Hotel Marketing

This week sees the first days of British Summertime.
This weekend saw the Sunday newspapers full of adverts for hotel breaks.
Lots of hotels chose to spend lots of money to reach out to the readers of these newspapers.
Were they successful? Good question.
Were the adverts any good? 90% of them were hopeless.
Why? Because whoever created the adverts had completely failed to understand what a headline is and what it's for.
A headline is not a headline when...

Continue reading "When is a headline not a headline?"

Posted by HotelBlogger

"If people don't book until they've had a conversation, how do you explain all those bookings I get from Expedia/Lastminute/Laterooms?"

Easy, they will fall into one of the following categories:

1. Those websites contained enough information to answer all the questions the customer had.
2. The customers had completed their research and were ready to buy when they were on those websites.
3. The customer couldn't find a better offer anywhere else (and especially not on your own website).

If people don't buy, they're stopped because of one of three reasons:

Timing; Budget and Unanswered Questions.

Continue reading "...a challenge"

Posted by HotelBlogger

Do you think of your website as holding conversations with people?
Most website designers don't.
Instead they often follow the maxim that "a picture tells a thousand words". Of course there's nothing wrong with that approach per se, but if you want to convert lookers to bookers, you're going to have to engage in a conversation at some point.

This conversation might be engaged in by someone in your reservations or sales team. Or it might be your website. In either event if you're not having those little conversations, you're probably not getting as many bookings as you could be.

Automation isn't the answer to everything...

Continue reading "Conversations with hotel websites"

Posted by HotelBlogger

A long, long time ago, when cars were slower, there were far fewer of them and I was a small boy (yes, I was once small) - all children were brought up with the Green Cross Code. It taught us how to cross the road properly so we could all reach the other side in safety without getting hit by a car.

OK, I'll admit now that I was in dire need of this, having been hit by a car when I was about six years old - it meant that I paid particular attention to what was said. It was very simple:

Stop, look, listen.

Before I learned this, I wasn't doing any of the above and learned the painful way that cars are awfully hard.

Now that I'm all grown up, I still use the green cross code every time I cross the road. Cars are still harder than I am.

I was sitting with a new client yesterday. He was complaining that enquiries were up but bookings were down.

Then the green cross code for marketing your business popped into my head. Let me quickly tell you about it...

Continue reading "The Marketing Green Cross Code"

Posted by HotelBlogger

Burns described this as a "gift" - the ability to see ourselves as others see us (I'm paraphrasing heavily here, from the words of "To A Louse").
In marketing terms, it certainly is a gift.

To be able to understand what's going on in the mind of the person who might buy a few nights at your hotel would be a gift indeed. You would be able to figure out the right words to use, identify what they need and quote an appropriate price.

Wouldn't that be lovely? It was with this thought in the back of my mind that I found myself leafing through a German guide to "Schottland" in a Berlin bookshop last week.

Continue reading "To see ourselves as others see us"

Posted by HotelBlogger

Your thought for the day:

Seth Godin http://sethgodin.typepad.com/seths_blog/2009/02/three-things-you-need-if-you-want-more-customers.html

tells us we need to have three things in order to attract new customers:

In his blog he says that any business seeking new customers must have three things:

1. A group of possible customers you can identify and reach.
2. A group with a problem they want to solve using your solution.
3. A group with the desire and ability to spend money to solve that problem.

Let’s think about this in the context of your hotel.

Continue reading "Three things you need if you want more customers"

Posted by HotelBlogger