Marketing Tourism with Facebook Bookings & Mobile

With over 500 million subscribers and a growing population of travelers using Facebook to share holiday information, travel plans and to check out reviews and share experiences, Facebook has become a power house for hotels and tourism.

AXSES launched its arcResBookings application for Facebook early in 2009 as the first app of its type: Designed for independent hotels and tourism operators,arcResBookings.com allows tourism operators to load and manage their content, rooms, products images, rates, special deals and booking capabilities directly to their own Facebook page: A "hotel/tourism op." branded solution for a direct booking presence on Facebook.

Facebook has recognised travel as a top market niche. With its recent acquisition of NextStop travel we expect that Facebook will continue to grow its travel and tourism services making it a top travel platform.

Facebooks purposeful and early move to Mobile is another example of how this platform is evolving as a platform of choice for travel. It is already a an alternative to TripAdvisor and the Nextstop will enhance this feature significantly. The Facebook Social network from its conception has always been a far more "personal place" to discover, share and discuss anything; that now gives it an edge in travel to; discover, research, shop, compare, share, discuss, advise, plan and book from a Smartphone, Mobile, laptop or desktop.

Mobile is the future

Over 150 million users now access Facebook through phones and that mobile devices are fueling its more recent growth globally and Facebook sees Mobile as the next major wave, in some cases the only wave. It has recently launched 'O' a free mobile version aimed at markets with limited Internet access. "Today the company has agreements with 66 mobile operators in 56 developing countries to provide the service free of charge. Last week, the company signed agreements with Bharti Airtel in India and Beeline and MTS in Russia".

Facebook now considers it is a platform for developers to distribute mobile apps. It had moved from "rolling out standalone applications for iPhones, Google Android devices or feature phones". Mobile devices are fueling its more recent growth globally. More >>> VentureBeat

Why you need an application to get your Hotel & Tourism products on Facebook

Everyone in the travel business knows just how tedious it is to setup and manage products, rates, seasons, allocation on the many channels that might market the property. A hotel may have to manage rates on Expedia - rates on its own website and perhaps several other channels. Hotels and tourism operators will have Special deals in off periods and special rate plans for families, for different channels and for affinity groups including repeat guests and referrals etc (loyalty).

The travel industry has many tools and online forms to help hotels load complex travel products with information relating to season, rates, packages and specials etc. Facebook does not have these tools so several travel companies have started to build them.

AXSES took a lead in building these Facebook tools. The AXSES approach was to use its arcRes Publishing system that loads data to hotel websites and Global Distrtibution System, Smartphones and 100's of marketing channels. Adding Facebook was logical choice.

What this means is that a hotel may load arcRes once and it will publish this content to FaceBook and other channels according to which channels the hotel chooses to subscribe to.

How to get your Hotel & Tourism Products on Facebook.

When we developed arcResbooking for Facebook there were no tools to do this. At that time Hotels who wanted to add rates and rooms had to use system that did not format or organise the data. When rates changed or new products were added, Facebook had to be updated.

Today you will find that travel suppliers have started to build Facebook applications like arcResBookings. This is the only logical way to do this. If you are already using a travel booking engine check with your supplier to see what kind of applications it has for Facebook. Check it against arcres for features like bookings, and easy of use etc.

You may also consider the AXSES solution. It has the advantage of being a publishing system that will also help you market on many channels.

Setting up arcRes on Facebook is very simple as you will see in the video below.

AXSES provides a turn key solution where our team will do the total setup and even manage rates and content for you.

Try arcResbookings at http://facebook.arcres.biz

See video below

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