Hotels in Pairs

Test 1

2008-02-05T16:56:00.001-08:00

I can't believe I still haven't figured out how to juggle 5 balls. It's been on my
to do list every year for the last 4 years. It's getting ridiculous now at this stage.

<a href='http://www.squidoo.com/learndjembe'>djembe photos</a>
\<a href='http://www.squidoo.com/learndjembe'\>djembe photos\<\/a\>

Test 1

2008-02-05T16:52:00.001-08:00

social book marks and aboutus

2008-02-03T17:35:00.000-08:00

Hey guys, a quick tip for all site owners, expecially hotels

Look at these 2 sites:
djembefola
Dating

They both have pages on a high authority domain about us.org.... you should have that too.

So I got interested in where the other links were coming from and found this too djembe social bookmarking.

As usual the software directories got there first.

2008-02-02T20:03:00.000-08:00

Hey Steve, thanks for the email, look up Seth Godin. Everyone else do that too.... :)

Website

2008-02-01T15:13:00.000-08:00

You will find more nuggets of useful information for hotel maketing on James Farrell's site.

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

2008-01-11T12:07:00.001-08:00

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...

Why your primary promotion strategy should be your website

2008-01-09T15:01:00.000-08:00

Your website is like your own PR company. They take all your calls and spread your word 24/7 without a break.

Many hoteliers believe that as long as they are doing ok with their affiliates there's no need for a website, let alone promoting themselves. This is just not true. It is very ricky to become overly dependent on any one income channel and many hotels are overly depenedent on their affiiates.

Lets not forget that most affiliates take about 10% commission on each booking.

Guests know this too, so even with zero search marketing or adword campaigns you will already see returns with guests googling the hotel name in order to get the best rates and prices.

Customers expect to be able to book on the website of the hotel they would like to stay in and would definietely be asking questions if this was not possible. In many respects, this is a matter of competitive parity as much as a competitive edge.

There are some free booking engines available, but in general you get what you pay for. These free ones are clunky awkward and not easy to use. They also tend to stick out like a sore thumb on your site as they have very personisation options.

They also charge very high rates per transaction, which is not surprising as this is how they make their money. Remember a booking engine is a long term solution and therefore a once off fee is very easy to justify.

Yield Management

2008-01-08T09:48:00.000-08:00

Yield management is the process of understanding, anticipating and reacting to consumer behaviour in order to maximize returns.

For hotels, this basically means managing your prices according to availability.

For example, if you have many rooms available, you should drop your bprices in order to attract more guests. It's all about supply and demand.

So say for example there's a big rugby game on at the weekend and you know you will be booked out, then you can up yourprices on the affilitate websites, so that you can mazimise your earning potential per room.

If you have a booking engine on your website you can adjest your prices the same way.

rationalise hotel affiliates

2008-01-06T04:27:00.000-08:00

Now don't go and sign up to as many affiliate programs as possible just yet. You need to rotate certain affiliates in and out, based on how successful they are for you.

It's pretty unreasonable to expect to be able to manage your availability on too many websites at a time. I find that hostel world and boo are what works best for me. This may be because my work is focused mostly in Europe where their market share is the biggest.

Tripadvisor is big in the states fro example.

Hotel Affilitates

2008-01-05T13:46:00.001-08:00

First things first.

Join as many affiliate programs as you can. Search google for "yourtown hotel" and you'll see the main plaers come up near the top of the results.

Definitely make sure you join hostel world, boo.com, tripadvisor.

They will be more than happy to hear from you and will walk you through their own individual sign up process.

Hotel Marketing

2008-01-04T04:17:00.000-08:00

Hi guys, welcome to my new blog about hotel marketing.

My intention with this blog is to convey some of the tips and tricks I've picked up over the years, that have helped me to promote hotels in europe. I am a marketing consultant that is brought in on a contract bases to advise hotels about things such as yield management, online marketing and offline promotion.

It's a very exciting field to work in and as you can imagine it's always changing, so you need to me on your toes. It is also very much the case that you have to be on your toes to keep up with the latest changes, to remain competitive.

I hope you'll tune in for more.

Take care

Stephen.

Test post for hotel marketing blog

2007-12-14T13:36:00.000-08:00

This blog is about hotel marketing.

hotel marketing