2010 The Year of Direct Sales and the Independent Hotel
So why will be 2010 be the year of DIRECT SALES and the INDEPENDENT HOTEL?
- Authentic friendliness of the staff
- Amazing location
- Exceptional personal attention
- Impressive original food
- Exclusive service
- Simplicity, no frills
- Unique design
- Warmth and true hospitality
- Opensource CMS: For more flexibility in managing the content of your website you should use an opensource content management tool. It will allow you to launch new pages and change structure without depending on your web designer. (Joomla / WordPress / Drupl)
- SEO: pick your keywords carefully, in your meta-titles and description focus on search behavior and not on product and brand. Sell what your potential guests are looking for!
Landing Pages: Pick themes, launch a page for every special offer and market segment or search. Think niche marketing and search engine saturation! Cater to each potential market segment on an individual basis. The long tail of travel seo works!
- Languages: An easy way to expand your reach. What at the main tourist feeder markets for your destinations? Are you missing any languages?
- Google Placesย : A great way to improve your listing and traffic. Powerful marketing tool which is only just starting to show its potential. The implementation of Google Maps Favorite Places gives you an idea where we are heading. click here for more info
- Google Webmaster Tools: Register your site map. Ideally you should have an XML sitemap that pushes your menu structure out to the search robot. If you are lucky Google will pick-up your menu structure and show site links below your URL when people look for your hotel specifically.
Click to Call, Chat, Call Back: Be hospitable and available on your hotel website. Assist potential guests to increase the number of bookings. Remember phone conversion is higherย than online as it is more personal. So let them call you! You can use a simple service like Skype or look at solution offered by companies like eStara
- Tourist Guide: Become a travel agent instead of a hotelier. Donโt push your product but sell the destination. Use maps, Google loves this!
- Events: What is going on in town while your guests are staying with you. Include it on your home page. Make an event section and show it in confirmation emails. No need to do it all by yourself, pull event calendars in through RSS feeds from your local tourist board website or sites like Eventful.com
- Video: Integrate videos into your website. Shoot your hotel room with your own camera and put the videos on YouTube and list them afterwards on your site. It helps you in 2 ways. We all know pictures say more than a 1000 words. Well videos kind of have a multiplied effect of this. Secondly it is a great SEO move. Make sure you pick your keywords smart in YouTube! Oh yes donโt forget to add the videos to you Google Local Business Center listing.
- Review Monitoring: Make sure you know what people write about you. You can set-up a control panel for free using RSS feeds from review websites, Google Alerts, Yahoo Pipes and Netvibes.
- Review Response: Thank everyone that write something about your hotel, positive or negative. They are your guests. Engage and show them you care and value their feedback. Keep in mind potential guests will notice that you are involved.
- Review Stimulation: Email guests after check-out, ask them to write about their experience on review websites like TripAdvisor or TravelPost and you hotels FaceBook profile. This way they help you to spread the word.
- Review Recycling: Filter out the positive stuff. You can use Delicious and create a feed you can send to FriendFeed, FaceBook and Twitter. Just like the movie companies on their posters, โNew York Times says: Best Movie of the Yearโ. Good thing is, you did not write it! This works, we tried it!
- Blog: Integrate the hotel blog into your hotel website and become a tourism journalist. Write about interesting and original things. Cover events in your city or destination. Please donโt write about your hotelโ itโs usually boring. Except of course if you have something really original will spark interest. But it has to be really really special!
- Online PR: Those interesting articles you write for your blog can now be placed on tourism news websites with links to your hotel website. There are also many blog syndication pages. It is one of the most effective SEO strategies. Moreover if you started to get recognized of a provider of great content you will be branding your hotel in the strongest possible way.
- RSS: Use Feedburner to distribute your blog by email and RSS Syndication.
- Listing Websites: List your hotel on as many free listing websites that allow you to put in a link to your hotel website. Please do not participate in link exchange. Start with WikiTravel, Yelp, VirtualTourist.
- Web 2.0 BroadCasting Station: Link all of your profiles from social networks, photo and video sharing websites and book marking website to save time. This way you donโt have to post the same thing over and over again. FriendFeed is the mother of all 2.0 websites. It allows you to link up all the othersโฆ You should be on FaceBook, Twitter, Flickr, Delicious, Digg, โฆ
Mobile: Start with a simple mobile website so you can be found if people look for your hotel. Have picture and click to call button. Simplicity should do the trick for now.
- eCRM: Personalized confirmation emails, pr-arrival and after check-out emails work. But again they need to be personalized. Include weather forecast, events during the guestโs stay, restaurant suggestions etc. Step 1 though is making sure your reservations office and front desk is capturing email addresses! Make sure you build a proper DB and develop a plan for implementing a hotel CRM strategy.
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About the Author:
As CEO and Founder of XOTELS, Patrick Landman has made it his mission to turn hotels and resorts into local market leaders. XOTELSยด diverse expertise and deep-knowledge across revenue management consulting, hotel management, and hotel consulting, enables us to drive results for independent boutique hotels, luxury resorts, and innovative lodging concepts. Below you will find opinion articles written by Patrick Landman.