Apr
16
The internet is a fickle place. Online customers will look in lots of places before they make their booking. If you’re not listed on the website they happen to be looking at when they finally make their decision to buy – tough luck.
That’s why you need to be listed on as many websites as possible. You need to be aggressive or you’re not going to get the occupancy your business needs.
Being listed “everywhere” is great for capturing room sales, but it does bring its’ own problems:
That’s why you need to be listed on as many websites as possible. You need to be aggressive or you’re not going to get the occupancy your business needs.
Being listed “everywhere” is great for capturing room sales, but it does bring its’ own problems:
Every agency website is different. You have to learn how each of them works and you’ll probably have to train somebody else how they all work too.
- You’ll have to remember all the website addresses, usernames and passwords. To do that, you’ve probably got them written down somewhere. (security headache)
- You have to monitor the number of rooms you give to each website.
- You have to monitor the number of sales you get from each website.
- You have to make sure you are offering the same rates to everyone (otherwise travel agents often claim the right to sell at the lowest rate you publish, not necessarily the rate you agreed with them).
- You have to adjust the rooms you’re placing for sale to reflect the room sales you’re making offline.
…and you sometimes need to bring all your online sales efforts to a sudden STOP because the sales office has just filled the hotel with a conference booking. Town is full and if you take any more bookings you’ll be overbooked with no hope of booking out to another hotel within 50 miles.
When you’ve got inventory on 20 websites, bringing availability to a full stop for a particular date can be a bit like an emergency stop in an oil tanker: It takes a while and you’re simply a passenger until it finally grinds to a halt. No two websites are the same, which makes the task of closing out dates ever so tricky. You just have to hope that when the stopsell command is issued, you’ve got somebody on duty who knows how they all work, who has the time to complete all the closeouts and can find the list of website addresses, usernames and passwords.
You’ve been there, haven’t you?
And then there’s the problem of managing your rates, packages and commissions. How many times have you had a great month for online room sales, only for the celebrations to be cut short when the commission invoices arrive?
Up until now, the number of websites on which you could list your hotel was limited only by the resources you had available to look after them. For most of us, those resources are time and money. Money being tight, that leaves us with time. Time is that most precious gift in high season, when there is never enough of it and a singular curse in low season, when you never seem to get enough value from it.
Want to know how to sneak some time back every, single working day? Take a look at channelRUSH - the easy to use channel manager for hotels.
- You’ll have to remember all the website addresses, usernames and passwords. To do that, you’ve probably got them written down somewhere. (security headache)
- You have to monitor the number of rooms you give to each website.
- You have to monitor the number of sales you get from each website.
- You have to make sure you are offering the same rates to everyone (otherwise travel agents often claim the right to sell at the lowest rate you publish, not necessarily the rate you agreed with them).
- You have to adjust the rooms you’re placing for sale to reflect the room sales you’re making offline.
…and you sometimes need to bring all your online sales efforts to a sudden STOP because the sales office has just filled the hotel with a conference booking. Town is full and if you take any more bookings you’ll be overbooked with no hope of booking out to another hotel within 50 miles.
When you’ve got inventory on 20 websites, bringing availability to a full stop for a particular date can be a bit like an emergency stop in an oil tanker: It takes a while and you’re simply a passenger until it finally grinds to a halt. No two websites are the same, which makes the task of closing out dates ever so tricky. You just have to hope that when the stopsell command is issued, you’ve got somebody on duty who knows how they all work, who has the time to complete all the closeouts and can find the list of website addresses, usernames and passwords.
You’ve been there, haven’t you?
And then there’s the problem of managing your rates, packages and commissions. How many times have you had a great month for online room sales, only for the celebrations to be cut short when the commission invoices arrive?
Up until now, the number of websites on which you could list your hotel was limited only by the resources you had available to look after them. For most of us, those resources are time and money. Money being tight, that leaves us with time. Time is that most precious gift in high season, when there is never enough of it and a singular curse in low season, when you never seem to get enough value from it.
Want to know how to sneak some time back every, single working day? Take a look at channelRUSH - the easy to use channel manager for hotels.
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