Google it!

As part of our web presence we tried to be listed on the major search engines. Yes, search engines will track your web-site even without your active participation but we wanted a listing that we have more control of. While Yahoo was very unresponsive we found that it is easy to work with Google. They suggested key words and rates and we chose what seemed the best fit for us. In addition we pay for a tracking service and so we are able to see how many people are visiting our web-site and how they are finding us. This supply us with another way to judge the efficiency of the different online advertising channels that we use and pay for. it is also interesting to see the locations from which people are coming and what attracts them on our web-site. Yes we are a little Internet crazy but we believe that this is an important tool and try to utilize it as much as we can.

Booking engines... PMS...GDS...

The terminology can be very confusing and the money involved pretty hefty so I will try in very few words to shed some light on this 21st century trend in hospitality.

PMS- Property-Management- System, are programmes that give you a software to manage your room inventory and reservation.

When operating on your web-site they are booking engines and guests can look at your rooms, rates and availability and book what they like without actually talking to you.

GDS - Global -Distribution- System, refers to world wide Internet reservation system run and managed by several companies and used widely by travel agents and all the big travelling agencies like Expedia, Travelocity, Orbits, Priceline and so on. There are companies who can offer you software that will interlink all three parts and create "one efficient seamless booking machine". As you can imagine each section of the reservation- booking, costs money and you will also end up paying commissions on each reservation made online plus a flat fee for the service.

It is quiet a competition out there and you want to be seen. The price however makes it very hard to swallow. There is also something that is lost, the ability to talk directly with people. Evaluate their needs and make them feel unique and special.

Internet presence

People say "if you are not on the net you do not exist". I happen to think that nowadays this is true. Everyone is surfing and whenever we need any kind of information our first instinct is to search on the Internet. So having a pleasing web site is an important thing for every business and especially a hospitality business, when so much booking is done online.

So your web presence have at least 3 key components to it.

a. Developing a web-site

b. Adding a booking engine.

c. Advertising on the Internet.

Each one of this components is, in my opinion, crucial. All are also costly so you need to give it some thought.

Developing a web-site. When we bought the motel it had a web-site. The web-site was and still is hosted by a professional company. However pretty early we realized that we need more control over it. We need to be able to add things or take them away and make it live. So this winter we purchased a software and design the web-site from the start. It is now completely "ours". We gave it a different look, add information that was not there but most of all we can now, with ease, change it every time that we want and it takes minutes.

I can already see the change when I look at our tracking information. Yes, we also are paying to belong to a tracking system that tells us how many people visit our site and where they are coming from. The main change is that people seem to stay more in the site, visit more pages and respond better to new information like specials. Again, money invested is showing results even if indirectly. Designing a web-site is not difficult if you have a software that is user friendly. Deciding how to design, what kind of look to give your web-site, that is challenging. We were lucky to have the original site that we liked and we kept parts of it. Things like color scheme, graphics etc' require a lot of time and planning. The wording of course are not less challenging. What to say and how much. I believe that a picture is worth a thousand words... so whenever I can, I will use more pictures and less words. We kept few rules all through the site.

1. Like I said less words more pictures/ graphics.

2. A constant color and style all through the site.

3. A navigation bar that lets you navigate with ease between the pages.

4. 90% of the information that is important to us is on the first page.

5. We have a side navigation bar that shows on each page and lets you go to the booking engine.

Again the main assumption that we kept in mind is that people do not want to spend a lot of time reading and they are generally looking to get the info as fast as possible. So they need to see the most important things within the first few seconds otherwise they will get bored and leave.

Little things means a lot.

Little things go a long way. Investing in your guests means paying attention to many seemingly small things. I spend a lot of time on lets see...soaps for example. What kind of soap to put in the rooms that will look nice, smell nice and give an impression of an somewhat upscale place. Towels are another example. I like big bath towels and so I purchased for the motel the biggest that I could find. Breakfast was another investment that we did. Even though it means more money we are continuously updating what we give our guests. Adding more items. We realized how important breakfast is and how it gives the guests a sense of added value. We added tables to the breakfast room and opened it all through the winter which meant heating it even if there are only handful of guests.

All these things means more money that needs to be spend. It is especially tricky because this is the sort of investment that you cannot actually see the direct return and you have to believe that every happy guest brings another or better yet comes back.

Word of mouth

All the money in the world will not help you if you turn unhappy customers who will than tell others about you. So, in other words your best advertisement is your gusts. What it means is that when you invest in your guests you are investing in this kind of advertisement - word to mouth.

It is hard to measure how much business this gets your way but here are some examples. Return customers speak volumes of how well you did. They are the backbone of a small motel especially when times are bad. Your return customers and other content guests send other guests your way. The best story that I can recall are two people who stopped by one afternoon to book a room. They told us that they spoke with some people that they never met before in a rest stop, on the side of the road and when they told them where they are heading these people recommended us.

Guests who come for one night and stay for two or three are our favorites. They step out of the road just because and the next morning they will come and express how satisfied they are and ask to extend their stay. Next year some of them will call ahead and book...you got yourself another returning customer.

With the Internet evaluating and reviewing hospitality facilities by their customers became more and more prevalent. The biggest and most trusted is Trip advisor. Very few people now days will pick a place to sleep, or dine, without looking at the reviews. Make sure that your customers write about their stay. I can't even count the people who booked a room after telling us that they read about us in Trip advisor and liking what they read.

Avertise...!! advertise...advertise ?

If you do not advertise than no one will know about your business. If you advertise too much you will have no money to run your business. So somewhere in the middle, as with so many other things, lies the truth.

You need to advertise but you need to pick and choose.

We get few advertisement suggestions almost every day. At the beginning we spoke with every one. We thought and thought. In time we learned to sift through then and decide what important and practical for us. We learned what advertisement costs make sense and which are way over the top. We learned to ask questions and evaluate. But most of all we learned to say "NO". As a rule we advertise where we think that we have at least one of two things; large exposure, and a target group. The large exposure comes usually from the Internet (on our web presence in the coming post) search engines, online booking agents, hospitality sites, chamber of commerce and the AAA/AARP. We show on all of them. Some approached us and some we reached out for.

The target groups are special interest groups that we believe will find interest in our type of hospitality and location and thus we approach them and ask to be included in their advertisement.

Examples are, bikers, religious groups, traveling with pets etc'

We test the results for a period of time and either continue or cancel our advertisement. Just make sure that you understand what you are paying for before you enter into a contract that will cost you a lot of money. Money that you can invest in the motel.

Cannot please everyone, all the time.

You can try, but it is impossible. Some people are very hard to please. It has nothing to do with you. It is them, most of the time.

It might come up as a legitimate complain, but once you start talking to them, or if they stay for more than a night you will realize that this is how they treat most of the things in their world.

It can come in many different ways. "The room is fine but....the smell, the noise, the shower curtain, the color of the floor....Don't get me wrong, we treat each remark with the utmost seriousness. We check it up, think about it. Many times even make some changes if it make sense and it is practical. We actually ask people to tell us if everything is OK. Being a guest you see things in a different way so it is very helpful when people tell us what they think. I am also not talking about all those people who are very grumpy at check-in time as we realize that many times they are just tired and the next morning they will be different and relaxed. No, it those people that no matter what you do or say will remain unsatisfied. We learn to tone it down, keep smiling, and wait for them to leave.