Group AFA based on Madeira island has published its new corporate website. The Group which began its activities on Madeira in 1980 has become one of the largest construction companies in Portugal, and a major player in Europe.

Today with a technical team of 840 specialists that operate in distinct areas of the construction industry, AFA is now preparing to expand even further and pioneer new and larger projects as it looks to new markets in its quest for globalization.

The new website has been carefully developed to act as a portal with complete information for the viewing public and with an intranet for the company employees.

CMS specialists ‘Navega Bem – Web Design‘ (also based in Madeira) were responsible for the design and programming of the multilingual site.
Chris Szabo, MD of Navega Bem explained “Grupo AFA is embracing the newest technological advances on the internet and this has helped us a great deal in developing the site which has been created with the Joomla CMS framework.
Having previously run a static website, the new AFA site allows the company to edit and manage their site without any external help or costs. This is a major advantage for any company that needs to remain highly competitive.”

Navega Bem are currently developing several other sites for the AFA Group and intend to publish 2 radio websites within the next month.

To learn more about Grupo AFA  – visit their new website at: www.afa.pt

Sequoia Consulting is synonymous with quality Real Estate and Property Consulting in the beautiful Canton of Ticino – Switzerland’s most southern Canton and famous for its Mediterranean lifestyle – focusing on elegant properties in the areas around Lake Maggiore, Lake Lugano and parts of Lake Como as well as many of Ticino’s beautiful valleys.

Sequoia Consulting have now launched their new Real Estate website which has been developed around the Joomla! CMS framework and incorporates a Real Estate component that is the product of Joomla! specialists ‘Navega Bem – Web Design’ based on Madeira Island, Portugal.

Lisete Gonçalves, Administrator of Navega Bem explained “with our ‘CMS Real Estate‘ component, you can run a multilingual CMS Real Estate Agency website that you can manage from anywhere in the world. All you need is an internet connection and a standard browser.

We provide a complete, ready to launch website that includes a unique design (we don’t use templates), initial search engine optimization and pre-launch marketing. All you have to do is add or import your properties and off you go. It’s that easy! And there are no license fees, no monthly fees, no maintenance fees or set-up fees.

The complete Property site is managed through just one back office! Our new Joomla 1.5 component (’CMS Real Estate‘) has been developed from the ground up with a complete new architecture and offers total management of the properties and the clients.

In just 1 hours online training with our remote software we can train you to confidently manage your complete website. We are Joomla specialists and our focus as developers is on user friendly and search engine friendly web sites that work.”

Visit the new Sequoia Consulting website here: www.ticinorealestate.ch

Homes Trading Real Estate have now launched their new property website, where you will find a wide-ranging selection of the finest properties in Madeira Island, Portugal. If you want to buy, sell or rent a luxurious villa, a stylish apartment or a cozy cottage, either facing the blue waters of the Atlantic Ocean or with a breathtaking panorama of the Madeira hills, take a look at the Homes Trading property portfolio.

Homes Trading can provide you with a varied real estate selection, from residential to commercial properties. They offer a fine selection of semi or detached houses, apartments and plots with many different features available for you to choose from, namely localization (urban or countryside, sea view and/or mountain view) and architecture (modern and/or traditional design).

The new Homes Trading – Real Estate website has been developed by CMS specialists Navega Bem – Web Design based on Madeira island, Portugal.

Chris Szabo, MD of Navega Bem explained “with our ‘CMS Real Estate‘ component, you can run a multilingual CMS Real Estate Agency website and manage it from anywhere in the world. All you need is an internet connection and a standard browser. Or an iPhone

Navega Bem provides a complete, ready to launch website that includes a unique design (we don’t use commercial templates), initial search engine optimization and pre-launch marketing. All a Real Estate Agent has to do is add or import its properties and off they go. It’s that easy! And there are no license fees, no monthly fees, no maintenance fees or set-up fees.

The complete Real Estate web site is managed through just one back office! Our Joomla 1.5 component (’CMS Real Estate‘) has been developed from the ground up with a complete new architecture and offers total management of the properties and the clients. A version for Joomla 1.6 and Drupal is under development. The sites provides the total management of properties and clients.

In just 1 hours online training with our remote software we train our clients to confidently manage their complete website. We are Joomla specialists and our focus as developers is always on user friendly and search engine friendly web sites that bring exceptional results.”

Visit the new Homes Trading website here: www.homes-trading.com

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Visit our the Navega Bem website and see for yourself that you really can achieve success in 2010

The Hotel Royal Orchid is a 4 star hotel, is situated on the sunny south coast of Madeira Island, on the touristic area of Caniço de Baixo. Strategically positioned on the seafront, the Hotel presents its guests with a magnificent panoramic view over the Atlantic Ocean.

The Royal Orchid is the ideal place for relaxing holidays away from the daily bustle of Funchal, the Madeiran capital.

The stylish new website for Hotel Royal Orchid has been developed by Hotel web design specialists ‘Navega Bem – Web Design‘ – based in Funchal, Madeira.

Chris Szabo, MD and Creative Director explained “Royal Orchid is one of Madeira islands most popular Caniço located hotels. It is very fashionable with the more sophisticated tourists in the middle-age group. The hotel offers a vast array of facilities and is very much in demand by diving enthusiasts. Also very popular is the amazing Nautilus Health Club.”

“We have developed the site to reflect the stylish hotel and the programming is based around Joomla 1.5 – the award winning CMS (content management system). This will allow the hotel to manage the site themselves very easily and without the need to ask for our help. Joomla allows very simple management and no technical expertise or programming knowledge is required.”

The Royal Orchid Hotel has a total of 98 rooms:
- 71 Studios
- 25 Júnior Suites
- 1 Sénior Suite
- 1 Penthouse

All the rooms are equipped with kitchenette, private bathroom (with bathtub/shower), hairdryer, direct dial telephone, rádio/cable and satellite television, air-conditioning and rental safe. The sea view rooms have a balcony.
Visit Hotel Royal Orchid here: www.hotelroyalorchid.com

Located in the hills above Funchal in the Palheiro Estate, Casa Velha do Palheiro is a graceful 5 star Madeira country house hotel, with 37 luxurious rooms.

The award winning Casa Velha website has now changed its identity to match the corporate look of the Palheiro Estate group. The site now boasts a fast and responsive user interface with online reservations, quality video feeds, high resolution image gallery and ample information about the Palheiro Golf course, Palheiro Gardens, Palheiro Estate and the Madeira Marlin Sportfishing boat ‘Balancal’.

The hotel is situated next to the famous Palheiro Gardens, originally created over 200 years ago by the 1st Count of Carvalhal. There is also direct access to the stunning Palheiro Golf Course, with privileged tee offs from the halfway house, a short stroll from the gate.
Within the grounds there is a heated swimming pool with sauna and steam bath: Tennis or croquet, billiards or walking: the choice is yours. Our private motor yacht ‘Balancal’ awaits your pleasure at Funchal marina. It is available for coastal cruises, swimming, dolphin and whale watching, as well as deep sea big game fishing and special charters.

Casa Velha do Palheiro is the ideal hotel for the visiting golfer, as it is the only hotel on the island situated right next to a golf course.

The new Palheiro Spa is a perfect complement to the existing attractions at the Casa Velha. Highly regarded local architect Bruno Martins, has integrated rustic elements with the classic style of the 200 year old Casa Velha hotel to ensure the new spa enhances the site.

“Palheiro Spa has been designed as an extension of the natural surroundings”, says Jonathan Fletcher, director of Palheiro Estate, “with local materials and native planting used wherever possible.”

Direct flights run from 13 airports in the UK to Funchal and take just over three hours. Airlines include easyJet, TAP Portugal, First Choice, Thomsonfly, Thomas Cook and Fly Globespan.

Visit the Casa Velha do Palheiro website here: www.casa-velha.com

Madeira islands civil protection service ‘Protecção Civil Madeira’ have launched their new web presence at an official site inauguration at the Arquivo Regional in Funchal. The site has been developed to allow the local population to access all the necessary information they require about emergency services, emergency planning, weather alert status reports and much more information that assists in their protection and awareness levels.

The site was developed by web design specialists ‘Navega Bem – Web Design‘ based in Funchal.
Specialist Programmer Marco Teixeira explained “the site has been developed with the objective of creating a highly user friendly web site that can be accessed quickly and efficiently. We built the site around the award winning CMS framework Joomla and incorporated substantial proprietary programming to allow the site to communicate with several database feeds for information such as the weather forecasts and status alerts.”

Visit the site at www.procivmadeira.pt

TOPcasas Imobiliária was founded in 2004 and has built a formidable reputation as a professional Real Estate company specializing in the non-resident market.

With studies and background in Law and a great knowledge in the Real Estate area, Ana Constantino started the business. Together with Teresa Mateus, Nuno Constantino and Marco Alexandre, TOPcasas does it best to offer a friendly but highly professional service to all that are looking to buy a house in the Silver Coast Portugal!

In 2007, Richard Williams decided to leave the bank where he worked for 10 years as an account manager, to assume the management of the company, bringing along his experience in Mortgages & Insurance.

Ana Constantino explained “We make a huge investment in advertising our properties, by listing your property with TOPcasas you are exposing it do several different markets and kinds of clients around the world.”

“On top of this our experience made it possible to create a number of good relationship with International estate agents in all continents allowing us to have our products not only in our web resources but in many major offices based in Miami, Toronto, Toquio, Madrid, London, Dublin & many others.”

The Silver Coast is a fertile region slotted between the Atlantic Ocean and the massif that rises in Montejunto and overlooks the entire region in all its extension. This splendid area is a green strip of land sprinkled with white houses, uniting the maritime cost and the countryside in a pleasant climate we wish to visit.

The new TOPcasas property website was developed by Navega Bem – Web Design, specialists in the creation of Real Estate websites and Content Management System Professionals.

Chris Szabo – Creative Director of Navega Bem explained how the site was produced. “The TOPcasas property portal is programmed around the award winning Joomla CMS framework. For this venture we utilized the latest version of Joomla 1.5 and incorporated our proprietary Realty component. With the help of the TOPcasas team we have been able to create a user friendly, search engine friendly website that will produce excellent results in the search engines.”

Anyone looking to buy a property in the Silver Coast through the TOPcasas website will have access to thousands of properties from Cascais up to Fiqueira da Foz. TOPcasas also offer a FREE property find service and take the stress out of buying a villa.

For those who do not live in their property in Portugal full-time, TOPcasas advice is to appoint a property management company to look after the villa or apartment. TOPcasas have a sister company called Black Cove – Silver Coast Property Services Ltd., that will take care of all or some of the following on behalf of the owners:

• Payment of bills on time (electricity, water, telephone, rates, etc);
• Regular visits to the property to air it and to keep it clean;
• Undertaking any necessary minor maintenance work (plumbing, electricity, etc);
• Taking care of the garden;
• Regular cleaning of the swimming pool;
• Preparing the house for arrivals (fresh flowers, food in the refrigerator, etc);
• Advising on any repair works;
• Renting out your villa.

For more information about buying or selling property on the gorgeous Silver Coast of Portugal – visit the TOPcasas website at www.topcasas.co.uk

So why will be 2010 be the year of DIRECT SALES and the INDEPENDENT HOTEL?

First of all this is kind of a contradiction. The reason that 2010 will be the year of the independent hotel is partially to thank to the resurgence of the OTA and Travel Merchant model. The current economic challenges in the market have allowed 3rd party travel agency websites to regain a larger % of online travel distribution.

The OTA distribution channels have made the franchise chain complacent. They easily produce the same number of bookings and revenues or more that the franchise chains. Looking at the paid advertising section of search engines like Google and Yahoo, the strong presence of OTA’s reflects this.

Shopping around on any of the travel agency websites, we have started to notice that more and more hotels listed on the first are independent properties, or belong to local or smaller hotel groups. Something tells us that the global chains and larger hotel groups have been pushing quite persistently over the last few years to bring commission levels down over the last few years that the OTA’s prefer to list properties with which they yield a larger margin.

But also on meta-search sites like Trivago and even Bing Travel independent hotels are starting to floart to the top more and more. On some sites and destinations they even significantly outweigh the number of ‘big brand’ chain properties. Just check TripAdvisor for the top 20 hotels in London, Paris and San Francisco. The independents are starting to rule the charts….

And even when doing a search in Google for Hotel London, Hotels Amsterdam, hotels in New York, etc gives comparable results. Independent hotels seem to dominate the online real estate.

So why does it seem that independent hotels have gained the upper hand? It is quite simple actually. Even though chains and large hotel groups offer many advantages (reduced purchasing cost because of scale etc), they also lack the focus to market a particular property or destination. Too many layers of management and difference of interest and priority between internal departments and management steers the chain in another direction. Their online positioning usually is mainly focused on the brand or flag.

Many corporate rules and guidelines within chains and hotel groups prohibit or withhold individual properties to develop their own direct marketing strategy. After all the chain takes care of the marketing side of the business, right? The lack of decentralization and empowerment of the on property hotel management is a huge handicap for them.

The above is all about commissions and marketing investments and efforts. But in this new age of Web 2.0 (or Travel 2.0) there is another factor we have to take into consideration when it comes to marketing.

• Authentic friendliness of the staff
• Amazing location
• Exceptional personal attention
• Impressive original food
• Exclusive service
• Simplicity, no frills
• Unique design
• Warmth and true hospitality

1. Opensource CMS: For more flexibility in managing the content of your website you should use an opensource content management tool. It will allow you to launch new pages and change structure without depending on your web designer. (Joomla / WordPress / Drupal)
2. Landing Pages: Pick themes, launch a page for every special offer and market segment or search. Think niche marketing and search engine saturation! Cater to each potential market segment on an individual basis. The long tail of travel seo works!
3. Languages: An easy way to expand your reach. What at the main tourist feeder markets for your destinations? Are you missing any languages?
4. Google Local Business Center: A great way to improve your listing and traffic. Powerful marketing tool which is only just starting to show its potential. The implementation of Google Maps Favorite Places gives you an idea where we are heading.
5. Google Webmaster Tools: Register your site map. Ideally you should have an XML sitemap that pushes your menu structure out to the search robot. If you are lucky Google will pick-up your menu structure and show site links below your URL when people look for your hotel specifically.
6. SEO: pick your keywords carefully, in your meta-titles and description focus on search behavior and not on product and brand. Sell what your potential guests are looking for!
7. Click to Call, Chat, Call Back: Be hospitable and available on your hotel website. Assist potential guests to increase the number of bookings. Remember phone conversion is higher than online as it is more personal. So let them call you! You can use a simple service like Skype or look at solution offered by companies like eStara
8. Tourist Guide: Become a travel agent instead of a hotelier. Don’t push your product but sell the destination. Use maps, Google loves this!
9. Events: What is going on in town while your guests are staying with you. Include it on your home page. Make an event section and show it in confirmation emails. No need to do it all by yourself, pull event calendars in through RSS feeds from your local tourist board website or sites like Eventful.com
10. Video: Integrate videos into your website. Shoot your hotel room with your own camera and put the videos on YouTube and list them afterwards on your site. It helps you in 2 ways. We all know pictures say more than a 1000 words. Well videos kind of have a multiplied effect of this. Secondly it is a great SEO move. Make sure you pick your keywords smart in YouTube! Oh yes don’t forget to add the videos to you Google Local Business Center listing.
11. Review Monitoring: Make sure you know what people write about you. You can set-up a control panel for free using RSS feeds from review websites, Google Alerts, Yahoo Pipes and Netvibes.
12. Review Response: Thank everyone that write something about your hotel, positive or negative. They are your guests. Engage and show them you care and value their feedback. Keep in mind potential guests will notice that you are involved.
13. Review Stimulation: Email guests after check-out, ask them to write about their experience on review websites like TripAdvisor or TravelPost and you hotels FaceBook profile. This way they help you to spread the word.
14. Review Recycling: Filter out the positive stuff. You can use Delicious and create a feed you can send to FriendFeed, FaceBook and Twitter. Just like the movie companies on their posters, ‘New York Times says: Best Movie of the Year’. Good thing is, you did not write it! This works, we tried it!
15. Blog: Integrate the hotel blog into your hotel website and become a tourism journalist. Write about interesting and original things. Cover events in your city or destination. Please don’t write about your hotel’ it’s usually boring. Except of course if you have something really original will spark interest. But it has to be really really special!
16. Online PR: Those interesting articles you write for your blog can now be placed on tourism news websites with links to your hotel website. There are also many blog syndication pages. It is one of the most effective SEO strategies. Moreover if you started to get recognized of a provider of great content you will be branding your hotel in the strongest possible way.
17. RSS: Use Feedburner to distribute your blog by email and RSS Syndication.
18. Listing Websites: List your hotel on as many free listing websites that allow you to put in a link to your hotel website. Please do not participate in link exchange. Start with WikiTravel, Yelp, VirtualTourist.
19. Web 2.0 BroadCasting Station: Link all of your profiles from social networks, photo and video sharing websites and book marking website to save time. This way you don’t have to post the same thing over and over again. FriendFeed is the mother of all 2.0 websites. It allows you to link up all the others… You should be on FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Digg, …
20. Mobile: Start with a simple mobile website so you can be found if people look for your hotel. Have picture and click to call button. Simplicity should do the trick for now.
21. eCRM: Personalized confirmation emails, pr-arrival and after check-out emails work. But again they need to be personalized. Include weather forecast, events during the guest’s stay, restaurant suggestions etc. Step 1 though is making sure your reservations office and front desk is capturing email addresses! Make sure you build a proper DB and develop a plan for implementing a hotel CRM strategy.

Zell am See is one of the most important holiday regions in Austria and one of the most family friendly in the whole of Europe.

Zell am See-Kaprun is one of the most sought after locations for holidays internationally – in both summer and winter.

Globalnet Wolf Hofer have now launched their new accommodation portal for this exclusive region. The site features hundreds of good hotels, villas and apartmemts – all featuring reviews and images with additional luxury category voting by clients.

Additionally, site visitors can find information about the individual towns in the area as well as restaurants, shopping, cafes and a whole lot more.

The portal was developed by Navega Bem – Web Design on Madeira island and is crafted around Joomla 1.5 with the incorporation of K2.

Visit the new Zell am See accommodation portal at: www.zellamsee.at