The Hotel Marketing Blog from HotelSphere

Many years ago, when I was a boy hotelier, hotel prices were published as high season and low season.

There were variations on the theme for groups, conferences and whatever other market segments you wanted to sell to, but essentially you had one set of prices for times of peak demand (often "summer") and another, lower set of prices for times of weak demand (for example, "winter").

Rate seasons were valid for 3, sometimes 6 months.

Do we use these rate seasons today?

Some websites certainly do. But the days of the long life rate season are numbered.

Why?

Continue reading "The death of the rate season?"

Posted by HotelBlogger

...if I could only reach you,
that would really be a

BREAKTHROUGH!

Ahhh, Freddie Mercury. What poetry.

How much work do you put in to reaching out to your audience?

On the face of today's advertising, I'd suggest the answer might be, "not a lot".

Continue reading "If I could only reach you - if I could make you smile..."

Posted by HotelBlogger

I noted with some disappointment yesterday that Google are testing a price comparison feature using a combination of their maps and adwords products you can read about their plans here.

My disappointment isn't with what Google are planning - they've got the technology and the market opportunity appears to be a strong one - my worry is that the hotel industry will do what it always does when threatened with downward pressure on price...

Continue reading "How to deal with price comparison websites"

Posted by HotelBlogger

It seems Google maps is going to become a price comparison site for hotels. I'll blog about this in another article when I've had a chance to think about it. But it's disappointing to think that, yet again, what could be a really useful route to market will probably get poisoned by "low price" promotions.

As all good hoteliers know (and so do your customers) - it is not all about price. Price becomes a default decision criteria when your marketing isn't up to the job.

So. Do you qualify for higher prices?

Continue reading "Do you qualify for higher prices?"

Posted by HotelBlogger

Interesting article fell into my mailbox this morning.

Interview with man from Google

The question about "predicting user perference" caught my attention. Not least because the following words formed part of the answer:

"The biggest unsolved problem therefore becomes this: how can we reduce the time to perfect fulfillment of the users’ online travel needs?"

I'm interpreting this (and forgive me if I've misinterpreted what's being said) as: "The biggest problem is working out what people need".

And I need to ask what is for me an obvious question. Who is running your marketing?

Continue reading "Google says "travellers want compelling offers at time of search""

Posted by HotelBlogger

Well that's got today's alliteration out of the way.

It's amazing how many hotel websites use alliteration (consecutive words starting with the same letter) and think it will be entertaining. It usually isn't.

Inspiration for today's muse comes from my new pal Andrea. She's a skilled copywriter who tells me that,

"...every word on the page has to earn its living."

On the web, you can't afford to dress pages up with fine words and fancy formats. You can put them there if you like of course - it's your website after all. People just don't read 'em.

Continue reading "Be ruthlessly relevant and decisively different"

Posted by HotelBlogger