Hotel Owner Hotel Owner July 2017 digital | Page 50

MARKETING MATTERS | AGONY AUNT Q & A WITH ANGIE PETKOVIC

Marketing Matters

It seems that a common theme to a lot of your queries is how to increase direct bookings and reduce the commission paid to booking engines . There are also a number expressing concerns over these search engines ranking higher than your own site , and how to tackle this

When it comes to direct bookings , there are two key customer streams ; existing customers who are returning to you and new customers visiting for the first time . These two audiences have to be tackled in different ways .

Building loyalty with existing customers I recently did an exercise with a client looking at their bookings over the last three years ; one statistic in particular stuck with me . The business has a lot of corporate custom , and each year , approximately 35-40 % of their total sales are from repeat guests ; even though this represents over a third of the business , of these repeat customers , only 41 % book direct with the hotel , the rest rebooking through third-party providers . This repeat custom was therefore costing the business more than £ 15,000 per year in commission fees alone – a total and unnecessary waste of money ! Speaking specifically with a cross-section of these guests , common reasons for using booking engines include ease , and difficulty remembering the hotel ’ s name .
This statistic is powerful and although I hesitate to do mid-year performance analysis , the initial changes that we made to marketing are already having an impact on commission . For the first six months of the year , average monthly commission is down from £ 1,250 to £ 690 , and the direct bookings have increased from 41 % of repeat customers to 59 % - a whopping increase for the business . Achieving this improvement has been done in three ways : 1 . Specifically asking guests to rebook direct and rewarding them for doing so . By reducing the amount lost through commission , we have been able to increase the value of each individual booking to the business . This means there is money in the budget to reward them for their loyalty , and incentives such as wine with dinner , and vouchers for the gin bar have both proved popular . 2 . Contacting the business as well as the individual . By cherry-picking businesses that
place fairly regular but inconsistent bookings , we have been able to reward businesses with loyalty rates and in one or two cases , have even worked with the business to provide hotel stays as employee perks . Not all of the businesses have been receptive , due to challenges with procurement processes , but it has been effective enough to warrant doing .
3 . Communicating regularly . You ’ ll be surprised how few hotels communicate specifically and regularly with their repeat guests . They may do an emailer to the entire database , but not to this specific segment . By sending regular reminders , offers , updates and even a targeted promotional item , customers are starting to make more direct bookings and less booking engine ones . The perk is that these customers are already on your database , and there is no need at all for them to use booking engines . This means where your website ranks and performance have a limited impact and you can make small but mighty changes to your revenue , quickly and simply .
Gaining new customers Gaining new customers is more of a challenge and you will find it difficult to get your own website , with its several thousand visitors , to rank anywhere close to the booking engines who have hundreds of thousands of visitors and much bigger marketing budgets . That doesn ’ t however mean it is a lost cause , but you do have to be committed to pursuing this custom and understand the impact will be more long-term . You can either use booking engines to drive your new custom , with a topquality loyalty programme running behind it , and / or invest time and energy into pursuing direct bookings yourself , which will take longer to offset the commission costs , but will have significant long-term benefits .
You need to accept you won ’ t exceed the rankings of the booking engines , but you can be high enough up the list to attract attention from anyone searching . Your focus needs to be on using available digital platforms to drive awareness and rankings . Search engine rankings are not an exact science , but you can influence rankings quite easily with some of the following tricks :
• Keyword your site well – think about what someone will be searching for , and make sure you have a page about it . For example , if people might search “ Hotels Oxford Town Centre ” then make sure you have a page that talks about your hotel in Oxford Town Centre .
• Start a blog – blogs , populated with keywords are a great way to improve rankings ; a ) they provide space for you to add more keywords , b ) they keep the site current and c ) they give you scope to link your business to others in the area . For example , writing a blog about guests visiting the Eden Project Bulb Mania will help you appear on the list when someone searches for hotels near the Eden Project ( if you are actually nearby of course ).
• Encourage reviews and PR – getting external sites linking to yours makes it more relevant . Inviting journalists to visit and review , encouraging bloggers to come along , using review sites , all link back to your website and help improve ranking .
• Drive traffic via social media and email – don ’ t forget your own platforms ; sharing visual posts and interesting information via social media and email encourages visitors to the site which helps maintain and improve rankings .
Direct bookings can be hugely lucrative , certainly more so than booking engines , but whatever you do , you need to be consistent , specific , analyse the results and expect gradual changes over time .
Angie Petkovic is managing director of APT Marketing & PR . If you have a marketing matter you ’ d like Angie to answer , email angie @ aptmarketing . co . uk
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