Gonna take a few minutes to fight through this exhaustion and make a little post. Have been working mostly mornings this week to cover for my boss. Adjusting to the mornings has been tougher than I thought, as I just cannot seem to shake the sleeping late bad habit. Even on nights I'm out early, I still end up being awake till 2 or 3am. This is as you may imagine not conducive to waking up at 5.30am. So here I sit, tired, frustrated and taking it out on the world around me.
This is me stopping all that and restarting my evening.
*Big Breath*
I know I don't write here to often but I've been feeling the need to lately. I will be hopefully regular in my posting of industry news and articles as well as keeping those interested up to date in my career. Please feel free to leave comments and thoughts, especially on the industry related items. There is nothing like a little good discussion to get those juices flowing.
For today I have a little article by Ilan Blum from the ISIS group. It is to do with some trends that independent hoteliers can use to help them compete with the big chains. Its an interesting read that I picked up courtesy of the Build Your Own Business Simulator newsletter. Check it out below:
How an Independent Hotel can turn lemons into lemonade by Ilan Blum
Before the advent of commercial applications to the Internet, an independently owned hotel was unable to market itself online as efficiently as the large hotel groups and chains. Even though many of the independents have worked to increase reach with their own websites as well as through links to the big search engines, most have not taken advantage of the Internet’s power to level the online playing field.
For example, inventory at independents can go unsold even in peak travel times. This is less likely to occur in the case of the chains. With their websites that show multiple locations within an area where the traveler wants to stay, the hotel chains have set themselves the option to redirect travelers internally.
Because an independently owned hotel is just that, and doesn’t have the advantage of the multiple-choice website, hotel management can find itself unable to move unsold inventory even in times when it should be easy to do so. And it makes no difference whether the hotel’s target client is a business or leisure traveler.
At no other time was this more self-evident than in December 2002, when Manhattan was not just sold out but, in some cases, overbooked. That holiday season brought the first signs of recovery, post 9/11, that the city’s hospitality industry had seen. Still, many independently owned hotels failed to capitalize on booking opportunities when they found themselves with an odd room night here, a couple there, oftentimes because of last minute cancellations.
This problem continues. It exists throughout the year. It is not just isolated to the holiday season. New York, as a city with constant conference and industry convention traffic, is also a favored tourist destination. The city’s hotels can show sold out at any given time of the year.
So what does the independent hotelier do, in peak times, when a prospective guest accesses the hotel’s website and it shows sold out for days that guest is requesting accommodation? How does this hotelier redirect the guest and indicate that there is, in fact, availability on other dates right around the time of that request? And further, how best can he or she be proactive and tempt a prospective guest to make use of the hotel’s unsold room nights?
Utilizing the power of the Internet, their own websites and the search engines they are connected to, there are three easy ways the independently owned hotel can make lemonade out of a lemon, turn problems into opportunities:
1. Pretend You’re Part Of A Chain...
The manager of Hotel “A“should seek out managers of other independently owned hotels, located in the nearby vicinity, similar in quality to theirs. In peak travel times, chances are that Hotel “B” is having problems similar to Hotel A. When a prospective guest gets to Hotel A’s website and sees that Hotel A is sold out for the dates when he or she wants to stay, a text message should appear and inform him that Hotel A is, in fact, sold out but Hotel B is not. On days when Hotel B is sold out and Hotel A is not, it works in reverse.
This is synergy. Travelers are not inconvenienced. They have a place to stay. They don’t waste time going from website to website looking for accommodations. The problem is never a problem. Our traveler ends up thinking positive thoughts about Hotels A and B.
2. Tell The World You Still Have Rooms Available...
Most people know what it’s like to be new in town, need the proverbial widget and not have a clue where to find a store that sells them. It’s hugely time-consuming, a real hassle, to go from place to place to place looking for a widget, especially when you need one right away to get an important job done.
The widget analogy holds true when people search online for room availability during peak travel times. They go from site to site, only to find that there are no rooms available at the hotels whose websites they are visiting.
From the hotelier’s point of view, there might be a hotel with room availability. How can a match be made between the prospective client who is struggling to find a room and the hotelier who is looking to sell his available rooms?
There is a solution.
Search engines, such as Google.com and Overture.com, offer their hotel management customers, who use “Cost Per Click” (CPC) advertising, administrative tools to change text banners in realtime. For example, if management sees that it has availability on December 24, 27 and 31, it can change the text banner on the search engine’s page result to show room availability on those dates. So when a user types in certain keywords (the keywords the hotel has decided to use), looking for a hotel, he or she will see that the hotel has rooms available on the above dates.
Just like the person looking for the widget, the search is hassle-free…and the hotelier gets rid of his unsold inventory.
3. Send Last Minute Email to Last Minute Decision Makers…
Proactivity always rules, but it is key in the new millennium. In an online survey conducted in 2002 by Trends Research, a Greenville, SC market research firm, 84% of those surveyed said they would consider taking a vacation at the last minute in the then upcoming year. 60% said they were more likely to plan last minute travel than ever before.
How did they define last minute? 54% defined it as 15 days or less before day of departure.
It stands to reason then that hotel management should take how people make their travel plans into consideration and send last minute emails (remember…‘last minute’ means up to 15 days before) to past guests, if for no other reason than that they have been previous customers.
A bonus: emails make the guest feel like he or she is special. (Hoteliers should get in the habit of sending emails to important clients on an on-going basis. Never let them forget you’re there, waiting to serve them.)
It seems simple. Act like you’re part of a chain, let prospective clients know what your availability is and remind them when you do.
In the press to keep up with other problems that plague them, independently owned hotels often overlook simple ways to unload unsold inventory. While no hotel is ever 100% booked, there are many days during the year when they should expect to be filled. For hotel management to be able to put together prospective clients with unsold room nights is like making more green lights on the road to a profitable year.
Till next time :)
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