Wednesday 21 October 2009

Building a new hotel website and where to start with keywords

Your hotel needs a new website and you have made the decision to different make the investment in developing a new, all singing, all dancing website to impress your customers and deliver the business you need.

So, who is the right person to lead and manage the development of the new website? Is it the web developer, a sales & marketing/PR company or perhaps your own management team?

The truth is it could be any of the above but the end result could be very different depending on who you choose.

Before deciding ask yourself these questions:

1) Who understands our business, our brand and what we stand for?

2) Who are our customers?

3) Why do customers come to our hotel?

4) Where do our customers come from?

5) How do our customers find us?

You and your team have the ability, knowledge and are without doubt in the best position to answer these questions and that is why YOU should manage the development of the new website. Not an outside agent who knows very little about your core business.

I don’t mean you need to do the programming or create the design but you need to make sure that the designer and web developer you choose work to your plan that will result in a website that your customers will find informative, easy to navigate, attractive and easy on the eye, encourage sales and be optimised from day one.

The first point is to identify the keywords or keyword phrases that customers would use to find your hotel and the services it provides such as wedding receptions, conferences, restaurants etc.

This is a critical step because these keywords or keyword phrases are what will identify you to potential customers.

When identifying keywords or keyword phrases it's important to be as specific as possible. Analyze every possible service or product you provide to potential customers, and think of all the ways someone could do a search for those services and think about your location.
For instance, someone searching for a hotel in your town who has never been there before or is visiting a local attraction is unlikely to know the name of your hotel so they are more likely to use a search phrase such as “hotels in Town name” or “ hotel near attraction name”.
The same applies to your business. Think to yourself, who am I marketing to? Ask friends and family how they would look for a hotel in another town on the web. Then take into account variations of those keywords. What if I make them plural, can I abbreviate them, and are they frequently misspelled? Also, think in two and three word phrases, too few words and you might not be specific enough, too many words and it's overkill.
After you've identified and exhausted all the possible keywords start planning which pages on your website you will target with specific key words, don’t target more than two or three per page, and start to write the text including the keywords in the content. When you pass the content onto the web developer make sure you tell them which keyword phrases you have targeted for each page and get them to include this in the page title, meta keywords and headers on the page.
Well done, you have now started the process of optimising your website from the beginning and you will see the benefits. For more tips about website building and how to improve your website download this PDF from my website.

Robert Smith
Director
Complete Hotels Services

Monday 12 October 2009

10 ways to attract your local media & improve your Hotel Public Relations

10 ways to attract your local media and improve your hotels public relations

Obtaining free coverage in your local paper, magazines and on local radio can be a challenge however, the potential benefits of being seen in editorial sections, rather than as a paid advert, can be significant and, better still, completely free. Consider following the following steps to help you make the local news.

1) Get to know your local media – Find out who’s who in your local papers, magazines, radio stations and community websites. Keep a note of the names of the decision makers such as editors, feature writers and broadcasters and note their target audience, publishing dates and deadlines.

2) Networking – Get yourself or a hotel representative involved in local networking opportunities including the Chamber of Commerce, Hoteliers Association or Council advisory committee. Offer to host events and meetings and be prepared to provide suitable quotes to local media representatives.

3) Approach Journalists – when you see journalists, editors or the like at local events make an effort to introduce yourself, be friendly and develop relationships. Make it known, although not pushily, that you are available for commenting and could introduce them to other prominent local business people.

4) Provide stories – Don’t wait to be asked for a story. Write brief, informative pieces about your opinions on business matters, local events, human interest stories and the like and submit them to the contacts you have made.

5) Write Press Releases – write press release about your business and submit to your contacts list. Always start with a clear headline that sums up the story and write the release in plain, easy to understand language. If possible supply, a quote, background information or images to support your story and finally provide your contact details.

6) Exploit PR Opportunities – Everyone loves a success story so exploit this by telling the local media about everything from a 10th trading anniversary to the fact that you have just served your 10000th customer or created a number of new jobs by expanding your business.

7) Create PR opportunities – proactively create PR opportunities such as teaming up with the local paper or radio station at Christmas or Valentines Day by providing a prize for a competition.

8) Get involved in the local community – Sponsorship of a local sports team, charity or event can generate plenty of PR opportunities. Back this up with a press release or story submitted to your contacts.

9) Fundraising – adopt a local charity and organise an annual fundraising event. Not only will it create income for your hotel on a potentially quite night the publicity gained could be significant. Invite local dignitaries and if the local paper won’t send a photographer then take some high resolution photo’s yourself and submit with a press release.

10) Review your success – successful PR takes effort and time, but can be very rewarding. Take the time to review local press to establish how successful you have been and perhaps even cost the coverage at the advertising rates.

Have a go – PR is not a dark art, it just takes effort, time and imagination.


Robert Smith

Director

http://www.completehotelsservices.co.uk/

Monday 5 October 2009

Ways to improve your hotel website visibility in local search results

Ways to improve your hotel website visibility in local search results


Increase your websites popularity by linking your website to other local websites

• Exposes the property website to incremental traffic and highly qualified potential bookers

• Builds your website's Link Popularity, a crucial criteria used by the search engines to determine how to rank the website in the search engine results (e.g., Google and its PageRank). Link popularity refers to the number and quality of incoming links that are pointing to your website.

Here are a few suggestions of the types of local sites and directories that should be considered by independent hotels. These locally-based sites can boost the Link Popularity of the property website and generate highly relevant traffic and incremental leads and revenues:

• Local content portals and radio station sites

• Local destination & town/city directories

• Regional, County and town/city tourism websites

• Chamber of Commerce sites

• Local events

• Wedding / event venues without accommodation

• Local sports clubs – golf, rugby, football etc

• Area attractions and theme park sites

• Sporting event and venue sites (stadiums, race tracks etc)

• Local museums

Local Email Marketing to the Hotel’s database

Email marketing to the hotel’s own opt-in list is one of the most popular Internet marketing formats used by hoteliers today. Today’s online travellers subscribe to multiple travel email Newsletters and love receiving relevant email promotions, events and happenings – as long as they relevant to what they subscribed to.

Why is email marketing important and why should it be considered by independent hotels?

• Email marketing to the hotel’s own email list is the most cost-effective online advertising format; it costs pennies per email delivered vs. expensive print and display ads

• Your emails “speak” to an audience that already knows your hotel, amenities and services, or is at least familiar with your website

• Creates personalized interactive relationships with locally based customers

• Instantaneous message delivery; thousands of potential customers may be reached within seconds

• Serves as a tool to move distressed inventory

• Serves both as a direct-response vehicle and recognition tool

• Plants seed in the minds of recipients regarding future purchasing plans

• Keeps you in touch with your customers; recruits and retains customers, new and old

Invest in branded emails

Every time an email is sent out by anyone at the hotel it is an opportunity to put your website in front of the recipient. Invest in a branded email solution which will allow you to feature interactive sales and marketing banners in the body text of every email that you send, putting your brand and products in front of your target audience using your everyday business email communications. This allows the every recipient to view your outline website content and an easy way to click through. Look at http://www.onletterhead.com/  or http://www.verticalresponse.com/ or http://www.rocketseed.com/.

I hope these ideas will help you to think about your hotel websites local search results.

Thanks for reading my blog and please do post some comments and follow my blog to receive updates when new postings occur. Simply click on the follow this blog link at the top right.

Robert Smith
Director - CHS - http://www.completehotelsservices.co.uk/