The Hotel Marketing Blog from HotelSphere

Be ruthlessly relevant and decisively different

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2010-03-04T15:07:56Z

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"

Who knows what you know?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2010-02-19T12:30:15Z

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?"

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

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2010-02-17T19:39:34Z

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..."

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

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2010-02-08T13:23:06Z

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?"

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

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2010-02-03T16:36:18Z

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...
Continue reading "When I grow up I want to be just like you..."

I hear Valentines weekend is going to be a disaster this year

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2010-02-01T10:42:03Z

"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...
Continue reading "I hear Valentines weekend is going to be a disaster this year"

You go to all that EFFORT - and then it all goes wrong

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2010-01-22T10:59:51Z

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...

Continue reading "You go to all that EFFORT - and then it all goes wrong"

Award winning or business winning?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2010-01-11T11:50:37Z

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) — 2010-01-05T14:37:16Z

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.
Continue reading "Is your hotel "hand picked"?"

It's 2010! What am I going to get?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2010-01-04T11:53:12Z

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...
Continue reading "It's 2010! What am I going to get?"

Adwords Campaigns for Hotels - the Camden Town hotel test

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2009-12-11T10:07:35Z

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.
Continue reading "Adwords Campaigns for Hotels - the Camden Town hotel test"

It's not easy, being unique

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2009-12-04T09:55:37Z

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...
Continue reading "It's not easy, being unique"

The Economy - Signs of the second dip

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2009-11-26T13:58:34Z

Recent apparaisals of the likelihood of a recovery for the hotel industry have started to predict that things will get better in 2011.

You'll notice that the pundits have stopped short of suggesting things might get better in 2010.

That's because they won't be getting better. Indeed, there is evidence to suggest we're going to see things getting worse...
Continue reading "The Economy - Signs of the second dip"

How much does it cost to acquire a customer?

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2009-11-04T10:29:25Z

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...

Continue reading "How much does it cost to acquire a customer?"

Rate Optimisation - it's not marketing

nospam@example.com (HotelBlogger) — 2009-10-31T16:33:09Z

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"