How hotels can get out of The Crisis!!

Can hotels get out of the crisis? Well this crisis is not only about hotels its about all tourism. The reality is very hard for those millions of unemployed people of tourism worldwide. Well we cannot get out of crisis if we continue firing 50% of our human assets; we cannot get out of crisis if we keep reducing the only recourse that makes our industry o be personal.

If hotels do not stop firing people then they will end being cheaper to stay than home. The problem will be when hotels will want to raise prices again after in 2011 or 2012 or 2015 when the crisis will be over. Hoteliers will beg repeat customers not to come back, the pressure of guests will be so big that many hoteliers will change work. Come on lets get a bit serious now.
If you are a serious hotelier then what you should do is.

1. Do not fire 50% of your staff so you make sure your quality is still high and your services are up to your guest’s standards.
2. Do not lower your prices. Do not touch your room rate. Please do not panic. This crisis is an earthquake, and during an earthquake the ones who survive are the ones who know how to react with calm.
3. Give more value to your guests’ money by offering more services for less money.
  a. Include the bloody wifi internet connection to your rate.
  b. Make breakfast hours longer.
  c. Offer 3 types of eggs on the breakfast buffet.
  d. Change that plastic taste orange colour liquid with real orange juice.
  e. Offer room service WITHOUT extra charge.
  f. Make your restaurant food unique so as your guest will think of you first when going out for dinner .
  g. Let your guest invite a friend or 2 for breakfast without charging extra.

There are so many things you can do before putting your “pants” down but actually the first thing you have to is to come closer to your customer. Turn your customer to your guest and this today is possible if you are able to use the vast social media sphere in a non abusive and guest friendly manner. Get in your guest’s shoes and see your hotel from through your guest’s eyes online. Use the Online Marketing tools wisely to market your hotel.

Disintermediate your sales process as much as you can and use those agents and tour operators that transfer price and value benefits directly to the end user.

Use your imagination and creativity and your hotel will come out of crisis stronger and you will be wiser at the end.

Hey do not take me wrong. Many of the ideas above are not only mine. The President of the International Hotel and Restaurant Association Dr. Ghassan AIDI shares many of those ideas as well, he shared them with Cypriot Hoteliers at the Cyprus Hotel Association 2010 Congress.

Online Marketing for Tourism: Social Media can Drive Sales to Hotels and Airlines

This post is inspired on the Mashable post about Social Media and how it can drive revenue to airlines and hotels. Therefore I would like to thank Shashank Nigam, its writer for the inspiration.

As Shashank very accurately says Social media is no longer the “new” thing, especially for airlines. Looking at JetBlue or Lufthansa we understand that social Media is part of their daily routine. However, most airlines are still wondering or even worse are still doubting that Social Media can drive them Euros in their accounts. In resort areas, and especially in the Mediterranean, things are even “harder” since the big tour operators are dominating the market and the average airline manager is Social Media illiterate and this because of working habits and lack of training. Cyprus Airways, Olympic Air, Egypt Air etc are companies with long tradition in bureaucracy and difficulty in change of Business Culture. Maybe the exception is Turkish Airlines who has lately been very Social Media oriented and I am sure their seeing the benefit.

If Dell can makes $6.5 million from Twitter, why can’t airlines and hotels? The 5 tips given from Mashable are very helpful. Here I twisted them a bit and added ideas for resort hotels and local airlines.

1. Clear Distressed and Early Booking Inventory of rooms and seats on Twitter

Like Mashable points out, running an airline or hotel is much like running a cinema, with more operational complexity though. It costs about the same to operate the plane or the hotel no matter how many seats or rooms are filled up. Any unsold seats or rooms at the last minute are called “distressed inventory.” Combine the last-minute nature of such seat/room availability with the real-time features of tools like Twitter and you create the opportunity for airlines and hotels to generate cold, hard cash. Any seat sold there before departure is less money lost.

Resort hotels and Airlines should be able to create a new tariff category. Twitter tariff that would be valid only for twitter followers and it should have an expiring hour. This will avoid conflicts with travel agents and tour operators. Of course, you have to set clear expectations with your followers that the account will only be sending out deals, and is not a customer service vehicle.

Ultimately, using real-time platforms like Twitter helps the airline circulate cheap very last minute or early booking fares and get people to fly more often, or even for the first time. Hotels could similarly post unfilled room inventory on Twitter. Those rooms they are trapped after the cut off dates of the Tour Operators. Ultimately this could fill up the planes and hotels and drives more revenue. Especially in the two edges of the steam, Early booking and Last minute.

2. Integrate Social Media Into the Booking Engine


Hotels should use social Media driven booking engines such as Sybelio version 5.0. This platform creates unique URLs for special offers in 14 Languages and is capable to post them on the most popular Social Media Platforms such as Twitter and Facebook (fun page and profile). Highly recommendable to test drive the tool, you will love it.

Airlines should be able to connect with Social Media seamless and the sign up forms could be the start point. Instead of the check box, “Would you like to receive emails about our offers” they could have “ would like to share with us your travel experience on social Media?”.

3. Integrate with Social Media Travel Applications with the frequent flier and loyalty programmes.

For example, an airline could integrate TripIt data with their frequent flier database to create a list of their loyal customers and the destinations those customers are planning to visit. The airline could then reach out to them with a custom-tailored travel deal.

A hotel could do something similar, taking into account the location the traveller, and in case the company does not have a hotel in the area suggest a third party one. This will increase trust, loyalty and industry solidarity.

4. Create Private Online Communities


This a great tip for independent hotels that have from season to season repeaters. Small and medium size stand alone hotels could forget the complex loyalty schemes. A small, simple and user friendly online community, will do a great job. Ning is a good start, and it has all the above characteristics. It can be as private as you like and it has the capacity to create groups. People would feel special and defiantly it will increase return business.

5. Remember: Social Media is About Relationships

It’s important to remember that social media is always about relationships first.
A good example of relationship building is Lufthansa’s MySkyStatus, which allows you to share your location with your Facebook and Twitter friends during the flight. Right now, it’s not generating any revenue for Lufthansa, but if they integrate a field to input a passenger’s frequent flyer number, they might be able to mine the data for some unique insights. However, right now, they are concentrating on building a relationship with passengers through social media, not hammering them with ads.

It is important to always set the right expectations with your fans or followers on what you’re going to be doing. If you’re only selling seats or rooms, let them know. If you are providing customer service, let them know that, too.

In the hotel industry we know very well how painful is to loose a relationship and hard it is to create one. So do NOT confuse advertising with Social Media. People will walk away if you bang them every day with sales and offers. So treat your customer online as if he was standing in front of your front-office or even better as if he was having a coffee in your lobby.

Here I would like to thank again  Shashank Nigam for his post.

Hotel Loyalty programs. Could they move to Social Media?

In the next 5- 8 years the majority of hotel consumers will be 24hrs a day connected to the internet via a mobile device. An iPhone, iPad, BlackBerry or whatever other gadget that will appear in the market will be in the pocket of all the customers of a hotel. Those gadgets already have a connection to Facebook, Twitter, MySpace and many other Social Media.

Hotels have spend fortunes to create complex Loyalty Programmes and maintain them cost them even more. It is very hard to keep track of all those cards you given out and even harder to determine who likes what. Social Media could be the substitute if used well. The painful part will be the transition. Hotels need to create in-house procedures of how those tools will be used in order to keep an open line of communication without crossing the line of privacy and not being annoying.

Some tests have shown that customers trust real People more than impersonal Social Media Profiles. It is more easy to become a Facebook friend of the director of a hotel than of the HotelGrand. The Hotel Napa Mermaid in Agia Napa Cyprus has started slowly but surely to connect its customers on the social Media Sphere.  The result is fantastic, customers already book not only their rooms for the next season but also participate in conversations with the director who receives direct  suggestions on how he could improve the services of this newly renovated upscale resort hotel.

Hyatt started last year a Twitter Concierge Service and opened the way to new ways of customer care. Now the next step is to create engagement elements on the social media sphere to maintain frequent non disturbing conversations and pass the “plastic loyalty” to a more live loyalty where personalisation can reach perfection.

We are entering the era of transforming hotel loyalty programmes and creating the conditions for Online Marketing for hotels to finally  get personal. In order to achieve this we need to be careful and professional. Practical training is needed in order to create new internal standards and procedures, show people how to use the online tools adequately.

Rethinking Love in Tourism, a key question for Tourist Destinations

When it comes to Tourism marketing I feel that we are still working like the old times. Advertising and Marketing are defiantly two aspects of tourism where most budgets are spent.

We all talk about niche markets, personalized marketing, consumer analysis, customer relationships, products thought for the customer, destinations made to relax customers, blah blah and more blah customer blah….

How many destinations have really talked to the consumers? How many hotels really spent money on talking to their customers? How many travel companies design travel products as if it was for them to travel? Love your customer is not asking him to love you. Love is Give and Take,  not Take and Give. So if you really want you customer to Love you;  first you have to really love him !

Online marketing definitely offers many more "love tools", but still, who knows how to use them? or how many destinations use them effectively?

Please take 2 minutes and watch this video. Try to get in her shoes even if who we really are is him.

Gain customers online using old methods

Are you a hotelier? Do you own a small and friendly resort or city hotel anywhere in the world? Are you tired of unpaid tour operator invoices?  I am sure you will be very happy to increase your return business. Your best customers are filed in those old file boxes, all those registration cards are a gold mine. 

You just have to use your imagination and the Social Media sphere and results will come soon. Start from taking those registration cards out f he boxes and put them by order of arrival date. Choose the ones you think have more possibilities  to be online and search their name on google… the rest you will figure it out yourself, and if you do not, contact me and we will find the path together. 

Online Marketing for Hotels and Travel Agents

I would like to thank all the participants who attended our seminar today Tuesday the 15th of September at the Ajax Hotel in Limassol. Personally I have enjoyed the active participation and the exchange of views on how the Cypriot Hotelier and the incoming agent could face the changes of the global market online.

Special thanks to our hosts , Ajax Hotel, for the great hospitality the excellent quality of the coffee breaks and the fabulous buffet lunch at their restaurant. Great tastes of real Cyprus and Mediterranean food accompanied by the attention of Akis Ioannides the General Manager and the staff of the hotel.

Also I would like to thank each and every participant form the hotels and agencies of the area. From the Holiday Inn Limassol Christos Rousos, from Pekos Hotel Nefytos Efstathiou, from the Mediterranean Hotel Sotiris Kaffa and Christina Lambrou, from Amathus Hotel Eugenios Savva, from Four Seasons Limassol Nick Aristou who shared with us valuable information concerning his activity online, Konstantina Eftathiou from Sun House Travel, from A.L Matnovani Travel Evros Theophanous and Julia Papageorgiou from JPP Marketing.

All of them have shown great interest and very active participation and made me become a better trainer, defiantly their experiences are of enormous value to me and to the seminnar.

Last but not least I would like to thank my assistant Maria Shaili-Papamiltiadous for her uncondtional support and fantastic work following the pace of the presentation and her more than valuable work concerning paperwork.

Next stop, Paphos the 22nd of September. Looking forward to welcoming the tourism sector of Pafos.

Direct Online Hotel Marketing can make a difference in times crisis

Have we invented everything on the internet ?

Sometimes it seems that innovation on the internet is either impossible or very expensive. Well I must say that the young MBA Greek student at Kingston University UK has proven us that things can be neither expensive nor impossible.

Spyros Pyrgiotis has created www.thetextpage.com looking at it as a cheap way of advertising. Pay per character model, a newish way of charging advertising that attract the attention of media such as BBC.

Now, how can the travel industry benefit from initiatives of this type? The travel industry is the leader in offers. Hotels and other accommodation facilities with the help of user friendly online booking engines (like Sybelio which is fantastic for special offers) could publish their special offers at a very low cost on this web. Google is indexing this site every 20 minutes since and the fact that it renews its content very often is an advantage for keeping it high in Google rank.

So, if you are an hotelier and you suffer from the low production of the tour operators it is time to take action. Get a non commissionable online booking engine that helps you create offers. ( I personally recommend Sybelio) and spread your offers online using Social Media correctly and why not pay per character at www.thetextpage.com.

Sybelio online booking system

View more presentations from Petros Mavros.

Online reservations in 14 laguages with Social Media facility

Sybelio, the non commissionable online booking system built in Spain has the capability to publish content on Social Media. The hotel can create its Special Offers and let its followers know instantly on all Social Media. Sybelio can know boost direst sales of hotels, hotel chains, incoming agents and any other accommodation facilities your company may have.

Sybelio online booking system

View more presentations from petrosmavros.

The Role of the Tour Operators in the new era of Tourism where internet is getting stronger

Many of us who defend the disintermediation of tourism and that the traditional tour operators had no place in the tourism market as intermediates, it is now proven that we are wrong. We are wrong since customers need a Big Guy to place their complaints. Here are some examples of REAL customer complaints. This was sent from a Major UK Tour Operator - listing some of the British guests' complaints during the year 2008.

"I think it should be explained in the brochure that the local store does not sell proper biscuits like custard creams or ginger nuts."

"It's lazy of the local shopkeepers to close in the afternoons. I often needed to buy things during 'siesta' time - this should be banned."

"On my holiday to Goa in India , I was disgusted to find that almost every restaurant served curry. I don't like spicy food at all."

"We booked an excursion to a water park but no-one told us we had to bring our swimming costumes and towels."

A tourist at a top African game lodge overlooking a waterhole, who spotted a visibly aroused elephant, complained that the sight of this rampant beast ruined his honeymoon by making him feel "inadequate".

A woman threatened to call police after claiming that she'd been locked in by staff. When in fact, she had mistaken the "do not disturb" sign on the back of the door as a warning to remain in the room.

"The beach was too sandy."

"We found the sand was not like the sand in the brochure. Your brochure shows the sand as yellow but it was white."

A guest at a Novotel in Australia complained his soup was too thick and strong. He was inadvertently slurping the gravy at the time.

"Topless sunbathing on the beach should be banned. The holiday was ruined as my husband spent all day looking at other women."

"We bought 'Ray-Ban' sunglasses for five Euros (£3.50) from a streettrader, only to find out they were fake."

"No-one told us there would be fish in the sea. The children were startled."

"It took us nine hours to fly home from Jamaica to England, it only took the Americans three hours to get home."

"I compared the size of our one-bedroom apartment to our friends' three-bedroom apartment and ours was significantly smaller."

"The brochure stated: 'No hairdressers at the accommodation'. We're trainee hairdressers - will we be OK staying here?"

"There are too many Spanish people. The receptionist speaks Spanish. The food is Spanish. Too many foreigners."

"We had to queue outside with no air conditioning."

"It is your duty as a tour operator to advise us of noisy or unruly guests before we travel."

"I was bitten by a mosquito - no-one said they could bite."

"My fiancé and I booked a twin-bedded room, but we were placed in a double-bedded room. We now hold you responsible for the fact that I find myself pregnant. This would not have happened if you had put us in the room that we booked."

I hope you enjoyed the quotes. This post has as objective to amuse the readers as well as show in a funny way that Tourism needs all of us since our customers' needs vary so much.