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.