Online customer Scare by Cyprus Hotels

On Friday the 10th of April 2009 I made a survey to 12 hotels in Paphos, Limassol, Agia Napa and Troodos in order to find out how Cypriots book their weekend holidays. The result of this mini survey is:

• 80% make there bookings online
• 10% book over the phone
• 10% with travel agents

Now the Cypriots who use the internet prefer www.bookcyprus.com , www.booking.com and www.expedia.co.uk . This would have been completely normal if the Cyprus Hoteliers did not have what we call special prices for locals. The funny thing is that these special prices are more expensive than the web of the hotels, more expensive than Booking.com and more expensive than expedia.

Then, today Saturday the 10th of April I have made a test on the 12 hotels I mention above. I called their reservations department, I checked their own web, I looked for them on the 3 web sites mentioned above and I also called to a travel agent.

The result was:

• 8 of those 12 hotels had 5 different rates for the same dates for the same room. One rate on the phone, one on their own web, one on expedia, one on booking and one on bookcyprus.com
• 3 of them had the same rates over the phone and on their own web but different rates on the 3rd party web sites.
• 1 hotel had price parity all the way thru.

I felt like an idiot when I mention to one reservation officer of the first 8 hotels that on booking.com I see that they have available rooms for 55 euros cheaper than the price is giving me over the phone and on their own web is 45 euros cheaper than the phone price. The answer was very embarrassing, those prices are for foreigners. I asked what would it happen if I book on booking.com and the poor lady got upset, she told me that I cannot make a booking from abroad if I am a Cypriot, and that the prices for Cypriots are the ones she told me.

I thanked her and I hung up the phone. I stared at my computer and I thought of sending an email to the General Manager of the hotel and the owners with a copy to the CTO and the 2 hoteliers associations. I decided that I will not do it because the reservations lady came all the way from Russia to work in Cyprus and she only follows orders of those I was going to send an email to. I will not mention the hotel, I will only say that is a five star hotel in Limassol.

I am wondering if hotels in Cyprus really want Cyprus residents to stay in their hotels.

Post originally Published on www.emergence2009.com

Your hotel is filthy according to TripAdvisor, is it really ??

Social media is changing the world of Tourism. This is something we all know and we all experienced during emergence2009.

Trip Advisor is probably the place where most of us, as hoteliers go to see how our hotel is rated. Now Trip Advisor also has another face, the search by key word face. If you search Filthy Hotels in Cyprus on Google or even worse search Filthy Hotels on Trip Advisor we see that this portal is NOT a valid source of information.

On the list of Filthy Hotels in Cyprus you will probably see your own clean hotel that comes up. I am sure that hotels like Ledra Iberostar in Paphos is not filthy, like St. Raphael Hotel in Limassol is neither filthy, I was there many times myself and they were very clean hotels.

The word filthy is just another word in the English language; customers may use it in a hotel review to describe how filthy the clothes of the kids got after playing in the kids club and had a great time. This is the case of Louis Phaethon that arears on the list of Filthy hotels despite its rating is really good.

The list of filthy hotels in Cyprus on Trip Advisor is huge and it goes back until 2006. So is Trip Advisor a benchmark? How valid are the comments and the search results there? Judge yourself? Is there a way to avoid this? Yes there is. !!!

Reputable Hotel with bad online reputation

Our friend Richard Sedley on his Twitter today was sending us on an article on the web of E-Consultancy about what importance brands should show about social media comments . A very interesting article that I read with great interest and inspired me to cruise on Trip Advisor and randomly check some hotels in Cyprus and Greece.

Amathus in Rhodes and Coral Beach in Pafos. Both hotels have positive and negative comments on this social media platform which I personally do not like. Now, the difference is that Rhodian Amathus followed up one negative and gave a very nice answer that makes lots of sense. Coral Beach never answers anything. This back turning gives the “excuse” to the guests to give even more negative reviews so as they influence more people. The conversation is only between the tourists and the hotel does not take any part.

Well this a fatal error. See by yourself here.

Coral Beach by Trip Advisor http://tiny.cc/i6F8P
Rhodian Amathus by Trip Advisor http://tiny.cc/7E7LF

This post is also posted on www.Emergence2009.com

Libra Holidays, choose Libra for your hotel so you go bankrupt

After several conversations with hoteliers in Cyprus and Greece I realised that Libra Holidays Group, also known as Alburry Travel Group has literally sent to bankruptcy lots of hotels and their families. This is well known but what was not that known is that the same situation happens in Turkey and Egypt. After some investigation I found out that Mr. Adreas Drakou and his environment managed to cheat many more naïf hoteliers also in Turkey and Egypt.

I have a list of apox 60 hotels and correspondence with some of them that proves that.

I am wondering why the hoteliers do not reveal and go against the owners of Libra worldwide. The owners are Andreas Drakou and other honourable businessmen form Cyprus and the UK and at the end of the day they are also victims of this big fraud since Drakou dragged them in the ditch.

There is a law office that deals with cases like that, very successful in similar cases and if the hoteliers of Cyprus, Greece (E.U countries) can join forces they will be able to recover their money. The money Libra and co took form the hoteliers is not lost, they became plots in Sharm el Sheik, in Bulgaria and Romania.

In these times of crisis we need to be united and get those companies and their owners out of the market.

Blaming the CTO is easy!! Helping the CTO should be a national compromise.

The Cypriot Tourist Industry has a false opinion about the capabilities of the Cyprus Tourism Organisation. Blaming the CTO is very easy. People like Mr. Noel Josephides, Managing Director of Sunvil Holidays and Chairman of the Association of Greek Cypriot Travel Agents (UK), took the CTO to task for its bureaucracy and lack of responsiveness.

I would give an advice to the Greek Cypriots Travel Agents in the UK. Have some "Tourist Patriotism". Stop selling Turkey and Egypt, become real specialist on Cyprus as destination and not specialists on exploiting hotels. The tour operators that made most harm in the Cypriot Hoteliers is nobody else but members of your association, Libra Holidays, Argo Holidays just to mention the ones that busted the small hotelier in Cyprus last year.

I find the article of Cyprus Mail unfortunate and I think is time to grab the bull from the horns. The crisis can only be faced with imagination, good pricings, added value and unity. Mr. Josephides please stop blaming the CTO and look how you can help them in their task.

The big opportunity of the incoming agents in the Mediterranean to go against the crisis

Semantic web, Web 2.0, collaborative marketing.… All these sound Chinese to most of us in the travel world. When your job has been going to the airport every week to check the arrival list “your” Tour Operator sent you and contrast it with the actual arrivals : then make sure, all got their luggage, their visas, their folder with the information and they are all the transfer bus heading for the hotel you have no reason why you should think you need to do any kind of marketing and even less any e-marketing.

Well things are changing, the tourists have created a new relationship with the destination, we know have a C2C relationship and this model the incoming agent is not in the scene simply because he is not there where the conversation takes place. C2C means Customer to Customer relationship, this means that when the 2 potential customers, Mr. C1 talks to Mr.C2 the incoming travel agent needs to listen to them, needs to be there, close to the conversation and change its services adequately to make them more “sexy”. Change it can only mean that instead of offering pre set sight seen trips to Cyprus, Greece, Turkey, Egypt or Sicily he could offer a la carte guided tours after he identified the customers interests. If someone does not like museums why on earth give him a museum brochure. Listen what he likes and then when he arrives to the airport surprise him with a service. I like fishing, well when I arrive to Larnaca and see that my rep has book for me about the fishing in Cyprus and the types of fish I could catch then I will feel special , he/she gained my trust and this is priceless.

The question now is… can this happen online? Well yes, not only it happens now but is already a trend in other sectors. We need the leaders in our area to invest on “semantic tourism”.