Le Travel 2.0 vous connaissez ? L'hotelosphère vous connaissez ? l'hotel blogging vous connaissez ? La dynamique des consommateurs sur Internet et via les blogs vous connaissez ?

Chris Clarke est quelqu'un de trés pro sur ces sujets. Il nous parle de Chrispitality Media, de ses projets Travel 2.0, de la dynamique des blogs pour l'hôtellerie et le tourisme et de bien d'autres choses encore !

Très instructif !

>Chris, can you tell some information about you?

Bonjour Claude! I am a former senior-level hotel manager who left the industry to persue a career in hospitality entertainment media. Actually I consider it more « Edu-tainment ». I live in rainy Vancouver, Canada - host to the 2010 Winter Olympics with Whistler Mountain. My body is made up of 50% water, 50% sushi.

>You manage a great blog network, Chrispitality Media, Can you tell us the story and some facts about it?

Thanks! About nine months ago I started blogging about Vancouver's hotel industry. Although I didn't know what I was doing, I was really enjoying it. Over time I started to see an increase in demand for my content style so I started Chrispitality Media (Chris + Hospitality) to formalize my vision - and hopefully make a career of it. Slowly, some industry players here in Canada are starting to take notice.

Although I do enjoy doing some consulting work, the main focus of Chrispitaltiy Media is to develop and run my own projects. I have some excellent blog development partners with hotel experience who I pass projects to if they come my way.

>Can you give us some highlights about your goals with Chrispitality Media!

My goal is to generate interest and excitement around the hotel industry through blogging, which can then be leveraged to inspire online purchases and strengthen brand identity. From the hotel industry perspective, I believe that hotel blogging is all about creating more transparency between the guest and the « product ».

I also want to facilitate better communication between hospitality professionals through the development of a hotel-specific social network. That's my current project, and I'm excited about it.




>You started BedJump.com and other « fun » blogs with already some great trafic and great impact. Can you give the story of this initiative?

I was researching a story on hotel bed amenity-creep to submit to HotelChatter.com. On flickr I stumbled across some hilarious images of kids jumping on their hotel bed, and when I searched a little more, I found hundreds more. I started BedJump.com the same night. Later I developed the other blogs (hotel pools, beds, bathrooms, bars) simply to keep readers on the sites longer.

Because the content was fresh and different, the site's popularity increased quickly when I passed it around my hotelier friends. Within six weeks I had alomst half a million pageviews with ZERO advertising. At the same time I started getting hotel bed jumping images sent to me almost every day.

I did many radio interviews in the Canada, the U.S. and in England, a TV spot (in Germany with a local « jumper ») and other press coverage all over the world. That was all fun, but I have bloggers to thank most for BedJump's success - they really passed it around quickly. It's just an idea who's time had come.

While this was all happening, I was also blogging about the site's « success » and potential application in online hotel distribution to de-commoditize the hotel product. Those articles lead to the sale of the entire group to HotelsByCity.net (a major Travelocity partner also from Canada) about four months after I created the blogs. I'm contracted back to continue writing for the sites, which I still really enjoy. I still can't believe that I get images sent to me almost daily - and they are always hilarious. I spend about 8-10 hours a week on those sites.

By the way, HotelChatter never did publish the story on hotel beds !

>Internet is going faster and we talk now about Web 2.0 and Travel 2.0, what do you think about this evolution in the tourism & hotel market place ?

The hotel industry always talks about the voice of the customer - and in the past that really meant hotel comment cards. For the first time, guests can actually be heard through 2.0 media in an honest, forthright format. Although this is the beginning of a major shift in the way we are able to communicate with consumers, I believe that the hotel industry has a long way to go in actually listening to and reacting to consumer-speak.

I think Travel 2.0 is currently more about consumers talking to consumers. There is huge opportunity for the hotel industry to build their brands and meet guest expectations by enabling conversation between hotels and guests - far beyond the comment card model. Comment cards are written when something is very wrong, or very right. We need to hear about the in-between !

>We see the important impact of news technologies (RSS, AJAX, podcast, blog, socialnetworking tools, Google mashup,Vidéo etc), what is your point of view ?

RSS is great in that we can better organize what we as readers want to see, how to see it and when. There is stil the challenge of creating content worthy of a reader adding it to their RSS readers!

I had to look up AJAX !! If it relates to wiki, then cool. Collaberative media is wonderful in that consumers are better able to create the experience they actually want. Hopefully it adds to the « stickiness » factor so users will keep coming back to a site.

Podcasts, blogs, mashups and video are all awesome content delivery platforms that allow marketers to tell a « brand » story through the eyes of their customers. As usual, content is king - and just because consumers are creating doesn't automatically mean that their peers are listening.

I love flickr, I love YouTube, I love social networking platforms - but for the purposes of hotel marketing and communicating between professionals, we have a long way to go in segmenting all the noise into a space that speaks specifically to hoteliers and guests. We'll get there.

>Blogs are a new media in Internet, for hotels you talk about "Hotelosphère". What do you mean ?

Bloggers have been using the term « blogosphere » for some time. I « live » in the hospitality environment which is unique in many ways so I chose to refer to our online sphere of influence as the hotelosphere. Plus, it sounds cool.

I never really considered myself a blogger. Blogs are simply a platform for delivering content, so I wanted to get away from the term blog.

>For hospitality marketers,what are their reaction about Hotelosphère, User Generated Content and Travel 2.0 ? Do you feel something is different for american hotels than european ou asian hotels?

In my experience I'd say that Europre is ahead of North America in the availability of discussion around Travel 2.0. We're catching up in North America, but I still often read blogs from Europe because there is more content, and more understanding. Even BedJump.com spread through Europe and Asia before it hit North America, which I though was interesting. Luckily for me my partner is Moroccan so she translates the French and Spanish press coverage for me !

From the Canadian perspective, I am in touch with two major hotel internet marketers who like what I'm doing in UGC. Hopefully we'll get together for projects in the future.

Vancouver is a huge hub of blogging and web 2.0 activity (flickr was created in Vancouver !). Although I'm very much on the outside of the blogging scene here, I've been meeting some people so that's changing.

The hotelosphere in Canada is a small party indeed - but that will start to change soon as well.

Women spend more time on Internet, have more and more financial power and special request for their professional trip, vacation and hotel.

See Ladies Floors, web site Tango Diva, Women & Wine....

What about a special women hotel blog or a concept around women needs in hospitality ?

Wow - great idea ! I'll start that tonight. ;-) To your point, female travellers are increasing in numbers - and do have some special expectations. TangoDiva is a great site !

Vancouver hotels are developing entire guest floors for people with hypo-allergenic concerns as well (allergic to dust, cleaning chemicals etc.). Maybe I'll start that one too. =)

You use a blog tool (Wordpress, great tool). Any advise about a hotel who want to start blogging ?

Oh boy, that's hard. Wordpress is a great platform that has much more functionality than I actually know how to use - and it keeps improving too.

Advice in a few words ?

Many hoteliers still think that their guests want to read about rate discounts, promotions and features/benefits. Forget it ! Guests want to know how hotels will remove their stress, make them feel good, solve problems and make them special.

Focus on guest stories of overcoming challenges or exceeding expectations. Talk about your employees and how great they are, and why. Is there a ghost in the hotel ? Talk about it. Did a celebrity paint an entire floor orange 10 years ago ? Great stuff. Did the Executive Chef carve a gold medal table centrepiece out of ice ? Feature it.

That's what we all want to hear about - isn't it ?

>What are your tastes for:

>Travel:

Huge appetite, never enough budget. I've travelled to Japan twice, all over North America for work and Europre when I was 10 (time to go back). This year I do actually plan to go to Monaco for a week with my partner , and hope to get to Hong Kong to visit my good hotelier buddy.

If I do some bed jumping, maybe I can expense the trip !

>Travel destination:

Favorite is Tokyo. Most anticipated is Morocco. Love New York, where I worked for two years.

>Hotel :

Best experience ever was recently at the luxury Fairmont Olympic in Seattle, Washington. The « W » in San Diego was great too.

>Business:

Do what you love - it feels awesome !



>You have the micro

Chrispitality Media exists because I had a vision to create blogging applications in the hotel and distribution industry here in Canada. When I started blogging my family were my only readers, and even then they stopped reading sometimes! My hotel contacts thought I was crazy to leave the industry to teach hotel management and create hotel blogs, but I believed in myself and kept at it. I'm still one of only a very few bloggers in the Canadian hotelosphere.

I've had some very minor success, but there is still a long way to go before I can say that I have a successful business. What keeps me going is that I genuinely enjoy creating and writing hotel-specific content, and I love editing hotel consumer media into my websites. Hopefully that passion comes out in my content development projects.

The BedJump group of blogs was featured last weekend with HotelsByCity.net in the travel section of the New York Times. Believe me, I didn't see that coming when I was blogging about jumping on hotel beds in my home office! It just reinforces that compelling hotel content has a place in the hotelosphere.

Thanks Claude!