Take Control of your Web Site and Bookings
By Richard Noon & Tom Petryshen
If you attended one of the many Internet seminar in the late 90's you may have heard that the Internet was going to revolutionise business and travel. It was going to change the way you do business and allow everyone to compete on an equal footing. The story was, you could build and nurture a one to one relationship with your customer with your web site and take control of your own destiny.
Today's realty couldn't be further from the truth, especially in the travel market. After a few disastrous years of declining bookings and revenue, most travel companies, including hotels are trying to keep their heads above water. To stay afloat, hotels have sold out their inventory to third party discount wholesalers. Rather than use these wholesalers to unload unused inventory, most hotels have had to entrust large blocks of inventory at deep discounts. The bottom line is that many hotels are now dependant upon third party discounters at the expense of their own web sites.
So what can Australian hotels do? According to a recent article in the US by Neil Salerno, a leading Hotel Marketing Coach, advises that it's time for hotels to take back control of rates and rooms by investing in their own web site and strategy.
At Amplify, we strongly agree with Neil's findings. Our research and work with clients in the travel industry have shown us that it's possible to compete with bigger budgets and brands and still take a sizeable piece of the pie. The key, as Neil describes in his article is to start investing in your web site to create an effective online presence.
These days, having a web site is no longer good enough. Rather, you also need to ensure that the site can found in major Australian search engines and is easy to navigate once the visitor arrives. Finally a booking engine combined with an effective tracking tool will together help provide the tools to take control of your room rates and earnings.
If you're like many hotels managers you're too busy trying to keep rooms filled to worry about your web site. Yes, you know you need to do something, but where do you start with limited time and resources? You may even have a strong relationship with a trusted web team and may have already invested in search engine optimisation. However, if you're not getting results from your web site in the form of visitor traffic or have a low booking conversion ratio, then you may need to reassess your online strategy.
Many web development companies are not setup to properly assist you with your online marketing efforts. They may list marketing as a service, but the truth is it takes a different skill set to create an effective web marketing strategy. While they may be great developers, there's a good chance that they may be letting you down on the marketing side. To make matters worse, few web development teams truly understand the hotel and travel industry.
How do you tell if your web site is under performing? Well if you're site is lacking traffic, especially from search engines or has a low visitor to booking ratio, then there's good chance your strategy may need a tune up. With a new year just around the corner there's never been a better time to reassess your online marketing efforts.
Amplify was created to help hotels and travel related businesses focus on acquiring quality traffic and turning your web site into a successful booking tool. With the right strategy and right people we're convinced you can have that promise of a direct relationship with your customers. By doing so, only then can you can rest assured that you're getting the best possible price rate for your entire inventory.
