As most hoteliers say, online bookings have become a growing channel of visitors these days. Because of the nature of the Internet as a free and convenient source of information, in the present world people wishing to go some place first of all visit the web to find out all essential details and methods for their trip, such as, for example, what airlines to use to get a cheap flight to your destination, which hotel to book so that it is within your budget and still allows easy access to everything you want to see in the place, what would be the main attractions and sights you plan to visit, etc. Also, people like to read travel guides, visitor reviews, and opinions and learn more about the customs and rules in the country of destination. What other source of information can be more valuable and precise than Internet then?
Bearing this in mind, let’s see how hotel owners may insert their service into this flow of information and be of value to their potential visitors. This process is now called by many people the hotel promotion or hotel advertising campaign. It can include several approaches and methods:
1. Set up your own website. This is probably one of the most essential steps in your hotel promotion campaign. This would involve some expense, such as web design, writing promo texts and taking good quality pictures of your hotel (exterior, interior, services and amenities, restaurant/bar etc.) Now that you have the materials, you need to set up a domain name. This is an important step! Be sure that you have the name of your hotel in the domain name, preferably along with the name of your city or locality. This will be of great help at a later stage when you start a search engine promotion for your website. Other expenses will include web hosting, a small amount of around USD 20-40 per year would be quite sufficient.
2. At this stage you will also need to decide if your website should have a booking mechanism. The easiest way to provide a booking mechanism is to publish your email address so that clients can send reservation requests to your booking office directly. This, however, is not too convenient if your client wants to book and pay for your hotel immediately. Having a credit card processing facility at your website may be quite a challenge, especially, if you are a small hotel or hostel or B&B and running costs of having a CC gateway may be too high in comparison with number of incoming requests.
3. To deal with this problem, we suggest that you think about inclusion of your hotel/website in numerous hotel booking systems. These may be of global scope, such as Expedia or Venere.com, or local ones, which only serve your territory, country or even city. Also, such service may be paid or free of charge. The aforementioned big hotel providers use their own online payment processing mechanisms, taking this burden off your shoulders.
4. When your website is up and running, it is good to think about its promotion, so that it ranks well in search engines and people can find it easily. There are so many ways to promote your website, and most of them are beyond the topic of this article. I would only recommend to try inclusion of your website into travel directories and hotel directories. This step will bring targeted visitors to your website and provide best per-dollar return.
|
|
|
last viewed articles
