Advocacy is knocking: 50 booking partners open new doors

Reaching 50 booking engine partners is a huge milestone for our team, but an even bigger deal for hotels.

Why’s it such a big deal? It’s because we’ve built deep relationships with our partners so we can ensure quick and simple onboarding for our customers.

Getting started with Flip.to is as easy as a copy and paste into your booking engine and website–similar to how you’d set up a Google Analytics tracking code. That’s it. Once you’re set up, the whole platform is out-of-the-box and ready for your hotel to start letting your guests introduce your hotel to their friends and family across the globe.

Check out the full-list on our Partners page. If you don’t see your provider, just let us know! Thanks to our strong industry relationships, there’s a good chance we know your provider, and can get you up and running in no time.

Watch now: Inspire a global audience

Something special happens when travelers discover your hotel through real experiences shared by friends & family. Capture these memorable moments and let your guests introduce your hotel to the world. You’ll inspire an entirely new audience of future guests with Flip.to.

Sound interesting? Introduce your hotel to the world with Flip.to. Take a tour, or see how to introduce your hotel to the people who matter most below:

Take a tourorWatch next video

Introducing: Photo Explorer (our first video!)

The need to make videos has become more apparent as our team and company continue to grow. Video will complement how we communicate our product, culture, and vision to the world. It’s a completely new arena for us, and I’m awfully excited that we’ve just jumped in.

We closely collaborated with our account team to better understand our customers’ needs, and narrowed in on what topics were right for us to get started. Of course, producing high-quality videos fast is crucial for a small startup team. After some help from The Startup Video Course, we were up and running in a couple of days.

In the end, here is what we made:

Be on the lookout for a ton more in this arena, from product updates, ideas and of course a bit of fun.

Also, word around the office is that a few other employees want to try their hand at voiceovers, so expect to see a few auditions, and possibly some bloopers along the way.

Take a tourorWatch next video

See it live: how hotels are using Photo Explorer

Photo Explorer is an entirely new way for hotels to infuse authentic guest stories and candid perspectives into their online experience. The newest feature of our advocacy platform, it’s become an integral part of many hotel’s marketing and revenue strategy.

Check out how some of our current clients are using Photo Explorer, below.

Rekindle a favorite moment of a past guest

The Shores

See it live
Extend the time past guests spend with your brand. Rekindling their favorite moment is a far better way to keep in touch than pushing promotion after promotion, and you’ll have the opportunity to engage past guests in the right way for months after their stay.

Share experiences with a visitor learning about your hotel for the first time

Nick Hotel

New visitors may not be ready to book now. Present them with an opportunity to “show some love” for a favorite photo in order to receive a special incentive for a future stay, and start building a new relationship. This thoughtful interaction is relevant to their current travel considerations, and starts the conversation down the right path.

Over time, hotels convert curious onlookers into future guests with meaningful, relevant interactions as they envision the beginning of their own great travel story.

Receive warm introductions to friends, family, and colleagues of a past guests

Adrift Hotel

See it live
Photo Explorer turns your guests’ memorable moments into highly engaging interactions with friends & family (and your brand). Greet your guests’ networks with a unique, distinct experience that builds a strong initial brand connection and starts them down the path to becoming a future guest.

Not only that, but your hotel has a richer story to tell thanks to the authentic perspectives and experiences that only your guests can provide.

Photo Explorer is a powerful, smart platform that drives and converts. With advocacy, hotels aspire to inspire—and aspirational selling is the key to winning in the new hotel marketplace.

If you’re curious how Photo Explorer can help your hotel reach new audiences like never before, learn more here or get in touch with one of our Advocologists and they’ll be thrilled to walk you through a live implementation.

Introducing: Photo Explorer, an entirely new look at your hotel

Captivate & inspire an entire new audience of global travelers like never before, and tell a richer story for your hotel with Flip.to’s newest feature—Photo Explorer. It’s an entirely new look at your hotel, as told by your guests.

Your guests capture the widest range of experiences and most candid insights into your hotel. With Photo Explorer, your property now has the ability to infuse these authentic stories and perspectives that only your guests can provide into your online experience. Thanks to advocacy, your guests drive their friends & family back to your site, drumming up a ton of activity and attention for your hotel.

It’s refined at every level. From a nuanced interface, to thoughtful interactions designed with your guests’ travel considerations in mind, the platform is smarter than ever. Photo Explorer adapts for every type of visitor that comes to your site, whether they’re learning about your hotel for the first time, or a past guest rekindling their favorite moment. With Photo Explorer, your hotel can tap into the benefits of aspirational selling and influence potential travelers where hotels can really win—inspiration.

Take a deeper dive below, and see how engaging your guests who create and share their stories makes a real impact for your hotel.

Take a tour of Photo Explorer

Curate a richer story from your guests’ meaningful moments

Turn memorable moments into highly engaging interactions with every type of visitor to your site—from your guests, their friends & family, or a curious onlooker. Capture, curate, and infuse authentic guest moments into a compelling online experience for your website. It’s a fun part of your day that makes a huge impact for your hotel. Since it’s in real time, these stories are timely, relevant and seasonal—speaking to your potential guests today.

Filtered by your hotel’s current and past contests, or through a unique Gallery view, Photo Explorer is smart. It takes into account hotel rating, votes, timeliness, and even who’s viewing your site. Your best images will always be on display, paired with the right message for that visitor.

Deliver unique, personal experiences to every website visitor

Photo Explorer engages different users in different ways—out of the box. Personalized, thoughtful interactions are built in, so your hotel has the right conversation with every viewer based on their persona and their travel considerations.

With unique call to actions, your hotel can now build real relationships with past and future guests. Convert anonymous visitors just learning about your hotel into warm leads, or rekindle a favorite moment of a past guest. These strong initial brand connections nurture guest relationships when you deliver unique, personal and genuine online experiences to every person that visits your site.

Integrate simply and see immediate, measurable results

Simply put, integration is a snap. Provide a link location to point your content, and we’ll take care of the rest. Managing Photo Explorer is easy too, fitting effortlessly into your day along with the rest of the Flip.to platform.

Everything is tracked, so you can see firsthand the impact authentic guest stories make for your hotel. You’ll be notified of submissions, sign-ups for future offers and shares—driving home the impact that authentic stories created by your guests are making for hotels on a global scale.

The Path to Booking is Not a Single Step

Even though the travel buying process doesn’t start at “Book Now,” this tends to be where most hotel marketing efforts are focused. In reality, the decision for travel starts well before guests are ready to book. In fact, the inspiration and research phases are primed for influencing the decision to travel. Fortunately for hotels, this is where they can be making a big impact. The key is to engage them in the right way.

Instead of pushing someone who isn’t ready to book now, why not change up the conversation. If they’re very early in the decision-making process, offer a light touch, let them unveil, and begin nurturing them down the path to becoming a future guest. With Photo Explorer, your hotel can do just that.

You’ll build brand affinity, and when they are ready to make a reservation, you’ll be top of mind and they’ll be more likely to book directly.

Aspire to Inspire

What does all of this really mean for your hotel? Photo Explorer is an entirely new look at your hotel. Thanks to your guests, your hotel can have real, candid experiences woven into a smart platform that drives and converts. It aspires to inspire—and aspirational selling is the key to winning in the new hotel marketplace.

Guests want more. They’re looking to buy into experiences and seek inspiration. By sharing in the creation of this inspiration, they receive value in return, and start on their way to becoming loyal brand ambassadors. It’s a win-win for your hotel, as you’ll not only share in getting incredible content, but you’re truly connecting with your guests.

Don’t just take our word for it. Check out Harvard Business Review’s recent article, What Apple, Lending Club and AirBnb know about Collaborating with Customers, which ties revenue and profit margin growth directly into the ability to tap customers to become co-creators.

Want to see more?

Stay tuned for a lot more to come. In the meantime, get in touch with one of our Advocologists to see a live implementation. We’re excited to see the stories your guests are telling!

One small step for integration, one giant leap for outreach

Sometimes, making a small change can make a big impact for your hotel. Take your welcome email—what can be a great personal touch for your guest, can also help you, the hotelier! In fact, welcome emails typically generate four times the total open rates and five times the click rates compared to other bulk promotions. This drives home that fact that it’s a great opportunity to do even more.

Enter the image URL from Flip.to, which doubles as a tracking pixel. Flip.to implements this strategy for our clients through our advocacy platform.

Why you should do it

The image URL or tracking pixel provides the ability to continue marketing to your guests with Flip.to, regardless of the channel that they originally booked. This enhances the conversations from your hotel, and builds strong brand connections with your guests.

Since this is coming from your hotel’s existing welcome email, the recipients include those who booked through a call center, mobile device, in-house, or travel agency. Here is where the pixel really stands out—with the ability to continue marketing to those guests before and after their stay, you can continue the conversation with your guests even when they’ve packed and gone home.

How to set up your image URL

Within your welcome email, simply insert an image URL into your existing email template. This URL acts as a tracking pixel that provides the ability to enhance campaign outreach. Any guest that receives the email will now receive pre- and post-arrival touch points through the Flip.to platform.

Because the pixel is an image URL, if you have Photo Advocacy enabled, you also have the ability to display a graphic relevant to their upcoming stay. This would include an invitation to let the guest know about the photo competition.

In this case, when the URL displays the graphic to announce the photo contest, it excites the guest by letting them know about their eligibility to participate—and knowing is half the battle. Following their stay, another email is sent to all of those guests that were tracked through the engine, as well as through the image URL, inviting them to interact and share their positive experiences to their friends and family across their social networks.

For hoteliers utilizing Photo Advocacy, guests participate further through periodic emails that rekindle their favorite moment, again and again. These interactions continue the relationship not only between the hotel and the guest, but also the guest’s friends and family, well after check-out.

So now, thanks to one tiny URL, the hotel has the opportunity to reach out to more guests, even if they’ve booked from other sources. This allows hoteliers to nurture these guests, and their networks, down the path to future direct bookings,

Bonus: Some providers include these email services and technologies within their subscription. Make sure you’re taking advantage of this service!

A sneak peek at Group Advocacy

There’s a lot going on behind the scenes here at Flip.to. Fueled by our very own bean-to-cup coffee machine, (more on that here,) our team of product designers and engineers are constantly working to enhance the platform and create a better experience for our users. Group advocacy is the latest example of this innovation, as we aim to weave advocacy into every level of the guest experience.

The new Group Advocacy is a big enhancement in a hotel’s ability to use advocacy with group business. Hotels can now easily import events, create and manage campaigns to target groups with specific incentives, track statistics across campaigns, and more.

So what does this all mean for our hotel partners? Well, now all of your hotels’ weddings, meetings, or corporate groups are stories ready to be told by these guests to their friends and family. And it’s through those stories that your hotel can reach more travelers worldwide, and deliver each one a unique, inspired experience that takes them down the path of becoming a future guest.

This is thanks to our integration with Lanyon Passkey—part of Lanyon’s Smart Hotel Cloud software—that lets hotels streamline and automate meeting and event bookings. Used by thousands of hotels, destinations, and meeting-planners worldwide, it’s easy to manage hotel accommodations for events of all sizes.

There’s more to follow, but enjoy a taste of Group Advocacy below. (For current customers, log in and take a peek at this new feature on your account!)

5 ways to target the right guest for your hotel using advocacy

Advocacy works for all types of hotels—the friends, relatives & colleagues of your guests are the perfect demographic for your hotel to reach. Whether your hotel fits in the business, leisure, resort, limited service or luxury markets, you have the ability to make trusted introductions to entirely new audiences of future guests with an advocacy campaign.

Your guests are already sharing their travels—get them talking about their stay too. Check out some tips below on how your hotel can reach the right guest by marketing with advocacy:

Connect the right guest with the right incentive for the best engagement. Two glasses of wine may engage guests booking a romance package to advocate more than a flat discount off of food & beverage (perhaps better suited to a family). Likewise, business travelers may enjoy a complimentary room upgrade or loyalty points.
Tailor guest share messaging for your brand. Your guests have like-minded travelers in their networks. Don’t be afraid to play up your guest share to build stronger connections with potential future guests. Just remember to keep it conversational—this message is coming from your guests on your behalf, not the other way around.
Enhance your advocacy strategies to optimize results. Pre-stay, Post-stay, and Photo Advocacy are all great experiences to engage your guests at different times of their travel. For example, guests love sharing moments at spectacular leisure destinations. Adding Photo Advocacy would be a great fit for this type of property. Our advocology experts can help guide you through the process of putting the best campaign together for your hotel.
Engage top advocates even further. Some of your advocates have astounding reach! With the Flip.to dashboard, you can easily sort by top advocates. Keep an eye out at check-in for these notable guests (our handy front-desk guest-list email will help, too) and make their trip a bit more special. Building these connections convert your guests into even greater promoters of your brand (and even co-creators,) giving them further reason to continue to advocate for your hotel.
Don’t forget to share! When your guests supply your hotel valuable moments from their stay in the way of photos and quotes, share! These authentic moments are perfectly suited to share to your own network and reinforce what’s unique about your experience. Plus, it’s built right into the platform—click to curate in just a few moments.

It’s important to remember that when you target guests using advocacy, you have the ability to be strategic across campaigns, incentives, share messages, and more. This will further optimize your outreach across your different markets. These small efforts can mean a big boost in engagement and revenue for your hotel!

Get to know your hotel advocates with search

Flip.to continues to expand the features in the newest Advocates section! This new addition to the account provides insights into your hotel advocates on an individual level.

Filter and sort to easily navigate your hotel advocates: All, advocates with Photos, or advocates with Quotes. A dropdown allows you to sort further by recent activity, top advocates, photos or quotes for curation.

From there, select any card to view details including connections, visitors and sign-ups. A series of stories is chronologically presented about their engagement with your hotel. Pre-stay, Post-Stay, Photo-Contest are all here, as well as other information that may have been captured, like the booking date and stay dates.

Introducing Advocate Search
Looking for someone? Now search for advocates by name, reservation number or email address. Click through result cards to navigate to individual advocate details.

Home sweet homepage

One of our newest components is absolutely killing it for our customers. It helps convert those website visitors who are just browsing around on your website into guests—turning them from lookers into bookers.

The Flip.to homepage component drives more bookings and grows a hotel’s reach. Here’s how:

First, it uses a short, curated quote from a guest. Words that are timely, glance-able and straight from someone who just stayed at your hotel are really compelling.
Second, Flip.to pairs that quote with a new call-to-action for hotels. The homepage component drives folks to book now but if they’re not ready at that moment, rather than just wandering away, they can lock in the incentive in two clicks. Your hotel learns who that anonymous website visitor is and now has a placeholder in their inbox (the Flip.to certificate that is emailed to them).

Well, that’s swell but the numbers are what get me excited. Hotels that use this component get 300% more sign-ups across the platform. That’s 300% more email addresses and a 300% larger reach for your hotel.

Even more impressive, on average 10.5% of website visitors to your site who engage with the homepage component end up booking a room (6.5% click book now and 4% sign up for an incentive and come back to book later).

It’s incredibly simple to curate quotes and get the homepage component going (if you’re not already). Plus it’s currently included with your subscription at no extra cost! Get in touch if you’d like to learn more.