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.

If you want to build long-term value for your brand, you have to step back look at the big picture.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.