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Fornova gives hotels free tool to optimize content distribution
Fornova has developed a free tool to help hotels tackle content disparity - where a hotel’s inconsistent listings across internet databases can result in reduced online visibility and damaged credibility.
FornovaHL (Fornova Hotel Listings) is a secure, centralized, and easy to use tool that will enable hoteliers to automatically distribute or update their property’s profile and attributes on the most important online channels, including:
Google My Business; links the most popular search engine (86% global market share), the largest international business directory, the no 1 map and navigation app, and the leading hotel metasearch engine (commanding a 55% share of clicks and growing faster than any other meta).
Tripadvisor; the world’s largest dedicated travel platform with hundreds of millions of unique visitors every month, whose hotel metasearch engine comes second only to Google Hotel Ads in terms of traffic.
Trivago; a hotel and accommodation metasearch platform accessed globally via 54 localized websites and apps in 32 languages, which made 240m qualified referrals in 2020.
Facebook; the dominant online social media and social networking platform with 2.85b monthly active users worldwide.
Additionally, we are making a long-term commitment to continuously add more directories - always free of charge. For example; the remaining top global travel price comparison (metasearch) sites, the most well-known local directories and the major business data aggregators will be connected and integrated with FornovaHL over the coming months and years.
The unprecedented impact of the coronavirus pandemic has been deeply felt by the global hospitality industry. Travel restrictions resulted in the biggest drops in occupancy on record across all regions and recovery is proving to be slow. Without a chain’s distribution or a brand’s marketing to fall back on, many independent properties have struggled and some continue to do so. As part of Fornova’s ongoing commitment to supporting the hospitality industry’s recovery, FornovaHL is free to use for all independent hotels worldwide - and the same goes for the first hotel in any chain.
Drawing on Fornova’s experience as a Google Connectivity Partner and e-commerce solutions provider to internationally recognized brands, FornovaHL was developed to make it as quick and easy as possible for hotels to standardize and optimize their online presence and take control of their location marketing.
Dori Stein, Fornova’s CEO said “The global hospitality industry has been one of the sectors most affected by the pandemic. We wanted to actively give a leg up to hotels on their path to recovery and FornovaHL is part of that. Hoteliers already know they can count on Fornova to help them control their distribution, but as we look ahead, we recognized that protecting rate parity is only part of the picture; ensuring content parity is becoming equally important.
“Hundreds of millions of travellers around the world use Google Search or Google Maps, price comparison sites, Facebook and local directories to find accommodation online. Ensuring a hotel’s details are accurate and consistent when submitted to all of these platforms can make the difference between showing up on the first page of search results or not.
“Hotel owners and operators can now use FornovaHL as a one-stop solution to make sure their profile is consistent and data-rich on all these online marketing channels, while also freeing up time to focus on providing the best hospitality to their guests.”
It can take many hours of concentrated effort to fill in all fields and update each platform individually - especially if having to do it for multiple properties. Inaccurate directory listings can confuse or misdirect customers and negatively affect any business’s reputation, whereas each missing piece of information potentially represents another missed revenue opportunity. That’s why hoteliers can download their hotel’s profile from FornovaHL and use it across all of their channels, including any platform that we haven’t yet integrated with, ensuring details are always consistent and correct across the board.
Accurate and optimized local citations are proven to rank very high in search engine results pages (SERP) as well as in maps, and are also picked up by other platforms; they drive web traffic, increase awareness and inquiries, and facilitate conversion.
FornovaHL is the first and only business profile and location data management solution specifically designed and built for the hospitality industry. It not only distributes the property’s NAP (name, address and phone number) and photos, but it also allows hotels to take full advantage of all available category-specific profile features, e.g. to complete their amenities, customize their services, advertise activities, display health and safety measures or showcase enhanced cleaning protocols.
FornovaHL will cover at least 90% of the sites which generate demand - ensuring lodging providers leave nothing to chance in their online presence. They can quickly and easily determine which images and text their customers see and publish clean and consistent information across all platforms.
Omri Rothchild, Area General Manager at Studios2Let said “It is critical that the information about our properties is accurate and consistent across the many different search engines, maps, apps, social networks, voice assistants, and directories that our guests are using to search for us. FornovaHL has saved us time, by allowing us to automatically keep our local citations up to date using a single, intuitive, trusted interface, and it has also saved us hassle because it is so easy to use.”