How to shift from OTAs to Direct booking

Probably 75% of the independent hotels, in Gulf Region (GCC), are dependent on Online Travel Agencies (OTAs). Meaning the OTAs are bringing them more than 60% of their overall business.

The main problem for hoteliers is how to increase their revenue with a limited inventory of rooms per day and any day lost can’t be recovered (perishable aspect). Once they have worked out how to fill the hotel, the issue is often how to decrease the market share of OTAs and increase their direct bookings. OTAs control directly hotel positioning on their web page, and they have multi factors to influence it (preferred programs, higher percentage of commissions, positive reviews, faster payment from hotel accounting department...). For those of you who aren’t hoteliers, OTAs take up to 25-35% commissions on the bookings they send to hotels. That is a very large part of the hotel’s profit. Looking into details, OTAs also make the client loyal to them and not to the hotel, because they provide the service and platform for bookings (Web booking process, confirmation, special offers, newsletters...).

Last year, RSVP Hospitality visited many independent hotels in Dubai and Northern Emirates, that were becoming quite popular on OTA sites, so much so that they had 60-70% of their revenues came from OTAs. While we congratulate the performance on the revenues side, it was obvious that this model would not last. It became urgent to work out strategies to shift to direct bookings. Here is how we initiate the change:

1) Website
We advised them to contact the best web marketing agencies and told them to make the best website. The web marketing agencies must think out of the box, to create the best hotel site. The areas to consider for General Manager and Marketing Manager, were full-screen images, easy navigation, easy to book, great contents.
(-) Avoid:
- To use generic website template that looks unprofessional,
- To use copyright pictures, or pictures taken from the internet,
- To crop pictures with basic photo editor,

2) Invest in your online marketing strategy
By allocating half of the OTA commission budget, we recommended to invest it into online marketing. Working with pay-per-click advertising, blogs and every possible means of direct marketing they had to offer. We weren’t going to make much more profit, but we wanted them to be independent.
(-) Avoid:
- To attribute these tasks to a non-marketing person,
- To expect large return on invest from the beginning,
- To think that everyone in your city knows about your hotel,

3) Use Social Media
We recommended working with Social medias, blogs, Facebook and any other medium they could find to get in direct contact with future guests. We had to get out there and make the hotel known to real people that were all potential guests for them.
(-) Avoid:
- To ignore negative reviews left on your Social Media,
- To monitor only positive feedbacks,
- Using cookie cutter answers / template,

4) Keep working with OTAs
OTAs are not bad for business, they’re just expensive on your P&L. We had to educate Revenue Managers on getting involved not only with Actuals Revenues from a statistics or PMS point of view, but also from a Finance side too. So of course we didn’t recommend to shut OTAs out and adapted some kind of revolution. But since hotel direct bookings took over most of their inventory, hotels didn’t have much to sell through them anymore. However we advise to keep OTAs all going and paid their commissions. Even if they were rather small.
(-) Avoid:
- To inform OTAs market manager about your strategies,
- To think that without OTAs production, you can look for another job,
- To restrict OTAs commission or margin to the minimal,

5) Best Rates Guaranteed
This is always a heated subject, but hotels need to decide where they’re going to head in the future. People need to understand that for 95% of the case, where the hotel is on BRG violation, it came from a manual input. To the exception of the currency converter variation, OTAs cannot fluctuate the margin price setup in their extranet.

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Best Rate Guaranteed - Hotels - Best Practice
When I worked in Starwood Hotels (2003-2006), Best Rates Guaranteed (BRG) was the priority for Revenue Managers, and Starwood Hotels and Resorts invented a BRG Violation Automated reports sent through the report provider to alert General Managers. For every case of violation, a penalty to the hotel was even considered.

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With about one year of work, applying the strategy, we changed mentalities. We have now hotels that increased their revenues by 20% over last year. It takes some courage and it must be pursue till the time the hotel finds a comfortable profit margin.

Romain @ RSVP-Hospitality

The challenges of marketing independent hotels

We all have truly amazing memories of independent hotel in which we stayed at, with warm welcome, that had an intimacy that made us feel special, and staffs highly focused on details. Every organization has a ‘culture’ of values or ‘how things are done’.

Because of their price positioning and market environment, independent hotel properties do not have the budget in the market to recruit and retain good line employees. Budgeting and forecasting can be a nightmare if accurate historical data of the previous years are not kept. Benchmarking performance in the market is difficult due to lack of access to benchmarking tools (STR, Benchmarking Alliance...).

Overhead (Full Time Employees, visa, staff accommodation) and expenses (Rent, Electricity, Water, Gas, Food Cost...) can run high when the market dictates rate ceilings. The PMS systems available to independent hotels often lack the sophistication of those available to franchise properties, lacking on the customer identification and market segmentation statistics. Inventory management is critical to maximize revenues in independent properties and the available tools often reside in the hotel manager's brain.

If this scares you off then you should doing something else. The independent hotels market in Gulf countries are highly focused on Front Offce and Guest Relations staffing. The rewards are the opportunity to create a guest experience based upon hospitality rather than efficiency, to implement customer service that makes memories rather than horror stories, to truly be in touch with guests rather than seeking to avoid them because a guest contact usually indicates a problem.

Marketing an independent hotel requires a certain "art" and accountability due to the restrictions of size and budgets. As there is no franchise driven marketing program and its accompanying contribution to occupancy by virtue of a GDS system and 0 800 numbers, nor is there a frequent loyalty guest program, the marketing plan has to be developed and executed with precise accuracy to reach the potential guest with a genuine appreciation of an independent hotel and the ability to pay the price for this level of service and intimacy.

Here are several key factors to make a successful marketing plan for independent hotels:
1) Begin by developing a client profile for each market segment by season
- Only when you have a clear picture of your guest can you target both sales and marketing efforts and media placement,
- Enhance the 4 segments industry (Retail, Corporate, Leisure and Groups) to allow sub segments that will tell you more about your clients,
- Track their production so you can review performance and make adjustments in your selection if necessary,

2) Use e-distribution channels
- Have a easy to navigate website that enable your clients to book online (Submit form button is still seen for 25% of hotels in UAE),
- Work your content for business or leisure clientele,
- Ensure that your revenue manager or e-distribution executive has you entered in the search engines by key words that appeal to your guest profile and pay for them to regularly refresh your web site positioning with the search engines.
- Review and use email data collection for the right promotion,
- Subscribe for a channel manager access, for faster control of extranets or limits your extranet to the Top 5 OTA room nights contribution,

3) Develop your own CRM program
- Collect as much as information about your guest,
- Don't collect their name and address only, but the kind of food (breakfast, amenities) they like, the kind of events / fairs that they booked through the hotel, the places they like to go in town,
- 5 years ago I was a Director of Revenue with The Shangri-La in Dubai when the company was still small that Mr. Bernhard Haechler would come and sit in your office and ask how things were going. The reservation, guest relations and front office team had a total focus on customer relationship management program that was state of the art. We knew the answer to the fruit amenities question and if guest preferred Evian or San Pellegrino. These things were done prior to the guest checking in.

4) Develop cost effective targeted mailing
- If your F&B outlet is sponsoring a wine festival or a beer festival, search the CRM for the information and mail your promotional piece to them,
- If your hotel is developing an offer for Eid Holidays, look in your CRM who stayed the previous years at your hotel during that period,
- If you drop your surcharge rate during a convention in the city, choose first to communicate with your top producing accounts,

The next nine to twelve months could be challenging for independent hotels. As many of them do not have a big margin, let's hope that we don't loose too many to franchising (Holiday Inn, Mercure, Ramada, Hilton...). It is these qualities and the experiences that they enhance that make the contribution of independent hotels to the industry so good. And who said an independent hotel cannot compete with a leading hotel brand? Do things, do them right.

Romain Saada @ RSVP Hospitality

Maintaining Rate Integrity to increase hotel gross operating profitability

In the last 10 years of Gulf Countries growth, Hotels behaved with healthy profit line until 2008. Revenue management was put into practice, in the Gulf within the hotel industry, nearly 7 years back, most of the philosophies and techniques that had been learned were from a strong economy (2005-2008). This presents a very challenging problem in today’s environment because hotel revenue managers are non-equipped to deal with it.

There is very little historical data that will show how yield management behaved during the tough times. Because of this, many hotel revenue management staff are still feeling their way and are committing trial-and-errors. Gathering some historical statistics is not enough, if reports are lying on the side of an office. Reading professional press information is rarely in place. The important key for revenue managers is to analyze it, and make recommendations and decisions. Mr and Mrs Revenue Manager, you are invited to challenge your General Manager. Believe it, they will appreciate it.

One regular mistake is that many properties engaged in the hospitality industry are dropping hotel rates in order to increase demand. This trend can be observed everywhere from Dubai to Cairo. I was discussing recently with a Finance Manager, 4-star Independent Hotel in Dubai, who is in charge of controlling rates (huh why not?), and he shared his experience that when increasing is BAR level from one day to another, he could not observe pickup room nights after 24h, so he was constantly changing to lower BAR rates. When I questioned him about its booking trends, cancellations factor and statistics line, there were no particular backup".

Fortunately, there is still a significant number of hotel revenue management teams that has the current crisis in perspective. Even during the worst of times, many hoteliers strived to maintain rate integrity as not to compromise their future positions.

It should be noted that dropping prices is never an appropriate response:
- Point 1: it will show that you don't know your hotel property booking pace behaviors,
- Point 2: you might undercut your Travel Agent and Corporate partners resulting in dropping of business activities,
- Point 3: it will take a lot of effort on the part of the hotel revenue management team to bring the price up again,
- Point 4: it will hurt the brand value so the hospitality establishment might not experience the full benefits of recovery once it happens,
- Point 5: The lower the rates, the most demanding clients you will experience, as they feel they had a great deal, so they would like 100% service attention to them.

Occupancy challenges can be solved with creativity, innovation, and appropriate yield management measures. In the Revenue Management discussions, a strong emphasis should be given to the investment in tools, process technology, and people. This is the best way to cope with the downturn or slow economy. Going back to basics is important. It does not only apply to operational aspects. If you get this right, then the hotel is operating on solid basis. In no time, the hotel can experience more bookings, increased RevPAR.

E-Marketing: Tips for managing your online reviews

Social media is all about managing your hotel’s online reputation, and the top website for travelers to share their experience is Trip Advisor.

Since being founded in February 2000, TripAdvisor has revolutionized the travel industry with 20 million members, it has established itself as a definitive go-to resource for travelers seeking to plan and have the perfect trip.

TripAdvisor offers travelers more than 50 million reviews (September 2011 - Source: Trip Advisor PR Releases) and opinions of accommodations, destinations, restaurants and attractions, contributed by members from 188 countries, or 96 percent of all countries around the world. Thanks to its loyal traveler community, TripAdvisor publishes 25 new contributions every minute and also features over eight million candid traveler photos.

Trip Advisor innovated with its Business Listings, which allows hotel owners the option of including direct contact details – website, phone number, and email address – on their hotel page on all TripAdvisor domains for an annual fee based on the size of property. Their goal is to put hoteliers one keystroke away from converting potential guests into paying guests.

How to be listed at the Top on Trip Advisor?
The first factors are the quantity of reviews, how well those reviews rate your hotel property, and how current the reviews are. If Trip Advisor discovered that a property has engaged in fraudulent activity, the penalties may very well impact their ranking for a period of time. And since many cases were found several times, whether or not a property opts for a business listing, I can tell you that t does not impact your popularity ranking.

How to increase positive reviews?
Rule Number 1, do take care of your guests and give them a good experience, regardless the star rating of your hotel property.

* Hoteliers should solicit reviews, as long as incentives are not used (Coupons, free breakfast, complimentary services...). The task should not only be carried out by the Duty Managers or the Guest Relations Executive.
* Hotels should monitor their reviews, and take advantage of this free feedback.


Hotels should address any problems that travelers have identified so they don’t impact future guests’ stays – and reviews. They should also think about managing their entire listing, not just the reviews. Make sure the listing is as complete as possible.

Travelers love photos and will not hesitate to share the most ridiculous one (it's quite rare to see Room Amenities pictures on T.A). Also, hotel may use the detail tab on the hotel listing page, that is a great place to enhance their property description.

I strongly encourage hoteliers to address the negative reviews. It should not only happen in the 8.30-9.30AM time frame with the Executive Team. A management response is the hotelier’s opportunity to apologize and to let both that traveller – and all potential guests who are reading the reviews – know how they have remedied any problems. It’s an indication that an owner is invested in improving their establishment, and that they take customer service seriously.

I am sharing a Best Practice that a great Hotelier, in Dubai, is doing regularly. Well done Mr. Gillings!!! I would like to see many hoteliers director answer in the same manner.

Client Experience:
Landmark is ideal for the trader who has to be in the deira market area. You can walk from place to place and a good choice of eating area around. Golden fork, KFC, Mac donalds are all in the vicinity of the hotel opening till the 2am or more. the down side was the fact that there was no internet service in the rooms.

Hotelier Feedback:
Mark Gillings, Chief Executive Officer at Landmark Plaza Hotel, responded to this review
April 25, 2011
Dear Solo40Nigeria

Firstly, I would like to thank you for taking the time to let us know about your experience with us on your visit to our Landmark Plaza Hotel in Dubai in April 2011.

I am very pleased you had a great stay in our Hotel and you were very happy with our bedrooms and that great service that was provided by our team.

Yes you are correct, we are have many of our business guest stay with us due to our fantastic location which is in easy reach of all the traders shops, restaurants and malls as well as our brand new metro station which is being built 1 minute walk away from our hotel, and in fact the new roads were opened on the 12 August 2010 which allows for much better access to the area, which is fantastic news for all. As you know we are located in the heart of Dubai in Baniyas Square and as you stated there are lots of great little shops and restaurants in the vicinity.

Thank you for your comment regarding the internet in the rooms, this is something we are looking into and we are hoping to have this rectified in the very near future.

We look forward to welcoming you back to the Landmark Plaza Hotel in the very near future.

Kind Regards

Mark Gillings
Chief Executive Officer

I would encourage everyone to act like Mr Gillings, because this brings Trust for the client and the hotel reputation.
Full Reviews about that hotel, please visit that link:
http://www.tripadvisor.com/Hotel_Review-g295424-d306729-Reviews-Landmark_Plaza_Hotel-Dubai.html

Share your +/- experiences with Trip Advisor usage, and look for your hotel reviews immediately.

Romain

Revenue Management Challenges for Independent Hotels across Gulf Region

Economic challenges is hanging over the Gulf Countries industry and being felt even more by independent hotels due to lack of system (a performing CRS, Foreign Sales Support, RFP impact...). With additional supply still being added, or residential buildings converting to Hotel Apartments, the pressure for hotels will still be effective in 2012-2015.

At the very time they need a revenue manager who not only does the usual opening and closing rates and inventory but also has the ability to generate revenue.. The Revenue Manager should be performing a full time analytical tasks, know strategic market information and makes sounds decisions. Many revenue managers for independent hotels are performing a multi task jobs involving Sales / Reservation / Revenue / Operations tasks. Can they really perform? Their job description cannot give them hands on Revenue Management effectively.

At the very time these hotels need more of a presence on the internet through the OTAs and other distribution channels, they can’t afford to hire an expensive e-commerce company. What if they could hire a revenue manager with the skills to get them exposure that they need to generate incremental revenue? The salary and payroll burden for someone with this experience would likely be more than their payroll can support.

If the economy continues to be uncertain, these are the hotels that suffer first.

Now RSVP Hospitality proposes that simple Outsource Revenue Management Program (6-12 months program) that guarantees to generate incremental revenue equal to or greater than their fees.

We grow RevPAR, GOPAR and Market share, and you will definitely appreciate an outsider look.

Contact us at info@rsvp-hospitality.com, for more information.

Demand Analysis: leisure or business clients?

Understanding your market segmentation
Segmentation is the concept of grouping people with similar demographics and psychographics together. The combination of demographic and psychographic information can provide valuable insights into your best customers – allowing you to find more like them.

Demographics looks at characteristics of people that include age, income, education, occupation, household size, travel budget, travel frequency.

In the hotels, to price strategically, we need to know the price point any particular market or market segment is prepared to pay. We need to know what average rates we can get out of each segment, and what volume of business each provides.

To assist you, hotels are using market segments. We segment our customers according to these market segments, and then we allocate each of our rate plans appropriately. Through attaching a market code (each market code belongs to one of our strategic main market segments) to each of our price points, and knowing that each customer "has" his/her own rate code, each and every time a guest checks-in and rooms revenue is posted, we record market segmentation.

First, let's start with the three key segments, which are Transient, Group and Other.

INDIVIDUALS: Include all customer programs that are not Group or Other,

GROUP: A Group is either 10 paying rooms or 15 paying people on any one night and can be any customer program

OTHER: Air Crew (contracted), Complimentary (not paying any money for the room). It may also includes extra revenues.

Let's break it down a little further:
Individual Corporate: Individual business where the customer program is corporate

Individual Leisure: Individual business where the customer program is leisure

Group Corporate: Group business where the customer program is corporate
Group Leisure: Group business where the customer program is leisure

Crew / Airlines: Business from an airline crew, on a specific contract where the crew checkin in uniform
Comp: Complimentary room nights where no rooms revenue is transacted.


*** Case Study ***:
The hotel GREEN DIAMOND, is a four star hotel that feature 150 Rooms. It is located in a business district surrounded by corporate business offices (banks, lawyers, asset management, consultants). Its first museum is located at 6km from the hotel. The hotel has 4 main international chain competitors in its vicinity (2 km radius). According the General Manager, the GREEN DIAMOND hotel is a mix of leisure and corporate clients.

Last night occupancy rate (Tuesday) was 85%, meaning 127 room occupied. In appearance, Its hotel lobby is full of business people wearing suits and ties, jeans/shirts/jacket, probably attending conferences or business meetings, therefore we can assume the property is a business hotel. Am I right? well, it's hard to answer without having a look in your market segmentation or engage with your clients.

The General Manager asks his Revenue Manager to analyze the hotel market segmentation by extracting the reports from the PMS, and the following statistics are extracted:
BAR Best Available Rate 05 RNs,
CORP Corporate Contracted Rates 12 RNs,
EXPEDIA Web Rate sold on Expedia 20 RNs,
BOOKING Web Rate sold on Booking 29 RNs,
WEB Branded Web Rate 06 RNs,
DMC LOCAL Contracted Leisure 35 RNs,
T.O INTL Contracted International Leisure 20 RNs,

Legends:
RNs = Room nights
DMC - Destination Management Company
T.O INTL - Tour Operator International

With a first look, we can assume that the hotel drives only 12 RNs from the corporate segment, the rest coming from leisure contracted rates and web bookings. So the hotel would have a predominancy to leisure bookers with a great support from Destination Management Company.

Well we recommend the GM to go an extra step, and therefore instead of making his decisions only with the market segmentation, the front office and guest relations departments were instructed to ask a simple question upon check-in: are you here for business or leisure?

The results turned to be that all clients staying at this hotel were coming on business purpose. So how comes there were booking leisure contracted rates, or how come the pricing structure was elaborated in a way to favor lower contributing ADR segments?

By understanding your clients through operational aspects, we realized that the hotel itself had a wrong perception of pricing / market segment. The pricing structure of the hotel was:
- BAR Rates AED 500.00
- Corporate Rates: AED 425.00
- Web Brand Rates AED 400.00
- Booking.com Rates: AED 375.00 - 20% Commission
- Expedia.com Rates: AED 385.00 - 25% Markup
- DMC Rates with Markup 25%: AED 345.00 - Lower impact on ADR

Discussing with the Sales Team of Green Diamond Hotel, we realized their low corporate room nights contribution was due to the fact that other businesses were undercutting them.

Therefore the hotel had an overall corporate client segmentation, driven by leisure rates. That is why you need to have a deep analytical mind to analyze deeply your operational hotel process in order to improve your profitability.

Revenue Management analysis is really the solution to help the hotel gather better information, makes better decision for better results.

Is revenue management art or science?

In Gulf country markets, small chains and independent properties continually face the challenges of limited resources and budget to invest in revenue management development and technology. Without it, are you at disadvantage against the large brands?

For every property and every revenue manager, there is a different definition of what revenue management is and how to achieve success. The concept of yield or revenue management was then introduced to measure the revenue more accurately and the unit of RevPAR was established to calculate the performance of each and every room in the total inventory of the property. A collective average of RevPARs of hotels in a specific area would reflect the strength of business in that market.

As a concept, revenue management has been adopted for airlines, but technically any business with limited or fixed supply of product sold in units of time (perishable) can benefit from it (Limo Transportation, Bus Coach, Concerts / Event tickets, Spa, Health Club, Parking, Rental Car, Outdoor advertising, Hairdressers...).

There are still many hotels who does not understand the RevPAR metrics. In the past, the success of a hotel was measured in units like average occupancy followed by ARR (Average Room Rate). However, a closer look at these units reveals a uni-dimensional approach - a reduced ARR may result in increased occupancy but fails to make the overall business a success.

No matter your definition, likely customized to the individual property, market demand pattern and rate structure, the revenue management development must fit the operation and goals of the hotel. Only then will it have the desired impact on the bottom line.

With Starwood, Radisson, Hilton and Accor moving to historical independent and small chain markets, particularly in Deira, Bur Dubai, Ras Al Khaimah, the perception towards revenue management is changing.

General Manager's conference meetings and small gathering of Revenue Management professionals, organized every quarter in Dubai or Abu Dhabi, help revenue management discipline to evolve, by including strategy, by understanding the customer behavior and by improving how to work effectively with the Sales department.

Today, the revenue management leader must be analytical and detail oriented, capable of thinking strategically, managing the relationship with sales and a good communication person.

So, which will make you flourish—the art or the science? How can you make the art more scientific? What is the right fit for your property? Who will take ownership for leading that practice?

Demand Analysis - What are the events in town?: get it right for your demand calendar

In our dynamic environment, maximizing your pricing on specific demand dates, seems the way forward to increase your RevPAR.
Selling on a one rate structure (RACK for everyone) can certainly apply if demand is largely above the supply (Olympic Games, WorldCup..). However during Citywide / Exhibition events, establishing the right market mix is a much easier task that many think.

What are the main key indicators to look at?
- Demand pattern last year,
- Demand pattern this year,
- Groups last year?
- Public bank holidays,
- School holidays,
- Ramadan period,
- Citywide events (Arab Health, Gulf Food, Air Show, Green Energy Summit...),

We recommend you to establish an excel spreadsheet with a specific legends, and distribute it across all sales department. Additionally, update this data in your PMS, so that all your associates are aware of it, and make sure that those dates are integrated to your analytical on the books / forecast reports.

Case Study: Arab Health Exhibition, Dubai
Arab Health is the largest medical health care exhibition & congress in the Middle East. It is held at the Dubai World Trade Center. It is currently the 38th edition.

How much would you expect to increase your RevPAR during Arab Health 2012 (Jan 23-26, 2012) vs. Arab Health 2011? +5% / +10%/+20%

In order to make sure your performance is at the optimum, you need to understand the event numbers and flow of business travelers:
- Over 3000 exhibitors from around 60 countries exhibit their medical and healthcare products,
- 65,000 healthcare professionals,
- Nearly 30 country pavilions and Germany is the largest exhibitor group,
- 17 CME (continuing medical education)-accredited conferences and over 500 internationally acclaimed speakers,
- Regional industry worth 80 billion dollar per year,

How many rooms does Dubai hotel establishments feature?
- Nearly 74,000 (DTCM Statistics)

So the city has high chance to be sold out. Sounds great, right? so as a Revenue Leader, how does this translate for your strategies?

You see lots of information is easy to get. The market segmentation mix, RevPAR last year, groups in house last year can be retrieved from your PMS or your historical data spreadsheet. Knowing your historical data, and compiling into analytical trends is the way forward for the revenue manager to make sounds decisions in the hotel.

Revenue Manager will then decide on its pricing strategies, inventory restrictions for the hotel during that period and communicate to the Sales department. If the hotel has banqueting facilities, it is also important not to let them empty while the hotel is running at full occupancy.

Information such as no shows, cancellations, non refundable booking, early departure need to be worked out 8-12 months before, during the sales contracting in order to have a positive revenue impact.

Cheers,

Romain Saada - RSVP Hospitality

E-Distribution: 3 tips to convert Visitors to Customers on Your Travel Site

E-Distribution: 3 tips to convert Visitors to Customers on Your Travel Site

As online distribution gains momentum, more travel related resources become accessible. Customer exposure to numerous travel products and services can be overwhelming at times. So what drives consumers to purchasing services from one provider and not the other? More specifically: how to convince visitors on your site to purchase your products?

Branding
In our dynamic environment, achieving brand identity seems sometimes impossible, especially on international level. Entrance costs, advertisement, translation services, SEO campaign and marketing expenses seem just too expensive, and many travel agencies forfeit this issue altogether. However establishing brand identity is a much easier and cheaper task than many think.
Why is this so important?

Before your customers are willing to pay their hard earned cash for their long anticipated vacation, you need to earn their trust.

We identified three key elements:
1. Your website appearance – clean design, updated logo, good functionality, aesthetic content, customization of colours and fonts, special place for packages,various association and accreditation badges, security of payments – SSL, professional layout – All these make your hotel website seem not only more appealing and user friendly, but also trustworthy and professional.

How much would you expect to spend on your website redesign? AED 15-20,000 can usually cover all your branding needs. When selecting a graphic design studio, be sure to review their works portfolio, and inquire about their expertise in travel themed websites specifically. If you are tied on budget, work it out with your finance manager, instead of going through a cheaper solution (freelance, internal) because it will slow down the process and overall impact. An easy way to look at your cost, would be to ask your finance manager the level of commission paid on a monthly basis to OTA (Online travel agencies) and evaluate how much savings you could so in that expense field. His answer will finance your budget. Remember you are aiming at powering your brand web bookings.

What we recommend for the booking engine experience, is to select an IBE (Internet booking engine) with:
- Ability of free flowing calendar,
- Ability to merchandize your hotel (Upsell, Transportation options, spa options, cancellation rules options),
- Ability to connect your booking experience with social media,

2. Customer experience – In order to retain clients and make their use of your website pleasant and entertaining, you need to engage them, think of promotions, free offers etc. Don’t forget, the customer experience doesn’t end with booking on your website, it continues until your client returns from his vacation.

In order to make sure that the customer won’t cancel his booking after receiving a shady booking confirmation or if he can’t get in touch with reservation department either by email or phone, you need to cover following aspects.
- Well designed order confirmations, hotel vouchers,
- Your own hotel copyright professional pictures,
- Follow up emails for customer polls,
- Email signatures,
- Avoid placing Google ads on your website: having an OTA Google ads on your website, and you can forget your strategies.

3. Reviews and social media – User generated reviews combined with social media applications can be your best friends or enemies if neglected. By gaining reviews from your customers you will eventually have a large base of information that can be used to generate additional sales. With social media revolution taking place, consumers are listening and relying on each other far more than they rely on you. Don't use your Facebook page like your own Facebook accounts with your friends. Power it with some unique graphic tools, that re-enforce your branding aspects. The more trust you will be able to gain, the more customers will trust you in return.

For IBE (Internet Booking Engine) recommendations, you can get in touch with RSVP Hospitality at info@rsvp-hospitality.com

Evolution of e-marketing: Using viral marketing to maximize Hotel Profit

E-NEWSLETTER OVERVIEW
E-Newsletter kicked-in in hospitality industry nearly 12 years ago, when hoteliers realized the importance of communicating to their clients using an electronic newsletter sent to an email database.

The email data collection was an effort from a good clean sales department database along with great steps in your Property Management System (PMS) to ensure that the data field is filled accordingly by the front office or guest relation agents. All those data will be merge by your IT department, creating a FREE clean databank to communicate to your clients.

E-Newsletters Advantages:
- Recurring promotional offers from the hotel,
- Public Relation opportunities,
- Low cost implementation,

ONLINE REVIEWS OVERVIEW
Then came Online Review Websites, first powered by Online Travel Agencies (HRN, Expedia...) and then Travel websites such asTripAdvisor.com, Trivago.com, VirtualTourist.com, posting reviews and opinions of travel-related content and engaging in interactive travel forums.

Online Reviews Challenges:

- Did you know that when one person has a good online experience, he or she will turn around and tell 12 more people? By the same token, if that person has a bad experience, 12 others will also know about it.

- Nowadays, Hoteliers are not comfortable to enter into a discussion online through social media. Even though we are in the hospitality industry, we are not afraid to talk to a stranger in the lobby, reception, restaurants, reservations of the hotel, as soon as it goes online, we are afraid.
- While we see great investment in Internet Booking Engine, we do not see the same trends for online communicative tools.
Is it fear for Taking Responsibility? Is it fear for Technology?

To overcome those fears, we recommend hotels to start reviewing their reviews on a daily basis, and start engaging with their existing guests through those sites or using their own Facebook hotel page.
- Collect the Favorite Reviews: probably a GM secretary or a marketing executive could perform those tasks on a daily basis,
- Share reviews in GM morning meeting and with your employees,
- Select the best reviews and apply to Facebook: you could copy the best phrase and page urls for an individual review, and paste it in your Facebook page.
- On the review website, respond to the review by thanking the guest for his compliment. Mention that you posted the review on your FaceBook page and that he should check it out.
- Your VIRAL MARKETING has just started.
- Ensure that someone qualified is monitoring your Facebook Page.

VIRAL MARKETING OVERVIEW
Many Hoteliers, Directors of Marketing or Revenue Managers have the misconception that effective viral marketing requires a huge budget.

But this is not necessarily the case as tourism authority for Hamilton Island, Queensland demonstrated. Basically, their campaign is simple: hire a blogger to talk about the island. The job, “Best Job in the World” was conceptualized. In January 2009, Tourism Queensland hosted a somewhat unorthodox contest, the winner of which would be put up in a posh hotel, their only responsibility being to tour the islands of the Great Barrier Reef and blog about it for six months. Oh, and also they would pay $150,000. You read that right.

Click on the Video link of "The Best Job in the World".

Billed as “The Best Job in the World”, the campaign generated massive amounts of attention and thousands of applicants. All the blogger needs to do is tour around Queensland, blog about his experiences, and get paid. The results of the campaign was astonishing, aside from the 7 million visitors recorded on the site, 34,000 people submitted their video application.

Eventually a 34-year old Brit named Ben Southall landed the coveted position. Going off the latest numbers, he now makes $149,998.00 (AED 550,492) more than the average blogger.

Tangible results of the viral marketing campaign are already being seen. Virgin Blue is not flying direct between Hamilton Island and Sydney. In addition, large Australian firms are also looking into the area for their events and conferences. There are some parallels between this tourism strategy and the hotel revenue management. And there are a few lessons that hotel revenue managers can use to increase RevPAR and boost profitability.

The most important aspect that should be recognized in this campaign is not the fact that they were marketing, but the fact that they were using social channels to achieve this level of success. Some tips to increase hotel profits using social media remembering that it’s not about the amount of budget you set aside – a big benefit of viral marketing is that it can create a big impact on a limited budget. In short, there’s no need to pay much to get the desired result. The main thing you need to remember is to have something worthwhile to share so people will talk about it.

Speaking about content, it can be in any form:

* Article,

* Video,

* Press Release,

* E-book,

* An entry or comment on a social media,

Viral marketing should be in daily jargon of hotelier so as like RevPAR, G.O.P.

Also, focus on content rather than traffic. The ultimate goal of most hotel revenue managers is to increase their site traffic, and hope that this will increase hotel sales. But to encourage people to share your products and services with their friends, content is more important.

It is the quickest method to reach out huge market.

For more information, please contact:

RSVP Hospitality - UAE Office

info@rsvp-hospitality.com