RSS stands for Real Simple Syndication. But if you do not know what this is, don't worry, you are not alone. In 2007 'what is RSS' was the third most searched 'what is' phrase! When we use Google to search that exact phrase 'what is RSS' the wikipedia artcle is the first that shows up. Wikipedia defines it as; "RSS is a family of Web feed formats used to publish frequently updated content such as blog entries, news headlines, and podcasts in a standardized format. An RSS document (which is called a "feed") contains either a summary of content from an associated web site or the full text. RSS makes it possible for people to keep up with web sites in an automated manner that can be piped into special programs."

So what is so great about RSS and why is it useful for hotels?

From the above description it sounds like it is a tool for news sites and blogs... True, but what is so uniquely great about RSS is that it allows up-to-date content to move from one website to the next witthout any effort. Another unique characteristic of RSS is that it includes a link back to the source. If you know anything about Search Engines you know that it is important to have as many links as possible pointing to your site as modern search engines all use a method popularized by Google's "page rank" to help push up more relevant search results.

Before looking in more detail at what you as a hotel could syndicate to other sites it might be interesting to explore how your hotel site could benefit from up to date information authored by other websites. For this lets take a simple example of information your guest might appreciate. The weather. While the weather changes frequently it would be silly for a hotel to update their website manualy with this information. Instead thanks to weather RSS feeds from example the BBC you can automate this. To the left of this article you will see a working axample of this with the current forcast of the weather in Barcelona.

There are many websites that provide feeds with usefull information for your guests. Like for example what restaurants to go to what tourist attractions and even up and comming events. Many of them are even GEO coded (meaning they have geographic location data) to allow them to easily be mashed up with maps services from Google, Microsoft or Yahoo. (click to see examples)

Perhaps your concierge keeps a list of these sort of things as well, and if your hotel has not yet allowed him to "blog" this online you should consider this as it will make your site more complete, and thus less reason for your guest to browse and search elsewhere. Also note that having up-to-date content helps your seach engine reankings.