Small Luxury Hotels Improve Website Performance

Well Written Websites Perform Better

It always amazes me the number of hotel websites that are created by website developers who have no sales experience, do not optimize for the search engines the sites they create or who are not briefed in detail by experienced direct marketers. The consequence is often that the sites are merely representative rather than being potent selling tools.

If someone is searching in Google, for instance, for ‘country house hotels in the Cotswolds’, your hotel’s website needs to be near the top. The copy plays an important role in achieving this. (Remember, most people search for hotels by destination, not by hotel name).

However, the written content of your website also needs to persuade people to respond in some way, either to make an enquiry or to make a booking. It’s not enough to generate loads of traffic to the site if the content is not sufficiently appealing. The content needs to outperform that of your competitors, especially if their websites are also near the top of Google.

Whatever you do, don’t let anyone try to convince you that you need a specialist website expert to write the content of your site. If your developers have never written direct response copy, either for advertisements or direct mail, which is written specifically to generate responses or orders, then they’re not qualified to write the copy for your website. It can be rather like asking a shipbuilder to write the promotional material for a new cruise liner he just helped build!

The internet is direct marketing writ large and your website has the potential to be the most potent sales medium imaginable, converting browsers into enquirers at a higher rate than any other medium.

The written content of your website, therefore, needs to be very convincing, highlighting all the selling points of your hotel, and needs to persuade browsers to make an enquiry at every opportunity.

Alberghi Marketing

I wrote this article for the December issue of Hotel Business magazine:

Hotel Receptionists Hold the Key to a Successful Website – Ten Tips

The websites of small, luxury hotels, if successful, should be generating by far the largest percentage of enquiries. Imagine the difference to the bottom line of your hotel if the reception team treated every enquiry like a hot opportunity and did their utmost to convert it. 10% increase in revenue, 20%, 30%, who knows?

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. 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!

Alberghi Marketing

Local Marketing. What is Your Hotel’s Profile Locally?

When planning your local marketing activity, never assume that simply because your hotel has been in existence for a several years and you have perhaps spent a small fortune on local advertising, everyone within say a 5 – 10 mile radius knows about you. In fact, it’s more than likely that well over 80% of the local population have never even heard of you or know of you but have never considered a visit or, based on nothing more than hearsay, think you’re too expensive. This even applies to supposedly high profile hotels.

Most importantly, a large percentage of the local population, who might well enjoy the experience, are not about to consider a visit for any one of these reasons.

An example of this was in Hampshire not so long ago when the small, luxury hotel in question told me that most people locally knew about them. They looked at me in amazement when I suggested this might not be the case. To prove the point, I armed myself with a load of brochures and set off for the nearest town, some four miles away. I went into every shop, estate agent, solicitors office and other commercial premises in the High St., and asked those present if they’d heard of hotel X. The result was even worse than even I anticipated. Hardly anyone had heard of the hotel by name and when I described its location, some thought I was referring to a competitor hotel. Naturally, I rewarded everyone with a brochure!

How well-known are you? Don’t assume, find out.

Alberghi Marketing