Step-by-Step Guide:How Travel and Hospitality Brands Protect Their Traffic and Revenues in the Digital World

W H I T E PA P E R

Table of Contents

Executive Summary ..................................................................................... 3

How Consumers Are Led Astray in the Digital Travel World ........................................................................... 4

Brand Misuse Erodes the Bottom Line .................................................... 6

Protecting Your Brand in a Complex Digital Ecosystem ...................... 7

A Brand Protection Strategy that Maximises Traffic and Revenues .. 9

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Executive Summary

Perhaps no industry has been more impacted by the digital revolution than

the travel and hospitality business. Rapidly changing Internet technology

and constantly evolving online business models have transformed the travel

ecosystem and the consumer experience of booking and managing travel.

New travel “intermediaries,” including online travel agencies, aggregators

and meta-search engines, have created a fiercely competitive landscape for

travel and hospitality brands. To stay relevant, hospitality brands have had to

partner with intermediaries and participate in this new travel eco-system. This

can negatively impact the way in which brands are portrayed and used online,

frequently resulting in lost revenue, higher costs in commissions, less effective

marketing spend and erosion of brand image.

Travel and hospitality brands need to consider a comprehensive partner

compliance program that combines brand protection technology with

expertise and guidance. This kind of program, supported by strong contract

terms that make it possible to enforce against infringements, is an effective

way to protect brands online — while maintaining positive relationships with

partners and a viable role in the digital economy.

This white paper illustrates the challenges and risks travel and hospitality

brands face and recommends some industry-specific best practices for

adopting and implementing a brand protection strategy today.

Travel and Hospitality | WHITEPAPER

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How Consumers Are Led Astray in the Digital Travel World

As new intermediaries — such as online travel agencies, aggregators and travel

meta-search engines — have sprung up, established travel and hospitality

brands have had to become more competitive, transparent and open to

working with these partners on new terms in the digital world.

Consumers have adapted to these changes in intriguing ways. On one hand,

they are more price-sensitive than ever and more empowered to find the most

convenient itinerary for the best price. Consumers visit an average of 38 different

websites before booking a flight, hotel or vacation package; they also spend an

average of 45 days researching optimal options before committing to a booking.1

Yet at the same time that they’ve grown savvier and more discerning, travel

consumers have also become increasingly brand-loyal. This is largely thanks to

the robust rewards and loyalty programs built by travel brands over the years, so

that even as consumers compare prices, features and schedules, they show a

preference for specific brands. This often triggers consumers to use preferred,

branded terms as they search the Internet for travel deals.

Brand loyalty is good news for travel brands. Unfortunately, marketing

practices by online travel intermediaries and franchisees can negatively impact

consumer brand relationships and intercept potential revenues for travel and

hospitality brands.

Hotel chains, airlines and other kinds of travel and hospitality brands that

partner with online search engines and travel booking sites typically pay fees to

the companies based on their ability to drive traffic and reservations. Guidelines

regarding use of brand trademarks govern these relationships, but online travel

intermediaries don’t always comply with these guidelines. Many use travel

brand trademarks in paid search listings, site URLs and online ads — often

despite brand guidelines that prohibit them from doing so.

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Franchisees can add to the challenge. While well intentioned,

franchisees also use digital channels to promote their own businesses.

If not monitored, franchisees may use brand assets that are out of

compliance with the parent brand, or they may compete with the

parent brand for traffic and search engine results.

These practices pose several risks for travel brands:

Online traffic intended for the travel brand is intercepted.

Non-compliant brand use by partners — such as misuse of trademarks,

logos, copyrighted images, domain names and branded keywords

— intercept and divert traffic from its intended destination: the

travel brand’s website. This negatively impacts revenues and leads

to escalated costs, as travel brands must pay commissions to online

partners when they book reservations on the brands’ behalf. Traffic

diversion by these non-compliant partner practices reduces the ROI of

marketing efforts and a company’s bottom line.

Brand misuse hinders brand loyalty and confuses customers.

Inappropriate or incorrect usage of brand trademarks, either visual or

as content, causes an inconsistent brand experience for consumers,

impedes a travel brand’s control over its brand image and damages

brand reputation. This misuse might range from a franchisee that posts

a non-compliant logo design on its website to an online travel site that

uses the brand name in a domain name to divert traffic to its booking

engine. The strength of a brand — especially in a hyper-competitive

industry like travel — depends on continuity at every touchpoint, and

each off-brand experience hurts the brand’s integrity.

Brand loyalty is good news for travel brands

Travel and Hospitality | WHITEPAPER

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Brand Misuse Erodes the Bottom Line

As travel and hospitality brands strive to maximize revenues in a fiercely

competitive space, the ROI of every marketing dollar is critical to

driving maximum occupancy rates, higher average daily rates and

reducing partner commissions where possible. Traffic diversion and

brand misuse have a direct impact on a brand’s ability to achieve its

marketing goals and conversion rates.

Digital marketing costs escalate: Paid search costs increase for

brands because partners are competing with them for the same

keywords and driving up the costs of branded keyword purchases.

A small increase in the cost per ad has the potential to translate up to

tens of thousands of dollars in additional advertising spend.

Increased commissions: Travel and hospitality brands typically pay

15 to 25 percent in commissions to travel intermediaries for bookings

made through those websites. When consumers search for a brand

term, their primary option should be to book directly with the brand.

Instead, partners using those brand terms in their own marketing

redirect traffic to their own sites, which not only makes the brands’

marketing ineffective, but also increases the commission costs paid

to partners.

Decrease in direct bookings: Brands depend on their websites

to manage the digital brand experience as well as direct bookings.

Marketing key performance indicators (KPIs) include traffic to the site

from online advertising, conversion rate per visit and average booking

fees. When brand abuse and misuse by partners diverts traffic intended

for the brand website to the partner’s site, these KPIs as well as

additional booking revenue is negatively impacted.

Travel and Hospitality | WHITEPAPER

. . . the ROI of every marketing

dollar is critical to driving

maximum occupancy rates,

higher average daily rates and

reducing partner commissions

where possible.

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Travel and Hospitality | WHITEPAPER

Best Practices for Protecting Your Brand in a Complex Digital Ecosystem

To enforce against infringements, brands first must have strong partner

agreements in place. Building on this foundation, leading travel and

hospitality brands have found success with comprehensive partner

compliance programs, which combine brand protection technology

with expertise and guidance in implementing best practices. Brands

can protect their bottom lines by taking a systematic approach to

defending their brands online, using technology to monitor partners

for policy violations and defining processes to categorize, prioritize and

educate them about partner compliance issues occurring across all

digital channels.

Travel brands that have been successful at protecting their brand

integrity and revenues online have established a brand protection

strategy and a structured program that employs a multi-step

enforcement process. Consider these best practices for adopting

and implementing a brand protection strategy for your travel or

hospitality brand.

1. Consistently monitor for brand misuse. Travel or hospitality

brands should consider adopting technology that can automatically

monitor online travel intermediaries and franchisees on their behalf.

This technology scours multiple Internet channels each day for brand

misuse and inconsistencies by partners as well as competitive use and

abuse of brand trademarks and keywords.

Monitoring trademark violations manually demands many hours and

resources and is impossible given the dynamics of the Internet. A

technology solution can automate the process and produce daily

reports of all trouble areas.

BRAND PROTECTION AND PARTNER COMPLIANCE MONITORING Use state-of-the-art technology that can detect and continuosly monitor for brand misues and non-compliance across multiple digital channels.

Domain/website n Domain registration violations

n Logo misuse

n Typo domain redirection

n Sales outside brand owner’s sites

n Incorrect/missing disclosures Paid Search

n Landing page violations

n Unauthorized promotions

n Ad rank violations

n Branded keyword bidding

n Paid ad direct linking

n Paid ad URL hijacking Social Media

n Social media username violations

n Logo misuse

n Sales outside brand owner’s sites Marketplaces

n Unauthorized sales in B2C marketplaces

n Unauthorized travel packages and timeshare offers

n Seller username violations Mobile App Stores

n Unauthorized bookings

n Loss of brand equity

n Trademark and logo misuse

n Copyright violations

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2. Prioritize your compliance efforts. A brand protection strategy will

help you focus your compliance efforts on the activities and companies

causing the most harm to your brand. Policing every violation would

place undue demands on marketing and legal teams. Your strategy

should help guide your team in making intelligent decisions about

identifying, communicating with and reigning in the most egregious

violations and the most frequent offenders.

3. Enforce your brand policies. A brand protection program enables

travel and hospitality brands to systematically contact, educate and get

results from non-compliant partners. A successful program uses

communication and education to work closely with well-meaning

franchisees and partners to bring them into compliance and ensure

ongoing consistency and adherence, while delivering firm messages of

intolerance to trademark violations (such as cease-and-desist notices

or other legal communications) to deliberate violators.

4. Partner with brand protection experts. Defining, monitoring

and enforcing partner non-compliance can be daunting, which is

why working with experienced experts is so vital to ensuring you

have the right processes, resources and technology in place. Brand

protection experts help you develop comprehensive and easy-to-follow

guidelines, implement a structured methodology for policing and

enforcement, and design processes to efficiently roll out and maintain

that methodology. In addition, to ensure your partner contracts remain

strong enough to enable enforcement, brand protection experts can

help you develop and refine your guidelines over time.

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A Brand Protection Strategy thatMaximises Traffic and Revenues

In the complex and rapidly changing world of online travel, there are countless

opportunities for other companies to leverage your strong, valuable brand to

their own advantage — intentionally or not — to the detriment of your own brand

integrity and bottom line. With so many travel sites, directories, search listings,

online ads and social media posts appearing each day, your brand is quite

likely being misused and misrepresented — deterring potential customers from

your own website and eroding consumer loyalty. Only with a comprehensive

brand protection strategy and a program that combines technology, actionable

intelligence and expertise can travel and hospitality companies protect marketing

investments and the equity of brands to maximize revenues.

1 Press release. “Retail and Travel Site Visitation Aligns As Consumers Plan and Book Vacation Packages.” Expedia Media

Solutions. N.p. Web. 13 August 2013. http://www.advertising.expedia.com/about/press-releases/retail-and-travel-sitevisitation-

aligns-consumers-plan-and-book-vacation-packages/

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