Brands that make an emotional connection to their customers have greater success and earn a higher customer lifetime value (LTV) than ones that miss the mark.

Travellers in the luxury market have different motivations than the average traveller. Aligning your brand, product and services with these motives will increase your resonance with this demographic.

There’s a big difference between making digital experiences accessible and making them inclusivity.

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.

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.

“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!”

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.

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?

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

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.