Cape Town based digital strategy firm Britefire is rolling out a series of courses to help hotels and tourism operators ramp up their success in online marketing. The courses are being run by Karen Parkin, till recently the project manager behind Marriott International’s phenomenal e-commerce success in globalisation. In less than two years, Marriott went from a minimal online presence to taking more than $10 million dollars a day in online revenues for its 2,800 hotels in 20 countries.Speaking at Indaba, Karen said “With seven out of ten trips researched online and half of all travel now booked online, travel is now emphatically an internet-based market. It’s a very crowded space where it is hard for individual hotels to stand out from the herd if – like most South African hotels – they are still using passive online brochure-ware of the “web 1.0” era. The local tourism industry is long overdue for the kind of boost that strategic web marketing will bring. But to date it has been hard for hotels or tour operators to gain the e-business skills and insights needed to forge ahead with confidence. That’s about to change.”Britefire’s “E-hotelier: The Master Class in Hotel E-marketing” courses will be run in Cape Town and Johannesburg, and focus on the essential knowledge and skills for success online: e-marketing strategy, website design, search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, online advertising and PR. The courses also teach hoteliers how to use web analytics for tracking and improving the performance of their e-marketing initiatives, and the very latest on “travel 2.0”. A one-day seminar, “Be Brilliant @ Marketing Your B&B Online,” that is specifically developed for small hotels and B&Bs will be run at various locations around the country. Details are available on Britefire’s website at www.britefire.co.za/hotels .Contact details:Karen Parkin, Vice PresidentCell: 076-970-1153karen.parkin@britefire.comAbout Britefire:Britefire (Pty) Ltd. (www.britefire.co.za) is a digital strategy firm dedicated to marketing innovation and performance improvement. We provide consulting, training and project management services that help people develop and sustain successful commercial relationships with online markets.