The Hotel Marketing Blog from HotelSphere

Taken from a conversation held last week with a prospect - as we tried to identify why his marketing wasn't working for him...

"We tried advertising last year. It didn't work. So I don't want to try it again."

What a pity. Because advertising can work - if you give it a chance.

Continue reading "How to give your advertising a chance of success"

Posted by HotelBlogger

We work in an industry that seems to be obsessed with price.
There are automated tools that allow you, as a hotelier, to compare your prices across "competitive sets" that can be made up from local hotels, regional hotels or even hotels in other countries. You can compare yourself with whoever you like it seems.

As long as you only want to compare your price.

Continue reading "It's not all about price! So what's revenue management for?"

Posted by HotelBlogger

Let's start with a caveat, before I get messages from people blaming me for the accident they've just had...

No sane person will take a silly risk which could end up in disaster. Taking ill-considered risks is a job for the stupid, egotistical (I'm thinking bankers here) or anyone who doesn't have enough understanding of "self preservation".

There are two types of risk: Risks to be avoided (those with a serious impact) and those which you can learn from. Obviously, the former type of risk means that it's likely you won't last long enough to learn from it.

...stick with me, I'm coming to the marketing lesson shortly...

Continue reading "The peril of being risk averse"

Posted by HotelBlogger

How far in advance do your customers book with you?

A day in advance? A week? A month? A year?

Do you measure it? If not why not?

Control over the booking window may appear to be tricky for you to establish, but it doesn't need to be. It really depends on how much you understand about your customers, their reasons for booking and the value they expect.

Late booking is an internet phenomenon which is fed by the fact that many hotels don't take the time to understand customer buyer behaviour. As a result, these hotels have less advance bookings than hotels with good marketing systems. A feature of this is panic "late availability" pricing on the internet.

If people know they can get good prices if they wait until they can hear your pips squeak - why should they book far in advance? Late availability pricing encourages customers to delay their purchase decision, then rewards that delay with a discount.

Is that really the way you want to run your hotel??

Continue reading "Booking windows - you get the behaviour you reward"

Posted by HotelBlogger

The internet allows you to be everywhere with your marketing.

Be careful that "everywhere" doesn't translate as "all over the place".

There are savage forces at work which can threaten your prices, your profits and your brand.

Yet, if you're going to make the most recent trends work for your business, you will need to be "everywhere".

What are you going to be everywhere with?

Continue reading "Live hotel prices on Google maps #2 - how to be everywhere"

Posted by HotelBlogger

Now that I've had a chance to think about the idea, I've decided I really like what Google are planning.
It's a pity that it's going to be price led, but then the industry has made its bed in that regard and must now learn to lie in it.

And that's what I want to talk to you about today. This innovation from Google may well prove to be revolutionary. The hotel industry in general doesn't cope too well with revolutions and innovations - preferring, as it does, to stick to polishing teaspoons (if I'm preaching to the converted here I apologise, but you know who I'm talking about).

Hoteliers, if you thought the online world moved fast you'd better prepare yourself for this - because it's going to get a whole lot faster.

Continue reading "Live hotel prices on Google maps - no place for the passive"

Posted by HotelBlogger

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

You know everything about your business.

You know what things cost. You know what your profit margins are. You know what you want to achieve.

So that's alright then. As long as you know what's going on, everything is going to be just tickety-boo.

It gets even better when it comes to your marketing:

You know what your logo means; you know what your headlines mean; you know what every paragraph in your website means...

...to you.

And that's when things start to go wrong. Because everybody else isn't you - and we often have no idea what you're talking about.

Continue reading "Who knows what you know?"

Posted by HotelBlogger

A couple of weeks ago I bored you with the story of my poor brother in law and his efforts to get a double room for his Valentine break.

He got his room - a nice outbreak of common sense on the part of the hotel. Fair play.

However, it didn't take long for the operations lunacy to start again...

Continue reading "Your romantic Valentine dinner - where the kitchen shuts at 8..."

Posted by HotelBlogger

This is - as you might imagine - a rather sweeping generalisation, but in most businesses somebody, somewhere will answer the telephone when it rings.

Sometimes it can take a while. If your switchboard has more than one incoming line, for example, and you expect the person who answers calls at the switchboard to take reservations and handle enquiries. In this case a queue can build up very quickly and callers can let the phone ring, and ring, and ring, and ring,...

Continue reading "If the phone rings, you answer it - what about email?"

Posted by HotelBlogger