With job growth anemic in the US and the debt crisis raging in parts of Europe, are hotels scaling back their mobile marketing efforts?
TravelClick, the hotel marketing and tech company, paints a somewhat different scenario in a recent survey it did among 455 hoteliers around the world.
In the poll, conducted during a webinar at the end of August, TravelClick found that 50% of respondents indicated they planned on increasing the marketing dollars they spend on mobile websites and mobile marketing during 2012; 24% intend to keep it at 2011 levels; 3% will likely decrease their spend, and 22.5% don't have mobile websites or engage in mobile marketing and will keep it that way next year.
So while half of hoteliers will up their mobile marketing spending, the other half basically will keep mobile marketing spending levels at current levels (including no spending on mobile) or will decrease it.
Of course, Jason Ewell, TravelClick's senior vice president of e-commerce, believes the rapid expansion of smartphone usage in Western Europe and the US means that hoteliers practically have no choice other than focusing their attentions and budgets on mobile marketing.
Hoteliers, according to the survey results, are split on that issue.
In other survey results, social media hiring emerged as a priority.
Some 50% of the hoteliers surveyed said they plan to increase their employee rolls and 45.3% indicated they will retain the same workforce levels, TravelClick says.
And, of the 50% planning on increasing their hiring, 30% of them indicated they intend on hiring staff to perform social media operations, TravelClick says.