Small Luxury Hotels Improve Website Performance

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

What an experience. Here is a restaurant that ostensibly provides for the religious community of Venice but is open to all and at 13 euros a head for a two course lunch including wine, not at all bad. One of our companions noted as soonas we entered that ‘it would be difficult to fall asleep in here’, so bright was the lighting. However, the food was pretty good and the service was ok…buit too quick for my liking. Nevertheless, we enjoyed ourselves immensely and had a very good lunch.

It’s in Calle Albanesi to the east of St Mark’s Square. Try it.

Venice need not be expensive

The arrival of snow can have a devastating effect on small independent luxury hotels. Having been almost full for the first two weeks of January, the snow arrived and with it the cancellations. All our marketing activity which had been so successful will not generate the anticipated revenue whilst the bad weather continues. One of the hotels whose website I manage was, a couple of days ago, still full for this coming Sunday. Then the weather forecasters started predicting heavy snow for the weekend and the cancellations started coming in.

What to do. Firstly, it’s imperative to secure the bookings for a later date. You might have to extend any offer for a further period for these people. You might even have to offer a very small incentive. Secondly, make sure you put a snow report on your website to say that the roads are all clear and there isn’t a problem, if this is the case. Make sure this is also on all the emails leaving the hotel.

If you have a twitter account, keep posting positive messages, especially if the snow isn’t bad where you are.

The chances are you will have taken some lovely photos of the hotel during the snow that makes it look ‘fairytale’. Post these to your website and include some stories of people having a lovely time whilst with you during the snow. You’ll not get back the revenue you’ve lost due to the cancellations but at least you can make something positive of it.

Alberghi Marketing

Twitter, Facebook, Myspace, YouTube, Flickr and more; social networking sites that so many people are devoting so much time to ‘developing’. Fine if you’re part of a hotel group and have the luxury of a marketing department but even then, how do you know those charged with managing these sites are devoting all their efforts to the task. Social networking is addictive and the temptation to manage one’s personal networking activities in company time frequently proves overwhelming. The number of man-hours lost to companies as a consequence can be very substantial.

Small independent hotels don’t have the resources to devote to this activity. It takes time and there’s no real indication yet as to how effective it might be in generating bookings. I am managing twitter activity for a couple of hotels and have succeeded in generating a few bookings that I know about. However, the big opportunity is to increase the profile of a hotel and to tempt people onto the hotel’s website. It can be particularly beneficial locally. This is where the small independent hotel can score over its larger competitors…by being local, personal, distinctive and, if possible, unique in the ‘tweets’ posted.

The success of twitter very much depends on how many followers you can generate who are the sort of followers you want to reach. Alas, there’s a great deal of rubbish out there and many followers will never by guests. I weed out those who are undesirable!

So, how effective is social networking in achieving your marketing and sales goals as a small independent hotel? Well I can see the big boys blitzing twitter with promotions but I believe that being selective and focused on the messages you post can be effective. It’s also important to observe the twitter activities of others and to react to them whenever you feel there’s an opportunity.

There doesn’t seem to be any proof anywhere that social networking activity actually produces bookings…and it takes up time. A hotel’s website is still the most important marketing resource and will continue to be so. A successful website with high Google ranking for a host of key phrases will generate as much as 80+% of your bookings and this should be reflected in your budgeting.

Alberghi Marketing

The luxury boutique hotel in the New Forest, near Southampton, Hotel TerraVina, now has an impressive schedule of popular events throughout the year. What’s different about these events is that they’re in one way or another beneficial. Here’s the schedule for 2010 so far:

Wednesday, January 27th 2010
‘Weight Loss and Healthy Eating’ Lunch
Special 2-course winter lunch with an after-lunch talk by Karen Guttridge from Slim Focus, who specialise in weight loss and healthy eating patterns.

Monday, February 8th – Friday, February 12th
Valentine Tasting Menu
A delicious tasting menu created especially for Valentine’s, with wines carefully selected to match each course by Gerard Basset and the TerraVina wine team, in the stylish ’sexy’ restaurant that’s a favourite in the New Forest.

Sunday, February 14th
Romantic Valentine’s Dinner
A romantic dinner on Valentine’s Day in a ’sexy’ restaurant in a voguish boutique hotel has to be a romantic’s delight.

Wednesday, February 24th 2010
‘The Healing Properties of Aloe Vera’ Lunch
Very few people actually know how wonderful and very versatile Aloe Vera really is. This event includes an Aloe Vera ‘goody bag’ for everyone.

Thursday, March 25th 2010
‘Floral Enchantment’ Lunch
Linda Lemmon of Floral Enchantment will host a talk on the healing properties of flowers.

Thursday, April 22nd 2010
‘Positive Health Naturally’ Lunch
presented by Dinah Smith, a personal health advisor specialising in organic treatments and natural therapies. This event includes a personal health analysis.

Thursday, May 27nd 2010
‘Focus On You’ Lunch
Christine Etheridge will demonstrate how different glasses can enhance your appearance and dramatically alter the shape of your face.

Thursday, June 24th 2010
‘Hypnotherapy Secrets Revealed’ Lunch
Derek Palmer will be speaking about the life-enhancing benefits that can flow from therapeutic hypnosis and about Neuro-Linguistic Programming and Meridian Energy Therapy.

Alberghi Marketing

Hotel TerraVina, the boutique hotel in the New Forest, is well-known as a ‘wine hotel’, hardly surprising when the hotel is owned by Gerard Basset, the only person in the world to hold the combined qualifications of Master Sommelier, Master of Wine and a Wine MBA, and TerraVina sommelier, Laura Rhys, was UK Sommelier of the Year 2009.

Gerard and the wine team regularly host very popular wine evenings:
January 24th 2010
An Evening with Bob ‘The Cat’ Bevan MBE, a fabulously funny raconteur who writes for Lord Coe, Sir David Frost, William Hague and other MPs and industrialists.
February 21st 2010
The Wines from Iona Winery, Elgin
with Andrew Gunn, proprietor of Iona winery from the beautiful area of Elgin in South Africa, a fairly new wine area which is showing great promise for cool climate viticulture.
March 21st 2010
An Overview of the Rothschild Wine Stable
with Mr Christopher Campbell, Managing Director of Rothschild Waddesdon Wines, one of whose roles is running the wine interests for Lord (Jacob) Rothschild.

Alberghi Marketing

The Castle Hotel in Taunton is now well established as a venue for some excellent events throughout the year with guests coming from all over the country, and beyond, to experience this beautiful hotel at its best. On January 15-17, the Fitzwilliam String Quartet will be performing. ‘This programme provides a sequence of delights, well-known and little-known pieces ranging from the 17th to the 21st centuries.’ Guests will have plenty of opportunities to meet and chat with the musicians. On February 5, there’s a Literary Lunch with Martin Bell OBE, particularly appropriate with a generral election looming. On March 26th, there’s an Evening of Jazz and Songs from the Americas with a Latin Gypsy Flavour with the ECLECTICA!

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Beechfield House is a small, luxury hotel gem in the heart of Wiltshire that’s offering some extremely appealing special breaks during the next couple of months. The Winter Special Break is offering two nights for the price of one and the Valentine’s Break will appeal to romantics who fancy a little quiet romantic bliss away from it all in beautiful Wiltshire. The Classic Sports Car Break is popular throughout the year with those like to experience driving like it used to be around the lanes of Wiltshire and the Cotswolds.

There are three beauty breaks available courtesy of the hotel’s ‘beauty centre’, which specialises in Pure Fiji’ beauty treatment and which is now recognised as one of the finest beauty salons in the Bath/Chippenham area. Each of the breaks includes beauty treatments. There’s a Babymoon Break for those couples who are expecting a baby soon, a Mother and Daughter Break and a Luxury Detox Break.

There’s the Longleat Break, always popular with families, that includes tickets to nearby Longleat Safari Park (NB Longleat doesn’t open daily until March 27th). There’s a Champagne Break which is just a good excuse to get away from it all and finally, there’s a 50% incentive to stay Sunday night, a simple Sunday Night Break.

Alberghi Marketing