Sep
30
This is an old golfing analogy. Simply put, it means the great big long shots which look really impressive (especially on the telly) mean nothing compared to being able to putt. It's putting that wins the game. The ability to putt earns the money.
The expression popped into my head this morning as we compared two websites: One the result of nearly £10,000 in designer and developer time, the other the results of £3,000 of marketing time.
The former looked lovely, but has a look to book conversion ratio of less than 1% (what we in this country call "all fur coat and no knickers"); the latter has a look to book conversion ratio of about 20%.
There are more differences:
Continue reading "Drive for show and putt for dough"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Sep
26
If you follow the writing of people like Seth Godin, especially his work on viral marketing and "Tribes", you might be interested in this blog
John Sviokla's blog
Take a look, you'll find out about a website called Groupon.
You know how I'm always banging on about boring websites? This one certainly isn't!
Continue reading "Attract new customers! Be different, be fun! Here's how."
Posted by HotelBlogger
Sep
24
If you subscribe to online marketing newsletters, you'll be familiar with all the things that are going to happen tomorrow. Predictions are everywhere:
- People will only book hotels using their mobile phones.
- Social networking will dominate booking and destination research behaviour.
- 75% of all travel bookings will be made online by the time I'm drawing my pension.
You know the sort of thing.
Continue reading "Manana, manana"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Sep
23
I get a hard time from some of my colleagues about my attitude to Twitter (and not just Twitter, I have the same problem with a lot of online social networking tools). I can see how it could be useful, but I keep finding that it takes so much effort that it can generate a lot of heat and very little light.
In other words, it just doesn't generate the results I'm looking for. I can spend my time much more profitably doing other things. I'll get around to it one day, but at the moment I need to do other things.
One of the problems I have with social networking is that it's all about...
Continue reading "Twit-to-who?"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Sep
22
I'm just back from an interesting little conference about the opportunities for hotel marketing online.
Towards the end of the day, lots of hoteliers were milling about, excitedly twittering about how they were going to get stuck right in to blogging, FaceTube and social networking in general.
There was a lot of "we will build it and they will come" mentality in the room. When I asked people what sort of things they were going to say when tweeting on MyBook the answers left something to be desired. When I asked how they planned to measure the performance of their efforts I was obviously speaking in the wrong language.
So gentle reader, here are five essential steps you need to take if you're going to reach marketing heaven...
Continue reading "Five steps to hotel marketing heaven"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Sep
21
The recent publication of the Hotels.com survey of hotel prices caused a bit of a furore in our local newspapers: Journalists delighted in pointing out that hotel prices appeared to be descending through the floor; hotel managers felt compelled to demonstrate that their chosen business strategy was the right one.
It was in the newspapers last week, it'll be wrapping up fish suppers this week.
Of course, this is more of a publicity exercise for Hotels.com than it has to do with accurately reporting hotel prices.
Continue reading "Much Ado About Nothing (the Hotels.com survey)"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Sep
20
Elsewhere in this blog you'll be able to read about my take on the craft of developing scenarios. Scenarios are essentially "stories" which attemept to illustrate how events may play out in the future. They help us to interpret present day events and their implications for what we're doing ("what we're doing" being a euphamism for "business strategy").
It has just struck me that there is another, powerful use for "memories of the future": You can use them to illustrate to a prospective customer what it might be like to stay at your hotel...
Continue reading "Memories of the future - do try this at home"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Sep
7
Life is good!
I've just experienced the JOY of dealing with somebody who read an article on this blog AND ACTUALLY DID SOMETHING ABOUT IT!
I was looking for a hotel room for a couple of nights for my next visit south. In fact, I needed a room for three nights, but the booking system only seemed to want to sell me two. The electronic hamster ran round and round inside the booking engine for a while and eventually we compromised on two nights. Then, disaster. The system doesn't like my postcode - verboten! Cease and desist! You're not real, your postcode tells us you're not...
Continue reading "I liked it so much, I booked the room!"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Aug
12
If you're running any sort of search engine optimisation or pay per click campaign, pay close attention.
You're making an investment in getting people to look at your website. Have you made a similar investment in making sure they do what you want when they get there?
A lot of hotels make one basic mistake with their websites...
Continue reading "How to bore your customers into booking elsewhere"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Aug
11
One of the hardest things to achieve with your website copy, sales letters or brochures is to give the reader a clear impression of what you're talking about.
Regular readers of this blog know that it's important to write for your reader, not for yourself or your boss. It's the customers you're trying to reach who matter. Of those, the ones who have never stayed at your hotel before are particularly important.
Key features of these people are that they've probably never heard of you before; they might not have visited your area before and they certainly don't know much, if anything, about your business.
So you need to tell them. And that's when it starts to get tricky...
Continue reading "The Curse of Knowledge"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Aug
7
Are you promoting a luxury hotel?
Selling your luxury hotel online is difficult. It can be hard not to get caught selling "luxury" as "cheap".
You can go and visit any number of “luxury” hotel websites. These hotels may indeed be the last word in luxury, their websites are probably things of beauty - wonders to behold on your browser screen... but I bet you the online selling isn't "luxury".
You can’t automate the sale of luxury. Not if you want to get (or indeed, deliver) all of the value you really want.
Continue reading "The key to selling luxury hotels online"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Jul
27
There are 525,600 minutes in every year. As I write this, most hotels amd most hotel customers appear to be conditioned to waiting until the last one to "get the best deal".
Hell, there's even a website (indeed, more than one website) dedicated to last minute, late availability or "distress" promotions.
They make money by promoting the rooms you didn't have sufficient wit to sell, to the people you didn't bother to engage with your promotion.
Controversial? Let's discuss.
Continue reading "There are more than 500,000 minutes every year - why wait until the last one to sell your hotel rooms?"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Jul
23
Are you sitting comfortably?
Then I'll begin.
Sometimes children, when hotel owners and managers close their eyes very, very tightly - they can imagine all sorts of wonderful things happening to their business. Because these wonderful things happen in their heads (but only when their eyes are closed very, very tightly remember) some hotel owners and managers can confuse them with reality and they think these things can really happen.
Aren't they silly boys and girls?
Continue reading ""Everybody welcome" means no target market"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Jul
20
A straw poll in the office today - completely unscientific and based on anecdotal evidence - suggests that a good many businesses (not just hotel businesses) don't actually have a marketing budget.
Nor do they have a marketing plan.
Or a strategy.
Ah.
We started off with the thought that we might find a figure that people think is a reasonable amount to spend on promoting and selling hotel bedrooms. We were a bit shocked (but not entirely surprised) by what we found.
Continue reading "How big should your marketing budget be?"
Posted by HotelBlogger
Jul
16
We know from our experience with hotel brochures that hotels don't sell furniture. We might be forgiven for thinking that they do. But they don't.
So what do hotels sell?
What does your hotel sell? Rooms? Beer? Wine? Sausages? Beds? Steaks? Pillows? Curtains?
Continue reading "Hotels don't sell furniture. Hotels sell...???"
Posted by HotelBlogger
