Small Luxury Hotels Improve Website Performance

Revenue management for many small hotels often amounts to discounting as a knee-jerk reaction to anticipated poor occupancy. I’m always surprised that so many hotels are prepared to reduce prices in the longer term in order to try to fill rooms, when there is the Late Availability opportunity. This is simply a rate that applies to selected days in the immediate future when occupancy is not looking good, up to say four days hence. Of course, someone in the hotel needs to be managing this on a daily basis and as soon as rooms fill to a certain level, Late Availability is no longer available.

So, your website needs a Late Availability page that is linked from the Home page and the Rates page and anywhere else considered appropriate on the website.  I’m assuming here that your website is fully content manageable, thereby allowing you to update pages as and when required. You will see, via your statistics, that this page quickly becomes  the second or third most visited page on your site, indicating its potential.

www.alberghimarketing.co.uk

Do you know how well your website performed for you during July? My client hotels have all seen a significant increase in traffic with a consequent beneficial effect on enquiries and bookings. These are some of the comments extracted from recent emails:
“…the hotel was certainly busy in July and we had a great occupancy rate and the best ever month in terms of finances…”
“…and we are full this week again.”
“…great results – last month was a record for us too on revenues.”

I’ve just checked the statistics so far this month and it looks as though August is going to be another record. So, how often do you check your website statistics? You should be looking at them at least once a week. Then you’ll know what needs attention to improve performance…here’s an example:

The most visited page of a hotel website, after the Home page, is often the Accommodation page. I noticed a couple of days ago that this was the case on a client hotel website but I also noticed that the link page featuring the individual room details with links to photographs was the 11th most visited page. This suggested that many people were not looking at the rooms, so I edited the page and made the links more prominent. I checked the following day and the Accommodation page had jumped to 9th which means more visitors are now looking at the photographs which, incidentally, are beautiful!

You need to keep watching the statistics and tweaking your site to improve performance.

www.alberghimarketing.co.uk

When you are on the Lido, pop along the island to Malamocco, make your way to the lovely little square just the lagoon side of the canal basin and you’ll see the the little tratroria bar Al Ponte di Borgo. If you want to immerse yourselves in the local life, then this is the place. We loved it.

Most importantly, it’s a restaurant for local people at local prices. VERY reasonable.

The fish is superb but most of it is fried including soft-shelled crabs, moeche. The Venetian way of cooking these is to drop the live crabs into a bowl of beaten eggs and leave them overnight. They eat the eggs. You then dust the crabs lightly in flour and fry. They are absolutely delicious but…hmmmmm.

This is a little gem of a restaurant, very cosy. In summer there are plenty of tables outside in the garden and should feel very much like a party! If you have a boat, then you can park it in the basin and stroll across. This is a little corner of paradise, so tranquil and virtually no-one around apart from the locals.

No matter how successful your website is or, for that matter, how much effort and money you are putting into other forms of marketing, if the resulting enquiries are lost by inexperienced or untrained reception staff or staff that do not realize they are supposed to sell the benefits of the hotel in order to secure a booking, then all that effort and money is wasted.

I’m amazed that hotels are still recruiting people simply to occupy the reception desk and to answer the telephone. Receptionists should be capable of converting telephone enquiries into bookings; they should not be there simply to answer callers’ questions, quote a rate and then leave it to them to think about it. Also, these are frequently the people who are expected to respond to email enquiries when their command of written English is lamentably poor. What’s worse about email responses is that all too frequently, nobody in authority checks them.

I dread to think how many times I have sat in Reception and heard the girls say, ‘No we’re full on that date. Thank you. Goodbye’.

I have even witnessed receptionists welcoming walk-in prospects and, when asked what the price of a room would be for the night, quote without hesitation the lowest rate possible, a ‘distress’ rate. When asked why, the answer was ‘because I’m allowed to and it’s more likely they’ll book.’ I’m sure that’s why the hotel’s average room rate was so low!

I frequently ask reception staff if they think their hotel is expensive and well over 50% respond, without hesitation, ‘Yes’. In their worlds, of course, the price of a night in a luxury hotel might well seem expensive but in the luxury hotel market, the rates relate directly to the experience at that level. How are these receptionists supposed to be convincing to callers who ask for a cheaper rate?’

This might sound a bit of a rant and I suppose it is. My business is improving the performance of hotel websites, resulting in increased numbers of enquiries, and inspiring reception teams to convert them. So, for what it’s worth, these are my top ten tips for improving the performance of receptionists in small, luxury hotels where a specialist Reservations dept. or specialist training are not options:

1. When recruiting receptionists, look for those with a vivacious personality. You need enthusiasm and conviction at the end of the phone.
2. Ensure they understand they are there to convert enquiries, especially phone enquiries (more people still prefer to enquire/book by phone), as well as to be ‘on Reception’.
3. Ensure all receptionists are always familiar with the hotel’s primary selling points, especially those that give you an edge over your primary competitors. They need to be quoting these to all enquirers.
4. Make mystery phone calls and send mystery email enquiries to your hotel. Then log what was said on the phone and file the email responses for review later.
5. Ensure all receptionists understand why your hotel is not expensive.
6. Every so often, treat them to dinner and a night in the hotel so they understand what makes your hotel special. They will then be able to convey the character of the hotel far more effectively over the phone or in an email.
7. Prepare for them an email response template that features the primary selling points of the hotel. The mystery email exercise will ensure they’re doing it properly.
8. Hold monthly receptionist meetings (more frequently, if necessary) to:
   1. Review the mystery phone calls and the emails and discuss how they could be improved.
   2. Review the average room rate being achieved and discuss how it might be improved.
   3. Ask them to list the primary selling points of the hotel at every meeting
   4. Review the guest welcome process. A guest arriving at your hotel for the first time might well be impressed by the building and the grounds but his first impression of the ‘guest experience’ is the receptionist. You know what they say, ‘You never get a second chance to make a first impression.’
   5. Make receptionists feel really involved and take pride in what they’re achieving. They can make a huge difference to the bottom line.
   6. Review how they can clinch the booking without reducing the rate
9. Create performance incentives. I suggest these are based on average room rates achieved by the team and an individual incentive for the most revenue generated by ‘upselling’, e.g. bottles of Champagne, flowers, beauty treatments, etc
10. Finally, and perhaps controversially, pay them more! Good receptionists can do more for you than mediocre sales people (I’ll be talking about them another time!) who can be paid twice as much.

You need to convert those website enquiries before your competitors get the chance.

www.alberghimarketing.co.uk

Kit Chapman of The Castle Taunton raises an interesting concern in his most recent blog. Those small, independent, luxury hotels whose revenues include business derived from locally based government offices must prepare for swingeing cut-backs by whichever party wins the election. This could well mean loss of business for your hotel.

Now, more than ever, it’s imperative that your hotel’s website is generating the traffic, enquiries and bookings of which it is capable and that you’re measuring its performance frequently. You ought to be using it to test new initiatives, to generate an email marketing database, to obtain valuable data from, for instance, wedding, conference, private parties enquiries that puts you ahead of your competitors, and so on.

As Kit says, a new age of austerity is on the way and you need to be ready.

Alberghi Marketing

There are many small independent luxury hotels in the UK who have a website but pay it little attention day to day. These same hoteliers are now trying to stimulate enquiries by focusing on Facebook and twitter. The fact is that a hotel’s own website is by far the most important element of the marketing effort. If the formula’s right, the website will be high in Google for around 2,000 individual search phrases every month generating a good number of enquiries, a good percentage of which are converted to bookings by receptionists who can sell the hotel’s benefit.

Most importantly, as long as the hotel’s website is fully content manageable, it can be updated as and when required with Late Availability rates for the next few days, special breaks, events, etc., activity which improves the enquiry rate and the booking opportunity.  Furthermore, if the search phrase for a specific page is not in the Google top ten, then an hotelier can edit the text, meta tags and links to improve its performance. Remember, every page of your website is a potential landing page, depending on what the browser is searching for. The website of a small independent hotel is the marketing opportunity that enables it to compete very effectively with larger hotels with greater resources.

Social networking sites are good for generating followers and, of course, previous guests need to be encouraged to follow you or become ‘friends’. You can then use your social media to ensure they know what special breaks, events, etc are available, as well as keeping them up to date as to what’s happening at the hotel. However, managing social networking activity is very time-consuming which is why PR companies have adopted them as part of the services they provide…another revenue opportunity for them.

In Venice for a few weeks. What a pleasure it is to walk through this beautiful city in February when there are fewer tourists and virtually none if one wanders off the tourist trail. It’s Sunday and we’ve just had lunch at Avogaria in Calle de l’Avogaria. What a little gem if you like something a little trendy. The Light Lunch menu is very reasonable, the food is delicious and the loos are among the best I’ve seen in Venice!

The other evening, we wandered off Strada Nova and discovered Alla Vedova. This is a local restaurant, hidden away down a little calle, that’s full of locals with a very good evening menu…most dishes are E10 or so. You might need to book, even on a Monday evening, as it’s very popular but it’s a real treat. Ask for the Italian menu.

I pop into my favourite cafe, Cafe Bar Palanca on La Giudecca, most mornings after my run along the fundamenta up to the chippy (Cipriani!) and back, and the other morning the acqua alta water was lapping at my feet…inside! This is an increasingly frequent occurence in Venice, alas. As always, my coffee costs me about E0.90, about 80p.

I popped over to Gino’s cafe in Dorsoduro after a hard day at the computer the other evening. I ordered a glass of red wine followed by another. I was sitting at a table so it was brought to me and therefore cost me E3.00. It would have cost me at least £5.00 in the UK. If I’d stood at the bar to drink it, the cost would have been E2.00!

I somethimes think it’s cheaper to live here than in England!

Martin Bell OBE Literary Lunch
Friday, 5th February
The man familiar on our TV screens for wearing a white suit has since become democracy’s white knight, never hesitating to expose the scandals and sleaze of the British political establishment. With a general election looming, this is the moment to meet and hear Martin Bell.
Full details…

Mr. Paul Chan, Kit Chapman’s Hong Kong Tailor, returns to Taunton
Tuesday, February 9th
Just to let you know that our old friend and tailor extraordinaire from Hong Kong, Paul Chan, will be in residence on Tuesday, 9th February.
Full details…

St Valentine’s Day Dinner with a Glass of Moet Rosé
Sunday, February 14th
For the love of your life, (or to make the best possible impression!), the St Valentine’s dinner at The Castle Restaurant is an occasion you will both remember for many years to come.
Full details…

St Valentine’s Day Dinner at BRAZZ with Jazz Singer
Sunday, February 14th
Taunton’s trend-setting brasserie is an idyllic choice for a romantic evening with your Valentine.
Full details…

The Wihan Quartet at The Castle
Friday – Sunday, February 19th – 21st
A weekend programme of quartets by Beethoven and Schubert, Schubert’s Quintet in C, and – the ‘hidden gem’, Anton Arensky’s magnificent String Quartet for violin, viola and two cellos (1888), performed by one of the great string quartets in the world today.
Full details…

The Schumann Weekend at The CastleFriday – Sunday, March 12th – 14th
The Music Room at The Castle is ideally suited to performances of chamber music, solo piano and song and therefore to celebrate the bicentenary of Robert Schumann’s birth. Joining us for the Schumann Weekend will be the Mandelring Quartet, Ian Fountain (piano), Stephan Loges (baritone) and Eugene Asti (piano).
Full details…

From Jazz to Joni Mitchell. ECLECTICA! in concert
Friday, 26th March, 2010: 6.15pm in the Music Room
An Evening of Jazz and Songs from the Americas with a Latin Gypsy Flavour.  This exciting quartet has attracted great critical acclaim for “redefining” the string quartet with recitals all over Britain.
Full details…

Vienna Piano Trio at The Castle Taunton
Friday – Sunday, April 16th – 18th
A weekend of piano music by the Vienna Piano Trio, the leading ensemble in its field. Their recordings encompass a large part of the core repertoire for piano. We warmly welcome the return of the Vienna Piano Trio to The Castle as part of our celebration to mark the Robert Schumann bicentenary.
Full details…

An Evening with Timothy West CBE and Prunella Scales CBE
Friday, April 23rd
An evening of theatrical reminiscences from two of Britain’s most distinguished thespians. Further details to follow.
Full details…

The Castle Dining Club Bibendum Dinner
Thursday, May 13th
Full details…

The Castle Garden Party
Sunday, July 4th
Full details…

The Gentlemen of St. John’s at the Castle
Friday, July 23rd
Entertainment between courses.
Full details…

The Castle 60th Anniversary Weekend
Friday – Sunday, October 15th – 17th
The Diamond Anniversary of Mr. Peter Chapman and the Chapman Family’s arrival at the Castle. Details to follow but there will be a celebration dinner on Saturday, 16th for which Gary Rhodes, Richard Guest and Dominic Chapman will cook one course each.
Full details…

Writers at the Castle: History Weekend
Friday – Sunday, November 5th – 7th
Full details…

Christmas and New Year Celebrations 2010
December 24th – January 1st
Once again, the festive season at The Castle promises to be a grand affair. The decorations always look fabulous and everyone here really knows how to celebrate. All you have to do is relax and let it happen.
Full details…

Alberghi Marketing

I’ve just been reading an article that was advocating the appointment of a Social Media Manager by hotels. Firstly, this presupposes that there’s sufficient loot in the budget to make such an appointment, and for most small independent hotels, there most certainly isn’t. Secondly, there is much trumpeting about the marketing potential of social media activity but I have not yet seen one piece of research that says how effective it is in generating bookings.

My advice to independent hoteliers, before diving into the social media maelstrom, is to concentrate on ensuring your website is generating an ever-increasing amount of traffic and generating an ever-increasing number of enquiries. Then ensure that your reception team is capable of converting the enquiries to bookings. Incidentally, do you ever check the emails that are sent out from your hotel in response to website email enquiries? If not, why not? Your hotel might be the exception but very often the responses are lamentably poor…poor spelling and grammar and no evidence of ’selling’.

Also, if you employ a Sales Manager, either full or part-time, make sure he/she is not languishing in the office planning wasteful advertising and making endless phone calls in the hope that a conference prospect might call back. He/she should be out there knocking on doors and promoting the hotel

I have just spent a couple of hours with a client on bookings for this weekend. I was amending the website every 15 minutes and within the two hours, we had filled Saturday and now we’ve almost filled Friday. (Incidentally, I’m not paid by the hour!) The point is that you need to be working your website to fill the hotel and that means constant attention.

Your website is your primary selling tool and, used properly, is a very powerful weapon in the fight for business. Once you’re confident it’s generating the necessary traffic, then you need to be updating it all the time with whatever it takes to generate bookings.

Top priority: make sure your website is ‘content manageable’ so you’ll be able to update it yourself whenever you want to, otherwise the costs will be prohibitive.

It’s 2010 and the economy is going to remain difficult for a while. It’s therefore imperative you ensure your websites are performing to the maximum. It’s the middle of January and the traffic to your website should be showing a steep climb. You should have been full or almost full during the first two or three weeks of this month before the snow hit and wiped out much of your business.

I was at two of my clients over the last couple of days. The first, having been hammered by the weather, was full, the restaurant very busy and the conference room booked. January is not going to be so bad after all. The second hotel reported a very busy 2009 but was concerned for 2010. Their website will be promoting some exciting new initiatives in the very near future.

Your website should be fully or partly content manageable so you can update it yourselves…and you need a Late Availability page! This you can update whenever you have too many rooms to sell. It’s a facility that really works.
Most importantly, though, your website needs to be ahead of your competitors (and the hotel portals) for a host of relevant key search phrases. This means treating EVERY page of your site as a search opportunity.

If you have been relying on hotel portal sites by paying to be on there, you MUST keep track of the traffic they’re sending to your website. One of my clients was persuaded to join a well-known portal about six months ago (I negotiated a very good price), in spite of my reservations. Business generated - none. Traffic to the client website from this portal last month - 0.

Your website is your primary marketing tool but it needs your attention all the time.

Alberghi Marketing