Everplaces - Save and share places you love

Have you ever stayed in a cool or unique hotel or do you know of any in your city? A beautiful design hotel, a romantic escape, a place with extraordinary service, a room with great views, you name it. Share the most memorable place you have stayed at and enter our competition to win a EUR160 voucher for a free stay, in any city where Hotel Tonight is present.

All you need to do is add the hotel to Everplaces and share it with us. All entries should include images and notes explaining why they were a special/unique place to stay, and you can submit as many places as you know :)

We’ll be putting together a collection with unique places to stay around the world based on the best entries of the competition. 

Deadline is: Friday, June 27th. 

To enter the competition, you can post the link to your hotel on our Facebook page or send the link to Ani, our Community Manager, at [email protected] before June 27th. 

The winner will be announced by June 30th.

Looking forward to seeing all those beautiful places!

ADD A PLACE

The recent coup in Thailand has brought a question to many travel companies minds; how to we prepare for crisis management when an emergency effects a country we’ve got customers currently in. Whether you’re a hotel group, DMO or travel agency, you’ve got a duty to help people who happen to be in countries hit by natural disaster or political instability. But how do you do that? Mobile can help.  Speed of communication is of essence Mobile is an important tool in crisis management. When you’re trying to help customers left in a unsafe environment where they may feel stressed or even scared the speed of communication is important, that makes mobile communication the superior choice, because they will have their phones on them, whereas they may not access the internet, or check for messages at the front desk.   Direct notifications is most reliable form of communication The best way in a crisis is to use direct notifications directly to each traveler, this should be delivered via SMS, so you’re not reliant on wifi. You should set up a SMS gateway system in advance, so you’ve got a system ready to use in case of emergency. These systems are easy to set up, and typically charge by SMS sent, so it will be a limited expense to set it up, think if it as insurance.  Make them feel safe and supported Here you can give a quick message to let them know that they are not alone, you’re there to help, and link them directly to a page where they can find detailed information about how to get out of the place, the policies and all important phone numbers and addresses. Link to a fast-loading, preferable offline info page The emergency & policy info should ideally be put into your dedicated app, as it can then work offline once they’ve opened it the first time. If the situation develops into a real emergency its important that they always have the information at hand. Alternatively the SMS can link to a mobile optimized webpage, but this means they wont be able to access it without internet, so if they are on the move it will be hard to access.  Either way it is key that you build a page which loads as easily as technically possible, so no images, videos etc. This is important because the phone network is likely to be overburdened at the destination if everyone is trying to find out what to do.  Make sure you have a CMS where you can make fast changes Whether you choose to out the information in an app or mobile web page is it important that you have instant access to enter and publish the information. So choose an app/m.web set up which has a CMS system so you can add and update content it in fast and easily. For apps there are CMS systems (like Everplaces’) that allow updates to go directly to the users, by passing Apple and Google, so you don’t have to wait for an app update. As an app update can take up to 2 weeks to be approved, it goes without saying that this is of key importance. What ever you do, make sure you direct people to the exact page they need in case of an emergency, as they are likely to be stressed and impatient.  Steps to prepare 1 - Systematically collect phone numbers for customers 2 - Set up an SMS gateway 3 - Keep accurate track of the location of customers (by looking at the hotel for example), and the date on which they travel. This means we at any time can pull a list of effected customers and concentrate our communication only on them.  4 - Make sure you have either an app or m.web with a mobile web CMS where you can add and change info quickly 5 - Sit back and feel good knowing that you’re ready for the worst case scenario.  — Tine Thygesen CEO, Everplaces Don’t hesitate to contact us if we can help with your mobile requirements, whether they are for emergencies or good times.

In the recent Google Maps update a hard-to-spot new feature was included, which is in fact a huge step for the location-based vertical - commerce has come to maps!

The new version allows users to “Book Uber” (this is a taxi from the american taxi corp. of same name), from inside the navigations menu. This little button is a huge milestone, because it marks another shift in location-based technology. 

Why does it matter?

The last 5 years has seen a silent shift in the way we find information: from traditional information to map-based information.

It all started with “nearby”, the fact that the map opens in your current location, which your guide book (if traveling) or Yellow Pages (if at home) did not. This made it easier for consumers to find nearby services, restaurants and companies if they opened Google or Apple maps, than if they used the guide books, brochures and listing services previously favored. This started getting people to search directly inside the Map apps, rather than in the mobile browsers, because they would get better results as it would take location into consideration too. 

Since then, Google Maps in particular has continued to include a million small bits of information to each place, which totals to a gigantic improvement in usefulness. They’ve added opening hours, contact info, reviews, photos and descriptions of the places. Combined with the new trend that people travel less prepared this was a killer advantage compared to static form info.

And today, we’re seeing the next step for maps to step out of their supporting role, and into a lead role, because this is the first clear opportunity to start buying directly from the map interface.   

We’ve been talking about this in our talks at conference about travel and mobile, and you can see more of our predictions in our knowledge center.

More about the new features rolled out here

Context beats all, especially on mobile

Context and relevance is the new frontier in marketing, as you’ve probably already heard. And mobile has an amazing advantage when it comes to contextual search, because we automatically know more about the consumer than we do when they search on web, as an example

- your exact location
- time of day
- weather where you are

This enables us to offer more contextual and relevant offers (rather than generic spammy offers). With commerce in maps, you can easily imagine that we start linking our current needs to commerce; such as sunblock for beach goers, lunch offers at mid day, m-tickets if near an attraction. Anything which you can add the words “required right now” in front of, is a perfect option for contextual, map based commerce.  

It’s a brave new world. Of maps.