A booking engine's all well and good, but your site will sell you.

So it's essential to have your own independent booking engine, but it will only be as effective as your website allows it to be.

It is your website that will sell your hotel and convice people to make a reservation. For that reason it is vital that you have a well presented website. A website that is professionally designed and is made to appeal to your target audience.

Defining who your target audince is, is the first step of developing your marketing strategy. From here we can begin to formulate a promotion plan. Are you targetting backpackers, business people, old age pensioners, the gay community etc?

It is a vital principle of marketing and warfare that you must divide in order to conquer. You cannot appeal to everybody all of the time and therefore you must segment your intended audience and decide how to appeal to each individual group.

Chew on that for a little while...