Remember when you used to discuss at your team meetings how a guest who has a positive experience in your hotel tells 5 people but a guest who has a negative experience tells 20 people and how as a result everyone had to concentrate on giving great service? If only that were still the case; now the potential PR damage of poor service or poor quality can be much worse…..much, much worse. Continue reading
At a personal level, we’ve all become used to posting status updates on Facebook to let our friends know how we’re doing or what’s on our minds. Most businesses, especially in the hotel & restaurant sector, also have a Facebook page and wait eagerly for people to “like” them before trying to engage with this group of customers or potential customers. There are more than 500m Facebook users and hotels and restaurants probably do not see any identifiable benefit of engagement with the people who “like” them. If it’s difficult to measure the benefit of using Facebook as part of your marketing mix, what success does the new kid on the block…..Foursquare….have?
So you’ve got your morning coffee, you’ve logged onto your PC and the first task of the day is to review and monitor any online reviews from your customers. If this is the start to your typical day then you are probably way ahead of the majority of hoteliers. To some, monitoring your online reputation is considered the most important part of the daily routine in the hospitality sector but to others it’s either not important or is carried out infrequently. Continue reading
The best hotel sales people know the importance of avoiding the immediate hard sell and instead build a relationship with the potential customer through a series of conversations. The aim is to get to know each other, to get to know what each party wants (or needs) from any transaction, to build trust and then to move towards the selling negotiation and eventual sale. It was much simpler when the main sales channel used by hotel sales people was personal contact, letter, telephone or even email. However we now have the social media channel as part of the sales mix.
