An article by Tambourine came across my feed today discussing the merits of live chat modules on hotel websites, titled Want More Bookings Get Chatty. They listed four very good reasons as to why a hotel should consider installing the live chat module, but failed to give any options. There are a lot of options available, it turns out. I will focus primarily on one, mainly because I enjoyed the default look of it without taking too much time to customize it.

Live chat modules, if unfamiliar with them, are a window that pops up on a website, allowing someone to chat through text with a support person on the other end. They are becoming more and more common, especially on websites that are looking to sell their services and businesses that have busy support systems (i.e. phone or cable companies.) They are unobtrusive and will disappear after a short time if they aren’t being used.

The best part about the chat modules is they are simple to use, both for the user and for the admin person. A user only needs to enter their name and start typing away. All of the chat modules I looked at can be installed on a website in a few minutes without too much effort. After installation, the admin person(s) can communicate with the guests through the website or through mobile apps on their phones. Some of the chat modules even offered desktop applications to make things even easier.

Pricing varied with the services: free to $200+ a month. The core features are always available on the lower-tiered plans. The limits placed on the tiers generally have to do with how many users the site has, and how many chat sessions can occur per month.

As mentioned previously, there are lots of options available online. Here are a few to get started with your exploration:

• Olark – 1 user with unlimited chats is $15/month.
• LiveChat – 1 user starts at $16/month.
• Tawk – Completely free. Unlimited chats, unlimited users.
• PureChat – Free for 15 chats, $15/month for 3 users and unlimited chats.

All of them offer the same basic functionality:
– web chat interface for users and admin
– customization for the look of the chat window
– chat history
– triggers for when the pop-up occurs, which pages it’s displayed on
– multipe users
– mobile apps to communicate while on the go

I will run through some of these features with PureChat.

Setup

Setup of PureChat is quite simple. You sign up for an account, get a snippet of code and then paste it into the header of your website or on individual pages. It was painless and installed within minutes.

Next was running through all the basics of the chat experience. This would include the words on top of the boxes, colours, location of it on the webpage (bottom right is the default), and what kind of animation to have the chat window first appear or disappear. When the window first opens, you have additional options, like whether you want people to enter a name or email address, or how you greet the people automatically. There are options for what happens when someone closes the window: download a transcript or have it emailed, rate the admin person, and have a button to direct them to a different part of your website. There are additional options for what happens when the admin person is unavailable. The default is to give the person the option to send a quick email.

Next you setup your users: name, email address, and their level of access. When the users first sign in, they will have to choose a password. They can also set a different profile picture.

The last step to get started is downloading their mobile app for your phone, and logging in with your credentials you used when first signing up.

Depending on how thorough you are in wanting to change all the default actions, setup can take from 5 to 20 minutes.

Chatting

The chatting experience is rather self-explanatory. There is nothing too fancy about it because it is designed for quick sessions to ask for help. There is no video conferencing, file attachments, audio communication, and so forth. Only text.

There are a few things of note for the admin users. Most of these services will allow for a canned response, a message prepared in advance that you find yourself sending out often. This will be rather handy for hotels that have to send out their cancellation policies or directions to the hotel frequently. You can setup as many canned responses as you like, and can set limits on who can use them if need be.

The other nice feature are the transcripts of the conversations. It will include the full converation for review if you want to see how your agents are responding, the agent involved, time stamps, and also an optional rating on what the customer thought of the conversation. Transcripts can be downloaded or emailed from the site, but can be automatically emailed to someone for review, which is useful at the start when usage may be the lowest.

If you happen to have a spammer messaging you, you can also ban their IP address and prevent them from messaging in the future.

Mobile Apps

Mobile apps are available for iOS and Android. They offer quite a bit of functionality for the user: access to chats, transcripts, canned responses, other team members, and scheduling.

Scheduling can happen on the site, but can be set for the users individually. That will be nice if you want a morning shift to respond during their hours, and then the evening shift takes over. Another nice touch is the ability to manually override your scheduling and turn off your availability.

For PureChat, the app is minimal and functional, exactly what you would expect to be using.

Integrations

All of these chatting modules integrate with other sites and services to offer more functionality. Depending on what else you use for your hotel, this may be useful. The information collected from the chatters can be sent to MailChimp to invite them to join your newsletter, or it can be sent to Google Analytics to track where people are visiting from, and more.

Most of these applications will also offer multilanguage support. Very useful for hotels located in major centres with international travellers.

Overall, these chat modules are easy enough to install and use that there is no reason for a hotel not to be using them. It will save guests from calling the hotel to ask questions and keep them in the booking process until the reservation is finalized. It will also offer one more amenity that your competition likely has not introduced yet. It is only a matter of time before they start including the chat interfaces on their sites, so get a jump start on them and start looking into one today.

The post Live Chat For Hotel Websites appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.

I recommend all owners at least explore the possibility of having a vacation rental video in their marketing portfolio. Please, whatever you do, don’t invest in one of those slideshows that has photos whizzing in from outer space or messages disintegrating into mist. A slideshow displaying different photos of your property does not constitute a video: even if it has music or voiceovers. A video is an actual video. One that communicates space and personality and ambiance. Ask to see your videographers portfolio before signing up. And don’t think of videos as your first two-piece suit. Rather, a compliment to that.

Matt Landau, Videos are for Winners

Matt is a smart guy. I have mentioned him previously in a post about The Value of Professional Photographs for Hotel Websites in which he tested how the quality of photographs effected overall bookings. In his latest post, he talks about the value of videos for promoting the vacation rental, but it also works for properties of all sizes.

Videos are becoming more common on hotel websites, but it is extremely important that they are done as a professioanl. It will help you control the viewing experience that potential guests have when watching the video. What I mean by this is that if a promotional video is a minute long, but starts off a bit choppy or uninteresting, people are more likely to click forward on the video, perhaps missing parts you wanted them to see.

The other reason why hotels should consider including a video on their website and cross-posting on YouTube, is because people are seeking out these videos more and more. For example, yvr2002rtw is a user on YouTube who posts only videos of hotel rooms and luxury airline services. He has over 60 videos posted, and over 600,000 views. That’s an absolutely staggering amount for videos that aren’t popular music videos or comedic events gone viral.

The problem with his videos, which becomes quickly evident after watching several in a row, is that they are a bit disjointed. There is no real story with them, more “show and tell.” This style of video is difficult to watch all the way through and leads to people skipping forward or not bothering to watch it at all.

Something else that Matt touches on his post is the value of capturing both the neighbourhood and the owners’ personality. The rooms at your property are only part of the story there. As I said in my post on Aligning with Your Guest’s Needs:

If people can recognize the indentity of the property immediately, they will buy into the services that are offered, and the ones that are not.

What better way to help people identify what your property is about than by watching a video? A quick two minute video will give a person much more information than two or three pages of text. Plus, it will be more enjoyable to watch than to read something on their computer screens.

Matt paid for two videos, one of the property, and one of the neighbourhood around his property. They are both very well done, and I encourage you to click through to watch them. The one of the neighbourhood is posted below to show you the effect a promotional video can have.¹

If I were to do a video of a property, here are the elements I would be sure to include:

• Share the experience of the property (the lobby, the restaurant, staff, pool area, lounge)
• Share some of the experiences from local activities (a neighbourhood pub, a winery, a market, coffee shop or other destination activities like a golf course, ski hill, beaches)
• Share the experiences of your more popular rooms (the sitting area, the bathtub/shower, and finally the sleeping area)

I would probably design multiple videos depending on the amenities your property offers. Perhaps a video to showcase your amenities that would draw in the corporate people (meeting rooms, a focus on the work space in the hotel rooms, business services) or a meeting planner (catering, meeting rooms, accessibility to/from hotel rooms).

To find a media company to work with, do a quick Google search, and be sure to look at several of their portfolio videos before making a final decision. It would also be useful to have a sit down meeting with them to discuss your needs and what they can provide to you. If you need assistance in tracking down a company, get in touch and I will gladly assist you.

The post The Power of Video Marketing for Hotels: Why You Need It appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.

I told the front desk person that she was overcharging me, and she disagreed and said there was nothing she could do.

That is a snippet of an email received by a client’s Front Desk team this morning. It contains the four words a guest/customer cringes at hearing.

Nothing they could do

When a guest approaches or calls the Front Desk with a problem, there is only one thing they are after: a solution.

They are not there to listen to the agent complain about how there is nothing they can do, how they are restricted by management, or how they will get in trouble if they push forward with that decision. They want to voice their concerns and have them resolved. That’s it.

When I was a Front Office Manager, I encouraged my staff to charge of the situation and resolve issues to the best of their abilities without concern. If someone is reporting that they were quoted a lower rate, it is better to offer them the lower rate than to dispute it with the guest. Take note of the issue so the manager could look at it the next day. It is much better to investigate an issue at the Front Desk and come up with a solution to prevent future issues the next day, than to investigate the issue but then report back to the guest the next day to resolve their issue.

My rule of thumb is that if a decision effects a small percentage of the rooms for one night’s worth of revenues, make the change. That decision isn’t going to effect the bottom-line dramatically, and may in effect help by preventing the guest from spreading a negative review about the property.

This rule can be applied from the top down, as well. One of my former General Managers wanted to be informed of the decisions we were making, but if a problem was going to cost less than $5,000 to repair, he gave us the authority to resolve the issue (it was a multi-million dollar property, so the cut-off amount will likely scale up/down depending on the size of your property).

Putting this policy in place will relieve a lot of stress in the work place, and keep the guest calm. It will put out the fires before they grow into an unstoppable force. I wrote about this in my article for Rethink Hotels, How to Minimize Damage and Fight Fires with Reputation Management

In the case of the email above, not only did the guest send multiple emails to the hotel about the issue, but she then went on to leave a sour review on TripAdvisor right away before the management could respond. The damage has been done, and we are having a meeting with the Front Desk to make sure they never utter these words again, “nothing they could do.”

The post Nothing They Could Do appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.

More than a million Chinese visited the U.S. in 2011, contributing more than $5.7 billion to the U.S. economy. That’s up 36 percent from 2010, according to the Department of Commerce. By 2016, that figure is expected to reach 2.6 million Chinese.

– Meghan Barr, At U.S. Hotels, Chinese Treated to Comforts of Home | The Seattle Times

Three years ago, when I attended the Rendezvous Canada convention that allows international travel agencies to meet with Canadian tour operators or hotels, the number of delegates from China was very few compared to the companies from Japan and South Korea. It was mentioned several times, however, that tour companies and hotels needed to start preparations for the coming Chinese visitors. There was a sense of skepticism on the floor, so I am happy to read this article about what some of the major hotels have been doing to make the Chinese guests happy.

The article details several things that hotels are starting to do:

• Have Front Desk agents who are able to speak Mandarin
• Hot tea and slippers available in the rooms
• Offering traditional Chinese breakfasts
• Respect their culture by not placing guests on the 4th floor, and ensuring the boss is never on a floor below their employees

It also mentions that several hotels have been sending people over to China to learn the customs directly and have designated “Chinese specialists” at their properties.

Of course, most of these items are simply not affordable for most properties, and may not be practical if there is a lack of international travelers to your region. There are other ways to attract Chinese tourists to your property though.

Preparation

Something that we did for a client’s website is to develop a Mandarin translation of the main pages. Visitors can select their language preference by selecting a button at the top. With some careful monitoring through Google Analytics, I am be able to see how often those pages are visited and when, so I can develop promotions targeting the visitors from China or make more informed decisions on whether to do further advertising with Chinese operators.

According to the Essential China Travel Trends PDF, a growing number of Chinese are surfing the web more by mobile devices than they are desktop computers. If you are going to develop a site in Mandarin, it may be worthwhile to develop it for a mobile device, as well to maximize your return on investment.

Another ongoing process is staying in touch with the Chinese inbound tour operators to keep a pulse on the interest level there is in your local area. If interest is cool but is building in a different area nearby, you can ask about the reasons why to help your local tourism organizations develop a plan to attract the Chinese market. For example, Yellowknife is a major destination for Japanese tourists when visiting Canada to view the northern lights. Its neighbour, Whitehorse, Yukon, was not as popular of a destination even though the northern lights are just as visible as they are in Yellowknife, plus it was a closer flight from Vancouver. After talking with some of the inbound operators at Rendezvous Canada, it was discovered that Yellowknife has developed viewing stations outside of the city where people can camp overnight while being catered to by other groups. In Whitehorse, there was no such facility and the tour operators were driving people outside of city limits to view the northern lights then driving back to the hotels.

I did not get an opportunity to work with more inbound operators, but the two I can suggest are listed below. The NTA has a specialized program solely for Chinese tour operators. Thankfully, they publish their list of approved operators for people to get in contact with.

• Lion Travel
• JTB Americas – JTB has 20 different companies throughout North America.
• NTA China Inbound Program Approved Tour Operator List

For Canadian properties, I would strongly suggest joining CITAP – Canadian Inbound Tourism Association (Asia Pacific). They list their membership and you can filter the results to show only the travel agencies. They have several events during the year which are excellent networking events to put you in touch with operators from China, Japan, and the Asia-Pacific region. If there is an American counterpart to this organization, I am unaware, so please share in the comments.

To get your web pages or other documents translated properly, I would suggest getting in touch with your local college or University to see if they offer Mandarin as a language course. A lot of Universities also have a large influx of Chinese students. Some of them may be fairly fluent in English themselves and able to do quick work with translating the document. There are plenty of companies out there offering translation services and I haven’t worked with any so I can’t personally endorse them, but Globalization Partners International offers website translation and multilingual website design, plus other services.

Further Reading

For people who want more in depth information about the Chinese market potential, their booking patterns, and what they may be looking for when traveling, there is one source I am going to recommend above all others: COTRI – Chinese Outbound Travel Research Institute

On the website, they have a variety of publications available depending on the information you are after. The latest one is The Green Book of China’s Tourism, published in 2011. Here is the description:

The Green Book of China’s Tourism is compiled annually in Chinese by the Tourism Research Centre, Chinese Academy of Social Sciences (CASS), the highest-ranking academic institution in China. Since its first publication in 2000, the Green Book includes authoritative reports on China’s domestic, inbound and outbound tourism. In 2011 for the first time Social Sciences Academic Press (SSAP) of China and COTRI are cooperating to present a selection of the most important articles in English to an international audience. The Green Book of China’s Tourism offers 16 chapters edited by the famous tourism experts Zhang Guangrui, Song Rui and Liu Deqian and written by the foremost academics, administrators and practitioners of tourism in China. Comprehensive analysis, forecast and prospect in key issues on the industry, government policy, destinations and tourism research indicates the state-of-the-art of discussions and plans in Chinese tourism. The Green Book of China’s Tourism 2011. China’s Tourism Development Analysis and Forecast represents a valuable source of information for companies, organizations, universities and individuals seeking to understand the complexities of China’s tourism with current data from 2010 and a forecast to the coming years at an essential and in-depth level provided as seen from within China.

Another publication is their Annual Report of China Outbound Tourism Development 2011. You can read the contents of the report from 2010 at their site in a short PDF which will give you an idea of the contents in the current edition.

Another good read is Essential China Travel Trends. This is a free PDF full of information on how the market is growing and booking patterns. One of the major take-aways for me is that CTrip is the most popular booking site in China. The majority of bookings go through a call centre more than being booked online, and the major international companies (Expedia, Sabre, etc) have been greatly minimized there. It would be worth visiting the site to see if your hotel is listed.

The post Waking the Dragon: Preparing Hotels for China’s Outbound Tourism appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.

In this first post about reputation management, I will point out some of the causes for a minor problem to heat up and become a larger fire, and how to minimize that damage.The following example just happened this past week with one of my client’s hotels. A common issue with hotels from time to time, overbooking, quickly turned into something much more. The full review is quite lengthy, but this was the first line shared on both the Facebook wall and a TripAdvisor review:
I would not recommend staying at this hotel and I am unimpressed by our treatment.

– How to Minimize Damage and Fight Fire with Reputation Management

The first of a series of guest posts I have written for Rethink Hotels.

Please read it and share your thoughts.

The post Fighting the Fires with Reputation Management appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.

They’re cheap, and anyone can stay there. As a result they house some of the oddest of the oddballs who keep LA interesting. The Ukranian screen writer, the crack addicted spiderman, the ingenue from South Dakota, the faded hair metal bassist, the Brits on a 5 day bender, etc. Anyone can stay in these dumpy motels. I’d write “dystopian egalitarianism” but then I’d seem even more pretentious than I already do.

Moby

The most effective way to be really successful in business is by challenging the status quo. Especially in a highly saturated industry like hotels, to compete and outperform the market you need a disruptive business model which delivers on a level competition cannot reach.

Patrick Landman, Xotels.com

I read Patrick’s piece a few weeks ago and have been letting it ruminate in my mind until I read Moby’s piece about his love of dumpy motels in Los Angeles. Moby offers an unexpected insight into the hospitality industry: by doing less, you can stand out from the rest. Patrick’s message is to do something different than your competitors in order to stand out – offer a different service, perform a service differently, decorate your rooms in a different style, and so forth. Combined, these two pieces offer some ideas in how to differentiate your property from others in the area.

Moby finds the motels of LA to be a curiousity partly because of their physical appearance, but also because of the people they attract. I find this to be an interesting idea. A property can attract people to stay there, because of the other people to be found there, not just because of the services they offer. I am certainly not going to suggest that the world needs more dumpy hotels so people can interact with “crack-addicted spiderman,” but I do think the hospitality industry can do a better job at showcasing the people that do stay at the property.

The charm of the local coffeehouses or the neighbourhood pubs are the people that go to those places to drink and to hang out. If a coffee shop serves good coffee and pastries, but lacks that ambiance of a thriving environment, it rarely succeeds. I often hear people talk about getting coffee to go from these places because it isn’t a great place to stay. The even more obvious example are pubs. Take a great bar with some great food, add some roughneck people and the previous clientele will most likely disappear.

The question then becomes how does a property create these ambiances and attract people to stay with them?

Patrick highlighted some hotels’ approach to this question. Their solution was highlighting a different kind of service and offering an experience that the guest wasn’t expecting. One hotel was offering a bowl of soup (that changed daily) to someone checking into the hotel, for example. Most properties will not be equipped with the space requirements or expertise to do something like that though. An alternative would be having fresh coffee available in the lobby (especially during peak hours), a bowl of fruit to choose from, or other treat.

People enjoy sharing with others when the environment encourages it. Think back to moments when you have talked to someone you didn’t know outside of a work environment. Maybe it was on a long plane ride and you were both alone, or waiting for a performance to start. Perhaps you were both caught in a rain storm and trapped under a bus stop waiting it out.

There are plenty of these moments on a daily basis, and we can somewhat duplicate them in the hospitality industry by encouraging guests to come together. Have them visit in a lobby space where they can share stories about their travels or some tips about what to see or do locally. Some of the larger hotels have a happy hour in the lobby with champagne or white wine, and I’ve seen people mingling about more than I thought they would.

People love these little moments where they discover something new that they have the opportunity to see for themselves or it’s something they can relate to. These moments are unlikely to happen on their own unless the property has a space where they can happen.

If you have a property, think about how you can re-purpose a space and use it for gatherings. The space can either behave like an invitation to gather (a reading room, a coffee/refreshment area) or a space that they are invited to (a cocktail hour, a movie screening, a guest speaking about local events).

This one small thing will help you build an ambiance at your property and help you stand out from the competition.

People love sharing with others, so remember to give them something to talk about.

The post The Importance of Ambiance in a Hotel or Bed and Breakfast appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.

I was logging into the portal site for the main CRS I work with, InnLink when I noticed a video they had on their main page to promote the company. During the video, there is a sequence where they cover the relationship of a potential guest and the journey where they end up being a guest and a returning guest. They call the process the Guest Vortex, and I thought I would share it here (click to enlarge):

As you can see, the Vortex consists of various stages, and the more often a guest returns, the more tightly they become loyal and part of the hotel (which is the eye of the storm).

A lot of hotels and properties focus on only a few of these points around the Vortex:
1. Awareness
2. During

The other points around the Vortex are what can help distinguish one property from another if the other two points are equal. What I mean by this is that if the websites are comparable with their layout, the rates are the same, the quality of the rooms and service offered are the same, the guest is basically flipping a coin to decide on which hotel to choose. They will often choose the one that is closer to their desired location, or it may just be that one looks more inviting than the other (maybe there are kids present in the pictures and it is a family that is booking the room).

While Awareness and During are extremely important, the remaining points are important, as well, and building a rapport with the guest. The better the experience booking a room, arriving at the hotel, and departing the hotel a guest has, the more likely they are to become a returning guest. Here are some ideas on how to build that rapport with a guest before they arrive at your property, and as they depart.

Planning

When a guest is planning, they are looking at two main things: eating, and activities (things to do, sites to see, close destinations, etc). The simplest way to let them know what to do or where to eat is by having local listings on your website, or at the very least links out to the related content (a local tourism website, TripAdvisor restaurants, Yelp and so on). When I’ve analyzed the Google Analytics for the hotel websites, I have found that visitors browsed around more when there was more information available, and booked more frequently, as well. I would not regurgitate a lot of the information that is available on other sites, but enough for people to be aware of what is available in the area that may entice them to stay longer than they originally had planned for.

Booking

A lot of properties miss out on an opportunity to sell something more to the guests when they are going through the booking process. When the guest clicks on the “Book Now” button to start exploring rates, they are in that “Buy Now” mode and can be influenced to make other purchases. The offerings will vary on the property, whether it be massages or other spa treatments, or discounts on golf packages, or something simple like flowers and a box of chocolates. Most Property Management Systems are designed to handle these add-ons, as are most Central Reservation Systems. If they are available, try to include at least two different add-ons that your Front Desk Agents or the web booking engine can sell to the guest. If your property has nothing available, try building partnerships within your community with flower shops or tourist attractions, and possibly earn a commission.

Pre-Stay

A pre-stay email is a great way to not only remind the guest of their booking details, but it’s another opportunity to remind them to make dinner reservations at your restaurant, or a helpful reminder that they are staying on a busy weekend so they may wish to purchase tickets to a music festival in advance. If your property is small and you’re willing to personalize these emails further, you could include the local weather during their stay or a link to movie listings.

Post-Stay

The post-stay period is important because it’s the final chance you have to get them interested in staying at the property again if they haven’t made that decision already. There are three things a post-stay email can consist of:

1. A thank you note for staying at the hotel.
2. An invitation to connect on Facebook, Twitter, blog or newsletter.
3. Completing a survey, posting on TripAdvisor, or emailing comments to the hotel.

The email could consist of all three of these points. I like having the thank you note at the beginning, and including links to social media profiles in the signature of the email. After the thank you note is the invitation to fill out a survey with SurveyMonkey or posting their thoughts on TripAdvisor.

Hopefully, after completing one cycle through the Vortex from Awareness to Post-Stay, the guest will be won over by your hospitality and the quality of the property. They will either stay with you again, or at the very least, spread a positive review about you, which is equally as important.

If you have any questions on how you can improve upon any points through the Vortex or require assistance in getting things setup, please get in touch. Also email me to learn more about InnLink’s services and I can put you in touch with the correct sales agent to help get you the best deal possible.

InnLink was purchased by Sabre several years ago. Please reach out to them to learn more about their CRS, SynXis.

The post The Guest Vortex appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.

The more features you add to a product, the more it dilutes the core reason for a product’s existence and confuses people.

Marco Arment, Build and Analyze Show #68

Marco Arment is the creator of Instapaper, an online and mobile application for reading online articles without all the advertisements and other distractions[1]. The above quote occurred during his podcast when he was talking about his competition who had released a new version of their application. When I first heard it, my mind started wandering to how it could be applied to other products, not just the world of design and application development. Later in the episode, he says something else that appealed to me (and I’m paraphrasing this time):

Better to leave certain things to your competitors instead of trying to incorporate all the features.

One of the first rules about revenue management that I have learned is to adjust to your property’s needs, not to adjust when the competition changes. I have seen it happen more and more, where one property drops their rates dramatically, so the property’s owner you are working with want to follow suit in fear of losing guests to the competition. It’s simply not the case in terms of rate, and it will also be true with other hotel features.

If a guest’s needs change, they will switch to a property that suits their needs, but they won’t switch to a property that offers something different unless it fits their need. For example, if a competiting property installs an indoor pool, that may not be something that the business traveler will take advantage of, but if a property installs higher-speed internet connections in all the rooms and free printing at the Front Desk, they will most likely switch.

It’s important for a property to have its own identity, be aware of it, and have everyone entering that property be aware of it, as well. Knowing your base identity, you can build upon it when the time is right by offering additional services that complement the original services. If people can recognize the indentity of the property immediately, they will buy into the services that are offered, and the ones that are not. If the hotel is selling itself as a high-end resort, but there are no services that make it a resort (no pool, spa services, golf course, etc.), there will be a disconnect between the guest and the property, which will drive the guest away. But if the property sells itself as a boutique hotel with limited services, and does those limited services very well, it will help to build loyalty to that property.

At the same time, guests have their own identity. This is something that goes missed by some properties, but you can’t try to cater your property to a guest who’s needs are going to be met. If your property doesn’t have a dedicated work space in the room, you can attract a leisure guest but probably not a business guest. You will be wasting valuable advertising dollars by trying to sell to the wrong person. Once the guest is in your hotel, it is important to be in touch with them to make sure their needs are continually being met (email newsletters, Twitter, surveys, Facebook, and talking with them while at the property).

If you notice a strong number of your guests requesting a certain feature, that would be a good time to pivot and go in that direction as long as it aligns with your original identity. If you notice a strong majority requesting a certain feature, you better act quickly before they are lost to your competition.

Aligning your guest’s needs with the features your property offers is the way to build a successful property longterm.

The post Aligning with Your Guest’s Needs appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.

I was listening to a video of one of my favourite (and sassiest) writers online, Ashley Ambirge, talking about how all the marketing in the world doesn’t matter if the website is crap. First impressions are especially important in the hospitality industry since the time invested in the website and other marketing materials greatly effects people’s judgment about the property itself. Of course, it’s not entirely true that a poor website = a poor property, or a great website = a great property, but most people will come to a quick conclusion to pass on a property if they can’t find the information they are after.
The website isn’t everything for the property, though. The appearance of the physical property is equally important, and like Ashley says, all the marketing in the world can’t cover up how crappy of a place it really is. That should be common sense for a lot of owners and managers. Unfortunately, a lot of people are quite oblivious to the problems around them and refuse to see what is in front of them.

I can understand why things get bad, but what is inexcusable in my mind is avoiding problems and believing things will correct themselves. You reach a tipping point where adjustments can be made, but the damage of previous negative reviews is beyond repairable. This happened with a property that I tried to help out last year.

Like most travelers, I visit TripAdvisor and other hotel review sites to gauge how well a property is actually doing. I read about the guest concerns so I can bring something to the table in my conversations and find solutions to problems that currently exist. When I visited the profile of this hotel, it was a horrifying experience, to say the least. Here’s a snippet of one review:

The word ‘resort’ needs to be removed from the title of this disgusting motel. It’s a long story but I’ll stick to the main points:
1. dirty room – with dirty towels and blood on sheets
2. bathroom had fungus (actual mushrooms) growing
3. garbage bin outside of room smells like DEATH!!! We were told 3 times that it would be removed – it wasn’t! The smell made us gag – literally
4. at 12:30am an employee banged on the door then kicked it in, breaking the lock – NO JOKE! (all because we didn’t return the extra key because ours was in the room) We are a family with 2 adults and 2 kids – needless to say, the kids were petrified to stay.

It went on for another six points, and is surrounded by other negative reviews. Incredibly, it’s managed a two star rating on TripAdvisor.

An owner or manager can’t edit or delete these reviews, of course, but they do have the opportunity to respond to them. Being humble and apologetic can repair some of the damage if the complaints are minor. With the above complaint, an appropriate response would be to be honest, admit the mistakes, and announce the plans you have in place to make changes. What makes the above complaints worse (if that’s even possible) is that there were responses to other reviews, but this one and other really negative ones, did not have a response. Reviews that happened after this one were responded to, so the owner had been following up with the reviews.

Mistakes like this are not easily fixed. Apart from fixing everything happening at the hotel level, there needs to be some serious work on rebranding the hotel, rewriting the copy and design of the website, engaging with these former guests to address their concerns, and making public statements about how the hotel has revamped their operation.

To protect yourself, I suggest visiting TripAdvisor and taking control of your property’s engagement with the public. You can receive notifications of the reviews, get monthly newsletters, and get access to website badges to include to show off your ranking. Vist this link to start taking control now.

Here is Ashley’s video. Short, concise, and possibly Not Safe for Work.

The post First Impressions Mean Everything, Especially on TripAdvisor appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.

Guest relations have always been an important part of the hospitality industry, but it is extremely important as the size of the operation scales down to the smaller bed and breakfasts, and motels. Larger hotels use expensive computer systems to keep track of their guests to tell when they last stayed, how much they spend in a year, and which rooms they prefer. Chain hotels can access a lot of that information between properties, as well.
People enjoy having a more personalized experience when staying at smaller operations. They have developed a romanticized vision of what it means to stay in a small bed and breakfast – having meaningful conversations with the owners, sharing stories with their fellow guests, and staying in a relaxing environment. It is easy to share that experience with people the first time around and have their needs met while at the property, but how do you do that the next time they stay with you?

If there is one thing that quickly annoys people more than anything it is repeating themselves. The more often you visit a coffee shop, for example, and keep repeating a special request, the less likely you may be to return there. What makes a coffee shop special is when one of the baristas remembers your order and can fix that drink for you without you putting in the request. It’s a magical moment for both the barista and yourself when you get served without having to ask for room for cream.

One of the challenges faced by owners of any business is keeping track of these special requests. At restaurants and cafes, it’s by memory. Most others are using some kind of system, whether it’s an Excel spreadsheet or a paper trail. Thankfully, Customer Relationship Management (CRM) systems have been widely developed on the web lately to make this easier and make the information more organized than ever.

Here is a simple description of what a CRM is from Wikipedia:

Customer relationship management (CRM) is a widely implemented strategy for managing a company’s interactions with customers, clients and sales prospects. It involves using technology to organize, automate, and synchronize business processes—principally sales activities, but also those for marketing, customer service, and technical support.^[1] The overall goals are to find, attract, and win new clients, nurture and retain those the company already has, entice former clients back into the fold, and reduce the costs of marketing and client service.^[2] Customer relationship management describes a company-wide business strategy including customer-interface departments as well as other departments.^[3] Measuring and valuing customer relationships is critical to implementing this strategy.^[4]

There are four different kinds of information that a motel or bed and breakfast will want to keep track of with a CRM:

1. Who the guest is.
2. How to connect to that guest.
3. What that guest enjoys.
4. When that guest stayed.

Who the Guest Is

This is the most logical item to keep track of, but it goes beyond the name of the guest. Where they are from helps you develop a marketing plan to target that city, that region. Odds are if one person from that city enjoyed your hospitality, someone else will, as well. A simple ad in a local newspaper or radio advertisement may be overheard by one of their friends, they will bring it up in conversation, and then that person will mention that they stayed there and share their experience. Word of mouth is by far the best advertising practice – but it is up to you to put the bait out and help them spread the word.

How to Connect to a Guest

Again, this goes beyond an email address or phone number these days. With 700+ million users out there, nearly everyone has a Facebook profile now. Twitter is also a growing social network, and LinkedIn is the goto site for business connections. Knowing this information is related to the above mention of advertising. Inviting your guest to connect with you on one of these networks will be signaled to everyone else in their network. A small portion of those connections will likely ask for further details or look up your profile or website right away to explore. An email address is an invitation to join a newsletter or social network to keep in touch year-round. Even if that guest does not stay with your property again, they will most likely influence others to stay with you.

What the Guest Enjoys

This information is going to vary greatly between the guests and the properties as everyone and every place is different. The chances of a person enjoying their room as is are very small. Everyone has their preference with how many pillows they use, whether they like their sheets untucked, the temperature of the room, to whether they put their luggage on a rack or not. Some details are more important than others, of course. Maybe they prefer a different view from their room, or want to be in a quiet section of the building. It may sound tedious to keep track of this kind of information, but it will be quite useful in building up longterm relationships with guests that keep them coming back for years down the road.

When that Guest Stayed

This information is the most vital in determining when you reach out to the guest again. People get quickly annoyed when they receive multiple emails from the same address without their permission. One email a year without their permission is allowable, however. If you do not have an email newsletter, the best time to send the email out to the guest is within 30-60 days of the time period they stayed before. Most couples are taking getaways around their wedding anniversaries, birthdays, or other important dates in their lives. If they received an email 60 days before their anniversary, for example, inviting them to stay again, they will enjoy the personal touch and likely book again. Others will be staying while on holidays, so perhaps an email in March or April when they are planning a summer vacation is more favourable. Like the guest preferences, this will likely vary greatly depending on the property and the guest.

How to Store the Information

Knowing what to collect is important, but just as important is where to store it. Most of this information could be stored in an Excel Spreadsheet, or even your Address Book for your email account. The Excel Spreadsheet can be useful for deep analysis (i.e. tracking where people are from), but tedious to actually enter information into. The Address Book could quickly become a mess and the information is not easily trackable either.

I am a big fan of using online CRM solutions to keep track of information. I will mention three possible CRM solutions, although there are probably dozens of them out there, if not more.

Salesforce.com: a premium CRM solution with many other options available to customize the software dependent on your needs. It is probably a bit out of range for most budgets, but I include them because they are highly regarded in this space.

Highrise: another premium CRM, but there is a free version for a limited number of contacts, and their plans are quite affordable as you grow. You can easily keep track of contacts, tasks (connected to people, or not), deals (which I would use to keep track of individual stays), and more.

Base: a CRM with an emphasis on being free. They are paid upgrades to allow for more deals, but they include an unlimited amount of contacts, notes, to do’s, and other information. It is my preferred CRM solution, because of its cost, but also because it offers a few little extras that are quite useful, which I’ll detail below.

First thing to do is to get contacts into Base. There are three ways to do this:

1. Manually enter in contacts
2. Import with a CSV file
3. Connect with a Gmail Account

Base has some great help features about using the import feature, but I thought I would share how a contact will actually look on the site.

Note that I filled in the Twitter profile section. You can also do this for Facebook, LinkedIn, and Skype. This is what the quick look of a profile will look like:

On the profile page, it adds the latest status message from Twitter right away. Highrise also has this feature built-in, but you have to switch to a different tab to view the information. With Base, the information is available right away.

Also note that I included a basic deal on the profile. The deal consists of a name, the amount, a date, a source, and a tag for quick reference. A basic deal would have the name be Length of Stay, the Total Amount of Revenue, Date of Stay, and the room (as a source). A more complicated deal could include the tags as the various services being offered or preferences (i.e. king bed, mountain view, in-room spa treatment, late riser, etc).

The report section of Base is terrific, too. Apart from getting the overall revenue through a time period (displays daily if only a month is selected), you can also generate reports based by tag or by source. If you are diligent with your information records, you could tell right away which room generates the most revenue for you, or whether one service is more popular than another. If you are real detailed, you could even tell whether the majority of your guests prefer having untucked sheets. The options are endless.

Another great feature with Base is that it includes a contact form to include on your website. When a person fills out the information, it gets imported into Base automatically and you get notified. This is useful when you wish to reach out to a potential guest after a week of their initial email to see if they are interested in booking if you haven’t received a response yet. You can see an example of this in action by visiting my Contact Form.

The final feature I wanted to mention is their mobile apps for iOS (iPhone, iPad) and Android devices. It gives you the ability to look up your contacts information on the go, which will be handy when preparing rooms in advance of the guest’s arrival. Instead of printing out notes, you can review the information at your finger-tips or make notes as you think of it instead of waiting for the time to sit down at your office.

Summary

Collecting and organizing this information about your guests is a lot easier now with these versatile CRM solutions made available. Keeping track of it is a lot easier and the options available with what to do with the information are endless.

If you would like further assistance with getting an account setup on Base or Highrise, importing your contacts, and doing some of the initial groundwork in getting the database setup correctly, please get in touch. I would love to help you and your guests have the best experience possible.

The post Why It Is Important To Stay Organized With Your Hotel Using A CRM appeared first on Four Sides Hospitality Consulting | Hotel and Airbnb Consultant | Canada.