Five Steps for Hotels to Build Repeat Business

Marketers have long talked about the concept of customer Life Time Value (LTV). For hotels in an increasingly global and connected marketplace this is more important than ever. LTV is about future profitability of the customer to you, from future cash flows generated from that customer and their actions on your behalf.

Life Time Value is made up of multiple blocks of income over the lifetime of the customer relationship. There is the revenue from that first booking, the revenue from any additional purchases or services added during that stay. There is the value of good recommendations to other customers that this stay may generate, which nicely results in a reduction in the cost of acquiring new customers. And there is the premium obtained from future stays of that guest if, and this is the big if, they are satisfied with the first stay. All these blocks of income need to be considered in the LTV calculation of that customer.

For any first-time guest that comes through your door, there has already been a cost to you for gaining that customer. For customers delivered via channel websites, that cost is dominated by the larger commission fees paid to those site - but there is also the potential future loss to you of the customer loyalty whereby that customer may well use the channel site into the future and avail of different hotels instead of yours. For customers delivered directly via your own website, there are other charges such as the cost of building and maintaining your website, the cost of your own online marketing campaigns, cost of offline marketing, fees or commissions for your own online booking etc., all of which can be calculated as an average value, the Cost Per New Customer (CPNC) for your business.

In many cases, a careful calculation of the CPNC will reveal that the profit from a single stay is unlikely to outweigh that acquisition cost. Multiple stays, up-sells, or reducing cost of acquisition are therefore a must in order to grow revenue and profitability.

To calculate LTV and CPNC figures reliably, you need years of customer data. But the principles of the issue are usually sufficient as a starting point to help you improve LTV substantially.

1. Improve Front Line Service
Front line service levels are more critical now than ever. They need to be maintained and constantly monitored and improved where possible. Always ensure your staff are trained to be helpful, pleasant and accommodating at all times. Impress upon them the consequences of poor customer service for future earnings and the potential damage that can be caused by poor reviews and word of mouth. Ensure they realise that every action and every guest counts and that failure to meet standards has real financial consequences for the business, and by extension their job security. Staff training is a relatively cheap cost in comparison that the cost of offline and online marketing. Invest now and continually.

2. Aim For High Online Service Levels
You must ensure that the service afforded your guest online is as good as that offline. With more than 50% of all reservations in 2010 estimated to be completed online, your website is in a very competitive landscape. Ensure that you provide high quality imagery. Ensure that you anticipate your customers’ needs in terms of mapping, directions, local information. Above all, be sure that your online booking system is clear and informative, helps the user through the process, instills confidence through its security handling and security standards compliance such as PCI compliance, works in the user’s language and currency, and offers convenience such as SMS booking confirmation. Bookassist's booking engine covers all of these issues and more.

3. Listen To Your Guests, And Respond
Review and discussion sites and forums are the most popular tourist sites today. It is an old maxim that bad reviews that are dealt with and handled well result in the most loyal of customers. It is critical to manage your online presence on sites like TripAdvisor, ensuring that you answer the good as well as the bad reviews. Remember, if someone praises you person to person, you don’t just ignore them, you thank them. So do the same online. Use a review service, like that built into Bookassist's booking engine, that allows you feed genuine customer reviews right to your own website. Potential customers then see that their views are taken seriously, they know they have a direct forum if required and they know that the hotel will respond appropriately to issues they may have.

4. Don’t Abuse Email Marketing
Ensure your website or booking engine operates as an opt-in service for future communications. Apart from the legal requirements, opt-in is a very valuable concept. Batch emailing everyone simply annoys the majority, potentially damaging repeat business and referrals and lowering your LTV. With opt-in, you have a much smaller but much more dedicated list of those who specifically wish to see your special offers and other communications. The relative success rate is proven to be an order of magnitude higher without the concurrent annoyance to those who are not interested. But don’t let it lead to “email fatigue”, wearing out your welcome. Generally for hotels, emailing about once a month is not too high a frequency - but again it is proven that the higher the frequency the lower the response. Examine your client base carefully - if people on average return once a year, then isn’t emailing once a week a little excessive?

5. Reward Stays, Not Just Loyalty
We have all experienced this one, particular from telecoms or cable companies. The company advertises a great deal, but won’t let you avail of it unless you are a new customer. This is very negative marketing. It screams to existing customers that they are considered of less value to the company. It works to an extent for companies that require lock-in to long-term contracts. Hotels don’t have that luxury. As a hotel, you must therefore improve the chances of the customer returning to you by incentivising them as much as possible at all times. Consider upgrading guests when you have distressed inventory, for no reason other than that they are your guests. If there is some fee service at your hotel, consider sometimes giving it for free for a day. If the spa is underused today, offer a free spot to the first people who arrive down to breakfast. Random acts of kindness may be a small cost, but result in great reviews and goodwill.

Bottom line - be concerned about building and maintaining your customer relationship online and offline. Losing a customer is not just lost future income, but real cost too since reactivation costs are usually significant. You shouldn’t be too concerned at spending more than the average profit in order to generate the first sale, provided you have strategically planned on ensuring good life time value from your customer relationships.

Dr Des O’Mahony is CEO and Founder of Bookassist, the leading online strategy and technology partner for the hotel industry. Follow Bookassist on Twitter at twitter.com/bookassist

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Originally published on hotelmarketing.com as:
"Five steps to repeat booking success" http://bit.ly/8l7Aba

Content Continues To Be King

In late September, Google finally confirmed officially what many of us have suspected for years - that the <meta name=”keywords”...> tag attribute (hereafter simply “the keywords meta tag”) in web pages has no effect on Google search results rank.

Fundamentally, what this means is that attempts to tell Google what your web site is about don’t work - Google will figure this out for itself thank you. Pretending to be something you are not won’t work. Tricks to make yourself look better than you are won’t work. Google of course uses various methods of its own to determine where you should rank in search engine results and will largely see through attempts to spoof it. Primary among those methods is to ascertain what the content of a website really is. Getting the content right is the single best way to ensure Google’s approval - plus it serves to entice and engage online readers, and to build quality incoming links.

Some Tags Are Better Than Others

There’s a bit more to the tags issue though. Web developers/designers insert various tags and tag attributes into web pages that are either necessary or useful and that are used by search engines, but not necessarily for search rank. For example, if you choose “View > Page Source” for a web page in Firefox, for example, the code behind the page you can see will contain entries like:
  <title>
  <meta name=”description”...>
  <meta name=”keywords”...>
among many others, such as the example code snippet shown below (click to enlarge)



The keywords meta tag has traditionally been applied to inform search engines of the primary focus of the website. This is the one Google doesn’t read anymore, saying that “Because the keywords meta tag was so often abused, many years ago Google began disregarding the keywords meta tag”.

On the other hand, Google is not the only game in town, and Bing has a slightly different approach saying that the keywords meta tag “is not the page rank panacea it once was back in the prehistoric days of Internet search. It was abused far too much and lost most of its cachet. But there’s no need to ignore the tag. Take advantage of all legitimate opportunities to score keyword credit, even when the payoff is relatively low.”

Search results do make use of other tags however, at least for result display purposes. The page title and description meta tags are used by Google directly in displaying its search results - for example the first result in the figure below (click to enlarge) shows the title and description meta tag that we “fed” to Google using the code shown above. While the effect of the title and description meta tags on the actual search result position is not clear, it is certainly important to have them correct and meaningful for the user who ultimately looks at those search results since they must create an impact and give immediate information if you are to capitalise on your search ranking. At least this is one area over which you have definite control.



The Dual Online User

This highlights one key tenet in getting your website just right online. It needs to be right for dual users - firstly, for the search engine that has to read and assess the site and determine how to return the address in search results, and secondly for the viewer who will click on results and ultimately interact with your site. The approach to optimising for these dual users is quite different but there are overlaps, content being the primary one.

What Search Engines Like

Google works very hard to make sure that its search results are as relevant as possible to the search phrase used. The more accurate Google is, the more likely people will continue using it and the more money it will make from displaying relevant adverts. So Google really needs to get it right.

The Google webcrawler program trawls the web and reads the code behind web pages, attempting to categorise the sites in its database. While the algorithm it uses to assess websites is no doubt complex, it is basically a dumb machine and must make judgement calls only on what is presented to it in plain text. The domain name, page title, the description tag are a starting point, but unless the information and wording contained therein are backed up by solid content on the page that reinforces the title and description, then the Google webcrawler feels that something is amiss and the ranking of the site will suffer.

To take an extreme example, suppose your page title is “Boutique Hotel in Dublin”, and your description tag is “We are a boutique hotel in Dublin”, but then your entire page content is about dog kennels. Then the Google webcrawler won’t consider your site a good result to show to anyone who is searching for information about “boutique hotels in Dublin” or about “dog kennels” for that matter. The structure and the content are simply not matching up. A web page has to do exactly what it says on the tin or it will be punished.

When a person searches for a specific phrase, like “boutique hotels in Dublin”, then Google really wants to display information about “boutique hotels in Dublin” and about nothing else. The likely best candidates are websites that have domain names that use the terms “boutique”, “hotel” and “dublin” AND page titles that use the terms “boutique”, “hotel” and “dublin” AND page content that makes regular use of the words “boutique”, “hotel” and “dublin” (preferably repeated use to up the keyword “density” of the content, but not too much use so that Google again is suspicious of your motives!). If external websites have links to this site that use the terms “boutique”, “hotel” and “dublin” in the text of the link, then Google further approves since other websites appear to be sending people to the site based on the same search terms, so the external link endorsement is worth something to Google.

Getting To The Top

So it is clear that the content of your website really needs attention to ensure that any search terms you want to be found for are targeted in your copy and are matched with page titles, descriptions and where possible web domains. For example, if as a hotel, your location is a key issue for your business, then refer to it at least four or five times in the content on your home page. Likewise for any other issues important to your business: if your spa treatment is a primary earner, then have a spa treatment page, with a title referring to spa treatment, a file name referring to spa treatment, content mentioning the spa treatment a number of times, images with file names relating to spa treatment and image alt descriptions referring to spa treatment and so on. Remember, the webcrawler that is trying to assess your page has no interest in colour schemes, Flash content, text rendered as images, photographs or aesthetics - it can only read information clearly presented to it in text form, so you need to get every element of the page “singing off the same hymn sheet” in order to make your point.

Good Content

Writing good content that can target keywords of the right density to Google but still be interesting enough to catch the online user’s eye is a difficult task. But it is also important that the content evolves as far as Google is concerned. Continually refreshing content is therefore critical also for search ranking, and one of the best ways to tackle the content issue is through the use of blogs.

Blogs are an easy and natural way to write content. Hotels can write on specific events, festivals, nearby attractions, recipes from their kitchen, unusual guests requests, all sorts of things, and use the blog simply as the newspage for the site. These entries make for interesting reading and are naturally full of good keyword content about your hotel and your area. It is also a way to involve more of your staff in contributing content and give them more ownership of the customer experience, as well as inviting customers to comment also.

There are many hotels who now build their entire web presence around a blog and booking engine only, eliminating completely the static brochure approach that typifies many hotel websites. For a good introduction to what blogs can do for your hotel and for your hotel website’s content, check out the video Interview with Juli Lederhaus of Hawthorne Hotel in Massachusetts available on YouTube.

Get What You Deserve

The bottom line is: the best way to get to the top of the search engine results listings is to deserve it. Forget the tricks and instead strive to give information that people are actually looking for and are interested in. With the recent launch of Google’s Sidewiki, people will increasingly pass public comment on your website in any case, so chances are you will begin to get feedback that you must tend to through dynamic content whether you like it or not.

Content of websites continues to be king. In the end, for search engine position and keeping users interested, there really is nothing else to beat it.

Dr Des O’Mahony is CEO and Founder of Bookassist, the leading online strategy and technology partner for the hotel industry. Follow Bookassist on Twitter at twitter.com/bookassist

Google inserts Ads into iPhone maps - Pay Per Tap (PPT) ramps up

Google has recently launched sponsored links directly on iPhone's (and iPod Touch's) native Google maps app. When searching for services in an area on the maps app, for example searching for hotels on a map, sponsored links can now appear alongside regular service links as shown in the example below of a "New York hotels" search. Sponsored links get a special marker compared to the usual pin also (as shown on the right).



If the user taps the sponsored link, the usual screen containing phone number, address, and directions appears but additionally shows some brief, italicised ad copy under the name of the business.



Can we propose a new acronym - Pay Per Tap?

The service doesn't appear to be live in Ireland yet. Clearly, the drive towards mobile advertising is in full swing, with mobile the next battleground for pay per "tap" (PPT) funds.

See Inside AdWords

Google folds Mapping and Address Extensions into Adwords

Google Adwords now allows you to extend your advert content to include Google Local information right in the advert (in other words Google Maps) and further enhance the utility and visual appeal of your adverts.

As an example of this in action, Bookassist's Traffic Builder team have recently completed the addition of Google Local to a number of campaigns - for example a search for Camden Court Hotel (camdencourthotel.com) in Dublin reveals the map content added to the advert (the "show map" link at the bottom of the advert below):






When you click the "+" next to the map link, the location opens up directly in the advert. A similar search for the Mespil Hotel (mespilhotel.com) again shows this functionality, where the map is now embedded directly in the PPC advert, include the "get directions" functionality:



According to Emel Mutlu, a member of Google's AdWords team writing on their blog on July 24th: “Location extensions allow you to "extend" your AdWords campaigns by dynamically attaching your business address to your ads. This new feature will be fully available in the coming weeks, with some advertisers having access to the feature starting today.” The features have landed in Ireland now and are extending to other countries.

Local business adverts are now no longer a separate entity, but are identical in form to the new local-enhanced Adwords adverts. This also helps streamline the Adwords process for advertisers.

This extension to Google Local shows that the adverts are themselves beginning to mix the media available to Google - Google have already implemented blended search (see: article on blended search) where different search elements like maps, video, news are listed in search results along with the traditional website results.

Folding blended search ideas in Adwords seems to be the direction this is going - expect to see embedded video and other items soon.

Mechandising Your Rooms Online

The old adage borrowed from another industry of “Retail is in the Detail” should be applied to how you promote your hotel rooms online. Customers who want to purchase online have the same needs and wants as those that come through your front door.

You wouldn’t ignore a customer who was hanging around the reception desk waiting for some information on a room rate before booking, and neither should your website.

Among the key factors that concern customer’s booking rooms online are,
- What does the room look like?
- What’s included in the rate?
- Is the rate good value for money?
- Can I picture myself staying in this room, at this hotel?

If you are on a hotel website and these questions cannot be answered quickly for you then you are much less likely to book. In some cases you may grudgingly call or email the property, if you really really want to stay, but it’s just as easy to go back to your search engine and find another hotel website which can answer your questions.

Bookassist Makes it Easy to Promote your Rooms
Every Room Package loaded onto a Bookassist Booking Engine benefits from clearly displayed rates, high resolution room images and lots of descriptive text, together with an accurate reflection of any applied discounts.



You can see the from the example image that the customer is drawn towards the discount information presented in brighter colours, thus illustrating the value for money. They can also see an image of room itself, which will expand when you mouse over it. And underneath the rate information, (which helpfully spans 7 days) there is significant text description that is persuasive and alluring.

In addition to these key features, the Booking Engine also enables you to group different packages together, as you can see in this example which shows the Superior Rooms options.

What to do next
To get advice on improving the display of your room offerings, contact your Bookassist account manager today.

Google Local launches in Ireland - Kinda

It's not rolled out across all searches on Google in Ireland, but it is certainly alive and kicking for hotels.

Google recently enhanced their search results pages with the addition of local business results (Google Maps) to searches targeting locations within Ireland. While these results have been available for some time in other locations such as the US and UK, this is the first time that searches for Irish locations have triggered maps as well as web links.

The implications for website owners are that the nature of the results page on Google has changed dramatically. It is no longer sufficient to list highly for location searches in the standard results, if you do not perform well in the map results. The figure below shows the results for a search using the phrase ‘hotels in Dublin’. The clear winners of this change are the sites that appear high in the map listing, as the previous first web listing has now been relegated from first to eleventh place on the page.

Google Local in action today for the search "Dublin Hotels" with the top six hotels availing of Bookassist's Traffic Builder online marketing service

The blended search results are also triggered by property name searches (see below), so it is important to ensure that your listing in Google maps is well managed. We've previously highlighted the usefulness of Google Local as part of Google's drive towards blended search in this blog entry: Get high search ranking through blended search results.

A property name search on Google Ireland today, now showing Google Local information

To maximise the benefits of this change, go to http://www.google.com/local/add/ and log in with a Google account.
You can then claim your map listing by going http://maps.google.com/ and searching for your property by name. Click on the “more info” link and then on the “Add or edit your business” link. From here you can confirm your web and email addresses as well as your physical address and phone number. You can also correct any errors in the map location for your property. When all the important details are correct, you can the concentrate on enhancing your entry by adding a good description, uploading photos and videos, as well as other details such as free wifi or parking.

What hotels should and should not be doing in the current downturn

In this economic climate, it is even more important to know exactly where your marketing money is being spent, what return on investment you are getting, and how you can maximise it.

What is clear is that the medium that is most easily analysed and maximised in terms of return on spend is the internet, specifically direct selling on the internet. Moving budgets now from offline to online is not only smart in terms of watching budgets, but it affords an opportunity to tap previously untried markets, lower costs per acquired booking, and even generate income growth through promotion of a mix of offerings.

The good news is that bookings online are continuing to grow. Bookassist figures across all our markets have shown a growth in the number of bookings year on year. Many current studies are continuing to show a growth in direct online bookings at the hotel website, at the expense of offline and indirect channel bookings. This is probably because the economic climate is causing people to look around more: the simplest way to look around is online, not offline, and the best chance a customer perceives of getting value is directly at the hotel. So hotels need to tap into this marketplace.

Here are some pointers.

1. Don’t cut your marketing budget. You need it now more than ever. But redirect your marketing spend to online now.
2. Get rid of your hunches, suppositions, feelings. You need facts. Don’t make sudden changes, for example switching suppliers because of a perceived better deal or trying completely new advertising approaches. Sudden changes are the result of panic - you need to hold your nerve until you have the facts. You may well lose the position you have in such a switch, rather than building on your position. Perception needs to be replaced by fact leading to informed rather than rash decisions.
3. Concentrate on direct booking. Be careful how you are using third party intermediary sites. They can commoditise your hotel in simple lists based on price, start rating etc which eliminates your unique qualities. They may be sending you lots of business, but these online customers can be yours directly if you adopt a proper direct booking online strategy as outlined below. The margins of third party intermediaries compared to direct booking on your own website means that you are losing 20% to 30% revenue per booking for each booking received from them. This makes no sense in today’s climate and some of that business can certainly be diverted directly to you with proper planning. And above all, ensure that the rate on your own website is always the best rate. Otherwise, you might as well close down your website.
4. Analyse. Analyse. Analyse. Ensure that services such as Google Analytics work for you by tracking all website usage. Have a clear picture of usage patterns on your website before you rush into changes. Use Google Analytics to analyse your online user base, in terms of their origin for example. It may surprise you and alter your strategy. Use a booking system that can integrate directly with Google Analytics Ecommerce, like the Bookassist Booking Engine. With Bookassist’s Ecommerce integration, every single booking is transferred to Google Analytics and linked to the customer’s path through the website and through the booking process. Any single booking can be directly linked to a specific cent spent on a specific pay per click campaign or email marketing campaign. This is very powerful data and shows instantly where your money is being spent most effectively in terms of return on investment measured in actual booking value. It eliminates the hunch and shows you the bare facts. Google Analytics for web usage is great, but it lacks the real meat: full Ecommerce integration goes way beyond web usage and is critical for optimising ROI.

Bookassist’s ECommerce integration with Google Analytics gives valuable strategic information and allows for fine-tuning of online advertising spend resulting in much higher conversion rates, 5.24% in this example from a Dublin hotel.

5. Act on information you glean from Google Analytics and Ecommerce integration. The conversion figures for lookers to bookers are your key indicator. All the visitors in the world are useless to you if they are not converting. Using Ecommerce integration you also get a much deeper insight into conversion in your target segments. For example, with a recent Dublin-based hotel of ours, visitor numbers alone in Google Analytics showed that the vast majority of the website visitors were UK based, with other countries being far down the list. The traditionalist would therefore target the marketing budget at the UK. But the Ecommerce integration showed us that conversion rates for German visitors to the website were a factor of 4 higher than the UK visitors. So targeting spend at the German market and using German language package descriptions in the booking engine resulted in higher bookings online. It was a safer bet. Only Ecommerce integration can give you this kind of analysis. Using this type of analysis has allowed Bookassist marketing teams to drive conversions on pay per click adverts to over 4% in many cases, a massive increase over industry norms.
6. Analyse your web presence holistically. Remember there are two users of your website, firstly the search engines who will analyse and position it based on its content, and secondly the customer who will use it. The customer won’t come if the search engine hasn’t been targeted. So be smart, you have two jobs to do. Invest your budget into ensuring that your website is optimised for search engines AND ensure it is easy to navigate and booking-friendly for customers and never loses an opportunity to convert. Do not waste your budget on rushing to build a new site just to give yourself a fresh look - remember, you see your website every day and customers see it once or twice a year, so fresh is relative. Be sensible about your spend, target improvements for measurable return on investment reasons, not aesthetics.
7. Structure your online pay per click advertising campaigns so that they promote key attractors and differentiators for your property. Advertise your name as a keyword so that customers who search for your name will get your advert. Advertise your location as a keyword, but be as specific as possible to avoid catch all phrases that are expensive like “Ireland”, “Dublin”. Promote unique qualities in your Adwords text. Alter them frequently and track their conversion to tweak their effectiveness.
8. Combat competition online. Search for your hotel name and see who is using your name to capture your customers. If third parties are using your name to capture search results position, then tell them not to. If competitors are using your name to leapfrog above you in search results, then trademark your name and take action to stop it. Adopting this approach will ensure that people searching for your name, those who are already your customers, will see your website first and
9. Use email marketing effectively. It takes time to build a proper (legal) opt-in email and phone list of customers, but the best way to do it is not to abuse the channel - always give something genuinely special and new in an email blast and use a booking service such as Bookassist’s which allows you to embed links in emails that bring people directly to the booking page for that special, not just to the website or to the general booking page. Use Twitter services to remind users of new offers via mobile phone. Think strategically - for example, advertise offers for this coming weekend so that a sense of urgency is created for the customer who feel they must act now or miss their chance. “Offer ends at midnight, unique offer available for this weekend only!”. Sounds familiar? Airlines have been doing this with a lot of success for some time now.
10. Listen to your online customers and correct issues quickly. Remember that over 80% of travel planning is now done online. Even if people are not booking, they are looking. This colours their future choices. Make sure that you are on top of social media sites such as TripAdvisor and others - be registered with them and monitor your property. Make use of your own customer comments on your website, for example availing of Bookassist’s automatic review system where customers who have booked online and stayed at your hotel are given a follow-up opportunity to submit their views. Above all, always respond to online reviews, whether positive or negative, so that potential customers see that you care. We all know that correcting a fault graciously often engenders more loyalty and satisfaction in a customer.

Be aware that the habits that customers are now learning could well become the norm for the future. Why? Because the approach is yielding value for the customer. Shopping around online, doing research online, making price comparisons online, reading reviews, going directly to source to book. These are all things that may have been enhanced by economic necessity, but are likely to stay as the norm as we exit recession.

Hotels that have tackled this climate constructively and strategically will likely emerge stronger and will be well positioned to capitalise on the upswing that will invariably come.

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Dr Des O’Mahony is CEO and Founder at Bookassist, the leading technology and online marketing supplier to the hospitality industry.

Should you discount your rates in a downturn?

By making obvious cutbacks you will only damage your reputation with the people who matter most
Customers' expectation of price may change in a downturn, but their expectations of service levels don't drop. Lowering rates may be one response to weakening occupancy but the lower income generated may result in lower service levels which in the longer term can damage your brand - according to a recent article on Caterer Search on the pros and cons of lowering rates: "by making obvious cutbacks you will only damage your reputation with the people who matter most".

While many strongly advocate reducing rates, there are other avenues to explore.

It's all about value, not price
In discussions with our hotels, Bookassist has advocated the necessity to look at the mix in what you have on offer, showing more value, rather than across-the-board discounting of price which can damage not only an individual hotel brand but an entire sector. Hotels should "look at added-value options to hold price, such as including breakfast free of charge, and focus on increasing the overall revenue they get from clients during their stay", according to Caterer Search. Bookassist's advanced add-ons facility, allowing for upsell directly at the time of booking, is an invaluable tool for this approach to value rather than just price.

For a perspective from the British Hotelier of the Year conference, see: http://www.caterersearch.com/

Exploiting the Path-To-Purchase Online to Grow your Revenue Stream

The importance of the internet as a tool for consumers wishing to book a hotel has been well documented, with estimates as high as 55% of total booking revenue coming from online bookings and up to 70% of that online revenue coming through the individual property website. But what are the underlying patterns of behaviour that result in an online booking being made and how can a hotel tap into that information to increase their revenue?

Let’s look at the approach of the typical online booker.

The amount of information available to an average internet user is staggering, and none more so than in the online travel industry, which was one of the early innovators in maximising the potential of online revenue generation.

Path-To-Purchase
By far the most popular method of research used by potential online bookers is the search engine, dominated by Google, Yahoo & MSN/Live. These search engines are also hugely important in driving direct traffic to the property website. Using the data we make available to Bookassist Trafficbuilder clients via Bookassist’s integration with Google Analytics, we have seen that up to 80% of property website visits originate in a search engine (including paid listings), with the majority of the remainder made up of referrals from directories and other sites, as well as email marketing campaigns.

Research presented by Google UK & Comscore (source: http://www.comscore.com/press/release.asp?press=1991) presents an interesting pattern of search usage by UK consumers, and highlights the opportunities available to website owners throughout the research process.

Key findings include:
• Consumers take an average of 29 days from their first search to making a purchase.
• 45% of consumers make a purchase four weeks or more from the initial search.
• On average they visit 22 different websites while researching their choice.
• They visit the purchase site an average of 2.5 times
• 54% of buyers started with a generic search term such as “hotels in Dublin”.
• The keywords used changed throughout the search phase, with 29% of purchasers who started with a generic search term, ending with a brand specific search term.

Path-to-purchase is therefore not about immediate offer and sale but is a far more complex time-driven process.

The Expanding Information Service
A more recent addition to these search engines has been meta search engines specialising in travel, such as Cheapflights and Travelzoo. The main difference between these two versions of search is that the main search engines such as Google, provide results by crawling the web, storing the information they find, indexing it and then presenting the results to the user based on their search parameters, whereas meta search engines gather their results from other search engines and databases, and present an aggregate of these results to the user, often on a direct comparison basis. While awareness of these meta search engines is still relatively low in Ireland, awareness in the US is high, and Ireland will soon follow suit.

Figure 1. Percent indicating prompted awareness of selected meta-search travel supplier. Findings based on survey of US online adults who traveled or looked for travel services in the past 12 months, n=469. Source: Prophis eResearch September 2006.

The main alternative to search is the use of third-party online intermediaries, such as Expedia.com, which create inventory through various models, including from the Global Distribution System (GDS). This inventory is presented to the user with an option to book through the third party site. As an aid to their users, these sites also present large amounts of information on the listed properties, and according to Expedia itself, 40% of users avail of this information to research their choice, and subsequently book direct with the supplier (Source: http://www.hsmai.org/Events/NewsDetail.cfm?id=4032987)

A third option, which is often neglected, is the recent emergence of Web 2.0 sites, which contain user generated content, such as reviews, blogs, photos, videos and travel advice. The most well known of these is Tripadvisor, but there are thousands of other popular sites where users can swap information and make informed choices based on others recommendations. This has led to a new phenomenon, which is the contrast between “official content” as displayed on the property website and on other third party sites, over which the property has full control, and “unofficial content” on reviews and blogs, over which the property has very little control, but is usually given the opportunity to reply. Until this new development, users had little option but to trust the “official content” as provided by the hotel or a travel agent, but this has now changed, with unbiased reports available with ease.
So, how do these main sources compare in actual usage and how important are the results?
Research provided by PhocusWright (The PhoCusWright Consumer Travel Trends Survey, Ninth Edition, 2007) shows the percentage of consumers who consulted the various online options when deciding on a purchase:
• Search Engines: 64%
• User-Generated Reviews: 47%
• Special Deal or Promotional Web Site: 34%
• Travel Search Engines: 25%
(Note: consumers could select more that one option)
Figure 2 shows the importance of these results in making the final decision.

Figure 2: Note that percents reflect those responding with a 4 or 5 on a 5 point importance scale. Findings based on a August 2008 survey of online US adults who travelled or looked for travel services in past 12 months, n=433. Consumers could select more that one option. Source Prophis eResearch.

Your Actions
Armed with this information on how a typical consumer behaves, what actions are required to maximise your online potential?
1. Search Engines: Take advantage of search engine optimisation and marketing services, such as Bookassist Trafficbuilder or other equivalent services in the industry, to increase your presence in the various stages of search. This can be done through a combination of search engine optimisation and search engine marketing using pay per click ads to target consumers during the decision making process. While it is difficult and expensive to appear on the first page of the results for generic search terms, campaigns can be tailored to work to your strengths and ensure that you appear for other relevant terms with a high search volume.
2. Third Party Online Intermediaries: It is important to maintain a presence on a selected number of sites such as Expedia. Your booking engine provider account manager should be able to advise you on the optimum level of exposure on these sites. Bear in mind that these sites are used for comparison shopping as well as for bookings, so it is important to offer the best rates and deals on your own site, and thereby take full advantage of third party sites for exposure, but direct bookers to your own site for the final transaction.
3. Web 2.0 sites: Take ownership of your online profile, by joining the online conversation. Respond to reviews in Tripadvisor, create your own profile on sites such as Facebook and Myspace, add your own photos and videos to Youtube and Flickr, monitor comments about your property in blogs. Remember that although these sites only generate a small percentage of your websites traffic, they are becoming an increasingly large part of the decision making process.

A careful strategic approach to your entire presence online will quickly make a difference to your bottom line and put you, rather than online intermediaries, in charge of your online revenue generation.


Ciarán Rowe is a senior search engine specialist at Bookassist and heads the Bookassist Traffic Builder search engine optimisation and marketing service for Bookassist Ireland.

Act now to increase your online business in an economic downturn

Bookassist clients represent the majority of the Irish hotel industry. Our feedback indicates that many hotels are experiencing a downturn in overall business in recent months, and recent news articles and industry press are saying the same (see Sunday Business Post July 20th, 2008).

But other hotels have genuinely been able to boost the online portion of their business by having a strong proactive internet strategy. Our experience shows that you can give yourself a competitive advantage if you act quickly and decisively, and we want to remind you of some tips to achieve this.

THE REAL ISSUE
Firstly, focus on the real issue. If total bookings have changed, it is not a problem with your booking technology. The problem in economic uncertainty is less bookers due to less discretionary spend, not a "booking process" issue. Sure, each booking engine provider has a different angle on the customer interface, but the technology from the main players all pretty much "works" and mostly they're just differences in approach, not serious flaws that prevent booking on a massive scale. The bigger weaknesses with online revenue generation lie elsewhere in online strategy but were perhaps less noticeable when customers were spending more. Bookassist handles tens of thousands of bookings monthly on behalf of our clients and we continue to see this volume increase not just in Ireland but in many countries. So don't waste time on small detail issues - look at the big picture because there is still room for growth.

Secondly, we see that overall booking volume online is still on the up so the key is to get a larger slice of that pie. Make no mistake, some hotels are feeling the pinch right now but others are generating more online business and with proper strategy you can certainly seek to improve your income. Since Google search is the primary storefront for your offering, you need to look very carefully at how that operates for you. In short you need to be as visible as possible, you need to be as clear as possible about what you are offering and your offer needs to be as compelling as possible for the online customer.

VISIBLITY
It is vital that you have your website regularly (not just annually!) analysed and optimised to ensure that it has the best possible chance of getting high up on the Google rankings, the natural listings, for the typical search phrases that your customers might use. You need to have a carefully orchestrated pay-per-click advertising campaign to complement that natural listing and you need to be prepared to budget for it. Tracking and analysis of spend on pay-per-click is so clear now that there is no need to be wondering whether it is working for you or not - you can see at a glance at any time. But you must act on the information and continually adjust strategy. You also need strong analysis of visitors and trends on your website so that you can act decisively to clear any bottlenecks and provide your visitors with exactly what they are looking for. These are continual and expert tasks that your online partner company may be better equipped to handle for you.

You can also broaden your visibility by ensuring that you tap into other new markets. Have multiple languages, promote your hotel in specific language target areas on Google. Bookassist clients have seen significant new business by focusing new multilingual websites on different untapped geographical areas and the Bookassist engine already operates in 9 languages so there is scope to unify your website and your booking process for a number of different foreign markets. But you must ensure that this is not a token effort that is done once and sits there - ensure that you have special offers etc regularly translated and perhaps targetted uniquely at specific markets based on what those markets might want.

From looking at Bookassist reports throughout Ireland, with hundreds of hotels, after Ireland, UK, US and Northern Ireland, the next 20 countries that generate business are displayed on the pie chart below. These are markets you can target to get more business (click the image for a larger view). If you need more localised information for your hotel, contact your Bookassist account manager.



Many hotels for example have foreign nationals working with them and this is a major advantage for visitors from their home countries who would feel much more comfortable dealing with a native speaker. So why not highlight the languages your hotel staff can offer on your website? It's one advantage over a competitor hotel who doesn't. Also, read our recent blog entry by an industry expert on why translation is so important in the wider marketplace.

CLARITY
You want to stand out from the crowd and you want the customer to click on your link. Look at how your hotel is displayed in Google results. Is the simple website title, page title and description good enough? Can it be tighter, more to the point? Is it clear to a customer who you are and what you are offering immediately, not muddied by having other similar websites with similar names appearing to offer similar offerings on your behalf? Do not confuse the customer at this vital search results stage. See for example Bookassist's opinion on operating multiple websites - you can't stand out from the crowd if you yourself create a crowd.

COMPELLING OFFERING
Focus on the quality of your online presentation and on differentiating your offering. Do the obvious stuff, like making sure the best prices are on your website, but look at other things like even seeing if you can reduce prices or have particularly good value specials where you might be able to offset that rate reduction against potential higher booking volume. Package more - engines like Bookassist allow you to have add-ons and room variations at booking time so consider better virtual packaging to have a stronger offering, perhaps partnering with local amenities to offer tickets or bundles with them.

You have to sell better and dispel any doubts, so ensure good quality photos for all room types offered, not just photos of your one best room. Engines like Bookassist allow you to have room specific photos built right into the booking process, so use those facilities. Consider more customer generated content, reviews online or video reviews which you can also post on YouTube. All of these things will enhance Google's opinion of your website, pushing you upwards, but they will certainly enhance your customers' opinion of your offering also and make it far more compelling than your competitors.

Hotels should consider exchanging links with other hotels who are not direct competitors to boost online traffic as well, featuring such hotels in a section of their website as a preferred or recommended partner.

At Bookassist we pride ourselves in getting it right, and we consistently do, for our clients (see some Bookassist testimonials). We can see clearly from our client base that those who listen to our advice and respond quickly and decisively are increasing online revenue right now.

Des O'Mahony, Roshan McPartland, Mary Collins, Christina Roche at Bookassist's Dublin office.

Multiple websites for your hotel might confuse your customers and erode your long term business

So I’m a customer. I’m looking to book a hotel online in Galway. Last time I stayed at “The Green Fingers Hotel” so I’d be happy to go back again to the same hotel. Very friendly staff, and a great breakfast if I remember correctly.

I type the hotel name into Google and hit search, and up comes the results page.

There it is, the hotel website – “Book online at the Green Fingers Galway”, greenfingersgalway.com – right at the top of the Google results page. So I click through to the link. Nice hotel website this, I recognise the photos of the nice rooms, the view. I had a pretty good stay there! Prices seem ok too, still reasonable. I wonder if it’s any cheaper on other sites though, like listings sites? Only takes a few seconds to check on other sites. Back to my results page for a quick scan of my options, maybe read a review or two.

Hang on, the second result on the results page looks like the hotel website too – “Green Fingers Hotel Galway Book Now”, greenfingershotel.com. Similar web address too. So I click through on that link. Nice hotel website this, not the same as the last one though! But the same hotel? But this is the official website surely? But then what was the last one? I mean the photos are the same, even the prices are the same, or close enough. Two fairly legit looking but obviously different websites for the same place? What’s going on here? Multiple personalities?

This is like that scene at the end of The Life of Brian – “I’m Brian. No, I’m Brian! I’m Brian and so’s my wife!”

I really don’t like the look of this at all. They can't both be "official". I wonder if one of those sites is spoofing and is up to no good? I wonder if the hotel knows about this? Surely they must check their own Google results from time to time!? They must have agreed to this. Cleverly done though, I’ll give them that, because I have no idea which is actually the official site. They’re both pretty good and pretty representative, though I guess anyone could get photos and logos and run up a website that looks official. But why, I'm thinking, would a hotel have two different websites? Surely at best they'd just send a fraction of customers one way and a fraction the other, it can't generate more customers! Unless of course one is being marketed well to attract a higher fraction of the existing customers at the expense of the other. But if you can do successful marketing with one site, you could equally have just applied your skills to the other and not bothered with the second site. I can't see the business sense in this at all, for the hotel anyway.

But wait, this is getting even better - there are adverts there too on the results page, for both website addresses! Now that is hilarious because the hotel is just allowing someone else to bid on their name and drive up their own pay-per-click advertising costs in response. They’re bidding against themselves! An auctioneer’s dream. No wonder pay-per-click can make so much money for the search engines if people allow that to happen. Guess this hotel doesn’t know too much about online marketing. They really should be talking to experts about protecting their brand online for the long haul, because this marketplace is just getting more and more competitive all the time and customers are getting much more savvy.



Anyway, that’s their problem. I don’t have time to be trying to figure this out, and there’s no button on Google for “Will the real Green Fingers please stand up!”. (Mental note, I should patent a “Will the real … please stand up” button before Google thinks of it). Whatever's going on it doesn't look too healthy to me, no reason I should take a chance.

So I type “Hotels Galway” into Google and go find somewhere else to stay. Shame, I liked the breakfast at that place. Maybe the next place will be just as good if not better anyway.


PDF - Bookassist opinion on multiple websites and their potential problems


Dr Des O'Mahony is CEO and Founder at Bookassist

EyeForTravel video interview with Bookassist's Yahya Fetchati

Bookassist had a major and very successful presence at the EyeForTravel event in London recently, and participated in presentations as well as round table public discussion panels. The ongoing response to Bookassist's innovation in the marketplace with Travel 2.0 technologies and targetted online marketing strategies for hotels is extremely positive, with a number of presenters in other forums at EyeForTravel mentioning Bookassist as a leader in these areas.

Hotel Blogs presents here a video interview with Yahya Fetchati, Head of Business & Operations at Bookassist where Yahya outlines Bookassist's philosophy of being a seamless solution provider for hotels, removing the hassle from them of having to worry about what to do online:

Interview - Yahya Fetchati, Bookassist
by HotelBlogs

Responding to Tripadvisor reviews of your hotel

Aleks Grzegorzak in Bookassist's Dublin office asks: "Have you checked reviews of your hotel at Tripadvisor website yet? "

Whether you like it or not, your previous guests like to share their opinion with friends, and the same applies to the Internet where social media websites allow them to share their experiences publicly with others. The only difference is that this time your guest shares his or her opinion with millions of people all over the world. The most popular website with reviews on hotels and vacations is www.tripadvisor.com.

The good news, however, is that this website allows hoteliers to respond to reviews.

There are already over 15 million reviews at Tripadvisor. Over 20,000 people visit the website daily for advice on hotels and vacation. Reviews online are a very important part of your web presence and it is up to the hotel’s general/sales/reservations managers to either monitor reviews and take appropriate action to control their image online or ignore them and allow themselves to be condemned for the image being created by somebody else.

Think: If somebody insults you in front of others, don’t you respond appropriately? If somebody compliments you, don’t you say thank you? The same rules apply to online reviews so take responsibility and act today. And remember to respond to both negative and positive reviews. It can be a great way of customer relationship management, too! You can do this in a few very easy steps.

1. Go to www.tripadvisor.com and write a name of your hotel in the search box provided:


2. It can yield more than one result, so find your hotel on the list and click on the link ‘Reviews of Your Hotel’ (highlighted in blue):


3. The link brings you to your hotel’s profile with reviews below:


4. Below the reviews there is a green frame for hotel’s owner with a link to the owner’s page (highlighted in blue):


5. The link brings you to the next screen with further links. Click on the ‘Respond to a review’:


6. The next page has a few drop-down lists where you can choose options of your choice:


7. Respond!

And remember you can set a Google Alert for your hotel page also so you can be informed when any new review is added.

Aleks Grzegorzak is Internet Support Coordinator in Bookassist's Dublin office

Get your business onto Google Maps

You can add your hotel to Google Maps as a Business so that it shows up if people are searching for hotels, notes Des O'Mahony.

People are increasingly using Google Maps to find local information, first locating the area of interest and then using Google Map "Find businesses" option as shown here.

It is vital that you get your business listed, and it's very simple. It all happens in Google's Local Business Centre.

If you don't have a Google account, do this:
* First, go to Google Maps on maps.google.com
* Either move the map to your hotel's location or use the search to type in your street address and it should locate you properly.
* In the search results column on the left you will see a link that says "Put your business on Google Maps", click on that
* If you have a Google account, log in. If not, take a few minutes to create one.

If you do have a Google account, log in, go to "My Account" in the menu bar and choose "Local Business Centre".

Once in Local Business Centre, choose to set up a new business:
* You will be asked to specify your business's details and contact phone number - this will be used to verify your entry so make sure you are near that phone to complete the process
* Choose your category as "hotel" or other as appropriate - you can add more categories if you cater for other services such as conference, wedding etc
* You should consider uploading high quality photographs to give users a feel for your product, up to 10 are allowed
* Once you have gone through the addition of all information, you will have the option of having the information verified by phone, by SMS or by postal verification - if you choose phone, the system will display a PIN number on screen and will phone the main business number that you gave immediately, asking you to enter that PIN. (You must be able to take that automated call directly as it will not be switchable through a switchboard. But you can give a direct line as your main business number and, once the call verifies you, you can then edit your business profile to switch the main business number to something else.)
* Once verified, you will be quickly live, usually immediately. To check, go back to maps.google.com and use the "Find businesses" option to search for your category in your area, eg "hotel" and you should appear.
* You can edit your listing at any time by logging in and going to the Local Business Centre

Note that if you have a series of offices or hotels, you can set up multiple locations.

Also, in the Local Business Centre you can track access to your listings and see if it is popular. To make maximum use of this, you should ensure you have online reservations as an additional attribute. You will more than likely also see your business listed by other vendors - it is up to you whether you want that to continue or not.

The screenshot above right shows Bookassist being found "locally" in the marketing category.

Dr Des O'Mahony is co-founder and Managing Director of Bookassist

Travel 2.0 issues: How can I listen to online conversations?

"Before you jump in and partake in online social media, you need to first listen to online conversations that involve you", writes Foncho Ramírez

Technorati reported that the year 2008 began with more than 120 million active conversations published online in several blogging networks. Online conversations are more and more crucial for your business. As we know, the best way to start participating in this media is first to listen. But there are thousands and thousands of themes out there, how can I find relevant streams of information for my market and company? How can I start participating in these social networks? Before you jump in and partake in online social media, you need to first listen to online conversations that involve you.

Use a feed reader and sign up for regular updates of your favorites sources of information. A feed reader is a web application which aggregates or gathers together syndicated web content as news headlines and blog entries creating a single location for all your relevant updated news sources.

Go and sign up for one now! Here is a short list of well known free and web based feed readers to join: Google Reader, Netvides, Bloglines. Click on the links, review the services and select the one you like the most.

Now that you have downloaded or signed up for a feed reader you have to add subscriptions from your favorite news sources, such as this Bookassist travel industry blog. Just look for the RSS symbol in any blog or webpage and you subscribe to it as a reader.

The second way to listen your market on the net is to set alerts for your hotel keywords. From my point of view every hotel needs to set alerts: in Technorati for blogs, in Google Alerts for general websites and in Tripadvisor for guest reviews that are related to their hotel. These are the most significant online applications for managing your hotel reputation on the net and you need to know what is there so that you can make sure your image is handled correctly and fairly.

The alerts systems mail you every time their search engine spider finds a new file on the internet with your keyword term in it. This is a very powerful tool and is very helpful for hotels finding hidden clients reviews, comments, questions, special offers, etc. You can set any type of terms like your hotel name, your brand, your closest touristic attractions or even your own name. You can add any keyword term for the search and as many as you want.

This "listening" system will work as your basic collection engine for information in social media. Any time someone talks about you in the net you will be able to hear it and answer it faster that anybody else.

Foncho Ramírez is Senior Search Engine Specialist at Bookassist's Madrid office and is a Google Adwords Professional

The Importance of Translation when Building Online Relationships & Revenues

"Research shows that online, people are 3 times more likely to buy if the website is in their own language", writes Mark Rodgers of Cipherion Translations.

The Celtic Tiger has brought Irish hotels into the 21st century. Most hotels have a strong online presence in the form of a professionally developed website which is seamlessly connected to a booking engine. However, with the current uncertainty in a number of our main markets, the industry is now at a watershed – how to keep the online momentum going while still focusing on revenues and profitability.

Building online relationships with your customers is essential at any time, but vital in today's uncertainty. The Internet allows you to be a global player, in control of how your hotel is marketed online. However, sometimes you have ten seconds to build that initial relationship so how do you differentiate yourself from your competition?

I'd recommend translating your website. Research shows that online, people are 3 times more likely to buy if the website is in their own language.

At the recent Bookassist industry seminar, I was delighted to be invited by Bookassist to present hotels with a multi-lingual strategy. It was fascinating to hear Roshan mention that a recent survey of Bookassist’s main hotel clients in Ireland showed on average over 55% of their entire revenue is now generated online.

Wouldn’t it be great to start getting an even greater portion of that revenue directly from your own website?

Here’s how we, at Cipherion Translations approach it. Think of Christophe and Sophie for a moment. They are sitting at home in Lyon, at their white oak kitchen table, drinking a nice Bordeaux while getting excited about their upcoming holiday to Ireland. They know that they'll visit Dublin, then Waterford and straight over to Galway. They just need to decide where to stay….

However, most of our hotel websites are currently in English. So while most European tourists like Christophe and Sophie have fluent English, think of their delight when they come upon your site in their own language. You're delighting the customer and exceeding their expectations even before they arrive at your hotel. You're building that initial relationship.

So how have the overseas visitors been able to find us in the past? This is where the third party operators, Expedia, Travelocity and the like have had a head start. They have been marketing your hotel in multiple languages for years… and likely getting a significant chunk of the online business from the European visitors.

Essentially, they are building that initial relationship, in French or in German. They have had a significant advantage since your website was previously only available in English.

FACT: Online, people are 3 times more likely to buy if the website is in their own language.

We'd love to help you build that initial relationship with your customers. We work closely with Bookassist, who already has a multi-lingual booking engine. We’ll help you translate your website to delight the customers when they come to your website. Bookassist has already done the rest for you by allowing your customers to book in their own language.

Cipherion Translations have teams of marketing specialists in over 40 languages. Because you only need to “hire” our marketing team for a day or two, the costs are not significant… and in conjunction with the multi-lingual booking engine from Bookassist you can start to grab a larger share of the business that used to come to you through third party websites.

So whether you only wish to market based on a translated home page, or feel that you want to tell the visitor more about your hotel, our team can quickly provide you with translations that will engage and hold your visitors attention. We ensure that during those initial 10 seconds the online visitor will get maximum value from the website.

The Internet and Web 2.0 now allows you to easily attract customers from all over Europe. So it’s vital that you market to this audience in their own language – to build that initial relationship with them.

Remember the fact: people are 3 times more likely to buy online if the website is in their own language. Cipherion Translations can provide you with the marketing experts in each language to guarantee that a visitor’s initial 10 seconds are meaningful and thus increase the chances of the customer wanting to book directly from your website. Bookassist, with their multi-lingual booking engine will take care of the rest.

In summary, thinking global means taking action. Translation is a cost-effective way to build your revenues and build relationships with your customers. Now is the time to think about differentiating yourself on the Internet.

Mark Rodgers is Managing Director at Cipherion Translations.

Managing negative online reviews

With Travel2.0 and the rise of customer generated media and content, Bookassist has been providing the option of showing genuine reviews as part of the Booking engine services, by genuine I mean reviews from people who have actually booked online and stayed at the hotel. We highlighted the growing need for this sort of "openness" online in the Bookassist Seminar on April 9th in Dublin in particular.

Hotels though are justifiably worried about putting reviews online, especially anything with negativity. This is understandable, but as we have pointed out in many different forums, these reviews are going online anyway whether you like it or not, so it is better to row in behind it and actually put them on your own website also so you can manage them appropriately.

Here's a brief article from Marketing Pilgrim about managing negativity online that gives some pointers. See Marketing Pilgrim

Promoting your hotel online

Ismael in Bookassist's Madrid office circulated this link today for client hotels as a briefing on what you should be doing to promote your hotel online. A good summary piece.

See HotelMarketing.com

Unlock the power of your website

"There is a risk that a hotel’s unique brand can be eroded by using travel portals", writes Des O'Mahony.

For a hotel, the direct guest is best. Bookings through travel portals or agents incur high charges, while the direct bookings through your own website represents lowest cost of sale. With stiff competition, hotels need to move to direct business more and more and lower their dependence on indirect sales. Utilising proper technology and online marketing expertise can unlock the power of a hotel website to maximize that business.

Direct versus Indirect

Times were when travelers to a destination treated the accommodation as a side issue. These days, the accommodation is just as likely to be the reason for traveling, especially with the growth in spa treatments and luxury hotels. With over 50% of leisure bookings to be made online by 2010 (PhocusWright), direct business is there for the taking. The Marriott group boldly invested millions in their online presence and in 2007 saw over 80% of their business generated directly through their own website. This could be the norm but the majority of hotels have yet to wake up to this potential instead of handing their online business to third party travel portals at a significant cost.

Poor brand imagery and customer care

There is a risk that a hotel’s unique brand can be eroded by using travel portals. A hotel is listed blandly in categories and risks becoming “commoditised” and unable to project its individuality appropriately .Pricing is out of the hotel’s control, causing customer confusion as different rates can be found on the net by potential guests. More importantly, the customer relationship is owned by the portal and it is the portal that they will return to for new bookings. While hotels may get significant business from these channels in the short term, the long term consequences for the hotel business and hotel brand is potentially damaging.

However…..

When selling directly on their own website however, the hotel lowers the booking costs, remains in control of their brand image online and ensures the customer is their customer, thereby improving return business potential. Building customer loyalty to your website is crucial and gaining their trust that the best prices are here. Bookassist technology and services are all about empowering individual hotel (or apartment) websites to reach those goals.

Get Geared Up

As the internet rapidly develops, so too does the online customer. Web 2.0 phenomena such as social networking are making their presence felt in the travel sector as it moves to embrace the technologies in so-called Travel 2.0. The recent (November 27, 2007) Sunday Times Top 100 travel sites was dominated by travel review sites and blogs, not the travel portals you might suspect, as online users increasingly want to hear what others have to say and then go direct to book. At Bookassist we continually research internet trends and implement change quickly and we’ve been doing so in the internet arena since as far back as 1994. In our long experience, we’ve seen many trends appear and disappear just as quickly, while others stand the test of time.

The key requirements for a successful direct hotel business today include:
• Good quality, attractive, customer-focused website that provides real information, quality photography and is regularly updated.
• Effective optimization of the website content and structure to ensure high search engine natural listings placement.
• Inclusion of customer generated media or other Travel 2.0 technologies such as customer reviews, blogs, vlogs.
• Newsletters and limited special offers for members to encourage the building of a community of users, plus loyalty programmes to build return business.
• Customer-targeted and constantly-monitored online advertising.
• Leading edge booking system that facilitates quick customer booking with ease and instills confidence and projects security to the customer.
• Ensuring lowest prices are on your own website at all times so that customers can trust your prices and increase their use of hotel’s website.
• Report systems that allow you to plan ahead and adjust as you go along.

It’s what they want, not what you think they want

Your website must be compelling and must capture the user in seconds or they’re gone. It must facilitate instant gratification in the form of fast secure online booking and instant confirmation (Bookassist for example uses SMS confirmation as well as email). Already the internet is fast becoming dominated by “second generation” users for whom even email is an anachronism while social networking, blogging and instant messaging rule. These new users of today are the customers of tomorrow. You need to know their thinking and their online habits. Without proper research or advice on internet trends your business can quickly be left stranded.

Dr Des O'Mahony is co-founder and Managing Director of Bookassist