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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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Hotel Marketing Trends for This Year

These marketing trends are crucial to the success of your business. Don’t let your hotel fall behind and lose out on bookings. Follow the advice in this article to increase brand loyalty, improve guest experience, and get more direct bookings.

Invest In Local

Local Search Engine Optimization helps the person searching find a local result that matches their query. In the hotel industry, local SEO could involve TripAdvisor, Yelp, and Google My Business. Search engines are beneficial for a hotel marketing campaign because the people searching for a local hotel are often already primed to purchase. They are looking for a hotel because they need one. Investing in local SEO can increase your direct bookings, as interested people will see your hotel in their search results and contact you.

Don’t only focus on search engine optimization, but also AEO, or answer engine optimization. People may type “hotels in Seattle” into a search engine. With the ability to use voice to search on devices, “what are the best hotels in Seattle” is a long-tail keyword you want to rank for as well. Keep voice searches in mind when creating your content.

Using Google Hotel Ads is another great way for hotel marketers to increase bookings. You can decide what you pay for the ads, and it allows customers to find you and book with you quickly. This way, you don’t lose a portion of your profit to OTAs. That being said, you may still want to consider OTAs for sponsored ad placement, especially to increase bookings in your low season. Find creative ways to encourage direct bookings such as perks for your guests.

Have A Mobile-Friendly Site

One of the top digital marketing trends is to make sure your website is mobile-friendly. Many people search and surf sites from their mobile devices. This means that if your site doesn’t function properly on mobile, you’re missing out on traffic. Online travel searches and bookings can make up a considerable percentage of your sales.

Create Content

If your marketing efforts don’t include a content strategy, you aren’t taking full advantage of the traffic, and potential guests content could bring. Content marketing involves posting content on your social media channels and blog that stimulates interest in your hotel without directly promoting yourself. Still, it is essential to remember to include calls to action regularly. Remind readers to follow you on social media, ask followers to subscribe to your newsletter, and encourage people to book with you.

When creating content, keep your targets in mind. Millennials and Gen Xers are very interested in travel and hospitality, and once they discover a brand, they like they can be very loyal. Don’t only focus on the experience of staying at your hotel; provide a full picture of what you can offer and what activities travelers can have. If you have unique dining venues or other perks on your property, highlight those in your content as well.

Spend Time On Social

Social media marketing is crucial to hotel success. First of all, it allows you to create brand awareness. Potential guests, as well as previous guests, can engage with you online. Second, you can monitor and respond to any comments being made about your hotel. If you encourage social logins, you can capture data on your customers and use that to improve your marketing strategies.

You may even want to consider sharing user-generated content. If a guest shares photos, videos, or a testimonial, your other followers may be interested in seeing it as well. Always ask for permission first. Share positive experiences, and others will want to have that same experience.

Grow your social following organically as much as possible. Cross-promote your accounts; invite your Instagram followers to follow your Facebook page. Use hashtags. Promote local events or businesses and tag them in your posts; they may return the favor.

Use Video

While a picture says a thousand words, a video says more. People who are interested in booking your hotel might want to watch a video of what they will be experiencing while staying there. Give them a glimpse into the guest experience they could have if they stayed at your hotel. Take them on a walkthrough tour of your hotel. If there is an event going on, create a live video to share, but remember to keep video quality in mind.

Don’t Forget About Real-Time Marketing

The hotel industry can take advantage of marketing in real-time, as guests often show up on time and have scheduled in advance. This gives hotels the unique opportunity to prime interested parties through social media, search engines, and then upsell or personalize the experience for each guest in person.

Chatbots allow you to have a virtual assistant 24/7, answering questions, and helping guests on your website. It can help nurture leads, allowing a real sales associate to step in and close the sale.

Personalize Your Marketing

Marketing professionals will personalize email campaigns for their subscribers to increase click-through rates. This doesn’t only mean using the subscriber’s first name in the email. It can involve a personalized subject line or different images based on subscriber preferences. It can even alter sections of content in the email based on criteria you’ve set.

You can also personalize your marketing efforts through retargeting people who have abandoned their booking before completing the process. Send a personalized email that encourages them to continue their booking.

These hotel marketing trends involve incorporating digital marketing and social media marketing into your marketing efforts. Make it easier for people to find you in search engines, and engage with your audience on social media. Focus on creating a positive experience, through videos, sharing user-generated content, AI chatbots, and personalized marketing both online and in person. Make it easy for your customers to book, make requests, and enjoy their vacation with a user-friendly online travel concierge app.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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Now's the Time to Create Your Holiday Campaigns

Summer’s over, and your business is probably coming down from the summer rush as everyone heads back to school and work. Believe it or not, now is the perfect time to start getting your holiday campaigns ready to go live. Here’s a quick list to get you prepared for your holiday campaigns.

Decide which holidays you will create campaigns for

The holidays don’t just mean Thanksgiving and Christmas. There are numerous dates throughout the final months of the year to take into consideration when creating your holiday campaigns. Also, it’s the most popular shopping time of the year. Take some time to think about what holidays and essential dates from September through December could be beneficial for your business. For example, even if you don’t sell a tangible product, perhaps a hotel can take advantage of creating a Cyber Monday deal.

Create your promotion

Once you decide which holiday dates you want to focus on, you’ll need to create a promotion to match. Using the previous example, a hotel creating a Cyber Monday deal would want to follow the rules for this type of advertisement. Cyber Monday (and Black Friday) are known for businesses offering their best deals of the year. Put together a one-of-a-kind package that you haven’t put together before. You could also provide a generous discount — research what your competitors are offering to ensure that your choice is competitive.

Decide on how you will promote your special

You have several options when it comes to promoting your special. This can include:

Social media

Contests

Email marketing

Landing pages

Blogs

PPC

Influencer marketing

The channels you use to promote your special should depend on your target audience and how you can best reach and communicate with them.

Develop Graphics and Content

Decide how you’re going to promote your campaign. Then, it’s time to begin creating the necessary materials you’ll need to carry it out. This will include content, graphics, videos, web pages, etc. Again, these should be tailored to the specific channels that you will be promoting your deal on, so consider dimensions. Videos are becoming more and more popular on social media. If you are supporting your special through social, you may want to consider creating a video.

Create a schedule

You’ll need to decide what goes out at what time. If you are driving people to a specific landing page from your social media posts, the page must be up and ready to go before you start posting. Work with your team to ensure all aspects of the campaign are completed on time to be pushed out on schedule.

Personal concierge app can also help you get last-minute deals, keep track of your rewards programs and increasing direct bookings.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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10 Ways To Write An Email Blast Your Subscribers Will Love

An email has a 4400% ROI for a good reason. However, if you want to make sure your email campaigns are as successful, you need to send the right emails.

Let’s take a look!

1. Some of the Best Email Blast Ideas Are Visually Appealing

Humans are visual creatures. Our brains process visual stimuli faster than text.

So if you’re writing an email that you want as many of your subscribers as possible to read, you first have to make sure it’s visually appealing.

Make sure your email design follows your copy and theme, and vice versa.

If you’re celebrating milestones, convey the atmosphere with visuals such as:

Gifs

Animations

Videos

Colorful images

Your newsletters should follow your branding, as well as visuals that your subscribers respond well to.

Don’t forget about interactive elements such as:

Quizzes

Polls

Mini-games

Numerous email marketing campaigns have been resounding successes just because they integrated interactivity to their regular schedules.

2. Personalization Is Key

If you don’t do anything other than personalizing, you’ll still come farther than businesses who don’t personalize their emails.

Use tags to insert each subscriber’s name into the subject line, and address them as you would approach a person you see face to face.

For example, Airbnb uses tags to address their subscribers with their names, and show them suggestions for the locations they recently searched for.

Email is not only an excellent tool for staying in constant contact; it’s an excellent tool for fostering relationships with your subscribers, as well.

Personalization is excellent at turning an abandoned cart into a successfully processed purchase.

Remind your subscribers of the things they’ve searched for, and offer them even more inspiration so you successfully up and cross-sell them.

Finally, if you have different types of subscribers, you can adapt your content to them with mailing list segmentation. Let people know that you are taking that extra bit to get to know them!

3. Enticing Subject Lines and Powerful Call to Action Buttons

Your subject line has to motivate your subscribers to open your emails.

It’s a good idea to make it relevant, personal, and in some cases, even humorous. If you can make your subscribers laugh, you can make them do anything.

Additionally, you can also infuse a sense of urgency to motivate your subscribers to click through.

Speaking of clicking through, there’s nothing more important than your CTAs (call to action buttons).

The CTA should be clear and prominent in the email. Make sure it stands out.

For example, if the rest of your email is black text on a white background, create the CTA in bold colors.

Alternatively, you could also play around with quirky CTAs if your audience appreciates that kind of humor.

4. Write Emails like Blog Posts

Content marketing is one of the best ways to convert by providing value, so why not write an email like a blog post?

Instead of making your subscribers click through, structure the email as a post about something you know they’re interested in.

The best ideas include:

How-to guides

“All you need to know” posts about significant new developments

Checklists

Then, make sure you add action-oriented CTAs.

Your subscribers will be more likely to click through and purchase your products/services if you’ve provided them with so much value early on.

Keep in mind that you shouldn’t do this regularly.

It can be an excellent way to shake things up. Especially if there’s a new development, or you’ve noticed that a lot of subscribers struggle with the same problems.

You can always use social media to research potential problems.

5. Want to Convert with Your Email Newsletter? Keep It Simple

If you’re sending an email blast that should motivate your customers to make a purchase, keep it simple.

Avoid meandering copy, too many visuals, links, or anything else that will take your subscribers away from the thing you want them to do:

Buy.

Instead, keep the copy simple. Structure it in a way that incorporates magnet words.

If you can also offer incentives like discounts or free shipping, bold those words and make sure they stand out. You can even add it to your subject lines. Very few people can resist the pull of discounts and free shipping.

6. Problem vs. Solution Formula

The majority of people buy either because they want to resolve a problem or improve their situation.

So if you want to send a great email, make sure you follow the formula:

Problem

Agitation

Solution

For example, if your customers are struggling with pet maintenance, you’d pose the problem statement in the subject line and the first few sentences.

Then, you agitate them. You show them precisely what it feels like not to solve that problem. You sympathize with their struggles.

Finally, when they can feel the problem pressing down on them, you should offer them a solution.

It’s as simple as that, and it works!

7. Try Writing Marketing Emails like Emails to Friends

This may not be the best idea for extremely formal audiences. This is for less formal audiences. Writing conversational email can be a great way to break the ice and get a chuckle out of your audience.

Don’t be afraid to speak like you normally would, and show the human side of your brand. Subscribers value personality, especially if they can personally relate to your struggles or observations.

Conversational and funny emails are also a great way to make practical products less dull.

Even socks can be adventurous if you write the right email.

8. Give Your Email List Subscribers a Choice

Sometimes we all focus too much on crafting one offer perfectly while forgetting that our email list subscribers would like multiple options.

There are two immediate benefits to this:

1) It’s much easier to understand which option is more popular.

2) It creates the “or-or” scenario. Email subscribers feel more pressured to make an immediate decision.

In any case, it helps your subscribers make up their minds, and give you the sales you want.

It’s a win-win.

9. Testimonials and Product Usage

Testimonials are one of the most important staples of digital marketing.

After all, there’s nothing like seeing people who are just like you love a product. It makes you all the more willing to purchase it yourself.

You can incorporate testimonials into your marketing emails:

Quotes

Case studies

Video testimonials

If you’re also segmenting your lists, make sure the right testimonials go to the right people – especially if your product has multiple use cases.

Additionally, you can also demonstrate how people can use your product.

Bonus points if they look happy and talk about all the benefits of doing it.

10. Turn that Frown Upside Down with Great Email Blast Ideas

Sometimes subscribers will stop opening your emails, or they’ll linger for so long that you think they’ll never convert. In that case, you shouldn’t just delete them off your mailing list to keep it clean.

Instead, send them a reactivation email.

For example, you can offer them a discount (especially if they’re still using the freemium version of your product or haven’t converted yet).

You can also point them to useful resources and case studies.

Maybe you didn’t convert them immediately, but there’s no reason not to start building a relationship with your subscribers right now.

Make it easy for your customers to book, make requests, and enjoy their vacation with a user-friendly online concierge app.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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Are investment decisions really independent? The role of decision making biases in hotel development projects

Think back to an important decision you have had to make. You may have weighed out the costs and benefits, studied the context, and evaluated the potential outcomes. While one hopes that careful analysis will lead to rational choices, the truth is that our human minds are complex. Our rational decisions are doctored by - amongst many others - feelings of potential regret, conscious or subconscious references, emotional attachment, and herd mentality. These biases prevail in business as much as they do in our personal lives, and we are all prone to them. We take a first look into the role of herd mentality in hotel investment decisions.

"Location, location, location"

A bird's eye view of the US hotel market exposes the phenomenon of geographic clustering amongst hotels (see figure 1). In fact, concentrated hotel supply can lead to positive agglomeration effects on the destination's market size and infrastructure. However, hotels may miss out on these benefits as market saturation and fierce price competition can limit the property's RevPAR potential. Indeed, researchers and consultants alike agree that late market entry and followership in hot markets do not support the profitability of the individual business [1].

The prevalence of hotel market 'hot spots' therefore begs the question: do rational economic considerations rule, or are investors jumping on a bandwagon?

What exactly is herding behavior and why does it exist?

Behavioral decision theory tells us that all humans are boundedly rational and decision-makers rely on simple decision rules and other heuristics in order to deal with environmental complexity, dynamism, and uncertainty. In other words, when we cannot accurately and effectively process all the information that is available to us, we use simplifications or shortcuts to make decisions.

Hotel investments decisions are typically uncertain. Current valuation and expert techniques consider multiple economic factors such as RevPar, Occupancy rates, economic forecasts, and the availability of resources in a particular region. However, classical conceptualizations of economic value maximization and decision making never happen under perfect rationality. In addition, engaging in a hotel development project spans several years during which the initial investment conditions - if they are known - and assumptions are likely to change. This makes a hotel investment choice complex and dynamic. While there is no doubt that economic factors play a central role in hotel investment decisions, high levels of uncertainty force decision-makers to focus on the most salient signals and in doing so lead to heuristic simplifications.

One proven means to gain legitimacy for strategic actions, respond to competitive moves, and reduce the uncertainty of own investment decisions is to look at peer-group behavior. The popular belief that "if others do it, it must be right" assumes that others know best. Through this lens, information gaps are discounted to make fast decisions and justify own strategic activity. Curious about the extent to which this happens in practice, we conducted a study to identify such herding behavior in hotel construction decisions.

To what extent does herd mentality impact hotel investment decisions?

In a study of 2'598 US-based hotel projects, we modeled hotel pipeline patterns over 12 years (2006-2018) to assess the extent to which prior development decisions influence the likelihood of new hotel projects. Results indicate that decision-makers are likely to mimic others' hotel development decisions, regardless of market conditions and property-specific characteristics. This positive pull effect is best described as a herding funnel: ongoing hotel development projects are likely to encourage more of the same. Such a pattern suggests that hotel construction decisions are indeed influenced by social pressures of peer-groups' investment behavior.

What does this mean for hotel developers and investors?

While we do no doubt that decision-makers are rational human beings and make important fact-based decisions, our research argues that decisions and value assessments in corporate real estate investments are biased. Instead of focusing solely on the costs and benefits of a particular investment choice, hotel investment decisions are simultaneously impacted by imitation tendencies that allow executives to justify quick market entry choices in an uncertain market environment. In this way, hotel market entry decisions might not be based on the absolute best hotel market location in a portfolio of potential investment possibilities but rather based on the best hotel market available among hotel peers' entry decisions. An awareness of herding behavior should enable executives to better reflect on their own evaluations and make a conscious effort to suppress cognitive biases. Such awareness will make room for more sound decision making based on objective economic assessments.

Get in touch with the professional mobile app development company and get guest manager app for boosting the profit of your business.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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Brown Hotels Acquires Four Tel Aviv Properties by the Zvieli Group

Tel Aviv-born hotel group Brown Hotels, has incorporated four Tel Aviv hotel properties by the Zvieli Group into its operations. Expanding its property portfolio, Brown Hotels will rebrand and manage all four acquired hotels.

Brown Hotels will convert The Townhouse Hotel and the adjacent Townhouse Apartments on Rothschild Boulevard into a 36-room hotel, transform the De La Mer Hotel on Hayarkon Street into a new wing of the Brown Beach House hotel, and relaunch the Olympia Hotel as a fully renovated and rebranded property. Brown Hotels will rebrand and manage all the Zvieli hotels in Tel Aviv, taking on all existing employees at each property headed. The effort will be overseen by Shlomi Tahan, former chief operating officer of the Isrotel chain. Brown Hotels plans to convert the De La Mer and Olymia hotels into residential properties in the future, at which point they will be returned to the Zvieli Group.

With residential, commercial and hotel real estate development at the company's core, Zvieli has made the decision to focus primarily on the real estate development and transfer day-to-day management and operations to the accomplished Brown Hotels group.

Leon Avigad, founder of Brown Hotels said, "We're delighted to onboard these centrally located, Tel Aviv hotels into our growing property portfolio. The acquisition reflects both Israel's growing tourism and Brown Hotels' development, to satisfy the influx of savvy travellers to Tel Aviv".

In addition to the eight hotels currently in operation across Israel and Croatia and the merger of the Zvieli properties, Brown Hotels is expanding with the arrival of six new properties in Israel over the coming year, and further properties across Greece, Germany and the UK by 2023, transforming the Israeli hospitality group to an international hotel brand.

About Brown Hotels

Brown Hotels is a Tel Aviv-based hospitality group known for its diverse portfolio of design-led, boutique hotels. The hotel's collection includes the acclaimed Brown TLV, Brown Beach House, The Poli House, The Dave Tel Aviv, Villa Brown Jerusalem, Villa Ba'Moshava in Jerusalem, and Brown Beach House Croatia in Trogir, Croatia. Founded in 2010 by Hoteliers Leon Avigad and Nitzan Perry, Brown Hotels evolved out of the desire to create dwellings that not only showed tourists the real culture and creativity of the city's youthful population, but also to expand the nightlife and neighborhood joints for locals. Each of the hotels in the group's collection are unique, independent and imbued with a true sense of place. Brown Hotels will open seven new properties in Israel in 2019/2020, and by 2023 will have expanded into Europe with new openings across Greece, Germany and the UK.

Develop your hotel mobile app to delight your guest quick and easy. It helps you empower your sales team to sell immediately.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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How to Better Convert Online Direct Bookings

Whether visitors are jumping ship to book on online travel agencies or simply changing their minds, independent hoteliers who rely on direct bookings to combat high commissions need to invest in their website and booking-engine strategies so that they don’t leave money on the table. In addition to websites and their booking engines being responsive, they also need to have clear call-to-action buttons that drive visitors to book now. Hotel mobile app encourages direct bookings by using a private offer feature on its booking engine.

#Concierge App #App for Hotels #Hotel Mobile App #Convenient

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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What is a hotel booking engine?

In simple terms, a hotel booking engine is an application on hotel websites and social media pages to capture and process direct online reservations.

An online booking engine is your key to commission-free direct bookings; a way to optimise your property’s sales strategy and maximise profit.

With most travellers today now booking their stays online, hotels have had to become reliant on online travel agents to deliver them reservations. Listing on them includes the benefits of reaching large, new, audiences and increasing bookings but each reservation requires a commission fee to be paid to the third-party. When this fee starts to creep up over 20%, it becomes incredibly frustrating for hotels, especially independent operators, as they see their profits melt away.

A hotel booking engine is a way for hotels to fight the OTA dominance, necessary though it may be.

This blog will give you a detailed rundown of booking engines in the hotel industry, including how they work, how your hotel can use them to advantage, and everything you need to know about providers, price, and features.

How does an online booking engine work?

An online booking engine works by plugging into your hotel website and processing secure online reservations made through the website. The data is then passed onto your property management system so you can access and manage the bookings.

The booking engine can be synced not only with your hotel website, but also your business Facebook profile. This means guests can book your rooms without ever being on your official website or any other online travel site.

It’s a highly convenient way for travellers to make a reservation. The booking engine will display your rates and availability in real-time and allows guests to select their dates and finalise the reservation. Other features may come with it – for example, the automation of reservation confirmation emails.

A booking engine can also integrate with a channel manager, so it can operate and be managed in the same manner as the online travel agents you connect to.

Online booking definition

Online booking is a convenient way for travellers to research and book their holidays or work trips. They’ll use the internet to browse travel websites and look for hotels, flights, car rental, guided tours, attractions, and more.

Using online booking methods, travellers can often book and organise an entire trip in one sitting – sometimes from a single website. They can also plan and build itineraries for their trip.

An online booking tool is a tool used by organisations to manage their business travel online. As well as making bookings, online booking tools usually allow organisations to view real-time data on their business travel spend, track their travellers online and enforce business travel policy.

Online booking is now the best way for travellers to book and securely pay for their travel. It streamlines the process for you and your guests. It’s also vital for increasing exposure and gets you on the road to more bookings.

The necessity of an internet booking engine

No matter the size of your hotel, you need to allow guests to book rooms online if you want to remain competitive and stay open for business

Travellers have come to expect this functionality from modern-day accommodation providers, appreciating the convenience and security it provides.

This is because:

Guests can easily self-serve – Travellers can check which rooms are available when, and for how much, without ever speaking to you.

Guests trust online booking – When guests make a booking, your booking engine can securely accept credit card payments, and guest data is safely stored and accessible in one place.

Guests can book quicker – Online booking puts an end to games of phone or email tag, with travellers and hotels liaising for days before confirming a booking.

Guests look for direct booking perks – People will often head to your website in the hopes that if they book direct they’ll get something a little extra added to their stay. This is a trade-off many properties will make to save on paying third-party commissions.

It’s more professional – Modern guests will be surprised if they can’t perform an online booking on your website. It’s likely to give them the impression that you’re not organised and they’ll end up booking another property.

The outlet an internet booking engine provides your property for bookings that are all your own is invaluable. When guests book direct, you own all this data and you own the relationship. Once a guest books direct you can do everything in your power to make them a return visitor and ensure they book direct every time they visit you. Without an internet booking engine, this can’t happen.

In a sense you can improve the profitability of every guest, one by one, just by securing their direct booking and earning their loyalty.

Benefits of booking engine software

While the core message around booking engine software is direct bookings, there’s a whole lot more potential than that.

With the right booking engine in place:

You can increase conversions with a simple guest booking experience

You can save time with quick and easy setup

You can eliminate manual entry with instant integration

You can make better decisions with data

You can gain an advantage over competitors who don’t have one

Here’s a range of benefits in more detail that booking engine software can provide hoteliers.

It improves your efficiency as a business With PMS and channel manager integration your availability is updated immediately upon receiving a reservation, not only in your own system, but across all of your channels.

It simplifies the administrative process for you and your staff Rather than requiring you to respond to email inquiries and accept reservations over the phone, an online booking system does the work for you. You can then spend more time interacting with your guests and keep the rest of the staff more organised and efficient, because everyone will have access to live information about the current occupancy at the hotel.

It allows you to collect valuable data about your guests Data collection is absolutely critical, especially in the hotel industry where guests are demanding a more personalised experience. Guest data can help you tailor your marketing campaigns to attract the most motivated guests to your hotel brand.

It directly improves the guest experience at your property A cloud-based system allows your guests to book their preferred room type on their computers, from their tablets or on their phones. With short forms and secure payment portals, it makes the process of online booking a room simple, easy and enjoyable. Remember, this is their first impression of your hotel and it will have a lasting impact on their perception of your brand. It should be user-friendly if your guests will complete the process and book online.

Why your website needs a booking engine

Think about every successful relationship, working or otherwise, that you’ve ever had. It’s likely that a common denominator throughout all of them has been effective communication and cooperation.

The same principles should apply to your hotel business. If your systems are not syncing together seamlessly in real-time, the probability of them working as you’d like is low, at best.

The two most prominent cogs in the machine are your website and booking engine. Unless you want errors, erratic results, and confused or cranky customers, these two systems must sync with each other.

To be optimised:

An online booking engine must be synchronised with your website

Your website needs to display a ‘Book Now’ button

The experience of your website and booking engine need to align on functionality and performance

Design quality on your website must also be reflected on the booking engine and vice versa

Your website will be HTTPS secure with an updated SSL certificate

Benefits gained from website and booking engine integration are numerous. They include:

The ability to stay on par with the booking experience on OTAs, which is important if your hotel wants to remain a viable booking alternative to the third-party channels

A consistently mobile-friendly platform which will help reduce user friction

A quick and functional experience for guests given they won’t have to repeat actions or input the same information more than once

A much easier way to manage rates and reservations since you won’t have to do any manual processing between the two systems, eliminating accidental errors

Greater success with search engine optimisation because your content and functionality will be optimised on both your website and booking engine

More traffic, more regularly, to your booking engine flowing straight from your website in a single click

Integration is something you should always keep in mind, no matter what systems you’re using.

Features to look for in a hotel booking system

As with any product you purchase for your hotel, quality will vary along with the price. Obviously you’ll want the basics covered at a minimum.

Here’s a number of booking engine features you should expect.

Up to 25 photos in your image gallery After you have done all the hard work of doing up your beautiful hotel and its rooms, you’ll want to showcase them. It’s already an established fact that visual experience through image galleries is one of the top factors to get guests over the line when booking. Being able to add a lot of high-resolution images to your gallery is important if you want to entice guests to book.

Banner images What is the first thing that you notice on a website? Isn’t it the banner image that steals the show for first impressions? Your booking engine should allow you to display an exciting banner image.

Facebook integration A booking engine should easily integrate with your social media pages, including the book now button to make it simple for guests to locate and start the booking process.

Room order auto optimisation When you want your guests to have seamless and hassle-free booking experience, the best you can do is to present them with the options they searched for. This feature displays the rooms according to your guest’s search criteria on the top of the search results, making it quick and easy for them to book.

Intuitive booking summary Whenever a guest chooses a room that is not close to the search criteria, a booking summary can alert the guests with a message that the rooms they selected do not match what they were looking for. This way, your guests are constantly engaged and guided to make the best choices for them.

Google Analytics integration When you have a hotel business and most of your bookings are coming from online, you need to know exactly where they are coming from, and where your website visitors are exiting from. Data can be crucial in analysing the success of your hotel website, so your booking engine should empower you with Google Analytics integration to keep track of your website visits and make decisions based on crucial data.

Promotion codes You can always be a step ahead of your competitors by attracting more customers with the help of promotion codes. A booking engine should enable you to create your own promotions and give a code to your customers to avail discounts. You can have something special going on during school holidays, local festivals, or even corporate promotions, and sell your rooms much faster with value-for-money offers.

Multilingual The hotel industry is one of the most diverse in the world. Since the hospitality business involves such a wide customer base from various regions and countries globally, your customers should be able to select the language they wish and have a smooth booking process without any language barriers.

Multi-currency Where there are multiple languages, there are multiple currencies too! Setting up your booking engine to receive payments in your local currency should be easy.

Extras Extras are a great way to upsell your rooms. These are the items or services that you can sell along with a room for an extra fee. You can actually keep the basic room rate low and earn from extras. Say your lowest rate is priced at $100, you can offer an extra massage worth $40 with the room for a more attractive offer for the guest.

Hide unavailable rooms Sometimes, your customers can be turned off or navigate away from your hotel website because they see more unavailable rooms than available ones. Well, you don’t always have to show what’s not available – instead, present them with all you have and let guests choose from the list.

Quick and simple reservation process Your booking engine should offer a short form for your guests to fill out when they are ready to book a room. They should not be redirected to a different site to complete their reservation or process their payment.

Mobile friendly The number of mobile bookings throughout the industry continues to increase with each passing year so your hotel booking software needs to allow you to accept mobile bookings.

Here are many other ways to improve the guest experience and increase the direct bookings for hotels through apps like personal concierge app.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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Increase hotel direct bookings with unique offerings

In a world dominated by big brands and businesses, where standardisation is the path to efficiency, customers consistently look for something out of the norm. This is clearly the case in the travel industry; it’s one of the major reasons Airbnb has been so successful.

Travellers can get bogged down by same-same marketing, and middle-of-the-road hotel experiences. They want something unique, authentic, and personalised.

To get more direct bookings, your offering has to reflect these desires. So how do you make your property stand out from the competition and convince guests to avoid booking via OTAs?

Understand the audience you want to target The first step to being able to offer a unique selling point to travellers is to know who you want to target and who will be visiting your website.

For example, Marriott expects the majority of guests to be millennials, so the company’s direct bookings marketing campaign emphasises the experiential joys of staying at a Marriott.

Doing the research into your most common demographic will be worth it, as you can start shaping your offerings to perfectly suit your guests.

Provide interesting incentives for travellers to book direct While using the word ‘bribe’ might be too strong, there are certain offers you can make that travellers will find hard to refuse.

For instance, about half would be most likely to book direct if a hotel offered a room upgrade as an incentive. Second in line is free room service, at almost a quarter.

Often an add-on like this won’t break the bank at your business but can be a powerful motivator for travellers to book direct and save’. In fact if you do upgrade a guest, you can then resell the original standard room – effectively selling this room twice.

Use authenticity to your hotel’s advantage Independent hotels often have a much closer affinity to the local area than big brands, so use this to attract guests via your website. Maybe your hotel is lucky enough to be near a theme park, popular nature reserve, or maybe your building itself is heritage listed.

Focus on what makes your hotel special and make this clear when travellers visit your web pages. You could even create special promotions around these unique features to further entice people to book direct.

Use exciting content to engage travellers When travellers are browsing your site they want as much information about your hotel as possible, and they want to be wowed. If they get both of these things, it’s very likely they’ll be happy to book directly with your hotel.

Think about using video content to showcase your hotel. It doesn’t have to be Hollywood quality, simply a short and sweet production showing off the best aspects of your property and its staff. Or you could go even further and use virtual reality to give potential guests a ‘try before you buy’ experience with a 3D virtual tour of your hotel. VR is becoming very popular and also more cost effective, so it’s worth a thought.

The importance of visual storytelling is vital, as is knowing what visuals to use. Images create emotions within individuals and opens up their imagination. Guest rooms are the most-viewed images on hotel websites. This means you should be leading with images of your rooms on your website to get travellers interested and excited.

Give guests a different, more original promotion to consider While percentage-off stay deals or common room package promotions are fine, they don’t differentiate your hotel from its competitors.

Instead, think about what guests might really want. For example, people are excited about their trip and just want to enjoy the experience. If they have to plan out all their days and work out a number of details, this excitement can fade away to a certain extent; to be replaced by frustration or impatience.

Make it easier for guests by offering an itinerary package – a ready-made bundle of activities around the area. You could have a few immersive experiences for specific guest types. This might include a family bundle package that offers tickets to local attractions with vouchers for a meal at your restaurant. On another day it might provide tickets to a children’s play centre while the parents enjoy relaxing massages.

Make hotel direct bookings sweeter with extras

Extras are an inextricable element of your hotel’s direct booking strategy. It’s a win-win situation: they enhance your guests’ experience while increasing your profit.

In recent years Tnooz released fascinating statistics around extras that will help you improve your up-sell and cross-sell strategies across the board.

Overall, 15% of guests will purchase extras at the time of booking.

Guests who book 1-7 days in advance of their trip are 3x more likely to purchase extras when they book.

Guests who book 7-21 days in advance are actually 5x more likely to purchase extras when they book.

Travel parties of 1-2 people are most likely to purchase extras that are available at your hotel, such as a bottle of wine or in-room breakfast.

Travel parties of more than 3 people are most likely to purchase outside extras, such as tours, activities and dining reservations. Partner with local businesses in order to earn commission for these bookings!

These facts and figures make it clear that extras are not just a passing trend — they’re a set of complementary products that you should always try to tweak and improve at your hotel.

Here’s a few ideas to consider when it comes to selling extras at the time of booking:

Shuttle services Many travellers like to use public transportation or simply walk from place to place once they have arrived in their destination.

This means that they will not be renting a car, and may prefer the convenience of a shuttle from the airport directly to your hotel property.

By offering shuttle services as an extra at your hotel, you can allow them to conveniently book everything they need at once.

Products and gifts Products and gifts are a popular extra amongst guests, specifically those who are celebrating a special occasion on their trip.

Champagne bottles, fresh, local fruit and local wine are marketable extras that you can up-sell to your guests at the time of booking.

Tours and activities More and more, travellers are looking for one-stop shopping when it comes to planning their holidays. By offering room packages that include local tours or activities, you will appeal to these time-savvy travellers.

In addition to earning the extra revenue on the booking package, you’ll probably be able to earn a commission from the tour company that you partner with in your area. This is a wonderful way to boost the local travel industry while generating additional business for yourself.

And of course, your guest wins with the perfect hotel stay and tour or activity experience.

Use an online booking engine that allows your guests to purchase these products and services at the time of their reservation.

Direct bookings at your hotel can be won simply with better images

If a traveller has any suspicion about the quality or authenticity of your hotel, it’s very unlikely they’ll book with you.

A lack of published reviews and a lack of photos are two of the biggest red flags for guests when browsing hotels. To someone viewing a hotel on the Internet, the absence of reviews or images may indicate to them that the hotel is hiding something – perhaps evidence of poor quality service, dirty interiors, or misleading location information.

TripAdvisor published findings stating that when compared to hotels without photos, hotels with at least one photo saw a 138% increase in travel engagement. On top of that, hotels with at least one photo are 225% more likely to receive a booking enquiry. If just one photo can make this much difference, think of the statistics if your hotel develops a strategic plan for your property photography.

During the browsing stage people generally fixate on the hotel name, images, price, and location. This means you have a chance to wow them with photos before they read any reviews.

Here are the best ways to approach your hotel imagery:

Capture a pleasing vista The majority of images that extracted positive emotions from consumers were bedrooms with window views, a pleasant vista, and natural light. The photos helped create an instant reaction between the consumer and the hotel. Positive feelings were also exhibited when customers saw something interesting outside of the hotel like a beach, city, or landmark.

Display unique and attractive features If your hotel has any unique features put them front and centre in your photography to delight the eyes of online shoppers. This way the potential guest will be immediately drawn to your hotel.

Don’t meddle with perspective, balance, and distortion By far the most popular images were those that also looked authentic. Photos that looked skewed or altered drew suspicion from shoppers because they create unrealistic representations of the property. Hotels should instead keep it simple and try not to show too much in a single shot.

Keep images clean and crisp Neatness and precision were the qualities that garnered the best responses to hotel room images, along with light and space. Negative opinions focused on messiness and clutter, clashing colours, odd angles, or missing features such as bathroom or wardrobe.

With eye-catching imagery and unrelenting dedication to quality, it’s clear you can use imagery as a powerful boost to your bookings.

Direct hotel reservation barriers and how to remove them

Direct bookings are always at the top of a hotelier’s mind. The higher percentage of bookings that come direct through a hotel’s website the better.

Investigating the barriers that stop customers booking direct and creating strategies that remove them is a never-ending but necessary battle.

Common problem areas include:

The cost of technology support

Reliance on online travel agents (OTAs)

Cost of acquisition (e.g web design and user experience)

Lack of hotel resources

All of these are reasons why hotels are either not pursuing, or not being allowed to pursue direct booking campaigns and foster return business.

However, there are methods hotels can use to improve their chances of direct bookings.

Here are seven reasons direct bookings are important and some strategies for hotels to make the most of them.

1. Anticipate the booking and communicate pre-stay

If a customer does in fact make a direct booking it’s important to reinforce that decision. The first step is by raising the anticipation of the guest for their trip. People like to be excited by the prospect of a holiday; often the period before departure is the most enjoyable feeling of the whole process. A common way of achieving this is to create a consistent and enthusiastic stream of pre-stay communication with your guest, usually via email. This may be as simple as telling them you can’t wait to see them in two weeks, or you might provide them with information about cool things to do while they’re staying at your property.

2. The traveller’s active choice

It’s been found that there is a direct correlation between guest satisfaction and direct bookings. Direct bookers are often happier because they’ve made an active choice to stay at your property. This may not always be the case for OTA bookers. This can result in a lack of personal connection and relationships, resulting in poorer reviews. When you get a direct booking you know they’re definitely from your target market and coming in with positive attitudes about your hotel.

3. Reroute your commission savings into the guest experience

Commission paid to OTAs are probably the biggest reason hotels look for more direct bookings because they eat into the potential profits of the business. Money saved on direct bookings can be better spent on guest experience and hotel upgrades. Commissions can be reduced by maintaining price parity to save on conversions and keep pricing transparent to debunk the belief OTAs always offer a better deal. Use some innovation in how you approach your direct booking strategy to entice as many travellers as possible to your website.

4. Build relationships with travellers

Building relationships with travellers is a big bullet hotels can fire in the direct booking battle. Using research and creating customer profiles to find common ground and appeal to your target’s interests is vital if you want to encourage direct bookings and build guest loyalty. Be imaginative in the way you engage travellers and always be positive.

5. Think about direct bookings and future innovation

New technology is sure to be a boon for any purpose you want. Decide what is best for you in progressing your relationship with customers. Services such as live chat or messenger apps might be serious considerations. Anything that enhances your social media or simplifies your booking process is a must.

6. Receive ancillary revenue from your bookings

Offering additional services or products to give the customer a ‘shopping cart’ experience is a good tactic even if the guest isn’t interested in purchasing any extras. It gives the sense of professionalism and credibility, and puts your hotel on a competitive level with OTAs who often offer some kind of package deal. Making sure you think of your hotel as more than rooms and beds is always a positive step towards enriching the experience of your guests.

7. Boost your hotel’s brand loyalty

The best way to ensure an increase of direct bookings is to boost brand loyalty and create new return customers out of every new traveller who enters your hotel. Increasing hotel brand loyalty is an obvious and natural way to boost direct bookings and has numerous added benefits such as:

The ability to know the guest preference

This enables your hotel to deliver a better experience by offering more appropriate products and services to meet the guest’s needs.

A diversified portfolio of hotel booking sources

This makes for a more stable and healthy business mix overall so that a hotel does not become dependent on only one or two primary markets.

Loyalty members are a comfort blanket

A larger member base means your hotel will better resist low seasons and harsh economic periods.

Get in touch with the professional mobile app development company and get best concierge app for boosting the profit of your business.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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How to prevent revenue leakage in your hotel

As a hotelier, it is possible that you are leaving no stone unturned in making sure that occupancy rates at your property are consistently high. You might even be focusing on improving your offerings, services and staff productivity. When you work so hard to increase profitability at your hotel, the last thing you want to see is a revenue leakage happening.

What is Revenue leakage in the hotel industry?

Revenue leakage happens when you are losing revenue due to several mistakes at multiple levels – mistakes that are often unintentional and go unnoticed. Revenue leakage in the hotel industry is a major cause concern for almost all types of hoteliers. It happens in most of the areas/departments of your hotel operations. Left unchecked, revenue leakage can lead to a huge financial loss at your hotel.

Tips to prevent revenue leakage at your hotel

You need to first identify and eliminate business practices and services at your hotel that don’t generate enough revenue to cover up the expenses/investment done on them. In such cases, let’s look at some of the areas of your hotel operations that need your immediate attention.

Keep an eye on manpower/labor costs

At hotels, labor costs make up about 40% to 50% of the total operating expenses. If you are able to cut your labor costs without impacting daily operations and guest service, you can save a lot for sure. Look at every staff member’s productivity and find how they have contributed towards the growth of your hotel. Make a careful assessment and find out how many staff you actually need to run your hotel smoothly.

If you arrive at the conclusion that a 20-member staff can do the job for you, then there is no point in keeping more. Train and encourage your staff to perform other tasks outside their prescribed roles when required. Simply speaking, your hotel should neither be overstaffed nor understaffed.

Adopting a smart cloud-based Hotel Property Management System can also drastically help in increasing staff productivity and efficiency, as the Hotel PMS would automate and streamline all your daily operations. With cloud Hotel PMS, you don’t have to invest in servers at your hotel. And without servers and hardware, you don’t have to have a dedicated IT team. Thus, you have enough scope to cut labor costs that would add to your overall revenue.

Save on energy bills

Energy bill accounts up to 6% to 8% of a hotel’s operational expenses, and this also one area where revenue leakage happens. According to Energex, a company that specializes in providing occupancy-based energy management solutions to hotels, guests spend over 50% of their time outside of their rooms, while in-room utilities like lights and ACs are left running. In such cases, to regulate the energy consumption in order to slash your energy bills, implement a smart energy management system that can be integrated with your Heating, Ventilation and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system. The system monitors your rooms’ occupancy status by sensing your guests’ thermal body signature and controls the rooms HVAC accordingly. This is another great way to prevent revenue leakage at your hotel.

Implement strict stock & inventory management practices

Be it your F&B inventory or other room-related inventory, you need to have a process to tightly control your stock to prevent wastage and theft that lead to revenue leakage at your hotel. Adopt a smart cloud-based hotel property management system that helps you have an efficient materials/stock/inventory management process in place.

The integration of Hotel PMS with a Point of Sale (POS) system allows you to keep an eye on your available stock. It lets you know the stock that should be consumed in any given day/month, so that you can plan the procurement process in advance. You can also set alerts to know which items have reached the reorder stage so that you don’t place an order for those items to avoid overstocking as overstocking too can lead to wastage. Be it a soap bar, shampoo, towel or food items, track product-wise consumption of all the materials and prevent wastage and pilferage.

Leverage the power this Hotel PMS and POS system integration to view detailed reports about stock consumption and make the right decision. In simple words, you should be in a position to predict demand and supply rate with great accuracy to put a check on revenue leakage.

Restructure your marketing costs

Marketing your hotel is another area that needs a huge budget. If you are spending money on digital marketing through pay-per-click or cost-per-click, don’t forget to measure the ROI. Run a campaign for a month or two and see the difference. Monitor the impact of these campaigns on your hotel’s online visibility, booking conversion rate, etc. If you don’t get to see desired results after repeated attempts, you may want to stop it or start from scratch with a new approach and reduced budget.

However, you can put a little bit of extra effort on SEO marketing to grow your hotel’s organic reach. The mantra here is to understand your hotel’s niche, your target audience while coming up with marketing strategies that can give you maximum results with less investment.

Here are a few more tips that can help you in the context –

Be cautious while rolling out offers and discounts

Make sure that such freebies don’t eat into your profits

Ensure an error-free billing process to avoid billing related discrepancies

Don’t lower your room rate or offer any discounts when your occupancy looks good

While some of the above-mentioned tips can help you prevent revenue leakages at your hotel, there are other numerous ways such as hotel concierge app to ensure the same in other operational areas of your hotel.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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How technology can help retain front office staff in hotels

With its global workforce said to touch 328 million by 2020, the hospitality industry is one of the largest employers in the world. In fact, the hospitality industry was the #1 employer in the United States, after government services (as of 2017). While this may appear promising, there are some very widely acknowledged challenges that plague the industry. How to retain staff in the hospitality industry is one of these grave challenges.

Here’s another stat that will set the stage for why we decided to discuss employee retention strategies for the hospitality industry. Merely saying that employee turnover is ‘extremely high’ will not suffice. The annual employee turnover rate in just the hotel and motel industry is 73.8%. Just to put this in context, it is universally agreed upon that a healthy annual turnover rate is somewhere between 10% – 15%

Alarming, wouldn’t you say!

In today’s hyper digital world, one of the most effective tips for retaining hotel staff is to invest in some much-needed hotel technology. While at first glance it might be the most obvious solution to an issue that has plagued the industry for long, we will take you through five ways in which technology helps retain staff in the hospitality industry.

How does technology in the hospitality industry help retain hotel front desk staff?

1 – Better use of Front desk staff time & efforts

Did you know that 61% of employees say that their new job is NOT what they expected! This is particularly relevant to hotels that still use traditional ways to manage their property. While the new front office manager might come in fully confident of their skillset, it could come as a rude shock to anyone to see that bookings are still maintained on an excel sheet! And this is where hotels are forced to depend on finding ‘tips for retaining hotel staff’, because they will most likely quit in such cases.

With more and more millennials joining the workforce each year, it becomes that much more paramount for hotels to cater to the needs of their staff. Millennials are more digitally aware and dependent than any other generation before. Hence, shaking hands with the right kind of technology solutions that help streamline and automate processes will help hotel owners put their staff’s time and efforts to better use.

Let’s get back to the example we just took. You run a 20-room property and keep a record of your hotel reservations on excel sheets. Imagine the kind of time and effort that goes into maintaining a log of every single booking/cancellation/no show that happens on a day-to-day basis. It is highly possible that your millennial front office staff will leave you for a better employer in no time, as this is not only an outdated way of managing operations, but also a highly inefficient way of doing it!

With the right hotel technology in place, you will no longer have to read up about ‘employee retention strategies for the hospitality industry’ and such! Technology in the hospitality industry has evolved to such an extent today, that adopting a cloud-based Hotel Management System is a must, and no longer a choice!

Invest in a cloud Hotel PMS and you will notice that your front desk staff no longer have to manually perform tasks that they would otherwise have to, thanks to the automation of several daily processes. That apart, they will also have the luxury of time to focus on better guest experience, building your online reputation, etc.

2 – Transparency in Cross-functional communications:

Clarity and transparency in communication across departments within a hotel is of paramount importance. Since the front desk staff are guest-facing, it is all the more important that they are connected to all other departments in the click of a button, instead of having to run around coordinating things and making sure guest requests are delivered upon.

Consider a situation in which one of your hotel guests is stepping out of their room for a little while and has requested Sam, your friendly front desk staff, to inform housekeeping to clean up the room in their absence. Sam make a mental note of this and just then a prospective guest walks into your hotel looking for a room. Sam gets carried away with making the reservation, checking him in, etc. and eventually loses track of the guest’s request. It isn’t until the guest walks into his room and makes an irate call to Sam, that he realizes the blunder!

This could appear to be a small slip up, but forgetfulness is no excuse to compromise on guest request! And in Sam’s defense, it was a genuine case of “got caught up with something else”. Angry customer leaves a nasty review. You, the owner, lose your cool on Sam. Sam has had it with this pressure of constantly being omnipresent and omniscient and he decides to move out. And you’re back to brainstorming on employee retention strategies. This is where technology in the hospitality industry has made lives easier on so many levels for hotel staff, owners and guests alike.

Hotel technology like an intuitive cloud PMS helps the front desk pass on notes to housekeeping, transport desk, or even the restaurant from within the system. This is a massive boon for all departments as the communication is made in real-time and is also centrally accessible for transparency to prevail. In the same scenario, if you had a cloud-based PMS in place, Sam would have made a note of this as the guest conveyed his request and would have assigned the task to housekeeping. The housekeeping team would have been notified in real-time and would have got to the job. Upon completion, they would have marked the task as done, making Sam aware of the fact that the guest’s room has been cleaned. Everybody wins!

3 – Night Audit automation:

As important as it is to perform night audits in the hospitality industry, it is also a task that can be extremely daunting when done manually. Imagine a busy day when your hotel is fully occupied and buzzing with transactions, your night audit in-charge is going to have a nightmarish experience trying to get everything together and roll over all those transactions manually to the next day! It is not a very smart way of performing a task that crucial. Time to look towards hotel technology and adopt a Hotel Management System before your staff quits.

A cloud-based HMS allows you to not only simplify the process of nights audits, but also makes it faster and error-free. Being empathetic can go a long way in redefining the employee retention strategy in hospitality industry.

While we’ve discussed a few ways in which technology helps retain staff in the hospitality industry’s front desk department, there are several other departments too where you stand to lose staff in the absence of technology. Mobile app for hotel is the best to improve the hotel reputation. It will manage your hotel on-the-go by bringing all your daily hotel operations at your fingertips.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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Why concierge apps are way of the future in hospitality

Hotel concierge apps are becoming a must-have for major hospitality brands seeking to tap into guests. Smartphones to anticipate their needs before arrival on premises. Mobile technology has prompted many hotel brands to employ their own or third-party concierge solutions to drive room service ordering and easy communication with staff in a bid to personalize guest stays even more.

#Concierge App #App for Hotels #Hotel Mobile App #convenient

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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A Dying Town, a Crumbling Hotel and the Water That Could Restore Both

MINERAL WELLS, Tex. — Equipped with a flashlight, Laird Fairchild unlocks a side door of the Baker Hotel and begins a darkened 14-story ascent to the top.

Along the way, each floor reveals a grim tableau from decades of neglect. Graffiti and vandalism. Crumbling plaster. Shards of glass. Stripped walls. Broken, uprooted boards that once collectively served as brilliantly polished dance floors.

For much of the early and mid-20th century, the Baker and its North Texas city shared a vibrant economy. Lithium-laced healing waters gave Mineral Wells its name and turned it into an internationally famous spa and tourist destination. T.B. Baker, a Texas hotel magnate, opened the hotel bearing his name in 1929.

A towering Spanish Colonial Revival hotel in the heart of Mineral Wells, the Baker closed in 1972 and has stood as an inescapable reminder of the city’s economic misfortunes over the past 47 years.

Now, however, energized business leaders are rallying behind a planned $65 million renovation to reopen the Baker in 2022 and cement a downtown revitalization that has been underway for several years.

“This is not a renovation of a building,” said Mr. Fairchild, a co-founder of Hunter Chase Capital Partners, a real estate developer in Southlake, more than an hour’s drive northeast of Mineral Wells. “This is a renovation of a town.”

For decades, the Baker embodied elegance, with a guest list that included Clark Gable, Judy Garland, Marlene Dietrich, the Three Stooges and, according to local legend, Bonnie and Clyde. But advances in medical science eroded Mineral Wells’ appeal as a health resort, and the city’s economy plummeted after the shutdown of Fort Wolters, a military base where helicopter pilots were trained during the Vietnam War.

As businesses closed and jobs vanished, some disgruntled residents began calling their city “Miserable Wells.”

Mineral Wells, with a population of just over 15,300, had a poverty rate of 23.5 percent in 2017, according to census data, compared with a state average of 14.7 percent. Median household income was $39,292, lower than the statewide median of $59,206.

Nevertheless, a surge of optimism has begun taking root throughout Mineral Wells as Mr. Fairchild works with Randy Nix, a local developer, and other community leaders on what they hope will become a 21st-century update of the city’s glory days. The efforts have given rise to yet another nickname: “Miracle Wells.”

At the center of the redevelopment is the Baker, which has what Mr. Fairchild called a “cultlike following” across the globe, with thousands of followers on Facebook. City officials say they are repeatedly asked about the hotel during out-of-town trips. The Chamber of Commerce receives about 100 requests a year to hold weddings there.

“There’s something about that hotel,” said Mike Allen, who was on the City Council for 22 years and served as mayor for 10 years before retiring in 2018. “If you pay too much attention, she will put her claws into you.”

Mr. Fairchild said he had become enamored of the imposing building more than a decade ago. Working with a longtime friend and business associate, Chad Patton, he successfully negotiated with the hotel’s owner, Times Industrial Limited Partnership of Mesa, Ariz.

They declined to reveal the purchase price, but they offered broad outlines of a complicated financing package heavily dependent on state, federal and local tax incentives.

“It’s kind of like putting together a complicated puzzle, and each piece is required in order to make the puzzle work,” said Mr. Patton, a first vice president and branch manager at Wells Fargo Advisors.

The Baker project is the capstone in revitalization efforts that Mr. Nix began spearheading several years ago. Without a vibrant downtown, he said, any effort to reopen the Baker was likely to face the same fate as past unsuccessful attempts to bring the hotel back to life.

“All of these years, we in this community have been sitting here waiting for somebody like Laird to come along and build the Baker, thinking it’s going to save this town, and I say it’s not going to happen that way,” Mr. Nix said. “Until this community steps in and does something about itself and starts bringing in tourism, the Baker Hotel will never be a viable project.”

One of Nix’s key undertakings is focused on the Crazy Water Hotel, which opened in 1912, burned to the ground and then reopened in 1927, two years before the Baker. Like other things in Mineral Wells, it bears the nickname of the recuperative waters that supposedly helped cure a woman in serious mental distress.

Mr. Nix, owner of Nix Rental Homes, was among 10 local business leaders who put up $200,000 apiece to form a public benefit corporation to convert the seven-story Crazy Water Hotel into upscale apartments that can also be used for short-term rentals when tourism begins to take off. He said the project exemplified the community’s renewed commitment to revitalizing Mineral Wells, saying he expects 150 investors to be on board when the hotel fully reopens in December 2020.

Restaurants and night life have also returned to the once-moribund city center, along with murals that brighten aging storefronts. Another Nix family project is the downtown Market at 76067, named for the ZIP code, where more than 100 vendors across two stories offer an array of items, from antiques to contemporary cuisine. An urban park is also part of the city master plan.

The goal is to transform Mineral Wells into a leading tourist destination in picturesque North Texas hill country, which will help draw more diverse industries and businesses to expand the city’s economic base. Mr. Nix said tourism was a natural for the region, pointing out the city’s proximity to the popular Possum Kingdom Lake, state parks and a 100-mile stretch of the Brazos River.

As part of that vision, the Baker’s developers espouse the brand “Palo Pinto chic” in describing plans to cater to a diverse clientele, including business conferences, school proms, reunions and weekend travelers looking for a small-town getaway. A major goal, Mr. Fairchild said, is to convert the Baker and Mineral Wells into “the wedding capital of North Texas,” if not the entire state.

Mineral Wells still has abundant supplies of “crazy water,” which will enable the Baker to reopen a second-floor spa as part of a larger fitness and wellness center. A private elevator will ferry patrons to an outdoor, Olympic-size pool downstairs. Workers will also reshape the interior into 157 spacious rooms instead of the current 450.

During a tour of the hotel this summer, Mr. Fairchild pointed out tarnished features from the hotel’s glamour days, and with a little imagination, it wasn’t hard to picture a ’30s-era celebrity being escorted through the lobby or lounging poolside, surrounded by autograph seekers.

Brass chandeliers, badly in need of polish and refurbishing, hung in the lobby. An acoustical dome in the ceiling once amplified the voices of guests so they could be heard by anyone in the room.

Mr. Fairchild’s favorite part of the hotel, he said, is the spacious Cloud Room on the top floor, which, as it did in the past, will host special events such as weddings and reunions. Now, however, its floors are destroyed, and the walls are marred with graffiti. A young oak tree has somehow taken root on the ledge outside, 14 stories above the sidewalk.

Planners are confident that the vast majority of residents eagerly await the Baker’s re-emergence.

“When I was growing up here, there wasn’t anything going on, and there was no reason for it to,” said Perri Leavelle, a co-owner of the Brazos Market and Bistro downtown.

Now, “it’s better than it’s ever been in my lifetime,” she added. “It’s exciting that Mineral Wells is right here on the forefront of people coming back to downtowns all over the nation.”

Get in touch with the professional mobile app development company and get best concierge app for boosting the profit of your business.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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Food and Beverage Boosts Hotel Revenue

Hotel investment transaction volumes increase every year which makes it more challenging for hotels to compete. The questions remains: how do hotel owners thrive in this environment?

According to an AMPM Hotel supply statistics (October 2018), approximately 150,000 new hotel rooms are expected to enter London by 2020. Research by Knight Frank indicates that investment in the UK hotel industry reached £7.4 billion, demonstrating a 29% year-on-year rise and a £1.7 billion increase in 2018 alone. This extraordinary growth was due to a 50% increase in international investment, with overseas buyers accounting for £4.9 billion invested into the UK hotel market with Asian investors such as mainland China, Singapore and Hong Kong being principally responsible.

Over the past several years, boutique hotels have been especially popular among hotel developers. Examples of Boutique-Lifestyle Brands/Luxury include Belmond, Montage, Thompson, and Boutique-Lifestyle and Brands/Upper-Upscale including Affinia and Joie De Vivre. These trends are attributable to the push to achieve premium levels of occupancy and ADR.

There are a multitude of boutique hotels around the world and hence it is incumbent upon hotel owners to discover new and creative strategies of facilities, services and amenities to provide a personal level of service and a unique experience to satisfy and attract all guests in a captivating manner. F&B is one of the key difference makers…

Food and Beverage (F&B) is becoming a major contributor to a hotel's positioning in the market. Consumers are not only looking for a place to stay, demand for and spending on F&B have been growing, allowing the industry to net extra revenue. There are big opportunities to grow F&B and contribute to added value. Illustrative of significantly increasing F&B revenues is research from CBRE Hotel's Americas which points out that, F&B profit margins rose from 24.9% to 29.5% between 2010 and 2016.

How can a hotel owners analyze which products to invest in in order to boost hotel's revenue? GE-McKinsey nine-box matrix is a strategy tool that offers a systematic approach for the multi-business corporation to prioritize its investments among its business units.

GE McKinsey Matrix

Figure 2. depicts the GE-McKinsey Matrix. It is a framework that evaluates a business's portfolio, highlights strategic implications for each element of the portfolio and aids in prioritizing the investment needed for each business unit (David F.R., 2009).

How to boost revenue? A close scrutiny of the model will reveal:

Growth: Business units which attract investment by the corporation as they are in a position to generate attractive revenue in the future

Harvest: Those units a business has invested in in the past and is now reaping the benefit from and where these rewards are reinvested into growth

Maintain: Business areas which are moving towards their maturity phase and where ensuring the maintenance of sufficient market share to maximize profit is the key priority

Divest: Are business units which encompass minimal prospects, unsustainable advantages and from which an expeditious exit is of benefit

In my opinion, F&B is definitely is a growing sector within the hospitality industry. While the differential position is average, its attractiveness is high since it is easy to profit from and its costs are relatively low.

In addition, F&B provides a simpler sell than a hotel room. It remains easier to convince potential customers to visit and have a meal in your establishment rather than to persuade them to commit to a stay. Therefore, F&B is attractive for locals, tourists as well as expatriates.

Furthermore, F&B is not an impulse purchase, rather, it is a straightforward sell. In the instance of a hotel room, you can only accommodate one night per one room. However, the turnover rate for one table is higher, as the maximum occupancy of a table is typically 3 hours, meaning that F&B possesses a preferable rate of flow and higher liquidity.

Currently, many hotels are harvesting their main product, namely their hotel rooms, and then re-investing this growth into F&B as an additional source of revenue which can yield a more significant profit.

While the core objective of a hotel remains to maximize room sales, hotel owners also need to attract more revenue by utilizing other products in order to differentiate their business and provide themselves with a competitive advantage. This is, in essence, when competition starts - exceeding the expectations of something conventional. In this case, it could be a hotel's design architecture, breakfast-inclusive offers, or additional facilities. All in all, hotels should focus on maximizing F&B when seeking to expand their business further.

In conclusion, to enhance your gross profit, boutique hotels require their online concierge app and F&B to portray them as the food destination which engenders a sense of fascination on the part of guests and generates a unique and enthralling appeal.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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10 Powerful Ways to Use Instagram for Real Estate Marketing

Real estate and Instagram are a match made in marketing heaven.

Pretty much everything about the social network is well suited for real estate marketing: its photo- and video-based content formats make it easy to showcase properties; its mobile-first nature easily incorporates location data and geo-targeting; its huge user base—now numbering more than 1 billion monthly active users—enables reach across many demographics and geographies; and its integration into parent company Facebook's advertising platform provides sophisticated campaign targeting options.

How can real estate firms make the most of this opportunity? What are some of the key approaches that marketers are currently utilizing on the platform to build interest, inspire action, and close sales?

Here are 10 impactful ways Instagram can be used for real estate marketing:

1. Feature current properties and developments

Featuring what's currently for sale or rent is the first thing that comes to mind when using Instagram for real estate marketing, and with good reason: the social network is a perfect place to showcase properties and developments.

To do this effectively, it's worth spending some extra time on the visuals. Don't simply post a digital version of a print flyer and call it a day; develop creative specifically for Instagram that will stand out on the platform.

Another thing to keep in mind is that you're not limited to just a single image. Instagram has a wide range of compelling content formats—including slideshows, Stories, ad carousels, and videos—which can be used to highlight properties.

2. Feature future properties and developments

Just because a property isn't yet on the market doesn't mean that it can't be featured on Instagram. The platform is a great way let audiences know what will soon be listed and to build interest ahead of time.

Keep in mind that even if a property isn't anywhere close to making it to market, it can still be showcased. For example, posting renderings is a highly effective way of sparking curiosity about an upcoming development.

3. Showcase aspirational real estate

Many people love to look at real estate even if they're not in the market, hence the appeal of TV shows such as House Hunters. This is especially true for dream properties, such as luxury homes and beach getaways.

Real estate marketers can tap into this aspirational curiosity and grow their audiences by highlighting "wow" properties on Instagram.

Again, keep in mind that Instagram has many effective content formats beyond single images. Stories and videos in particular can be powerful ways to showcase aspirational real estate.

4. Let audiences know about your successes

People want to work with individuals and firms that are successful. That's why using Instagram to boast a bit is a powerful tactic: it highlights to audiences that you're competent and likely to meet their real estate needs better than others.

A key thing to keep in mind is that specificity helps when talking about successes. By giving Instagram users details about your achievements, you can better differentiate yourself from the competition.

5. Promote specials and open houses

Instagram is a time-sensitive platform: feeds tend to turn over quickly and Stories disappear within a day. That can pose challenges, but it also makes the social network a useful tool for promoting time-sensitive information. Specifically, it's a great place to inform audiences about things like current price specials and upcoming open houses.

With timely content, as with all other Instagram content, it can pay to have some fun with your pieces. The tone of the platform tends to be fairly light, and adding some humor can make your posts feel like they fit the medium.

6. Introduce yourself and your team

Who are you? That question is a key one that audiences ask when evaluating real estate firms. To address it, you can use Instagram to highlight details about yourself as well as your team.

This is another area where specifics are helpful. The more familiar you make yourself to audiences, the more likely they are to reach out.

Something to consider here is that you don't just have to talk about your professional qualifications. Showcasing other details—such as the charity work your firm does or the pets around the office—can also help to make people feel like they know you better.

7. Provide insights and thought leadership

Real estate can be difficult for both buyers and sellers, especially for those not very familiar with it. It can be daunting for people to figure everything out, from listing timing to how to go about getting a mortgage.

That's where real estate marketers can be invaluable. By providing insights and thought leadership, you can engage eager audiences on Instagram and establish yourself as a trusted resource.

A useful approach when it comes to insights and thought leadership is to post at a regular frequency. This will help to build interest over time and will keep Instagram audiences following your account through different stages of the sales funnel.

8. Showcase amenities and unique features

Instagram is the perfect place to highlight the things that make a particular property special beyond the structure itself. Through images, videos, and Stories you can showcase the amenities that audiences are looking for.

To stand out from the crowd, try to find ways to show off features that are unique to the property—maybe an architectural feature, a particular paint color, or a unique communal space.

9. Highlight why the community is great

Properties don't exist in a vacuum; they're part of neighborhoods and towns. And often the key to successful real estate transactions is sparking interest in these surroundings.

Instagram is a powerful tool for highlighting local charms. Use it to show the specific features—from a new school to a weekend farmer's market—that make a particular community great.

Keep in mind that different community elements appeal to different audiences. Given that, highlight a range of features, from shopping and dining options to opportunities to engage with nature.

10. Inspire and motivate audiences to take action

All the Instagram marketing in the world is meaningless if it doesn't eventually compel people to do something that helps your business.

To take action, audiences sometimes need a nudge. Real estate marketers can provide this by posting content that motivates people to stop putting things off and dive in now.

This sort of content doesn't have to be overtly connected to real estate; sometimes broad inspiration is enough to encourage audiences to take the next step.

Instagram can help with every step through the real estate sales funnel, from sparking interest in communities and providing information about properties, to encouraging open house visits and driving purchases. Ultimately, the key to success is to use the power of the platform: engage directly and consistently with the network's large audience, build a strategy that utilizes the sophisticated targeting tools at your disposal, and make the most of the many compelling content formats available.

Develop your guest check in app to delight your guest quick and easy. It helps you empower your sales team to sell immediately.

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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How Do You Simplify The Lives Of Hoteliers? With The Best Breed Of Technology, For Starters

The ever-evolving industry

The structure of the hotel industry in Europe continues to evolve, and remains fragmented, despite chain hotels increasing their percentage share of overall room stock. Many countries, including some very large destination markets like Italy and Greece, have a large percentage of hotels which are unbranded, independent and family owned, many with 50 rooms or less. The world of hotel technology software, or "hotel tech stack" is similar in structure, and equally fragmented, where you have a large number of small tech companies, each operating in their local market, providing tech and support services on a regional basis. These companies, such as hotel booking engine providers, revenue management, reviews and guest engagement platforms, compete with each other for market share, either on price, product features or service as a differentiator. This makes for a lot of duplication of product and effort which isn't economically efficient, making it much harder for some travel tech companies to reach scale, which doesn't benefit the hotel industry in the long run. All this duplication has helped create a jumbled world full of seemingly endless amounts of systems which have been built over the years using differing technologies, meaning half of them don't even integrate properly with each other. This can make the lives of hoteliers a bit more complex than they need to be! Not to worry though - we can see this is starting to change. Year on year, there are continual signs of growth and consolidation within the hotel tech stack, as big players inside and out look to increase their own market share, or even gain entry into a market where they haven't existed or gained sufficient scale in yet. How do you make the lives of hotel execs easier? Unsurprisingly, one of the biggest challenges facing hotel executives today is navigating the minefield of software solutions and tech stack, figu ring out what combination is going to be right for their business. Enter Open API's! Open API platforms are what we see as the solution to this complex issue faced by hotels. Open APIs allow a range of diverse systems across the hotel tech stack to connect and communicate more seamlessly with each other. They also help to remove any legacy issues around 'old tech' competing on whether their systems can work well together and 'talk' to each other or not. This means a hotel can pick a tech stack to assist with virtually any task, from on-site property management to reservations to channel management for their hotel, and rest easy that it's fully integrated with other systems and allows for more of a 'plug and play' scenario. Solutions through innovative products

We've found that another very familiar challenge is limited IT budget. By no means limited to our industry, it's an obstacle that has aided a surge of SaaS product s to thrive over recent times. We recently launched a Website Builder product that addresses this obstacle in an environment where consumer behaviour is always changing, and guest expectations in technology are naturally rising. SaaS products like our website builder ensure that technology and user experience is as current as possible, at a price that isn't anxiety-inducing!

The ever-growing access to this sophisticated variety of technology also gives hotels an unprecedented amount of data on their guests. Knowing who their guests are and how they behave allows hotels to target and assist them much more specifically, which is crucial in this 'age of personalisation'. Over the next 3-5 years, we'll see a growth spurt of start up tech companies and products focusing more & more on this wealth available data, and what kind of unique & added value that it can bring to a guest's journey. For companies like us, this means looking at every aspect of the booking jour ney, and how to bring all the various data sources together to deliver a highly personalised booking experience. What's been your experience in finding the right travel concierge app for your hotel? Is it something we can help you with?

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blogdanielwilson-blog · 6 years ago

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Hotel BI: Applying Data Analytics to Real-Life Situations

When it comes to analyzing your data, relying on manual methods - i.e. using Excel spreadsheets or Google Sheets - takes too much time and is often inaccurate, fraught with human error. Hotel owners looking to accurately and efficiently improve business performance should consider implementing an automated business intelligence (BI) solution.

BI reporting and analytics quickly integrate data from your property management system (PMS), central reservations system (CRS), revenue management system (RMS), sales and catering systems, as well as other potential external sources. In seconds you can easily compare historic, real-time, and predictive analytics, creating big picture to deeply granular views of your business. By applying BI to real-life situations, you will better understand critical pain points to make impactful improvements that optimize revenue and help grow your business.

Pain Point: Understanding Account Production

A BI tool allows you to drill down, deep into the production details of a single account. You can review day of week production to determine which days they are staying, and if those are the right days to provide your hotel the greatest benefit. And when does that group stay at your hotel? Is the spend spread throughout the year, or does it all fall in one month? Knowing how that account produces helps you to know if they are truly benefiting your hotel, or possibly displacing higher-value guests. If this is a long-term client, are they growing with you year over year? Do they bring more to you than just room revenue? A BI solution can help you understand the ratio of spend, beyond room nights, while on property. This information is invaluable, particularly during RFP pricing season.

Say for example that one of your long-time accounts is requesting a reduced year-over-year increase. You may consider acquiescing to this request because you understand them to be a great customer. But after examining this account's day of week production, you realize they only stay on Tuesday and Wednesday nights - never hitting your shoulder nights, or staying throughout the weekend. And by digging deeper into account production by rate code, you see that they only book your standard room type. Armed with this type of fact-based data, sales managers can go back to a corporate account manager and educate them by visually showing how they're impacting your business by only staying on Tuesday and Wednesday nights in standard rooms. You may then hold strong on the rate or negotiate more favorable terms, such as pushing for an increase.

Pain Point: Creating an Optimal Pricing Strategy

A strong BI tool has many different reports that help your team create an optimal pricing strategy. One category of reports are the detailed pickup and pace reports. These reports provide information on two key measurements to help you spot and understand your trends.

Pace and pickup let you determine if you need to deploy different rate strategies based on leading or lagging metrics - they show you when your demand comes, i.e. when guests are booking rooms and your rates should be strongest.

For example, if you see a trend of bookings coming in Thursday and Friday of the week prior, your rates should be strong during that peak demand time. Perhaps you investigate weekends and discover that most of your bookings come in by Thursday afternoon. If that trend is not being met, it may be time to run a promotion for the upcoming weekend. Taking this concept to a more broad level, using monthly data, you can see which months may require you to reduce rates or develop promotions to increase pickup.

Pain Point: Understanding Your Base, Corporate Client and Group Production

When you share account production and pace reportswith your sales team, they are able to monitor year-over-year production, quickly identifying where your production is, at the segment and rate code levels, and which accounts may be producing behind. Sales managers can then get in touch with accounts to resolve what may be causing volatility in production.

Moreover, when analyzing accounts by month, you can compare budget forecast with actual on the books (OTB), for this year and the same time last year. Information like this is helpful because it allows you to create a plan for hitting your forecasted results. For example, your data may show that your group business for July is pacing behind last year. You can let sales know that July would be a good month to shift large group sales leads into, and they may have more rate flexibility for closing a deal. When Revenue Management shares this data with the Sales Team, it helps them understand why they can offer more favorable group rates in July versus a set of dates that is pacing ahead.

Pain Point: Creating Accurate Forecasts

Pace and pickup reports are critical components for more accurate forecasting and identifying booking trends

Initially, by understanding your production, your forecast will be more accurate. Then, by further examining pickup by day over time, you determine exactly what type of business you picked up within a specific timeframe, so you can adjust your forecast accordingly. A good reporting tool not only lets you analyze each individual year but also analyze each day's segmentation. Looking at major business types such as group and transient, at a very granular level, even going so far as to identifying which rate code- i.e. a promotion, package, or discount - is picking up. With a detailed pickup report, you can track rooms and revenues as they book months in advance and have strategies in place when the bookings come.

Monthly market segment reports are beneficial as well, helping to show any risk you have in reaching your forecast goals. By pulling past, present, and future data in a market segment by day report, and combining it with total revenue analysis, you can really see what is taking place in your hotel compared to the same time last year. You can also quickly identify which market segments are contributing to your reservation production. This information can benefit other teams within your hotel as well. For example, if your restaurant knows how each customer segment tends to spend in food-and-beverage purchases, this can help them better plan operational short-term forecasts, as well as maintain tighter control over costs for greater business gains.

Pain Point: Connecting RM and Marketing Teams

Sharing BI with your marketing team is particularly helpful. When combining account production, pace and pickup data with market intelligence from marketing's own data points - such as how many hits they have received on a promotion, how many open emails, etc. - it creates a more complete story of each promotion, helping them understand how they are impacting hotel performance.

A detailed pace report lets you know where you may be pacing behind, identifying which dates would be best to offer a promotion and fill rooms. When your marketing team has access to this intelligence, they can become more active in decision-making. They know which promotions have worked well in the past and can provide suggestions concerning which promotions to apply for a future set of dates. For instance, perhaps by digging into your pickup and pace data, you identify a pattern of midweek slumps. Your marketing team can jump into action to collaborate with local organizations and tourist attractions to promote midweek activity, like wine-tasting trips, dinner-and-concert events, or art shows, boosting revenues during those time periods.

BI tools let you analyze reservation data and revenue by geographic region, segment, ancillary spend, folio level spend, and more. This allows you to target your marketing efforts more strategically, presenting each customer with a relevant offer that is more likely to convert.

When you utilize a science-based RMS enhanced with a comprehensive BI tool, you are able to make the most of your data. And by giving every team in the hotel access to BI analytics and reports, it ensures your departments work together as a single unit, instead of siloed entities each pursuing their own agendas. Furthermore, meetings become much more productive, because rather than using up valuable time having revenue strategists walk through the data points, each department has already reviewed that data. So instead, they come to meetings prepared to discuss the "whys" and the "hows" of pulling in optimal revenue throughout the entire year. By taking your BI and applying it to real-life situations, you improve business performance by meeting the needs of every facet of your hotel operations. There are many other ways to improve the guest experience and increase the direct bookings for hotels through apps like guest check in app.

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