Distribution

Finding your own niche on the internet is tricky.
It's a very competitive market place.
So what is a fledgling website to do, when confronted with a very similar name already established with the search engines?

Quite simply, it has to clarify its position, both to you the reader and browser and to the Search Engines.

This website is having a problem because at present, Google can't distinguish between people wanting to book the Merchant Hotel in Belfast, and people using Hotel Merchant to search for hotels using the iPads.

Do you want to book the Merchant Hotel Belfast, or do you want to search for hotels using the new Hotel Merchant website?

You decide - read about it here.

Posted by HotelBlogger

To use Online Travel Agent (OTA) sales websites as part if your distribution plan and get the most out of it, you need to understand what your target customers are doing.

You know this already, but it’s worth repeating: People do not land on an hotel website, see a booking box with “book now!” written on it and suddenly feel a compulsive urge to book a room.

It doesn’t happen that way.

This is what really happens:

Continue reading "The Billboard Effect - A guide to what hotel bookers are really doing"

Posted by HotelBlogger

How fast can you get your hotel offer found on Google?

If you are looking for hotel deals (in an especially nice hotel!) in the Inverness area - the Kingsmills Hotel has a limited availability offer for the nights of Sunday 29th and Monday 30th August.

Check it out! You won't believe the value for this deal at this smashing luxury hotel.

August bank holiday deals at the Kingsmills Hotel Inverness

Posted by HotelBlogger

The previous blog caused a couple of derisory emails. So let me clarify a couple of things.

1. Online promotion and selling is a good thing to do. I am not anti-internet.
2. When it comes to marketing per se and online marketing in particular - carelessness can be seen in a high percentage of hotels.

If you're going to use online social networking to promote your hotel business online, there is one fundamental thing you need to understand...

Continue reading "The Luxury Hotel Sales Process"

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

I like revenue management. It’s a fascinating discipline. At its most extreme it can get really, really complicated. Complicated is good, as long as complicated is getting the job done.

For most of us, true revenue management is something other people do. I know quite a few revenue managers and most of them, by their own admission, aren’t using all the bells and whistles they could be using. Mainly because they’re just too complicated to use and you get to a point where spending 10% more time and effort on more analysis won’t bring in any more business.

Today – not for the first time – I saw revenue management being abused. Someone set out to make things much more complicated than they should have been. The result was a hotel that pointed itself in completely the wrong direction. The hotel was pointing at its selling price, not the customers.

Continue reading "Rate Optimisation - it's not marketing"

Posted by HotelBlogger

For milk, read "room rates".
I was sitting with an hotelier pal of mine this morning.
We were looking at competitor room rates.
This is one of the higher demand periods in our location, yet three hotels seem determined to cut each others' throats with their prices...

Continue reading "How do you like your milk: Full fat or skimmed?"

Posted by HotelBlogger

Selling your hotel rooms on these websites can be awfully expensive.
There are some who want huge commissions for the privilege of selling your rooms. Fair play to them, most of them know what they're good at and they deserve to get something in return.

So why should you use these websites? Take a look at the front page of Laterooms. I quote,

"...opportunities we bet you never even knew existed..."

They understand exactly why their customers are visiting. They're visiting to look for ideas about things to do and places to go. In the majority of cases, people nowadays learn that your hotel exists because it pops up on a search on one of these websites.

If your hotel isn't listed - people still won't know you exist.

Continue reading "Why you should use Laterooms (and other sites like it) and how to do it"

Posted by HotelBlogger

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:

Continue reading "So many websites, so little time..."

Posted by HotelBlogger