We have done something similar to this before, but it was a long time ago and we thought it would be useful to update it. Winter offers an excellent opportunity for hotel marketers to do the things they have not had time to do during summer.
1. Update your rates on all Booking Engines until the end of 2009 (January is the month when many people make long lead-time bookings)
2. Check all the Booking Engines you are on - Do they have your latest images and text. (is that new 'outside' shot utilised that you paid a fortune for?).
3. Check all the Booking Engines you are on - Do they have all your room types listed (what about that Treble Room that is becoming more popular?).
4. Check that the Optional (free) extras are uptodate on your own booking engine (Late Check in, Newspaper or Cot in the room etc)
5. Check that the Buyable Extras are uptodate (Did any new additional revenue streams come online? Airport Transfers etc?)
6. Thinking about using an Inventory Distribution Tool to manage your booking engines, go and trial one (ie Rate Tiger or our own, AccuSell).
7. Review your Gift Vouchers - Could the wording be improved? Do you have any new products in-house to trial ie the Sunday Carvery for example.
8. Can you improve your ' Frequent Customer Sign-Pp' cards that you hurriedly put into place over summer. Can they be put into the rooms?
9. Update your listing on Google Maps (Business Listings) so that your correct details are appearing when someone does a map search.
10 Sleep with the Devil! Set up or edit your Listing on Tripadvisor, if you cant beat em join em!.
From the Hotel Marketing Discussion Area
Media Rich or Content Rich Websites?
Join the debate about Web Design for Hotels in our Discussion Forum.
E Mail Marketing - Consumers Opening Fewer E Mails
This article looks at E Mail Marketing response rates and contains one or two nuggests about the effectiveness of short E Mail Subject Lines. For us this evidence points to the fact that hotels cannot get away with simply sending out their Special Offers. E Zines must be sent only to people who want to receive them and contain something of unique tangible value to the customer.
Hotels Managing in a Downturn
We thought this was a pretty inciteful report, as it relates what happended to the hotel industry in previous downturns.
More Insights for Google Adwords
Part of the complexity with Google Adwords is that there seems to be so many 'levels' at which to work, so we thoght we would throw our understanding onto the table here.
Previous Technical Bulletins
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