.

The relevance and granularity of personalization is what can ultimately persuade someone to book at a specific property, book direct and even become a loyal, returning guest.

Just as business are required by the ADA to accommodate customers with disabilities in the physical world, they are required to do so on the web.

Are you a hotelier, hotel manager or hotel marketer looking to get more direct reservations and avoid costly OTA (Online Travel Agent) commissions? If you are, then you won’t want to miss this!

Each year, we compile a list of digital marketing trends for luxury hotels. With the end of 2014 being as busy as it was, it must have slipped our mind.

Year 10 was a good one (and so was the party). Our studio is producing some of its best work to date, we’ve got some amazing talent on board, and some great projects in the portfolio and pipeline.

The true goal – the oft-neglected contributor to conversions – is effective visual communication. After all, communication is a key ingredient in transforming browsers to buyers.

There’s a number of things you need to consider before choosing what’s right for your business.

To celebrate Wallop’s 10th year in business, we invited friends of the studio to join us on the rooftop (for what turned out to be a rather epic dance party).

Wallop was incorporated in July of 2004, 10 years ago. The same year Facebook started. The same year Britney Spears was married (twice). The year of Janet Jackson’s nip-slip and the start of a second term for George W. Bush. Needless to say, a lot has happened since then.

I won’t beat around the bush – I came to Vancouver to rekindle my love for snowboarding. A once-a-year holiday from England was no longer cutting the mustard.

New people. New tools.

It’s been quite the ride, and despite the disgusting weather we’d been having, I had sprung into an excellent first week at Wallop.

This post is meant to summarize the discussion in New York last week. I was invited to be part of a panel on Responsive Design for Hotels with Andy Kauffman, VP of Global eCommerce Marketing at Marriott International, and Brian Estep, VP Sales at buuteeq. The panel was led by Michael Bennett, VP Marketing at KSL Resorts, who did a great job of asking good questions and keeping the discussion moving.

There are way too many generalists out there, and for us, finding a niche has been a key part our success. A lot of people ask us how we developed our niche, so I’ll provide a bit of background.

Instead of sending out a slew of corporate holiday gifts this year, we decided to sponsor a small relief mission in the areas of the Philippines most affected by Typhoon Haiyan.

Rdio took over our musical lives this year. It gave us a social layer to our musical tastes and, as a result, it feels we are approaching a sort of musical singularity. At any rate, here are some of the albums we’ve been listening to in our studio this year.

Last week, I took the train from Montreal to Philadelphia. I wanted to try something different than an airplane for once. Turns out the train includes enough legroom for Roy Hibbert, free wi-fi and the freedom to roam and meet people.

Exciting times for Wallop. The world is back to work, and despite the impending rainy season here in Vancouver there is a palpable sense of enthusiasm from our team, clients and partners.

This post could have been titled “14 web trends for boutique, independent, luxury, exclusive, art hotels, resorts, escapes, spas, camps, cabins, excursions, and yurts.” But you have to draw the line somewhere. And despite (or perhaps because of) its ambiguity, “luxury” is still a relevant word.

Google recently announced the launch of a new search algorithm called Hummingbird. It has been up and running for over a month now, and has resulted in minor shifts in search engine results for sites that we monitor. The biggest changes are for outlying pages with content that receives a small amount of the total traffic. It therefore has not had much impact on the site statistics overall. But what is the reasoning behind the change?

If you’re in Vancouver this summer, Grand Hotel: Redesigning Modern Life at the Vancouver Art Gallery is certainly worth your time.

There are plenty of great articles about responsive design, so I don’t intend on repeating what’s already out there. But I’m finding there’s a lack of material geared for people outside of the web industry.

After back-to-back red-eye flights, I found myself in Dubai for 3 days. I would have stayed longer, but Canadians are on a short leash due a disagreement between Air Canada and Emirates Airlines. Travelling alone inevitably leaves ample time for good old-fashioned tourism.

So we’ve been hard at work re-designing the Singita website. It’s an established name in luxury eco-tourism, in the midst of an extensive rebranding process. We were brought onboard to reinvent the digital application of the brand.

Social is a highly effective marketing channel for hotels; no marketer worth his or her salt will tell you otherwise. Social is even more effective for boutique, luxury hospitality brands. However, by the same token, social can be exponentially more destructive to luxury brand equity if not handled properly.

To help spur on productive discussions and to make our clients’ jobs a little easier, we’ve put together a list of 13 important web trends for the hospitality industry in 2013.

As hotel websites become increasingly interactive, some guests will accept frustrating online experiences as inevitabilities; growing pains in the evolution of the web. Yet, as users’ patience wanes and they spend less time on frustrating sites, it’s time we start seeing usability for what it is: a business concern.

Due to lack of properly organized documentation, setting up a simple Facebook application can be a frustrating task (even with Google at your disposal). We’ve prepared this guide to get your Facebook application off the ground FAST.

Publishing video on your website is now relatively simple. But with all the formatting options available, it can be difficult to choose the platform and video player that perfectly fits your needs.

In the past few years there has been an emergence of new web-font tools. These tools are opening the door to beautiful typography and design variation across the web. For the sake of simplicity, I’ll compare three widely adopted options. Each product has it’s own advantages and limitations, and knowing the differences is key to determining which service best suits the project.

When we wrote the original article, we were talking about 1.4 billion mobile subscribers in the world. In a span of almost 3 years, we’re now at 6 billion.

Our goal, as forward-thinking developers – is to deliver rich visuals and functionality, across common devices, in a way that flows naturally with users’ precedent experience.

Last week, we attended the Hotel Association of Canada conference in Toronto, which conveniently coincided with the Canadian Tourism Marketing Summit and Online-Revealed Canada; a veritable grand-slam of all things hospitality, travel, tourism, and digital.

Ladies and Gentlemen. Boys and Girls. It’s my pleasure to introduce the latest iteration of wallopcreative.com.

There’s a lot of talk about social media being a game changer in the hospitality industry, and that’s mostly accurate.

Here at Wallop, we‘re big proponents of video usage, especially in the context of building websites.

If you’re a hotelier, you’ve probably heard the phrase “best practice” bandied around in the context of designing and building a website. Typically it’s nothing more than a buzz phrase in an industry that’s littered with them.

Google’s Business Listings is a popular tool that helps consumers find local businesses. For businesses in certain industries, a favourable ranking in the LBL will go a long way in driving qualified traffic to your website. In this article, we discuss how the LBL works and how customer reviews effect ranking within the system.

It’s no secret that recent advances in mobile devices have dramatically changed the way people use the internet.

SEO is an extremely popular topic with clients of any web design studio. And even more so with clients in the hospitality industry, as googling for hotels is a common way to find accommodations.

The way hotels communicate with their guests is changing, and quickly.

Considering the volume of information on the web and an audience that is growing increasingly impatient, your website had better communicate its message quickly and clearly.