Sales & Marketing Glossary

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3G Network, “3rd Generation” Network: Term used to represent mobile telecommunications technology that supports wireless voice telephony, mobile Internet access, fixed wireless Internet access, video calls, and mobile TV.

4G Network, “4th Generation” Network: Successor to 3rd-generation (3G) standards. Provides mobile ultra-broadband Internet access to laptops, wireless modems, smartphones, and other mobile devices. Conceivable applications include amended mobile Web access, IP telephony, gaming services, high-definition mobile TV, video conferencing, and 3D television.

A

Abandonment: Point at which a visitor on a website stops an activity and closes the open window (moves on to another activity/exits website).

Acquisition: Process of obtaining/acquiring a customer.

Affiliate Marketing: Process of using a network of affiliated marketers across industries, who find consumers with similar interests, and provide referrals to relevant website vendors. The network handles the sale and the billing, tracks production, and collects a fee or commission on the sale.

(Search) Algorithm: A mathematical formula used by search engines to determine the ranking for listings returned in response to a keyword query. The search engine uses “bots” or “spiders” to collect information about the website and code it. The algorithm then searches the database, and each website is assessed to determine its relevance to the keyword being used.

Alt-tags: Text tags attached to a graphic image on a website which identify the graphic when the user holds a mouse pointer above the image. The Alt-tag could define the purpose of a graphic icon or be a word such as “advertisement.” In the past, Alt-tag text was heavily used in search-engine algorithms, but its usage has declined.

“Always Be Closing.” (ABC): An antiquated sales strategy that basically says everything a sales rep does throughout the sales process is in pursuit toward the singular goal of closing a deal. The implication is that, if a sales rep doesn’t close the deal, then everything they did regarding that opportunity was a failure.

American Hotel & Lodging Association(AH & LA): The sole national association representing all segments of the 1.8 million-employee U.S. lodging industry, including hotel owners, REITs, chains, franchisees, management companies, independent properties, state hotel associations, and industry suppliers. Headquartered in Washington, D.C., AH&LA provides focused advocacy, communications support, and educational resources for an industry generating $155.5 billion in annual sales from 4.9 million guestrooms.

American Society of Travel Agents (ASTA): A trade association formed to represent and defend the business and regulatory public policy interests of travel intermediaries, including travel agencies and tour providers.

Application Programming Interface (API): Technical definition that governs the interaction of two or more independent computer programs.

Application Service Provider (ASP): ASP offers technology through remote channels. A hotel may install computers powerful enough to access a main system, (usually through WiFi); replacing the need for high capital investments in hardware at the hotel level. The ASP service upgrades and maintains its own system, and the hotel pays for usage, usually per transaction.

Attention, Interest, Desire, Action (AIDA): Marketing concept used to describe the different stages a consumer passes through when he/she engages with the advertisement — communication tool used to effectively understand the psyche of the consumer and their different triggers inspiring to buy the product/service.

Attitudinal Data/Metrics: Data that refers to a website visitor’s perceptions, thoughts, or feelings about the website or online experience (ex: satisfaction with site). This data is usually survey-based.

Average Daily Rate (ADR): Calculated by dividing total room revenue by the number of room-nights sold, in a given period of time

Average Length of Stay (ALOS): nights / bookings

B

Behavioral Data/Metrics: Data that refers to what a website visitor is doing while online, (ex: moving within a website, or between websites). Can be survey-based, usually system-generated based on data files that track user movement (ex: process tracing).

Behavioral Targeting: Process of directing promotional messages to a website visitor, tailored to fit the user’s online behavior (ex: visiting a certain type of website). Defines how someone acts, not just once, but over time. Requires a collection of data on the user (user profile).

Benefit: The value of a product or service that a consumer of that product or service experiences. Benefits are distinct from features, and sales reps should sell based on benefits that are supported by features.

Best Rate Guarantee:The lowest rate offered by a supplier or distributor to consumers to fulfill their requirements for a product or service. Often used as marketing tactics by suppliers (ex: hotel companies) to instill trust in consumers that they won’t find a lower rate at another distribution point—or if one is found, it will be matched.

BillBoard Effect: An impact described and measured by Chris Anderson of the Cornell University School of Hotel Administration. As described by Prof. Anderson, “hotels that are listed on third-party distributors’ websites, commonly known as online travel agents (OTA), gain a reservation benefit in addition to direct sales. That benefit, often called the billboard effect, involves a boost in reservations through the hotel’s own distribution channels (including its website), due to the hotels being listed on the OTA website.

Black Hat Optimization: any optimization technique of which search engines do not approve. (HSMAI study guide)

Blogs: Personal or organizational online journals which offer reporting, opinions, or both, about people, things, and events. Designed to allow readers to post responses or comments. Successful blogs generate a high degree of interactive dialogue. They are dated in reverse chronological order, with the newest material at the top of the page, and they are often associated with keyword tags for bookmarking. Usually available as feeds for RSS readers.

Booking Engine: Technology that allows reservations to be made. Usually refers to the application or widget needed to power the booking function of a website so visitors can make a hotel reservation.

Boston Hospitality Review (BHR): An interdisciplinary journal devoted to scholarship and reflection about the theory and practice of hospitality as a business activity and cultural phenomenon. It is published for the benefit of academics, industry practitioners, and the interested public by the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University.

Brand Agnostic: A term for online customers who are not inclined to go to an individual hotel or branded hotel site by name. A brand agnostic usually wants to cast a wider net based on type of hotel, destination or location, services offered, or other variables, to generate a short list of choices for hotel selection.

Brand Flag: The brand name for a hotel affiliated with a chain (ex: Marriott or Sheraton).

Brand Management: The marketing process that involves developing a brand promise, standards, and communications that are executed consistently across brand touchpoints (ex: on hotel property or in marketing communications).

Brand Promise: A concise, clear articulation of what the customer will take away from their experience with the brand.

Brand-based Search Word: Words that are associated with a specific brand (ex: Marriott or Starwood hotels) or, with a branded property (ex: The Broadmore).

Brand Volume: the total number of brand mentions over a given period of time

Business to Business (B2B):Also known as e-commerce, is the exchange of products/services between businesses.

Business to Consumer (B2C): Businesses that sell products/services directly to consumers – has played a large role in the rapid development of the commercial internet.

Buying Signal: A communication from a prospect indicating they are ready to make a purchase, either verbal or non-verbal. An example would be them asking the sales rep, “When can it be delivered?”

Buzz Marketing: when the company seeks to generate more intense WOM; a term used in viral marketing

C

Caching: The temporary storage of content to reduce the time required to deliver content to a user. (ex: HTML pages, images, files, inquiries, or bookings).

Central Reservation System (CRS): Could be a system or an office used by hotels in one chain or organization, or it could be one created by a third-party vendor to support unrelated independent hotels and small chains. These systems are used to maintain hotel information, inventories, and rates and to manage the reservation process for the chain or hotels in the system.

Channel Management: Techniques and tools hotels use to update hotel information, room inventory, and rates in each of the distribution channels and to optimize the mix of these factors.

Clicks: the number of times a user interacts with your ad by clicking on it.

Click Path: Represents a series of pages viewed or websites entered during the course of an online visit.

Clickstream Data: Describe the movement of a user on a website. The clicks refer to the actions taken by a website visitor. Each click creates a file that is stored, and analyzed, to create a stream of activity.

Click-Through Rate: The number of website visitors who click onto a promotional image (ex: link, keyword, ad) as a percentage of total visitors to the site.

Cloaking: offering a different page to the search engine than to a user

Close/Closing: The penultimate step of the ‘Seven Steps of the Sale’ selling process, when essentially the sales-person encourages the prospect to say yes and sign the order. In days gone by a Sales person’s expertise was measured almost exclusively by how many closes he knew. Thank God for evolution. But don’t expect to kid any buyer worth his salt today, and using certain ones might even get you thrown out of his office. Use with great care.

Closed Question: A question which generally prompts a yes or no answer, or a different short answer of just two possible options, compared to open questions, which typically begin with who, what, where, when, etc., and which tend to invite much longer answers.

Closing Ratio: The percentage of prospects that a sales rep successfully close-wins. This ratio is usually used to assess individual sales reps on their short-term performance, but it can also be used to evaluate profits, forecast sales, and so on. Improving a closing ratio usually requires efforts to bring better-qualified leads into the funnel.

Cold Calling: Typically refers to the first telephone call made to a prospective customer. More unusually these days, cold calling can also refer to calling face-to-face for the first time without an appointment at commercial promises or households. Cold calling is also known as canvassing, telephone canvassing, prospecting, telephone prospecting, and more traditionally in the case of consumer door-to-door selling as ‘door-knocking.’ Making unsolicited calls in an attempt to sell products or services.

Competitive Set: A group of firms that serve a similar set of customers. Market activities have an interdependent impact on one another. In the hospitality industry a competitive set might include hotels that are located near one another; have similar facilities; or are of similar size, price, and service level.

Concession: Used in the context of negotiating, when it refers to an aspect of the sale which has a real or perceived value, that is given away or conceded by seller (more usually) or the buyer. One of the fundamental principles of sales negotiating is never giving away a concession without getting something in return – even a small increase in commitment is better than nothing.

Consolidation: The combination of resources to create a stronger entity.

Consumer Decision Journey: Phrased coined by McKinsey to represent the newer “consumer purchase funnel.” In this model, steps are not sequential and linear but involve a circular path of touch points between consumers and marketers and among consumers.

Consumer Decision Rules: A decision rule whereby consumers evaluate brands in terms of relevant attributes and develop a weighted score for each brand depending on the relative importance of the attributes.

Content Syndication: The distribution of text, videos, or photos to other websites to extend the messaging reach of a brand by allowing others to subscribe to the content on a website to be used elsewhere. This is usually done through the use of RSS-enabling technology.

Contextual Targeting: The process of showing a website visitor an ad that is relevant to what the visitor is doing at that time. Usually driven by the content of the page(s) the user has accessed during this particular Web visit.

Convention & Visitors Bureau (CVB): An organization that promotes a town, city, region, or country in order to increase the number of visitors. It promotes the development and marketing of a destination, focusing on convention sales, tourism marketing, and services.

Conversion: A customer’s transition from shopping or gathering information to taking an action such as making an inquiry or purchasing.

Conversion Funnel: Viewing website visits as a series of steps, and the number of visitors who take each subsequent step, as movement through a funnel. Graphic depictions often show the points at which the greatest number of visitors abandon the conversion or booking process.

Conversion Rate: the percentage of clicks that resulted in a conversion

Cookies: Small text files created by a Web server and sent back to a user’s Web browser to store useful information to make an existing or subsequent visits more efficient. There are “session” and “persistent” cookies, depending on the time frame for which they are stored. Cookie files describe a user’s browser and visit, but do not contain personal information about website visitor.

Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR): A corporation’s initiatives, to assess, and take responsibility, for the company’s effects on environmental and social well-being. The term generally applies to efforts that go beyond what may be required by regulators or environmental protection groups.

Cost Per Acquisition (CPA): Calculated by dividing the total cost of the campaign by the number of actions undertaken by the target audience (ex: inquiry, booking, email address submission, information request).

Cost Per Click/Pay Per Click (CPC/PPC): The total cost of a marketing campaign divided by the number of clicks received through the site where the campaign was directed. 

Cost Per Conversion (CPC): total conversions divided by total cost

Cost Per Order (CPO): The total cost of a marketing campaign divided by the number of orders received as a result of the campaign.

Cost Per Thousand (CPM): The total cost of a marketing campaign divided by the number of impressions made in the target audience. Impressions are counted in thousands, so CPM is cost per thousand impressions.

Crowd Culture: the digital crowds that are bind together from diverse cultures and ready to share their like-minded acquaintances.

Customer Acquisition Cost (CAC): This is your total Sales and Marketing cost. To calculate, follow these steps for a given time period (month, quarter, or year):

1. Add up program or advertising spend + salaries + commissions + bonuses + overhead.
2. Divide by the number of new customers in that time period.

For example, if you spend $500,000 on Sales and Marketing in a given month and added 50 customers that same month, then your CAC was $10,000 that month.

Customer Relationship Management (CRM): A marketing process supported by technology that allows companies to improve the information obtained and retained about their customers and the communications they have with them; used to enhance company-customer relationships and gain greater loyalty.

Customization: enable the customers to create their own solution to their accommodation needs; closer to customer solution and convenience dimensions of the 4Cs ex. adding flowers in the room or airport pickups.

D

Direct Memory Access (DMA): A feature of computer system that allows certain hardware subsystems to access main system memory

Disruptors: An a-typical entrant into the market, someone who shakes up the market. (Ex: AirBNB, Netflix, Uber)

Distribution: The channels used to sell on, uses consumer touch points.

Distribution/Sales Distribution: The methods or routes by which products and services are taken to market. Sales distribution models are many and various, and are constantly changing and new ones developing. Understanding and establishing best sales distribution methods – routes to market – are crucial aspects of running any sales organization, and any business organization.

Dynamic Cross-Selling: A process that allows consumers to purchase multiple products without bundling them into a package. Facilitates the sale of ancillary products, although the site visitor has a primary interest in one product. (ex: an airline or hotel company can offer car rental without combining it with airfare or a hotel rate).

Dynamic Packaging: Technology built into booking engines that allows customers to choose multiple elements for their travel plan from one website (ex: air, hotel, & car rental). Also refers to the functionality in a hotel’s website that allows the booking of multiple elements of a visit (ex: could include the hotel room, theater tickets, golf tee times, spa appointments, and restaurant reservations).

E

Earned Media: Review sites, WOM, UGC.

Email Service provider (ESP): company that offers email services such as email marketing.

Engagement: the overall number of times a user talks to your brand on social sites. (HSMAI)

Extranet: The functionality some large online agencies use, accessible by Web browser, to enable hotel reservation departments to update their hotel information, room inventory, or rates. The extranet looks like a website, but it is password-restricted to authorized hotel users and only allows information entry and updating.

F

Feature: A function of a product that can solve for a potential buyer’s need or pain point; usually a distinguishing characteristic that helps boost appeal.

Folksonomy: The practice of collaboratively creating and managing freely chosen tags to annotate and categorize content. In contrast to traditional subject indexing, a folksonomy is generated by experts in addition to creators and consumers of the content. Also known as “collaborative tagging,” “social indexing,” and “social tagging.”

G

Gamification: The use of game mechanics and game-design techniques in nongame contexts.Typically applies to non-game applications and processes, and is meant to encourage people to usage.

Gatekeeper: A person who, or role that, enables or prevents information from getting to another person(s) in a company. For example, a receptionist or personal assistant.

Generic Search Word: A word associated with some specific characteristic or feature of a particular service or product. In the case of search engine related to lodging, such words might be related to the nature of a property such as a resort, event venue, bed and breakfast and so forth.  It can also be related to location such as beach front, central city, ski slope, etc. Such words can be differentiated from brand-related search words (defined below) that are associated with a brand like Marriott or Starwood.  Or, it could be associated with a branded property name like the Broadmore.

Geocoding: The assignment of geographic coordinates to street addresses and other points and features.

Geofencing: A technique that confines a location-based service to a narrower geography by setting up a virtual perimeter around a location, such as a restaurant.

Geographic targeting: showing ad to visitors based on zip code, area code, city, DMA, and state or country derived from user-declared registration information or inference based mechanism.

Global Distribution System (GDS): Large reservation systems originally designed for airlines, and now widely used by travel agents, to book all forms of travel. Generally use older technology, and are not connected through the Internet. Most vendors have related websites sites for various customer groups and “power portals” for corporate accounts.The big four: Amadeus, Galileo, Sabre,and Worldspan.

H

Halo Effect: Occurs when the overall evaluation of an object is based on the evaluation of just one or a few attributes.

Hard Hotel Brand: A hotel brand in which a chain name is used to identify all hotels within the group (for example, Marriott, Ramada, Hilton, and Hyatt), and these hotels are connected by ownership or management contract.

Hierarchy of Effects: A hierarchical representation of how advertising influences a consumer’s consumption decision process. The hierarchy-of-effects theory is used to identify the sequence of stages consumers progress through in order to match advertising messages and objectives to consumer needs.

Hits: The number of times an element of a Web page is downloaded, including frames, images, and text boxes. Not the same as a page view. Hits are registered every time any part of a page is loaded, whereas a page view is the entire page; for this reason, hits are not a valuable marketing metric.

Horizontal Search: A horizontal search on the on the World Wide Web involves a query using search terms (e.g. “Hilton”). The search results are generally presented in a list often referred to as search engine results pages (SERPs). The information may be web pages, images, information and other types of files. The query will return general results associated with the search terms. A search for Hilton, therefore, will return more than just results for Hilton hotels.

Hospitality Financial and Technology Professionals (HFTP): The global professional association for financial and technology personnel working in hotels, clubs, and other hospitality-related businesses. Founded in 1952, HFTP provides first-class educational events, networking, certifications and resources to over 5,000 members worldwide.

Hospitality Industry Exhibition & Conference (HITEC): An annual industry conference run by HFTP. it is the largest and most comprehensive worldwide showcase of hospitality technology. Refer to www.hitec.org or www.hftp.org/hitec.

Hospitality Investment Conference Africa (HICA): As the leading hotel and broader hospitality investment conference in sub-Saharan Africa, HICA assembles the region’s leading hospitality professionals along with international hoteliers, investors, developers and senior public sector leadership from more than 40 countries; for two days of insightful content, networking, constructive debate, and deal making.

Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI): Organization of sales and marketing professionals representing all segments of the hospitality industry.

Hospitality Valuation Services (HVS): The industry’s primary source of hotel sales data, research, market studies and educational information relating to the hospitality industry. The company offers a comprehensive scope of services and specialized industry expertise to help you enhance the economic returns and value of your hospitality assets.

I

Impressions: how often if the ad shown. One appearance of the ad = one impression

Impression shares: impressions you received divided by the estimated number of impressions that were eligible to receive

Influencer: A person in the prospect organization who has the power to influence and persuade a decision-maker. Influencers will be generally be decision-makers for relatively low value sales. There is usually more than one influencer in any prospect organization relevant to a particular sale, and large organizations will have definitely have several influencers. It is usually important to sell to influencers as well as decision-makers in the same organization. Selling to large organizations almost certainly demands that the sales person does this. The role and power of influencers in any organization largely depends on the culture and politics of the organization, and particularly the management style of the two main decision-makers. See decision-makers.

Integrated Marketing Communication (IMC): The application of consistent brand messaging across both traditional and non-traditional marketing channels and using different promotional methods to reinforce each other.

Interactive Advertising Bureau (IAB): 

Internet Protocol (IP) Address: The Internet Protocol Address is assigned to a computer once it is connected to a network. There are static and dynamic IP addresses; in the former, a computer has a “permanent” address assigned, and in the latter it gets a new one every time it connects to the network.

Internet Service Provider (ISP) Vendor: An Internet service provider that provides Internet connectivity to an organization or to consumers. (ex: Comcast, Cox, Adelphia, and AOL).

J

JavaScript: A registered trademark of Sun Microsystems, this scripting language is a programming format that is most often used on webites; it is only distantly related to Java programming language. Usually used to write functions embedded in HTML Web pages to perform actions that HTML cannot do alone. Common usages are to allow for window pop-ups, Web-form validations, and image changes triggered by mouse movements.

K

Key Performance Indicators (KPI): Key performance indicators. A calculated metric that measures some element of performance for a Web site, a company, an industry, or some other entity.

Keyword: A word used in a search engine to query the database and get a listing back (search-engine results page, or SERP) to answer a question, choose a product, or find information on a particular topic.

Keyword stuffing: using the same word in the content that the content loses its meaning.

L

Landing pages: a single web page that appears in response to clicking on a search engine optimized search result or an online advertisement

Lead: A person or company who shows interest in a product or service in some way, shape, or form.

Leading Indicators: Metrics that predict future behavior or performance. In digital marketing, leading indicators are the metrics that help a Web manager forecast some form of online activity. (See also: trailing indicators.)

Lead Qualification: The process of determining whether a potential buyer has certain characteristics that qualify him or her as a lead. These characteristics could be budget, authority, timeline, and so on.

Lifetime Value (LV): The value between brand and consumer – the predicted profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. A prediction of the net profit attributed to the entire future relationship with a customer. To calculate LTV, follow these steps for a given time period:

1. Take the revenue the customer paid you in that time period.
2. Subtract from that number the gross margin.
3. Divide by the estimated churn rate (aka cancellation rate) for that customer.

For example, if a customer pays you $100,000 per year where your gross margin on the revenue is 70%, and that customer type is predicted to cancel at 16% per year, then the customer’s LTV is $437,500.

Life-time Value Analysis (LTV): Market analysis that estimates the profit a customer or segment of customers generated over a specific time period, typically defined as the period for which the customer is an active purchaser of the product.

Location-Based Services (LBS): Any product or service delivered to a user on a mobile device that utilizes location to define the product or service.

Log Files (for a Web Server): Text files written to document the activity of a Web server. The most common types of information in log files include IP address, passwords, and IDs of users (if known), date and time of activity, the request of pages or information from the server, and the size of the returned object.

Long tail keywords: phrases that contain four or more words that are very targeted to your business. They receive fewer searches but result in a higher conversion rate.

Look-to-Book Ratio: Used exclusively in travel to show the percentage of website visitors (lookers) relative to the number who book on the Web site (bookers).

M

M-Payments: Financial transactions (remittances and payments) made using a mobile phone.

Management Information System (MIS): Computerized database of financial information organized and programmed in such a way that it produces regular reports on operations for every level of management in a company.

Manager on Duty (MOD):The individual on the hotel property responsible for making any management decisions required the during the period he/she is the ranking manager at the property.

Marketing Mix (M^2 = 4P = 4C): The combination of factors that can be controlled by a company to influence consumers to purchase its products.

4C’s:

1. Consumer Solution
2. Cost
3. Convenience
4. Communication

4P’s: A well-established marketing framework used to organize the marketing process and its functions.

1. Product
2. Price
3. Place
4. Promotion

Mash-Up: A Web site or Web application that seamlessly combines content from more than one source into an integrated experience, sometimes in response to user queries. (ex: plotting hotels, with their names, on a map, along with local restaurants or other attraction).

Massachusetts Restaurant Association (MRA): The MRA provides access, influence and protection to restaurant professionals allowing for the ultimate opportunity to lead thriving businesses.

Meetings, Incentives, Conferences & Exhibitions (MICE):Type of tourism in which large groups, usually planned well in advance, are brought together for a particular purpose.

Merchant Model: The business model used by some OTAs that solicits net rates (non-commissionable and discounted) from hotels, which are then marked up and sold online. The affected hotel may or may not know the rate the OTA posted or sold, even after the guest arrives at their hotel. The rate the hotel sold to the OTA is not posted to the guest folio.

Metasearch: A search of other search sites. In travel, metasearch engines search the fare, rate, and availability search engines of many Web sites, including online travel agencies, supplier sites, and other sources.

Meta-Tags: Descriptive text within Web site code to describe what the site is offering. This text is indexed by search-engine software (spiders) to factor into their ranking algorithms. Copywriting of meta-tags is an important element of organic search-engine optimization.

Metropolitan Statistical Area (MSA): Geographical region with a relatively high population density at its core and close economic ties throughout the area.

Micro-moment: those nano-seconds of time when we check our phones and quickly glance at emails or rapidly look at our Facebook page. Each moment is an opportunity for a marketer to show in just seconds the reason to interact.

Mobile App: A software application designed to run on smartphones, tablet computers, and other mobile devices. They are available through application distribution platforms, which are typically operated by the owner of the mobile operating system, such as the Apple App Store, Google Play, Windows Phone Store, and BlackBerry App World. Some apps are free, and others have a price. Usually, they are downloaded from the platform to a target device, such as an iPhone, BlackBerry, Android phone, or Windows phone.

N

National Restaurant Association (NRA): Restaurant trade organization offering certification, training materials,start-up advice, education resources, and industry news and trends.

National Sales Office (NSO)

Native App: Mobile applications (apps) designed to run on a device’s operating system and machine firmware. These must be adapted for different devices.

Net Promoter Score (NPS): A customer loyalty metric introduced in 2003 by business writer Frederick F. Reichheld, a United States business author and business strategist. The NPS metric is meant to help determine customer loyalty ranging from detractors to promoters.

Non-Compensatory Decision Rules: A decision rule whereby cutoff levels are used to include or exclude brands where attributes don’t meet acceptable criteria.

O

Objection/Overcoming Objections: Point of resistance raised by a prospect, usually price (“It’s too expensive..”), but can be anything at any stage of the selling process. Overcoming objections is a revered and much-trained skill in the traditional selling process, but far less significant in modern selling. Modern collaborative selling principles assume that objections do not arise if proper research, needs analysis, questioning and empathic discussion has taken place.

Off-site optimization: where you make your site more relevant by methods that don’t involve you making changes to your site. Ex. Link building

Online behavioral advertising (OBA): based on the users inferred or declared interests from the cumulative browsing patterns across a variety of websites and pages.

Online Reputation Management (ORM): The practice of crafting strategies that shape or influence the public perception of an organization, individual or other entity on the Internet. It helps drive public opinion about a business and its products and services.

Online Travel Agency (OTA): Websites that provide online travel agency services by offering a wide range of hotel choices (usually thousands)using both wholesale and retail pricing models. Many OTAs were initiated as online only, but some also offer traditional offline service. Examples of popular OTAs are Expedia and Travelocity.

On-site optimization: where you make changed to your websites to tell search engine and users what your site is about, and make your site as relevant to your target market at possible.

Onward Distribution (ODD): The process of making hotel inventory, information, and rates available through the Internet’s travel Web sites. This may be done by providing information to a CRS or Switch, passing it along manually, or both. The wide range of travel Web sites throughout the Internet is sometimes referred to as “ADS” (alternative distribution system), an alternative to CRS and GDS systems.

Opaque Agency Packaging/Pricing: A business model used by some websites to sell discounted inventory without revealing the name of the hotel until after the purchase has been completed by the customer. Involves the customer committing to a purchase without knowing the brand or the specific prices of elements of a travel package.

Opaque Inventory: Inventory is called “opaque” because the specific supplier (i.e. hotel, airline, etc.) remains hidden until after the purchase has been completed to prevent sales of unsold inventory from cannibalizing full-price retail sales. The primary consumers of opaque inventories are price-conscious people who are less concerned with the specifics of their travel plans. Hotel discounts of 30-60% are typical, and bargains are stronger at a higher-star hotel.

The main sources are Hotwire.com (fixed price model) and Priceline.com (bidding model), but Travelocity.com, Expedia.com, and MakeMyTrip have also recently added opaque booking options to their sites.

OpenID: A single sign-on system that allows Internet users to log on to many different websites using a single digital identity, eliminating the need for a different username and password for each site. OpenID is a decentralized, free, and open standard that lets users control the amount of personal information they provide.

OpenTravel Alliance: An organization of travel companies that are developing standard XML messages to exchange traveler information among travel partners, including hotels, car rental companies, airlines, railways, cruise lines, travel agencies, and distributors. Functions include search, availability, pricing and rates, reservations and booking, modifications, cancellations, itinerary, and content distribution, among others. These messages take the place of proprietary messages and can be re-used, speeding time to market for new distribution partners and new distribution products.

Open Rate: A metric used to show the percentage of promotional email messages opened by recipients relative to the number emailed out. The difference is generally accounted for by “bouncebacks” or bad addresses that do not reach anyone and return to the sender, along with those that are deleted by the recipient.

Opportunity: Though every company has different processes for defining what criteria make someone an opportunity, it’s basically when a qualified lead is being worked by Sales.

Owned Media: Any web property that you can control and is unique to your brand.

P

Pain Point: A prospect’s pain point, or need, is the most important thing for a sales rep to identify in the selling process. Without knowing a prospect’s pain points, they can’t possibly offer benefits to help resolve those pain points.

PageRank: A Google-trademarked analysis algorithm that forms the basis for the Google search engine. It assigns a numerical weight to each element of a hyperlinked set of documents with the purpose of “measuring” its relative importance within the set.

Page Tags: A type of tracking file that uses JavaScript to capture information about a Web site visitor’s browser and the pages the user requests. Results are packaged into a small gif image as a tracking file that replaces or complements system usage tracked with log files. (See also: log files.)

Page Views: Unlike hits, which measure parts of a page, page views are metrics that measure the full page seen by a Web site visitor. One page view means one person seeing one complete page of a Web site. If a visitor spends time on a Web site and looks at ten different pages, that would be measured as ten page views. (See also: hits.)

Pay Per Click (PPC): Tactic used when a marketer establishes links or advertising copy on a Webpage and agrees to pay a fee (usually from $.05 to $5.00) each time a website visitor clicks on the link or ad., the link or ad only appears on a page in response to a particular keyword entered into a search engine, so different keywords result in different content, depending on their popularity. (See also: SEO.)

Perceptual Mapping: A research process consisting of the mapping of consumer perceptions of competing brands along relevant product attributes. Most usually done using 2 most important dimensions.

Property Management System (PMS): Used on-site at a hotel to allow guest check-in and check-out. PMS varies, but most have functionality for room inventory tracking, assignment of rooms, generating guest billing, flagging rooms that are not available, making within-property reservations, and guest messaging.

Prospecting: The process of searching for and finding potential buyers. Sales reps (or “prospectors”) seek out qualified prospects and move them through the sales cycle.

Proximity marketing: marketing to those prospects that are near your location.

Public Service Announcement (PSA): Messages in the public interest disseminated by the media without charge, with the objective of raising awareness, changing public attitudes and behavior towards a social issue.

Q

QR Codes: The trademark for a type of matrix barcode (or two-dimensional code). The code consists of black modules (square dots) arranged in a square pattern on a white background. The information encoded can be made up of four standardized kinds (“modes”) of data (numeric, alphanumeric, byte or binary, and Kanji), or through supported extensions, of virtually any kind of data.

Quality score: variable used by Google that influence the rank and CPC of ads.

R

Rate Integrity: The consistency of rates offered and promoted between systems, such that the same rate and availability options are displayed in all systems connected to the CRS. This is a technical and management concern designed to ensure that each distribution system is working with the same formulas and following the same revenue management guidelines to respond to user queries, whether for a hotel or chain Web site, a third-party Web site, a CRS call center, or an individual hotel.

Rate Parity: The strategy of maintaining consistent rates among sales channels. Rate parity is usually enforced through contractual agreements between suppliers and the third-party vendors who sell inventory, to ensure that the rates available for any given time period are consistent. The goal of rate parity is to reduce channel conflict that arises when a supplier and a distributor compete on deals offered to customers for a given time period, and to ensure that rates are consistent in the eyes of the consumer.

Real Estate Investment Trust (REIT): Company that owns, and in most cases, operates income-producing real estate. REITs own many types of commercial real estate, ranging from office and apartment buildings to hospitals, shopping centers, hotels.

Real Simple Syndication (RSS): Procedures that allow consumers to designate what news or information they want sent to them; the information appears on their browsers rather than via email or as a result of clicking a specific news section of a Web site. A user signs up or opts in for specific categories of information, and when that information is updated or new information is available, it is automatically delivered to interested readers. Users often have to load RSS feeders on their Web browsers, after which the content appears when they sign on to their browsers. RSS is often used in place of email, which is hampered by spam filters and wholesale deletions.

Recency: A metric used to measure the value of specific consumers or segments of consumers based on how recently they have used or purchased a product or service. (See also: frequency, monetary value, LTV.)

Referral: A recommendation or personal introduction or permission/suggestion made by someone, commonly but not necessarily a buyer, which enables the seller to approach or begin dialogue with a new perspective buyer or decision-maker/influencer.

Referral Source: The last website a user visited prior to the current one. This might include a search engine, a directory, or another Web site that included a link or some other directive to send a user to another site.

Request For Proposal (RFP): Used in online channels to refer to booking group space or corporate rates. Group organizers communicate their needs to a list of hotels, with the expectation of receiving sales proposals. Used in the sales process hotel’s go through with corporate travel agencies to propose corporate rates.

Response Rate: The number of actions taken in response to a marketing campaign relative to the number of consumers who received the campaign message.

Responsive Web Design (RWD): a web design approach aimed at creating sites that provide easy reading and navigation experience with a minimum of resizing, panning and scrolling across a wide range of devices.

Retail Model: A pricing model used by online and offline travel agencies to sell hotel rates. The rates are provided by the hotel, and the hotel pays a commission on the sale, usually 10%.

Retention Tactics: Marketing methods used to keep existing customers.

Return On Ad Spends (ROAS): measures how profitable the advertising is; also called ROI.

Return on Engagement (ROE): Measures the impact of various marketing activities, including evolving media, that increase, in some measurable, way the level of attachment that a particular marketing activity has on a brand’s customers. That attachment includes both the number of customers impacted and how they customers are engaged with the brand. Measures of the number of additional engaged customers from a marketing activity might include an increase in the number of new customers visiting a hotel brand website or calling the reservations center. The level of engagement might be how long they stay on the site, how often they return, whether they make a booking, if they join the loyalty program, and/or if they post a review after they stay. Corollary of ROI.

Return on Investment (ROI): Typically considered in financial analysis as profits produced in relation to capital invested. In the context of evolving media for hospitality, ROI is often determined by the incremental revenue contribution from media expenditure like a search engine keyword purchase. In this case the ROI is determined by net value of incremental revenue generated by the media purchase less the variable cost of producing that revenue, including the media cost.

Revenue Management: The science of managing room inventory and rates to optimize hotel revenue, given the constraints of competitive supply in the marketplace and the flow of demand at different rate levels.

Revenue Management System (RMS)

Revenue Per Available Customer (RevPAC): Calculated to gauge how much revenue each customer generates in-house at any given time. This is meant to assess how well a hotel sold room rate as well as ancillary revenue generators.

Revenue Per Available Room (RevPAR): Metric used to assess how well a hotel has managed its inventory and rates to optimize revenue. (Occupancy x ADR) or (Revenue ÷ Total Number of Rooms).

Revenue Per Available Seat per Hour (RevPash): Metric used to assess how well a restaurant has managed its inventory and rates to optimize revenue. (Total revenue) ÷ (Available Seats x Hours).

S

Sales Cycle: Describes the time and/or process between first contact with the customer to when the sale is made. Sales Cycle times and processes vary enormously depending on the company, type of business (product/service), the effectiveness of the sales process, the market and the particular situation applying to the customer at the time of the inquiry. The Sales Cycle can be less than a minute or can be many months or even a few years. A typical Sales Cycle for a moderately complex product might be:

1. lead generated
2. qualify lead
3. arrange appointment
4. customer appointment with questions
5. verify depth of problems and consequences
6. presentation of proposal
7. close sale

Sales Funnel: Describes the pattern, plan or actual achievement of conversion of prospects into sales, pre-inquiry and then through the sales cycle. So-called because it includes the conversion ratio at each stage of the sales cycle, which has a funneling effect. Prospects are said to be fed into the top of the funnel, and converted sales drop out at the bottom. The extent of conversion success (ie the tightness of each ratio) reflects the quality of prospects fed into the top, and the sales skill at each conversion stage. The Sales Funnel is a very powerful sales planning and sales management tool.

Satellite Media Tour (SMT): A technique used by corporations (primarily) to provide an “expert” of their choosing to local television news broadcasts for often-live interaction, with the goal of getting out a specific message.

Search Engines: Web sites such as Yahoo, Google, and Bing that help users find information online when the user enters keywords (to form queries) and reviews the summarized lists of information returned in response. Usually the results from a search-engine query refer to the information sources, most often Web sites, that a visitor can contact to get more information.

Search Engine Advertising (SEA): includes display advertising, paid advertising, search engine marketing.

Search Engine Marketing (SEM): Search-engine marketing. A form of Internet marketing that seeks to promote websites by increasing their visibility in search-engine result pages (SERPs). SEM methods include search engine optimization (or SEO), paid placement, and paid inclusion.

Search Engine Optimization (SEO): The process marketers use to gain prominence in the listings from query returns (entered as keywords). “Organic” or “natural” SEO is a Web site’s efforts to be ranked high on a listing by virtue of appropriate copywriting and links from and to relevant and complementary sites. There is also a form of SEO marketing (PPC) in which a Web site pays for a prominent listing in response to a specific keyword.

Search Engine Results Page (SERP): The listing of Web pages returned by a search engine in response to a query. The results normally include a list of Web pages with titles, a link to the page, and a short description showing where the keywords have matched content within the page.

Segmentation: A method used by marketers to stratify prospective or existing customers into meaningful groupings for the purposes of targeted communications or product or service development.

Segmentation, Targeting, Positioning (STP)

Semantic Search: Seeks to improve search accuracy by understanding the searcher’s intent and the contextual meaning of terms as they appear in the searchable data space, to generate more relevant results. Rather than using ranking algorithms such as Google’s Page Rank to predict relevancy, semantic search uses semantics, or the science of meaning in language, to produce highly relevant search results. In most cases, the goal is to deliver the information queried by a user rather than have a user sort through a list of loosely related keyword results.

Share of Voice: the number of mentions of your brand versus competing brands on the social web. (HSMAI)

Shared Economy: The new economy where peers can share access.

SMS: Short message service. The system that text messaging uses. Text messages are sometimes called “SMS.”

Smith Travel Research (STR): American company that tracks supply and demand data for multiple market sectors, including the global hotel industry.

Social, Location, Mobile (SoLoMo): A phrase that refers to the intersection of social interaction among guests, location-based service offerings and experience enhancements, and the ability to communicate in a networked way with mobile devices.

Social, Military, Economic, Religious Fraternal (SMERF): An acronym indicating a market segment for the sales of banqueting rooms and meeting facilities.

Social Media: Internet-based and mobile applications used for social interaction and the exchange of user-generated content, most often among users of a social network site such as Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, and foursquare; also content sites such as YouTube and Flickr, and review sites, blogs, and forums.

Social Network: A social structure made up of individuals or organizations that are tied by one or more specific types of interdependency, such as values, vision, interests, financial exchange, friendship, likes or dislikes, trade, and personal relations.

Social Networking Sites: Online Web sites where users create profiles for themselves and then socialize with others using a range of social media tools such as blogs, videos, images, tagging, forums, and messaging, among others.

Social Search: Social search takes many forms, ranging from shared bookmarks or tagging of content with descriptive labels to more sophisticated approaches that combine human intelligence with computer algorithms. Social search affects the relevance of search results by considering the interactions or contributions of users.

Social (filtered) Search: Social search or a social search engine is a type of web search that takes into account the Social Graph of the person initiating the search query. When applied to web search this Social-Graph approach to relevance is in contrast to established algorithmic or machine-based approaches where relevance is determined by analyzing the text of each document or the link structure of the documents.

Soft Hotel Brand: Brands that provide marketing, sales, and reservations support to independent hotels and small chains so they gain the sales and marketing capabilities of larger chains but retain their management independence. Soft brands do not have ownership or management agreements with their hotels, and the hotels do not take on the name of the soft brand, except as part of the reservation network. (ex: Preferred Hotels, Leading Hotels of the World, and Historic Hotels of America).

South American Hotel & Tourism Investment Conference (SAHIC): An annual event of international level aimed at promoting the Hotel and Tourism business and related Real-Estate industry projects in the region.

Standard Operating Procedure (SOP): Set of written instructions that document a routine or repetitive activity followed by a Hotel. Helps in maintaining quality and consistency of service and standard’s in your hotel. The development and use of SOPs are an integral part of a successful quality system as it provides individuals with the information to perform a job properly, and facilitates consistency in the quality and integrity of a product.

STAR Report (STR): STR is the leading global provider of competitive benchmarking, information services and research to the hotel industry. Empowers hoteliers, as well as third-parties affiliated with the hotel industry, to make sound decisions by providing actionable performance data.

Strategic Business Unit (SBU): Relatively autonomous division of a large company that operates as an independent enterprise, with responsibility for a particular range of products or activities (ex: a spa in a hotel).

Strengths, Weakness, Opportunity, Threats (SWOT): Summary of internal and external factors affecting an organization in preparation for marketing planning.

Subculture: distinct groups within a larger culture that exhibit and preserve distinct cultural identities through a common religion, nationality, ethnic background or lifestyle

Subject Search: A query made of a search engine about a subject, such as travel, hotel options in Cancun, or Vietnamese restaurants in New York City.

Sub-Saharan Africa (SSA): Hotel development is increasing – IMF forecasts that economic growth will be higher in Africa than Asia over the next five years as Middle Eastern hotel chains are looking to expand west. http://www.hoteliermiddleeast.com/20349-news-analysis-targeting-sub-saharan-africa/

Switch Services: The two services in hospitality (for example, Pegasus) that create a connection between CRSs and outside systems, including GDSs, online travel agencies, and other third-party Web sites and services so individual hotels and hotel chains do not each have to create their own connection (or interface) to these other sites to receive reservations and to maintain hotel information, inventory, and rates.

T

Tag: A keyword or term associated with or assigned to a piece of information (picture, geographic map, blog entry, video clip, etc.), thereby describing the item and enabling keyword-based classification and search of information.

Third Party Intermediaries (TPI): The intermediary acts as a conduit for goods or services offered by a supplier to a consumer. Ex: OpenTable, OTA’s.

Time-based targeting: showing an ad to visitors only on certain days of the week or times of the day (also known as day parting).

Time Frame (Unique Visitors): A key component applied to online statistics to indicate the amount of time represented by the metric. (ex: unique visitors can be counted for each 24-hour period or on a weekly basis).

Top Exit Page: The Web page identified as the one most commonly visited last by the most users.

Traffic: The volume of visitors or visits to a Web page.

Trailing Indicators: The online metrics that describe historical or past behavior or performance. (See also: leading indicators.)

Travel Management Company (TMC): Travel management company. A company that handles corporate accounts for booking, cost tracking, and policy compliance.

Trusted Network: A specific social network that contains individuals who have various levels of shared values and opinions.

U

Unique Selling Proposition (USP): A factor that differentiates a product from its competitors, such as the lowest cost, the highest quality or the first-ever product of its kind.

Unique User Identification: A code or password associated with a person who visits a Web site, to identify that person distinctly from another person who visits.

Unique Visitor: Each person going to a Web site in a given time frame. They are unique when there is a system to avoid counting the same person twice.

URL: A Web site address. Usually in a form such as this: www.somecompany.com.

User Experience Design (UXD): Taking a holistic approach making sure to cover all touch points

User Generated Content (UGC): Any form of content such as blogs, wikis, discussion forums, posts, chats, tweets, podcasts, digital images, video, audio files, advertisements and other forms of media that was created by users of an online system or service, often made available via social media websites (ex: TripAdvisor, Yelp).

V

Value Proposition: “Value prop” for short. A benefit of a product or company intended to make it more attractive to potential buyers and differentiates it from competitors.

Vertical Marketing Systems (VMS): One in which the main members of a distribution channel—producer, wholesaler, and retailer—work together as a unified group in order to meet consumer needs.

Vertical Search: A vertical search engine, as distinct from a general web search, focuses on a specific segment of online content. The vertical content area may be based on topicality, media type, or genre of content. There are also vertical search engines such as Bing and Yelp. In contrast to general Web search engines, which attempt to index large portions of the World Wide Web using a web crawler, vertical search engines typically use a focused crawler that attempts to index only Web pages that are relevant to a pre-defined topic or set of topics such as travel or hotels.

Viral Marketing: a video or an ad or another type of message goes viral when it gains a large audience through people sending it to others online

Visiting Friends & Relatives (VFR): Form of travel involving a visit whereby either (or both) the purpose of the trip or the type of accommodation involves visiting friends and / or relatives.

Visitor: A person who enters a Web site. Visitors are counted when they open the first page of the site.

W

Wearable: Technology you can wear (ex: FitBit, Apple Watch).

Web App: An application for a mobile device in which the software is downloaded from the Web each time it is run on the mobile browser.

Web 2.0: The use of the Web network as an online platform to allow greater interaction among users through an “architecture of participation”—as websites are used, users improve them through added, enriched, or modified content. Web 2.0 goes beyond the “page” metaphor (referring to Web pages) of Web 1.0 to deliver richer user experiences.

White Hat Optimization: any optimization technique that is recommended and approved by search engines, and does not involve any form of deception. (HSMAI study guide)

Widgets: Small utilities, such as “plug-ins” (often using JavaScript or Flash), that can be installed on any HTML Web page without further complications or processing. Widgets appear on a user’s desktop, allowing certain functions to be performed, such as subscribing to a feed or making a donation. Widgets offer functionality and ease of use. They are distributable Web media that lend themselves to the need for Web users to be transported between devices and to perform actions on smaller mobile devices.

Wiki: A collaborative website that is open to anyone, with or without programming skills, for editing, additions, or updating. A wiki is unusual in that it allows the content and the organization of contributions to be edited. Typically, changes are made in small increments, but there is a high volume of changes. The only quality control on wiki sites is through observation by the user community, and there is no official screening for inaccuracies. “Wiki” is the Hawaiian word for “quick”; the term was first used in 1995 by software engineers at the Portland Patterns Repository. The term later entered widespread use when Wikipedia began to create the first user-generated encyclopedia.

Word Of Mouth (WOM): People telling other people about an organization, brand, a product, or marketing message.

X

XML (eXtensible Markup Language): The language that facilitates the sharing of data across different information systems, usually via the Internet.