MTA organises E-Marketing Seminar

A forum on E-Marketing for the local hotel industry, was held on the 10th September at the Imperial Hotel Sliema. This was the first of a series of seminars which the MTA Trade Support Division has in the pipeline, in order to keep local tourism operators up-to-date with what is happening in the global tourism market.

Today web-based information has become the primary influence on consumer decisions in virtually all major markets, therefore this particular forum focused on actions that hoteliers can undertake to broaden their appeal on the net, by exploring online marketing strategies in order to achieve success.

The seminar was addressed by two international experts from Team Consulting Ltd. Ms Karin Elgin-Nijhuis and Ms Iris Hillier delivered various presentations starting by giving an overview of what one can find in the e-marketing toolbox, the trends and tools of online branding and marketing, Web 1.0, Web 2.0 and the social web. They delved into the fundamentals of what makes websites effective and successful, and took the audience through a crash course in search engine optimisation. A discussion of how to make the most of social and professional media platforms such as Facebook, Linkedin, Plaxo, photo and video sharing sites, such as Panoramio, Flickr, YouTube, followed. The speakers also gave a presentation on how to listen to and learn from conversations going on in e.g. blogs and Twitter. The audience learned how to tap into them and use them to assist customers and brand the business or destination, and how to deal with rating and reviews published by TripAdvisor and other forms of user/consumer generated content. Customer Relationship Management was thoroughly explained in a session on how to use customer data to create valuable relationships, loyalty programmes (business hotels), e-mail marketing and other ‘relationship services’ and the importance of collecting data/CRM.

The seminar was well attended and was an interactive one where hoteliers had the possibility of asking questions and discussing the various topics in detail with the speakers. It was co-sponsored by the Imperial Hotel and Powerhouse, the latter having provided the audiovisual equipment.

For further information on events of a similar nature which will be organised by MTA in 2010, kindly register your email address with Ms Shirley Psaila, Manager Trade Support at MTA on shirley.psaila@visitmalta.com. Your details will be added to a mailing list which will receive details of such events as and when they are announced.