Starwood is to debut new guestroom designs at its Westin and Sheraton hotels.The new room schemes, from furniture to textiles, were custom-created by Starwood's in-house Brand Design team led by Erin Hoover, Vice President of Design. With a background in fashion, fine art and industrial design, the team applied key learning's from extensive in-room behavior research which indicated a desire for a greater level of stylish functionality - resulting in design specifically targeted to address some of traveler's biggest pet peeves. The new room designs will be featured in new hotels and renovation projects globally across both brands.Key highlights include:- Custom Westin-designed accent table that folds out to fit a room-service tray or laptop, and folds closed to occupy a smaller space. With a quick flip the multi-use table can serve as a working area for an impromptu laptop session or transform into an intimate table for in-room dining.- Custom Sheraton-designed bedside tables with built-in outlets that face beds, facilitating easy computer and electronics charging use.- Expanded Westin closet includes shelves and the mini bar, freeing valuable room space and reducing clutter.- Westin upholstered bench that can double as a luggage rack and is easily stored under the television console and oversized signature Sheraton armchairs with ottomans stored beneath seats, creating additional living area space.- Sheraton rooms feature an LED nightlight, allowing guests to find their way in an unfamiliar space without turning on the lights and the new Westin rooms incorporate strategically-placed, adjustable LED reading lights in the headboard.Westin's two new room designs - Westin Classic and Westin Modern - represent a 60% growth in sustainability, utilizing eco-friendly materials such as energy-conserving LED and CFL lights, water conserving low flow plumbing and recycle-able carpet pads, low VOC finishes for casegoods and GreenGuard certified solar shades.With new builds comprising 95% of the hotels in Westin's pipeline, the new room designs will play a pivotal role in reinforcing the brand's identity and wellness strategy.For the Sheraton brand's two new designs - Sheraton Revival and Sheraton Heritage - also feature eco-friendly materials including CFL lighting features and low-flow plumbing. Gallery-framed artwork is thoughtfully arranged in vignettes to convey a residential feel.The first Westin hotels to showcase the new room designs will be the Westin Phoenix, which is scheduled to open February 2011; and the Westin Gaslamp Quarter in San Diego, which will complete a full renovation including rooms in early 2011.The first Sheraton hotels to feature the new room design are the Sheraton Red Deer in Alberta Canada and the Sheraton Syracuse University Hotel & Conference Center which are scheduled to be renovated in early 2011.
See other recent news regarding: Airlines, Airports, Awards, Flights, Codeshare, Lounges, First Class, Business Class, MICE, GDS, Rewards, Miles, Hotels, Apartments, Promotions, Spas, Yoga, Retreat, New Hotels, Traffic, Visitor Arrivals, Cruises, Interviews, Free Deals, Videos, Starwood, Sheraton, Westin, Design
Sunday, May 1, 2011
Carlson Signs Two Hotels in India; Plans for 100+ by 2015
Carlson has plans to have more than 100 hotels in operation in India by 2015.The company, which opened three hotels in India in the first half of the year, is scheduled to open another five hotels by the year end and is planning to add at least 15 more hotels in 2011.Carlson, which is now one of India?s largest international hotel companies, has also just signed two new hotel agreements in west and south India for the 275-room Radisson Blu Hotel Mumbai Malad and the 110-room Park Plaza Coimbatore.Radisson Blu Hotel Mumbai MaladOwned by American Spring and Pressing Works Private Limited, construction of this US$ 52 million upper-upscale hotel will begin immediately, with the hotel expected to open in 2014.The 275-room property is located on Chunilal Girdharilal Marg off SV Road, one of the main roads connecting Mumbai city to the western suburbs, and near the city?s Central Business District area of Andheri East. It will feature contemporary rooms and include an all-day dining restaurant, two specialty food outlets, a tea lounge and a sprawling 10,000 square feet banquet and meeting facility.Park Plaza CoimbatoreOwned by Sabari Inn Private Limited, the US$ 15 million hotel is scheduled to open next year.Only four kilometres from the Coimbatore International Airport, it will feature four suites, 14 deluxe and 92 executive rooms.Food and beverage options will include a restaurant, coffee shop, rooftop restaurant and bar. There will also be two banquet halls that can accommodate up to 500 guests each, as well as two board rooms seating up to 40 people.
See other recent news regarding: Airlines, Airports, Awards, Flights, Codeshare, Lounges, First Class, Business Class, MICE, GDS, Rewards, Miles, Hotels, Apartments, Promotions, Spas, Yoga, Retreat, New Hotels, Traffic, Visitor Arrivals, Cruises, Interviews, Free Deals, Videos, Carlson, Radisson, India, Mumbai, Coimbatore
See other recent news regarding: Airlines, Airports, Awards, Flights, Codeshare, Lounges, First Class, Business Class, MICE, GDS, Rewards, Miles, Hotels, Apartments, Promotions, Spas, Yoga, Retreat, New Hotels, Traffic, Visitor Arrivals, Cruises, Interviews, Free Deals, Videos, Carlson, Radisson, India, Mumbai, Coimbatore
Why Multiple Domains are Mostly Bad for SEO
It happens all the time, and causes me to scratch my head in complete confusion every time: Someone I’m working with on SEO will own multiple domains for the same business. I don’t mean that they have a couple related domains, I mean the same business and same offerings or services on more than one domain.
I usually find out about these domains in one of two ways: I find them through poking around and investigating the site (and the client usually acts like it’s some sort of dirty secret), or, they come to me about the domains and want more than one site to show up at the top of the search results.
I’ll be honest, I’m not usually a happy camper when I get this news; mostly because the secondary domains tend to have duplicate content (if you’re not aware, duplicate content is a bad thing). That being said, however, there is such thing as effectively using multiple domains (although I don’t recommend it). There are two main tactics commonly employed with owning multiple domains. Keep in mind that I’m going to keep an SEO perspective on these and only lightly touch on other marketing sectors.
Some businesses are worried that competitors will buy keyword oriented domains thereby pushing their own site into obscurity. This can lead to a panic shopping spree of domains. The idea is that as long as they own the available domains, there is less chance of a competitor beating them in the rankings. While there is some merit to this tactic, it will have no effect on your SEO at all. Nor do I believe that it will really have much effect in blocking out your competitors. You can’t think of all the domain variations and buy them all, and if you buy too many, it can get expensive just to maintain them. Any competitor can rank better by offering better content and getting more links regardless of domain name.
As a side note, if you do this tactic, you had better make sure that all of your domains are redirected toward your main domain using a 301 redirect.
In buying multiple domains, some companies want to simply dominate the search results. Buy having multiple sites on the first page, you can get that much more traffic, right? In theory, yes, and it has on occasion happened. However, there are some fairly serious drawbacks to this:
Doesn’t work on brick-and-mortar stores — If you have a single physical location, it’s not a good idea to have multiple websites. You’ll confuse your visitors and customers, and I personally avoid having two websites with the same address. Google doesn’t want to have multiple sites from the same business (as it doesn’t provide good results) and I consider this to be one short step away from spam. Duplicate content woes — Because you can’t use the content from another site, you will have to write all new content. Considering how hard it is to write content for sites as it is, not to mention the allocation of resources to get it written, I wish luck to anyone writing content for a whole new site.Double branding all the way! — You have branding issues with two sites. Does one site become higher-end and the lower-end? Do you keep the prices the same? For that matter, what names are you even going to use on the site? If you have a phone number, how do you answer the phone? While there are certainly going to be exceptions (such as targeting different demographics), such a chaotic and divisive branding effort comes with a lot of risks and extra work.This is less of a tactic, and more of a “must do,” and is therefore my exception to multiple domains. It’s an exception because all of the problems above do not apply when you get into other countries. In fact, in order to have the best results in international SEO, you’ll need to have a country specific TLD (or top level domain). For example, if you’re doing business in England, you will have a hard time ranking without a .co.uk domain. You can still rank without a country level TLD, but it’s an uphill battle. And by uphill, I mean Rocky Mountains-type uphill.
One final (and big) point to that I would like to reiterate. If you really intend to own and run multiple domains and get these sites to show up in the search results, you will have to double your SEO work. There are no shortcuts, freebies, or quick rankings that you can get, even if you are already ranking well for your main domain. In fact, a new domain and site will be significantly harder to rank than a site that has history and some authority already built. I highly recommend that indented listings (or secondary pages for the same site showing up underneath the first main listing) be the primary goal before attempting to achieve multiple domains in the same search.
Tags: Multiple Domains, seo
An Over-Optimizing Nightmare: Staying Off Google’s Naughty List
Disclaimer: The below post illustrates a personal experience. The views and opinions expressed in this post do not necessarily reflect those of SEO.com or the work performed with their clients.
For the most part, link building is pretty straight forward and simple. You can publish your articles, request some directory listings, bookmark links, guest blog posts, request links from other webmasters or even purchase links if you’re feeling particularly rebellious. But keep in mind if you don’t have a strategy behind it, you might fall face-first into a ditch filled with sorrow and regret.
Many times so many of us start a website in hopes that in 5-6 months we might start seeing some decent cash rolling in. Because you need link building to attain those rankings, you need to make sure the links you’re acquiring match the progress that your website is currently at. Let me explain.
Most experienced search engine optimization professionals understand that you need a healthy balance of links. Building links in moderation and keeping a proper anchor text to non-anchor text ratio is crucial. If your entire backlink portfolio consists of anchor text links, it isn’t going to look natural to the search engines. Same can be said if everything is a directory link, bookmark link and especially a comment link.
If you are submitting articles, make sure that you are using your anchor text but also make sure that some of those links back to your site are strictly the URL or business name. If your site is brand new, the number of anchor text to branded links should probably be a 50:50 ratio so your backlinks don’t look unnatural.
However, the same cannot be said about large, established websites. Odds are that if your site has 40,000 backlinks, submitting higher ratio of anchor text links aren’t going to hurt you or your rankings. For example, if you pointed 1000+ spammy, anchor text filled comment links to YouTube, do you think it’s going to make a difference? On the other hand, if you did the same to a brand new site with no reputation or authority, you’ll probably get a penalty very quickly.
I’d like to share a personal experience with this. On one of my personal websites I wasn’t following my own advice. I got in the habit of submitting content using my anchor text. There was variation of the anchor text but I never threw in my URL to make it appear more natural.
For a couple months all I saw was an increase, and for two of my main keywords I even attained first page rankings. I was very happy and hopeful that this website might actually bring in some money. Then, on one fateful day, Google dropped the hammer…
As expected, I was very perturbed to say the least. After looking through my backlinks I found that I clearly wasn’t following best practice. I wasn’t building enough natural looking, credible links. Instead I got caught up in my fantastic rankings and continued submitting content, directories, bookmarks and other links using only my anchor text.
Because I was a new site with a limited online existence, building these links worked for almost two months, but it caught up with me. If I was a site with some authority and a very healthy, natural looking backlink portfolio, this probably wouldn’t have happened.
Just remember that the links that you are pointing back to your website need to vary when it comes to your anchor text and method of link being built. I think the same analogy (for the most part) applies to life, “too much or too little of anything, is a bad thing. Keep everything in moderation.”
Tags: Link Building
Few Brave SEOs Conquered ‘Movember’
To the chagrin of the rest of the office (and to their respective wives) seven of SEO.com’s best talent kept their upper lips away from the bite of a razor blade through Movember November — except for Christian. He’s the guy on the right with the weak-sauce ‘stache that he had to shave last week for some family photo. Seriously, priorities …
Anyway, the bold and brave souls called on their mustaches to power them for four weeks, and even made it through Thanksgiving without losing a turkey leg inside their grisly, nasty facial hair.
Nathan Blair (second photo down) won the Movember contest with his oily black handle bars. Cheers to you Nathan Blair, mustaches around the world are proud.
Tags: Movember
Why Multiple Domains are Mostly Bad for SEO
It happens all the time, and causes me to scratch my head in complete confusion every time: Someone I’m working with on SEO will own multiple domains for the same business. I don’t mean that they have a couple related domains, I mean the same business and same offerings or services on more than one domain.
I usually find out about these domains in one of two ways: I find them through poking around and investigating the site (and the client usually acts like it’s some sort of dirty secret), or, they come to me about the domains and want more than one site to show up at the top of the search results.
I’ll be honest, I’m not usually a happy camper when I get this news; mostly because the secondary domains tend to have duplicate content (if you’re not aware, duplicate content is a bad thing). That being said, however, there is such thing as effectively using multiple domains (although I don’t recommend it). There are two main tactics commonly employed with owning multiple domains. Keep in mind that I’m going to keep an SEO perspective on these and only lightly touch on other marketing sectors.
Some businesses are worried that competitors will buy keyword oriented domains thereby pushing their own site into obscurity. This can lead to a panic shopping spree of domains. The idea is that as long as they own the available domains, there is less chance of a competitor beating them in the rankings. While there is some merit to this tactic, it will have no effect on your SEO at all. Nor do I believe that it will really have much effect in blocking out your competitors. You can’t think of all the domain variations and buy them all, and if you buy too many, it can get expensive just to maintain them. Any competitor can rank better by offering better content and getting more links regardless of domain name.
As a side note, if you do this tactic, you had better make sure that all of your domains are redirected toward your main domain using a 301 redirect.
In buying multiple domains, some companies want to simply dominate the search results. Buy having multiple sites on the first page, you can get that much more traffic, right? In theory, yes, and it has on occasion happened. However, there are some fairly serious drawbacks to this:
Doesn’t work on brick-and-mortar stores — If you have a single physical location, it’s not a good idea to have multiple websites. You’ll confuse your visitors and customers, and I personally avoid having two websites with the same address. Google doesn’t want to have multiple sites from the same business (as it doesn’t provide good results) and I consider this to be one short step away from spam. Duplicate content woes — Because you can’t use the content from another site, you will have to write all new content. Considering how hard it is to write content for sites as it is, not to mention the allocation of resources to get it written, I wish luck to anyone writing content for a whole new site.Double branding all the way! — You have branding issues with two sites. Does one site become higher-end and the lower-end? Do you keep the prices the same? For that matter, what names are you even going to use on the site? If you have a phone number, how do you answer the phone? While there are certainly going to be exceptions (such as targeting different demographics), such a chaotic and divisive branding effort comes with a lot of risks and extra work.This is less of a tactic, and more of a “must do,” and is therefore my exception to multiple domains. It’s an exception because all of the problems above do not apply when you get into other countries. In fact, in order to have the best results in international SEO, you’ll need to have a country specific TLD (or top level domain). For example, if you’re doing business in England, you will have a hard time ranking without a .co.uk domain. You can still rank without a country level TLD, but it’s an uphill battle. And by uphill, I mean Rocky Mountains-type uphill.
One final (and big) point to that I would like to reiterate. If you really intend to own and run multiple domains and get these sites to show up in the search results, you will have to double your SEO work. There are no shortcuts, freebies, or quick rankings that you can get, even if you are already ranking well for your main domain. In fact, a new domain and site will be significantly harder to rank than a site that has history and some authority already built. I highly recommend that indented listings (or secondary pages for the same site showing up underneath the first main listing) be the primary goal before attempting to achieve multiple domains in the same search.
Tags: Multiple Domains, seo
Download the Mobile ITB Asia 2010 App for Free
Visitors to this year?s ITB Asia can download a free guide to the show on their mobile phones.The ITB Asia Mobile Guide includes a list of exhibitors, a floor plan and information on press conferences and sightseeing in Singapore. The mobile guide makes it easier for ITB Asia visitors to find their way around the Suntec Singapore International Convention and Exhibition Centre and also contains the programme of WIT-Web In Travel 2010, the Associations Day programme as well as a list of ITB Asia events, presentations and receptions.Plus this year, every exhibitor entry will have a direct link to the Virtual Market Place, so detailed information about every exhibitor is readily available and easy to access.At the end of each show day, the ITB Asia Mobile Guide can be used to find the best way around town offering ideas on where to enjoy Singapore?s nightlife. Restaurants and bars can be accessed along with tourist information, plus details about key attractions in the city. This clever system can be easily downloaded onto many commonly available mobile phones from www.itb-asia.com/mobile.The ITB Asia Mobile Guide will also be available as an internet based version to display additional features such as detailed hall plans, shortly before the show commences on 20 October 2010 at www.itb-asia.mobi.ITB Asia will take place at the Suntec Singapore Exhibition & Convention Centre, 20-22 October, 2010.It is important to note that while the mobile app is free, those downloading it may incur charges from their mobile phone operators or ISP depending on what package they have. Terms and conditions apply.
See other recent news regarding: Airlines, Airports, Awards, Flights, Codeshare, Lounges, First Class, Business Class, MICE, GDS, Rewards, Miles, Hotels, Apartments, Promotions, Spas, Yoga, Retreat, New Hotels, Traffic, Visitor Arrivals, Cruises, Interviews, Free Deals, Videos, ITB Asia, Singapore, Suntec, Travel Trade Shows, Mobile, App
See other recent news regarding: Airlines, Airports, Awards, Flights, Codeshare, Lounges, First Class, Business Class, MICE, GDS, Rewards, Miles, Hotels, Apartments, Promotions, Spas, Yoga, Retreat, New Hotels, Traffic, Visitor Arrivals, Cruises, Interviews, Free Deals, Videos, ITB Asia, Singapore, Suntec, Travel Trade Shows, Mobile, App
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)