We had quite a good response to our 'Dummies Guides' in the last Technical Bulletin, so we present below a couple more that we have used on the Conference Circuit.
Dummies Guide to the Online Habits of Successful Hotels
Owner Manager Detailed Guide to Booking Engines
Demand Management in Vogue
Judging by the amount of phone calls we are receiving on the subject of 'Demand Management (or Yield Management or Revenue Management!) this is a hot topic at present. Nearly 65% of our customers are now using the (Completely FREE) Demand Management Tool built in to AccuBook. Interestingly the main reason seems to be that it makes price updating much faster and simpler.
Tripadvisor - Sleeping with the Enemy.
Not every Hotel Managers 'favourite friend', but Tripadvisor have recently provided more tools for Hotel Managers to use, including the ability to add photos, videos and descriptions. The article below confirms our suspicions that hotels who are brave enough to embed into their website live Tripadvisor comments get the rewards.
View Article HERE
View Hotel Website Example HERE
Google Maps get better.
Many of our customers contacted us after the last technical Bulletin asking how they can get Google Maps onto their website. We have done this for most of our customers, but for everyone else you need a Google Account (yes any Google Account including E Mail. Adwords or WebMaster tools) logon to http://maps.google.com/ and then create your own map following the instructions. Once you have created the map, simply copy the code into the relevant page on your website Content Management System.
View Example HERE
Google 3D Maps - On the same subject, Google has recently launched its 3D Mapping Tool, (you might have seen the Google Car driving round with the camera on top). 3 D imaging is only available in certain areas, but again it is very easy to create. View Example HERE (and do play with the tool to rotate the image)
E Mail Marketing - Does it work or not?
Recently we watched as one of our hotels religiously send out an E Zine at 10.00am on a Monday morning to its customer database with offers of VERY low room rates.
By the 5th or 6th Monday the hotel suddenly attracted 12 bookings in the space of about 1.5 hours.
Clearly the customer had been educated to expect an E Zine at this time with a limited number of low rate rooms. Yes, the hotel had been wise enough to pick just 3 or 4 dates when occupancy was low and offer just 4 or 5 rooms at this rate (actually a total of 20 bed nights out of a monthly availability of 3000). As weeks progress the hotel upped its game even further by 'scaling up' the price of these cheap rooms to almost reach rack rates, as the few cheaper rooms sold out..
Now we dont want to participate in a discussion about room rates, but it was interesting for us to see that e mail marketing CAN be very effective, if the e mail message is interesting enough. Even more interesting is the amount of 'normal rate' bookings this hotel is attracting and the fact that their online business is 100% up compared to the same period of 2008.
Previous Technical Bulletins
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