The Hotel Marketing Blog from HotelSphere - Hotel Marketing

Be ruthlessly relevant and decisively different

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Thu, 04 Mar 2010 15:07:56 +0000

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.
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Who knows what you know?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Fri, 19 Feb 2010 12:30:15 +0000

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.
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If the phone rings, you answer it - what about email?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 13:23:06 +0000

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,...

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When I grow up I want to be just like you...

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Wed, 03 Feb 2010 16:36:18 +0000

Imitation is supposed to be the most sincere form of flattery.

Sitting in HotelSphere towers, looking at the behaviour of the businesses I can see, it's clear that there's a lot of imitation going on.

Times are hard. When times are hard different people respond in different ways. As such, we should be seeing lots of different ways of responding to the challenges 2010 will bring.

Today, I want to talk about just one of them...
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I hear Valentines weekend is going to be a disaster this year

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 10:42:03 +0000

"Valentines weekend is going to be a disaster this year!"

Exclaimed the hotel manager.

"It was rubbish last year and we've got no bookings this year." He moaned...

So what's going wrong?

- Has the recession led to a reduction in romantic interludes?

- Has libido reduced in line with bank assets?

No. Love and romance are both alive and well. Couples all over the country are looking for an opportunity to spend some time together.

The problem is twofold - (1) hotels aren't designing Valentine packages people want to buy and then (2) they fail to reach out to people to tell them what's going on.

It's a self fulfilling prophecy. It'll be rubbish because you're not producing what people want, and even if you do hit on a winning formula you'll keep it a secret. Just because your target market is in love doesn't make them clairvoyant...
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You go to all that EFFORT - and then it all goes wrong

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Fri, 22 Jan 2010 10:59:51 +0000

Valentines weekend is fast approaching.

So this means there are special offers popping up here and there for Valentine weekend breaks. Some hotels have put a lot of thought and effort into their packages. But it's important - as a marketer - to make sure that everyone in the team understands how important it is to take the bookings and have happy customers. Otherwise it can all go the way of the pear. Just like it did for the hotel in Oban, Scotland - where my brother-in-law booked...

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Award winning or business winning?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Mon, 11 Jan 2010 11:50:37 +0000

This morning in the HotelSphere office, we were doing a bit of benchmarking.

It's good to look at the opposition and see what they're up to. It's also good to look at business practices of other operators to see what they do and try to figure out what works for them and what might work for you.

Copying isn't the goal - looking for ideas and different approaches is the objective. It also lets you see where you are relative to other players.

This morning we were looking at "award winning" websites. One in particular, caught our attention.

It's a website for a hotel business, which won an online marketing award.

It doesn't have any method to allow visitors to book online. No booking system at all. Nothing whatsoever.

So it can't automatically convert visitor traffic into bookings.

I wonder how it managed to win an award for online marketing?

Is your hotel "hand picked"?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Tue, 05 Jan 2010 14:37:16 +0000

It's an expression that never looks quite right to me.

"Hand picked".

At least, not when it's used in the context of a "specially selected" hotel.

It just looks wrong. When you think about all the things that can be hand picked: Mushrooms; daffodils; firing squads; noses...

Does that expression really send the right message out to your customers? Do they "hand pick" a hotel?

...they must have big hands...

I have a dilemma.
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It's 2010! What am I going to get?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Mon, 04 Jan 2010 11:53:12 +0000

Happy New Year!

Over the past few weeks, lots of emails have landed in my inbox from people offering their opinions on all sorts of subjects. From what trading conditions are going to be like for 2010, through to their top ten "do's" or "don'ts" depending on their point of view.

There's no reason why 2010 should be a bad year for your hotel business. You've just got to get a few fundamental things right -and one thing in particular...
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Adwords Campaigns for Hotels - the Camden Town hotel test

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Fri, 11 Dec 2009 10:07:35 +0000

I've lost count of the number of times I've seen this. It is tooth-grindingly annoying to find that it still happens. There's lots of great advice about how to do Google Adwords campaigns available to you as business owners and managers - if this happens to you, it is easy to fix.

What's the problem I'm talking about?

Google adwords campaigns based on keyword sets which include the business name.

But it's not the businesses themselves who are mounting these campaigns - it's so-called experts. People who should really know better.
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It's not easy, being unique

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Fri, 04 Dec 2009 09:55:37 +0000

Every business is different, yours is no exception.

What is it about your business that makes it different?

What is it about your business that means people should buy from you instead of any other business?

Often, we don't work hard enough to demonstrate why we're different and why people should buy from us.

This is an essential marketing task - when it is done well, a business can flourish. When it is done poorly (or not at all), a business continues to plod along, or down.

Uniqueness is a difficult concept to grasp and communicate - so it's not easy...
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How much does it cost to acquire a customer?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Wed, 04 Nov 2009 10:29:25 +0000

Do you know what it costs to get a customer to book at your hotel?

Do you know how much it costs to make someone aware that your hotel exists?

Do you know how much a customer is worth to you?

This month, why don't you try an experiment...

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Failure makes better hotel marketers

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Wed, 14 Oct 2009 16:25:19 +0000

I was intrigued by a comment made in an interview I saw recently. The interview was about an “Olympics” style sporting tournament for children, designed to give every child an opportunity to compete in a sporting context.

“I believe there is a place in sport for everyone”, said Dame Kelly Holmes. But the comment that really caught my attention was,

“Children need to learn how to fail”.
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Drive for show and putt for dough

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Wed, 30 Sep 2009 10:56:42 +0000

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:

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Attract new customers! Be different, be fun! Here's how.

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — Sat, 26 Sep 2009 10:14:55 +0000

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."