Another of a new breed of hotelier tools not unlike WIHP Hotels and their Convert, buuteeq is aimed at properties that are at a marketing disadvantage for any number of reasons. Driving direct bookings is what the newest OTA and marketing innovations are all about, and from what my old friend Robert Scoble showed in his interview with CEO Forest Key (video below), a lot of hotel owners may get some relief soon.
Unlike WIHP’s Convert solution, which pretty much revolutionizes any hotel’s online landing and direct conversion and leverages marketing push techniques (plus PPC and other marketing know-how), buuteeq encompasses more technically slick meta information – Facecbook, mobile and other potential channels are beefed up using meta-data and Open Graph cynergies.
Not to get to technical, buuteeq basically puts tech hard to work to make better distribution channels for hotels. A crappy Facebook with no likes, becomes a image centric room “look” and “book” portal – an iPhone can act as a miniature window into any hotelier’s inventory. And, it looks like rich media for smart stuff may be in the offing too.
We make no secret of our own affiliations with cutting edge travel dynamos. Stay.com, Treovi, even our Finland friends with their Geo-location wonder app Grafetee, all these and more companies are headed at breakneck speed toward making online travel booking the only real choice. What use to take Yellow Pages and a phone call (for a dime) will likely end up costing less than a dime and with a webcam in place for the desk clerk to affirm your room.
Web, mobile, or social the presence is refined.
But, slowing down a bit, self proclaimed as the world’s first software-as-a-service SaaS solution of a type, buuteeq lets hotel staff manage multilingual marketing content on their websites, social media profiles, and onto their own mobile channels and apps. A booking engine, detailed reporting tools, and negating the need for website redesign, buuteeq is an interesting and apparently effective solution for beleaguered hotel owners. buuteeq is already claiming some clients get a 40 plus percent increase in traffic. Substantial indeed.
AND, buuteeq charges no commissions. But there’s more than just visibility tools.
Providing detailed room overviews, high quality photos, interactive maps, custom articles and content, and rich PDF brochures, the developers essentially make mobile and social media a media rich tapestry for guest conversions. At least this is the goal. While the hotel does incur a cost (versus totally free channels like Treovi), as a direct booking tool buuteeq is very, very good. With setup fees from zero to $2000, and yearly costs from $3000 to $20,000 the system is not free, but it could be a bargain compared with 30 percent OTA commissions.
Sarah White – Tree House Hostel, Hotel Antumalal from forest key on Vimeo.
My only criticism at this juncture is that any marketing company professing social media or any other expertise should have a very significant presence themselves. While buuteeq is sufficient in this department, their innovation is geared way past “sufficient ” in my view. Boost it.
For more info about buuteeq, we suggest the reader visit the company website. Alternatively, you can connect with them via Twitter too. The video above is via buuteeq for one of their clients in Chile. (I told you the desk clerk is on the way).
View Comments (1)
Hey Philllip, thanks for the great write-up. The primary goal of buuteeq is to power any hotel's Internet marketing using our Cloud DMS, which is a browser-based software that lives "in the cloud". Hotel marketers simply login to their account, where they can upload photos, define their room inventory, add their pricing information (or integrate with their current online booking solution), craft articles, post videos and more--then, with the push of one button, they can sync this information with all of their important online marketing channels--mobile, in the form of optimized mobile websites and apps, social, as a Facebook application, and on the web as a new, modern, HTML5 website.
The defining aspect of our solution is that whenever a hotel marketer makes a change using our software and publishes it, these changes are instantly pushed to all of their marketing materials across the web, keeping everything updated and in sync.
We emphasize mobile, which is what we believe the majority of guests use and will use to book rooms. Our mobile solution publishes a hotel's marketing materials to the web with an information architecture that drives more conversions with easy one-tap driving directions, phone reservations and mobile bookings. Our mobile solutions load quickly, are customized and optimized for search engines.
We also have, as you mentioned, a Facebook solution (which is free) and a paid web solution--as well as a commission-free online booking engine.
Thanks again for the piece, and feel free to email me if you'd like any further details. Your readers can learn more about us at buuteeq.com.