Minute 6 — Ed starts discussing Flip.to and its history. Flip.to is a marketing platform for hotels helps hotels reach guests organically  by following paths of the individuals that are similar to those who have experienced the hotel. then bring the guests down compelling conversation paths and conversion funnels. social experiences site experiences, email communication, web experiences.. engaging guests with the hotel and hen sharing it with their friends.

Minute 11 — Guests by themselves do not have a lot of reach but together there extremely  powerful  16% on average guests share, with the average guest having about 300 friends total guests 200 to 300 people that’s 100,000 of thousands of people reached Facebook also features friends and family posts more than business posts that mean’s that more than 35% more is seen by friends.

Minute 14 — developing ‘warm leads’ and bring the guests interest down the conversion funnel.

Minute 16 — Robert asks to define ROI Ed referred to targeting a 20:1 return Mega rests are best at 40:1 and more — ROI tracking is not based on Impressions reach / — direct unique visits to website / a value of warm lead – lifetime value then cut in half and then the revenue value of the room sales.

Minute 19 – Ed – ‘a trip is not real till you share it with someone’ — you either have to tell someone or want to tell someone — all in response to the question of the humble beginnings of Flip.to from a social broadcasting of a booking to the vanguard of thought leadership on the effective use of social for hospitality marketing

Minute 20 — Ed brings us through the evolution of Flip.to’s roadmap and the creation of proper legally useable content generated by guests.

Minute 25 — Tim Peters joins and we discuss the value of gasification of content and the guest content being promoted by the guest themselves their friends for  up to 90 days.

Minute 27 — discusses the slow growth development of engagement via voting contests of content 100 guests invited, you get 12 full stories of content to share. Keep in a constant touch with advocates not just blast emails but keep in an appropriate constant contact as advocates tailored to just them.

Minute 29 — Who is not a good customer for Flip.to? — “Photo Advocacy”— it’s not about the building but what people do with what you have — the bike story, guests use your property in ways that you never imagined, inspiring the staff of the hotel to see ways to promote their property they never would have thought of, the cabana story.

Minute 32 — Social platforms are a distribution platform — they distribute inspiration — Edward St Onge

Minute 34 — Tech Crunch refers to the fact that organic-rich for pages under 20K will go to zero by the end of the year people like 50% more pages than they did last year at any time 1500 items can be on your newsfeed but only 300 are allowed by Facebook most of that is Friends and family the remaining scraps are pages that you liked and made post performance that made it worthy to be added to your newsfeed.They want ads in front of you but only what you want in front of you, then you have newsfeed in there because they are being shared and liked by your friends and that diminishes the opportunity for organic reach by pages.

Minute 37 — Chain of trust that you follow to continue engagement on social. for every guest share 10 unique visitors back, every unique visit back over 10% signed up as a ‘warm lead’ then each warm lead around 42 day’s is a 3% conversion.

Minute 40 — To vet a potential client they need to know what their direct channel bookings are to know what audience they can reach —not many hotels know who to get where they want to be — Tim

Minute 43 — Flip.to is a platform that introduces you to a new strategy. — on-boarding starts after 90 days of it already operating (post 50K ft view)

Minute 49 — Social media is still the cheapest form of advertising when you see the action button as ‘book now ‘and ‘check rates’ no hotel has earned that call to action yet in a social environment better to say, ‘continue the story’

Minute 52 — How do you market your hotel’s unique value? allow the consumer to share it through the lens of their own experiences — ed “Heres what people do when they stay here” you need people on your site, and guest writings are not perfect.

Minute 54 —  The legal process Flip.to handles

Minute 59 — Announcing the 24/7 live show review of the direct channel value you are getting to your site (Loren steps out)

Minute 64 — AirB&B discussion about guest stories, one host compared to a team at a hotel. they have no local employees, so they are not local, they have no stories they simply share their guests stories.

Minute 69 — Hotelier hotels are better to stay at than investment hotels. — Ed

Minute 77 –- Tim- a true platform is one that allows you to do what you do without the constraints of the process of the platform. Others think a platform is a process that has to be followed.

Minute 80 — What is the cost of Flip.to? — $300 a month up to 89 rooms / Big mega hotel in las vegas $3,000 a month  average hotel about $400-500 a month about the cost of two room nights plus set up fee — “ROI above a certain cost base still does not matter”. no direct competitors. Hubspot marketo as a subset.

Minute 85 — Flip.to’s long-term roadmap is to make booking direct with the hotel the most compelling option for any guest.

Minute 88 — Flip.to’s value propositions – guests satisfaction / guest relationships / content / understanding of data / Guest reviews / guest interaction / Direct bookings

Minute 98 — Ed concludes his overview of Flip.to and leaves the session.

Minute 100 — News item Uber losses 1.2 billion $ YTD 75 cents of every dollar goes to the drivers. but by 2021 most major car manufacturers will have autonomous cars as fleets of service.

Minute 107 — the transition of self-driving cars as a transition of technology.

Minute 120 — how we are transitioning to a service side economy

Minute 124 — Who gains from globalization

Minute 125 — population discussion versus employment and its impact on the intent of tech use going into the future

Minute 130 — Open discussion of AirB&B and its lantern impact.