Looking more closely at the hotel component of the tourism industry, there are many portals providing plenty of choice but, as a whole, the industry seems to lack direction.

have a real dilemma , says Richard Simmons, chief executive of uk250.com, which has just launched a category for London hotels. think it would be good to be on the list, others are doing nothing to market themselves. It is the age-old marketing problem: in a recession, do you stop marketing, or do you double it?

Relying passively on other websites for promotion should be one aspect of a comprehensive marketing campaign. There are other more specialised, proactive ways of reaching customers using the Internet.

smart companies are the ones adopting smart technologies to market to smart people, says Matthew Maxwell, chief executive of Amateo, a company specialising in intelligence, data-mining and Internet marketing

Amateo is a native American word meaning path and that is precisely what the software it has developed is intended to provide for the ailing hotel sector.

According to the Amateo mantra, hotels are challenged with accessing information that sits locked away in the archaic transaction systems they use to run their businesses. Amateo Internet-focused strategy enables a hotel to sift through this complex customer data and produce a highly targeted marketing response.

Thus a hotel chain saves time and money by concentrating on those people most likely to respond favourably to a marketing campaign. Already Choice Hotels Europe, Shire Hotels and JurysDoyle Hotels have signed up to the new system.

Published in the Evening Standard - 22 November 2001

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