In the spirit of making these reviews more interesting, I have developed a scale of greatness for the hospitality apps. Each app will be rated on three basic categories:  appearance, functionality and amount of information for guest. By creating a simple platform to evaluate the different apps, we will start to develop an understanding of makes a truly great app. Our scale of greatness will range from somewhat mediocre to awesome. The levels from worst to best are somewhat mediocre, a bit better, pretty good and awesome.

Now let’s move on to my thoughts on the Marriott app.

I will begin by introducing you to the opening page of the app.

I am not moved by the graphics but the color theme fits the brand. It offers you an easy to navigate menu at the bottom of the app where you can find a hotel, look up reservations, sign in to your Rewards account or more options.

Once you select your dates and location, you are presented with this menu. It is easy to navigate and I like that they can share new information such as “New Lobby”.

You can then select a hotel. I really like that each hotel has a photo gallery. This is a great selling feature as visuals are so important. Also, the hotel highlights provide pertinent information for the traveler.

Finally, we are to my favorite part of the app – the “More” menu.  I think this is a great idea as it sells the whole experience rather than just being a booking app. The guest can find important phone numbers and city guides. You can also provide feedback on the mobile app, helping Marriott to improve its service and making the guest feel important. Well done!

I would like to conclude with my ratings of this app on my newly developed scale of greatness.

Appearance – Pretty Good

Functionality – Pretty Good

Amount of information for guest – Awesome! – due to the City Guides!

Hopefully, you have found this review helpful. Stay tuned for more reviews. Please let us know if you have an app you would like us to review.

Take for example the most obvious place to start – Phone wide Twitter intergration. This will see more photos and other rich media tweeted by iPhone users making twitter a more valuable tool for digital marketers. It could also see a surge in Twitter sign ups as new iPhone users jump on the bandwagon.

However the biggest marketing challenge will be the new Notification Center that is visible on users lock screens. This update has come about because of the number of notifications iPhone users receive has ballooned over the last 12 months. This led to a number of complaints to Apple. The Notification Center has been built to remedy this.

The user can see all notifications in a single place via the Notification Center from the home screen or from any app by swiping down the status bar. When the user gets a new notification it will appear at the top of the screen rather than a popup. The lock screen also displays the notifications so you can respond to them quickly with a swipe of your finger. From a marketing standpoint this change certainly makes the iPhone a less useful tool. We can imagine that deal apps like Groupon and Living Social will suffer as their daily updates go unnoticed more often. Its worth keeping an eye(phone) on when the new OS and iPhone 5 is released.

That increased use has meant that we have seen QR codes out and about a lot more recently. Here’s what we’ve seen around over the last few weeks…

Caribou Coffee – Caribou are using QR codes as part of their “Stay Awake For Summer” ad campaign.

Firstly the good – QR codes are still relatively new to most of the general public. Therefore it’s vital that, for now, we explain to consumers what they are and how to scan them in a simple and concise way. Caribou have done a great job of this. They explained what was needed and where to get a free reader.

They also incentivized the marketing message giving the consumer a reason to use the QR code – “Sign up for more weekly summer savings”. Most consumers won’t scan the QR code just because it’s a cool new tool.

Now for the bad – This can’t be seen from our photo but the signs were placed in awful locations. The codes need to be easily accessible and in obvious places. Caribou started well by placing the signs on a few tables. However there were also signs behind the counter and on the wall behind tables (blocked by other customers). And they were the 2 most obvious in the store.

The Hilton, Hilton Head Island – Unfortunately this was ugly pretty much all round. The only positive we can give is that the QR Code was very obvious and stood out. Everything else was poor – No explanation of what it was, no incentive to scan, it didn’t offer a free reader and it was in a pretty odd location (down a hallway in the middle of the resort). The sign didn’t even look professional; it was pretty much just a print out stuck to the wall. All in all a very odd piece of marketing.

Old Navy – Hazaa! By far the best use of QR codes we have seen. The codes were used as part of a competition to win tickets to the MLB World Series. The execution was superb. Signage was in all the best locations – Front door, by checkout and by the changing rooms. Everywhere customers were likely to stop for a few moments there was a sign.

They explained the code well, they incentivized it and their mobile landing page was simple and easy to use. As a campaign for generating customer email addresses it was seamless from beginning to end.

Have you seen any good or bad uses of QR codes out and about recently? Comment below and let us know. And if you’re thinking about implementing them in your upcoming marketing efforts then get in touch. We’d love to have a chat about what can be done.

This new link building product is called Ontolo. What makes this product different from the past attempts is that they claim to spider 15,000+ websites on a monthly basis. The collection of these spidered sites are then stored in a searchable database.  The user of Ontolo will be able to access this database of possible links by entering relevant keywords that pertain to the theme of your website. What is also great about this tool is that it allows for searching for .gov and .edu backlinks. Either way a backlink tool such as this will help to speed up time when you are looking to build up the backlinks of a website. A word to the wise, this tool is designed to be used by intermediate to advanced SEO professional just because there is still some analysis that goes into building links.

So if you are looking for new way to build backlinks to your website, then I would check out Ontolo.