Hotel Sales Blog

We all tend to have good feelings about Google and its company culture. Google is about to become a major force in the online travel space with its acquisition of ITA.

“ITA currently provides airfare data to many of the industry players, including Orbitz, Kayak and Bing; … The businesses that are most likely to be hit soonest are those known as travel meta-search engines, like Kayak and Bing Travel. … Google itself said on its site that it “has no plans to sell airline tickets to consumers.” (Wall Street Journal, 7/5/10). However, 10% of all Google searches are travel related. With Google already testing featured hotel rates on ‘searches’ (will they decide to sell hotel rooms?), the addition of the functionality of researching air fares could make Google a major force in online travel and Kayak should be very afraid.

We are alll waiting to see how all this plays out and how Google will pull these elements together.

What will Google Travel look like when it’s all integrated? Good question but with budget season upon the hotel and travel industry, it might be wise to add a few extra dollars in a contingency online advertising line item.

I don’t know if there is right or worng answer here as necessity has indicated the ‘dumping’ of unused inventory on the opaque channels.

This is a little story of trust and integrity.

I went online to book an airline ticket on the United Airlines site that states that the customer will not find lower fares on any other site. The fare was almost $600.

So I tried to save my cleint some money and went to Priceline where I haven’t ever booked an airline ticket before. The fare to the same destination with a better schedule was only $300. Granted, United posted in it’s lower fare column the same fare but the flight schedule was for flights leaving at ungodly hours and with hideous layovers.

Maybe I was naive to believe that United meant what it said but it taught me one thing — I will always check on Priceline prior to booking another ticket.

Does your hotel have a similar lowest rate guarantee on your web site? Will your customers find lower rates on Priceline and the other opaques?

Have we created Priceline’s incredible profits last quarter by driving our clients to the opaque channels?

As Seth Godin said in his book “All Marketers Are Liars” our cutomers don’t believe our marketing copy any more, they believe User Generated Content by ‘people like themselves’ as found in testimonials and review sites.

Have we given the power to the review sites that many hotel managers resent by failing to maintain integerity in posting rates?

Think about it — leave your comments and let’s start a discussion!

In a recent Power Selling seminar for a hotel management company, I had a participant who had totally incorporated her FaceBook page into her sales process. She blew me away!

It goes something like this. First of all, she built a robust ‘Friends’ network of clients. Secondly, one day she and her GM were brainstorming on how to get business for the upcoming slow season. They thought of an idea to promote the winter season on FaceBook to scrapbookers.

After they began their campaign, a strange thing happened. Other client ‘friends’ responded saying that while they were not scrapbookers, they did have business during the winter and could they have the same deal?

Sabrina responded yes they could and when would be a good time to come and see them? Then a tour operator posted tour series dates on the wall and asked her to repsond if she could accomodate them.

Sabrina then began posting her sales call schedule and asking her ‘freinds’ if she could come and see them. She soon had her appointment schedule filled with new prospects and existing clients that wanted to see her when she was in their area.

This is a perfect example of how a social network can be integrated into the sales process. Considerations for success:
1. Don’t invite your competitors to be Freinds or Fans on your page.
2. Push out promotions but also things of interest about yourself, your hotel and your area — it shouldn’t always be about pushing business.
3. Use your page as a service to your clients — give them opportunities to be part of your business such as asking if you can come see them during sales calls in their area.

BTW, she never booked one scrapbooking group but the other clients that saw the post and booked other groups more than made up the difference.

Congrats Sabrina Bowman on a job extremely well done!

“Contrary to previous thinking, STR now believes demand growth will be stronger in 2010 than in 2011. The company said demand will grow 4.1 percent in 2010 and 2.9 percent in 2011. When STR crunches March 2010 data in the middle of April, it is expected that it will emerge as the fourth consecutive month to show demand growth.” (AHLA, 4/07/10)

This is the best news in 18 months but does it mean that Rvenue Managers will use this opportunity to begin moving the needle on rates? It’s time to put the floor under discounts and rates.

Don’t be bullied into locking in rates for 2011 and beyond — we may not be at 2007 rates but it has to start somewhere. Let rate increases, gradual increases, start here and now before the summer season!