Wedding Marketing – Marketing Your Wedding Business and Wedding Industry Associations

blogger /

Networking is a huge key to success in any industry but especially in the wedding industry where referrals and alliances formed can help keep business booming when a recession looms overhead. Are you a wedding photographer, floral designer, wedding reception site, ceremony site, DJ, wedding videographer, wedding cake designer, bridal salon, bridal consultant, or wedding caterer? If so, read on because if you’re not already part of an industry association, you may want to think about joining.
There are quite a few wedding industry associations . Many are national associations with regional branch offices. They typically hold monthly meetings and mixers where members can network and get to know one another. Business ideas are shared as to what is working and what is not working in terms of booking weddings. The associations that will be covered include: the Association of Bridal Consultants (ABC), Wedding & Portrait Photographers International (WPPI), Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA), Association for Wedding Professionals International (AWPI), National Association of Catering Executives (NACE), International Special Events Society (ISES), and the American Institute of Floral Designers (AIFD).
The Association of Bridal Consultants is a great resource for bridal consultants. A few benefits of joining the ABC include their comprehensive Professional Development Program, job placement service, business name search,advertising to brides on a national level, referrals, seminars, and local meetings.
The Wedding & Portrait Photographers International (WPPI) is a great marketing and networking association for wedding photographers. Some reasons for joining them include: attendance at WPPI’s Annual Convention & Trade Show, WPPI’s Referral Network can bring your wedding photograph business added photography assignments through their referral site, group buying rates and services.
The Wedding Photojournalist Association (WPJA) represents the best wedding photographers from around the world. The WPJA sponsors seminars, conventions, and workshops geared towards wedding photojournalism. The WPJA also provides a listing of its members for brides to search from.
The Association for Wedding Professionals International (AWPI) strives to strengthen the wedding industry through networking, marketing and promotions. Your wedding business will be listed in their online and print directory. You will receive a monthly lead list of brides that have requested a directory or assistance, can participate in their networking mixers, and referrals through their wedding hotline.

The National Association of Catering Executives (NACE) provides the catering business with industry specific education, networking with other professionals, seminars, conferences, and awards programs, internationally recognized professional certification, and a listing in their directory.
The International Special Events Society (ISES) provides its members with professional development and education, a listing in their directory, networking parties, local meetings, and subscription to their Special Events Magazine. This association is great for event planners but has members in all sectors of the wedding industry.
The American institute of Floral Designers (AIFD) is a great association for wedding floral designers. It is a great resource for brides to find a wedding floral designer in their local area. Members have access to floral designs, floral shows, and accreditation programs.

Real estate industry in Delhi

blogger /

Land is the basis of all businesses, whether its hospitals, factories, educational institutions, shopping malls, markets, food outlets, all are built on land. Every type of business needs a piece of land to establish them. Like the rise in the price of food products, leads to an increase in the prices of restaurants or daily budget of houses, same ways, a shoot up in the property rates affects all the business and their leading markets.

Real estate industry is the sector responsible for the evaluation of the prices for all the personal and commercial properties. The price standards for selling and purchasing the properties in a particular area are defined by a group of people called real estate regulators working under the of real estate laws. The industry of real estate is in itself a great industry divided into various sectors like: appraisals, brokerages, property management, real estate marketing, net lease, real estate investing, relocation services and corporate real estate.

The real estate market is divided into cities and then further on the basis of area and location. Among all the metropolitan cities, Delhi grabs the position of being the hottest real estate spot for most of the people related to the property business. Delhi being the capital of the country attracts a larger number of people for job and other career related opportunities. This leads to a further rise in the demand and the need for the property or land for the residential, business and other purposes. Therefore, the demand and the growth of real- estate industry in Delhi are ever-growing.

Delhi is the centre of attraction for all the commerce people due to availability of diverse audience and prospective customers in the city. Delhi is famous for markets like south Delhi, GK, Chandni Chowk, which magnetize a large number of shopaholic people to shed huge bucks from their pockets. Areas around these markets or these shops itself are tagged worth a million. Delhi is the hub of education, so areas nearby north or south Delhi universities form a major share of the residential projects for rent and shopping market places.

The latest developments of property in Delhi like expansion of metro, instillation of various luxuries in the housing societies like parks, welfare groups, swimming pools, and building of shopping malls at every nook and corner of the city has enabled the citizens to lead a very easy and a comfortable life. People want their houses to look different, more beautiful with the engraved designs and structures. An inclination towards the stylish and exclusive houses and property design have been observed and all these hi- tech advancements in the local areas or in the city as a whole, results to an increase in the demand of these properties leading to a jump in their prices.

The major share in the booming up of Delhi property market goes to the trend of opening up of more and more shopping malls in the city. Delhi people have become addicted to shopping in gigantic malls, and as it is said, accomplishment of one project leads to the beginning of another, so has become the habit of the real- estate industry. The success and popularity of one mall gives birth to another and so on.

A lot of health and sports complex have also grown rapidly in the past few years due to the increasing consciousness in people about their health and lifestyle. People prefer going to gyms or playing sports for regular exercises or body warm ups. Opening up of new healthcare projects of different groups, also claims a major share in the development of the real-estate industry.

Therefore, it can be concluded that the growth of real- estate industry in cities like Delhi is everlasting due to its indefinite developments and needs of the general public and citizens.

Loyalty Program Hospitality Industry

blogger /

HOTEL LOYALTY
Hotels get nearly half of their revenues from the small segment of travelers who spend about a month each year on the road: frequent visitors make up only 10 percent of all hotel guests but account for 44 percent of
hotel nights . In the early 1980s, hotel chains began to recognize the value of such customers by introducing loyalty programs patterned on the airlines’ frequent-flier model. These programs have succeeded in maintaining the loyalty of people who travel moderately often but are not as effective as they might be with other segments, our research suggests.

The frequent-traveler segment represents $40 billion to $50 billion in revenues each year. These guests spend some of that money in their preferred hotel chains, but their wandering ways leave $22 billion to $27 billion in play. Persuading such people to narrow the field from three or more chains to their favorite two could add seven to ten nights at the chain they prefer. To capture this opportunity, hotel executives must ask, “What do you get the person who has everythingor at least more points than he or she can use?”
Part of the answer might involve changing the way points are redeemed. Even for elite-status members of a loyalty program, redeeming them for free hotel rooms can be cumbersome at popular times and destinations.

2.Loyalty Club Members Habitat
The percentage of all guests who indicated club membership is “very important” when selecting their most
recent hotel stay increased steadily throughout 2003 with a 25-percent annual increase.
Frequent travelers are four times more likely to consider club
membership very important when selecting a hotel.
Among frequent travelers, club members have considerably higher incomes, pay slightly more per room
night, stay more nights per year in hotels and are more tolerant of price increases compared with
nonmember hotel guests
The average profile of a frequent traveler who joins a loyalty program is a 47-year-old male traveling on
business. He stays 31 nights per year in hotels, is very brand loyal, pays an average of $103 per night and has an annual income of $104,000

E-CRM IN HOSPITALITY TODAY

Electronic customer relationship management (e-CRM), in the context of the exploding Internet distribution and marketing in hospitality, is a business strategy supported by Web technologies, allowing hoteliers to engage
customers in strong, personalized and mutually beneficial interactive relationships, increase conversions and sell more efficiently.

e-CRM cannot exist in isolation
Today’s multi-channel marketing model requires a single brand image to be communicated across all channels. In the same time it requires interactive customer relationships to be established and maintained across all
channels.

Anytime an Internet user lands on a hotel website, a branding interaction occurs. This branding interaction can
be positive or negative . Unfortunately for some hoteliers on many occasions a
visit to the hotel website turns out to be the last point of contact with this particular customer.
Two key questions are facing hoteliers today:
Who owns the customer in this new online environment? The online intermediary, which made the
booking, or the hotel where the guest stayed?
How can hoteliers establish mutually beneficial interactive relationships with the customers in order
to increase repeat business, boost revenues, and retain loyalty?
Here are the main aspects in e-CRM in hospitality:
1. Know Your Customer
2. Customer Service
3. Personalization
4. More Efficient Marketing
5.Building Customer Loyalty

1. KNOW YOUR CUSTOMER
Knowing your website visitors is an extremely important consideration when conceptualizing and designing your hotel website and your e-CRM strategy. After all, addressing your key audiences and providing them with relevant information is one of the key aspects of any hospitality site. Different customer segments should easily identify areas on the site that speak to them. Internet users visit a hotel website not as John Smith or Jane Smith, but as a Business Traveler, Meeting Planner, Special Event Planner, Family Traveler, Spa Services
Seeker, Golf Outing Seeker, Vacation Planner, Convention Attendee, Wedding Planner, etc.

Case Study: Who Are Your Online Customers?
The 2004 RUSH Report, a joint effort by Hospitality eBusiness Strategies and iPerceptions, based on nearly
40,000 customer survey respondents on 30 major brand hospitality websites, shows that 56 % of all visitors on
hotel branded websites are Leisure Travelers and 32% are Business Travelers. The benefits are obvious:
Identify your most valuable customers with best lifetime value perspective
Allows guest-centric data mining: guest history, guest profiles, past bookings, preferences, etc.
Enables informed decisions in real time
Allows fast response times
Real-time Guest Lifetime Value
Deliver business insight to executives, marketers, sales
2. PERSONALIZATION Personalization is more than providing the right information to the right person at the
right time. Personalizing the customer experience on the hotel website is a powerful conversion and retention
tool. Customizing your interaction with your most valuable customers will provide significant long-term rewards.
Adopt a policy on how to address your guests via email Addressing the customer segmentation issues on the property website is a logicalnext step. Creating a targeted email marketing campaign is another good step.

For the major hotel brands, the personalization efforts are much more complex and expensive. Customization tools used by some major brands and airlines allow website users to actively personalize their website experiences using over 250 criteria. Here are some of the efforts by the major travel and hospitality companies to make the user experience more personable:
Personalization agents using a variety of customization applications, capable of creating Behavioral
Profiles and a Real-time profile for each customer
Collaborative filtering: Using preference matrix and artificial intelligence to capture and predict
customer interests
Decision-support applications utilizing various applications for Behavioral Profiling, Predictive Modeling, Collaborative Filtering and Click-Stream Analysis, capable to sense the purchasing behavior and patterns of the user. By providing a customized booking experience these applications can boost the conversion rates.
2. CUSTOMER SUPPORT
It is important to understand that customer service is only one aspect of e-CRM and is primarily a reactive function aiming to improve performance and efficiency, while e-CRM as a whole is a proactive long-term strategy.
On the Internet the customer support aspect of e-CRM is an extremely important trust building and customer retention tool. A well positioned Contact Us or Help button or Push-to-talk feature speaks volumes about the
hotel brand and builds trust. 57% of online shoppers actively seek sites with good customer service

Case Study: e-CRM Comp Analysis of 9 major upscale hotel brands.
HeBS uses its proprietary CyberScore system to evaluate various aspects of 9 upscale hotel brands. HeBS addresses e-CRM features and functionalities considered essential for optimum customer experience, such as customer support, ease of use and visibility of customer support throughout the site, customer support by phone and email, personalization, “Self-service” Customer Service Tools , “Live” Customer Service Tools, corporate and property level help desks and contact info. Evaluated were a total of 9 e-CRM features. The maximum score is 90

Live Service Tools: Push-to-talk functionality and real-time interaction with live agent; instant messaging and chat-room type of assistance; Voice-over-Internet Protocols (VOIP) applications; automation to pre-screen live
support (selective approach) E-Mal Service Tools: Inbound e-mail management; automated e-mail response systems, capable of
automating 80%-90% of e-mail volume with 98% accuracy, and dramatically improving service and reducing support staff by up to 40%.

4. MORE EFFICIENT MARKETING
eMarketing plays a crucial role in establishing interactive relationships with your customers. eMarketing is a
marketing strategy that uses the Internet as its medium.
The main issues facing eMarketers in hospitality today are:
Guest profiling and one-to-one marketing.
Accurate segmentation: focused segmentation equals higher response rates
Create narrow-focused marketing campaigns
Utilizing lifestyle data and personal preferences in the marketing
Building opt-in email lists and precision e-Mail marketing (fivefold higher response rates)
Internal benchmark of customer lifetime value
Cross-selling opportunities
Campaign tracking and ROI analysis
Developing a robust and effective eMarketing strategy requires not only an extensive knowledge of your
customers and precise customer segmentation, shifting marketing finds from offline to online channels, but
deciding what your marketing objectives are.
Display Ads (e.g. Traditional Banners): Steady decline: 2003: 21% (as percentage of total online
advertising spend); 2002: 29%; 2001: 36%; 2000:50% (PWC/IAB). Click-through rate 0.83% in
Feb 2003 (eMarketer)
Keyword Search (e.g. PPC, paid-inclusion, etc): Steady increase: 2003: 35%; 2002: 15%; 2001:
4%; 2000: 1%.

Classifieds: increased usage of this format: 2003: 17%; 2002: 15%; 2001: 16%; 2000:7%.
e-Mail Marketing: Currently between 3%-4% of total spend; Jupiter Research reports that US email
marketing spending will rise from $2.1 billion in 2003 to $6.1 billion in 2008.

Overall Site Satisfaction: How would you rate your website experience overall?
Excellent 18.80%
Very good 35.73%
Good 28.94%
Fair 12.22%
Poor 4.31%
Total: 100%
Different customer segments perceive the hotel website differently. While not dramatically different, Business Travelers appeared slightly more critical than other user groups. Even when they felt satisfied, Business Travelers
appeared more critical: 54.57% found the site to be Very good or excellent compared to 55.14% for LeisureTravelers.

Conclusion: e-CRM is an integral part of online distribution and marketing in hospitality. The Internet provides the best direct means to reach existing and potential customers. Establishing interactive relationships with your
customers, which is the essence of e-CRM, will help you retain your customers, increase revenues, and build brand loyalty.

To know more about HOSPITALITY INDUSTRY check out ITC Infotech Website

http://www.itcinfotech.com

Travel Industry, Hospitality Industry, ITC Infotech, loyalty program,

Industries Less Likely Affected By Recession

blogger /

There are business sectors that do quite well during the good times, like tourism, fine dining, and casinos. But many of these boon-thriving industries fail to perform well during the hard times. These are the top ten most resilient industries.

1. Fast Food. When the economic times are hard, no one wants to spend more than twenty dollars for a meal. People tend to go to fast food chains to have lunch or dinner at a friendly price. They dont mind high carb or high fat content of the food. They just want to eat! Many fast food restaurants offer combo meals that provide savings for customers. Value meals during recession are more than attractive. No wonder McDonalds was doing great during the recent recession.

2. Film. The movie industry has proved to be more resilient than most other industries out there. Going to a cinema seems a lavish expenditure during a downturn, but people prefer watching a movie to buying a DVD copy of it, which is a more expensive recourse. Not only did people go to cinemas but also did they rent movies online. Online movie rentals increased during the recession. Many people realized that it makes more sense to just rent a film than to buy a copy. Anyway, they would only watch it once or twice.

3. Junk Food. It so happened that more people tend to buy snacks when the economy took a free fall. Candy makers, soda companies, and chocolate manufacturers all saw increased sales during the recession. Psychologists believe that having a piece of candy or a bar of chocolate makes you look back to a simpler life.

4. Energy. People didnt stop consuming electricity or gas during the recession. In the modern world, it is hard to think of existence without needing energy sources. Even though people had to save on electrical consumption during the recession, the energy industry remained alive simply because you cannot live without TV, fridge, washing machine, and internet.

5. Virtual Assistance. More people are acquiring work online. As business owners wanted to cut back overhead, they had to farm out much of the office work. This is why the terms virtual assistants and virtual secretaries became popular.

6. Online Selling. Many online stores also saw a boon during the recession. During the recession people spent more time indoors. Shopping at brick-and-mortar shops was like a grave sin. They instead turned to online shopping, which is more convenient. Its also easy to spot promos and discounts online.

7. Repossession. Many people were not able to pay dues on items bought on installment payment basis. Failure of payment leads to repossession of an item. The seller or company usually hires a repossession agency to handle the recovery of the item.

8. Repair Services. People had to save money during the downturn and they were reluctant to buy new things. Broken phones or faulty cameras were likely to be sent to repair shops instead of be replaced with new ones.

9. Health Care. The need for health care services did not stop during the recession. People still needed to go to their doctors and buy medications. No one wanted to ignore their health concerns.

10. Education. The rise in unemployment did not deter young people from going to college and pursuing higher education. Even professionals had to go back to school to earn more skills.

Augmented Reality And The Tourism Industry

blogger /

Augmented Reality (AR) allows recorded and animated images to blend and be viewed in real time. Most of the past augmented reality apps mainly focused on entertainment, such as the Lego Kiosks, futuristic baseball cards and even a virtual tour of the starship Enterprise. More recent apps however, have shifted their focus: providing travelers with useful information and answers to their possible questions.

What does augmented reality mean for tourism?
Augmented reality apps comprise different layers, such as museums, historic sites, dining and real estate to name but a few. The tourism layer, however, is the one most commonly used. This makes sense since tourists need information which will make their travelling experience easier, more informed and more secure, allowing travelers to experience the destination before they arrive.

A few examples of how augmented reality was used in tourism
TripAdvisor launched their Augmented Reality Tours app for iPad this month, using images from Google Street View to create a virtual walk through various destinations. This app might not be as advanced as apps by Layar, Lonely Planet or mTrip, but is still more useful and fun to use than 2D maps.

The Beijing Institute of Technology created a virtual reconstruction of Yuanmingyuan, a local historic site destroyed in 1860 during the Opium War, by using various paintings and sketches. They built a coin-operated viewing platform which tourists can use to see what Yuanmingyuan used to look like.

The Cluny Abbey Museum in France has a giant augmented reality screen, a window to the past if you will, allowing users to travel back in time and view a pre-destruction example of the Abbey. GraffitiGeo launched the first ever augmented reality restaurant recommendations app. Just point your phone towards a restaurant and see immediate reviews.

There are a lot of augmented reality apps, too many to mention in only one blog. Did I miss your favourite? Please share it with us in the comments.