Wednesday 17 November 2010

New investment at the Plough & Harrow Hotel, Birmingham.

The Plough & Harrow Hotel in Edgbaston, Birmingham is undergoing a £500 000 facelift. Work has already commenced on the refurbishment of this landmark hotel on the Hagley Rd, in the centre of Birmingham. Acquired at the end of February 2010 by TTM Partnership the program is being lead by Robert Smith a former Director of privately owned group Paten Hotels and now managing director of Complete Hotels Services.


The initial work has seen investment in the main bedroom block of 36 rooms, including the addition of free internet, LCD TV’s, beds and soft furnishings, and the public areas while the second stage will concentrate on the 6 conference rooms, restaurant and the 8 bedroom in the main building

Robert Smith commented “The intention is to return this lovely, individual and historic hotel to the prominent position it previously held in Birmingham. The upgrading of the bedrooms, public areas & conference rooms will result in a good quality mid market hotel delivering excellent levels of service and quality of food in the city. The country house style, excellent location & plenty of car parking coupled with first class facilities and standards will help us to attract new customers”

It is expected that the will create a number of new employment opportunities for the local community.

Friday 26 March 2010

Are you using Google local business centre to promote your hotel?

I've been been doing some work on Google Local Business Centre (LBC) in the last week or two and it amazes me that so many hotels still do not manage and update their details on a regular basis on what is a FREE service and is a sure fire way to get your website into the top section of Google search result pages.

LBC returns search engine results for most geographical based search phrases as part of Google maps which usually appear just below the Pay per click sponsored search links.

To edit and maintain your entry your either need to create it or if there is one already online then claim it. The system is easy to use and there is a multitude of information that can be completed, not least images, business categories, description and video.

And then theres more as it also allows you to enter Coupons for promotions. These are not being widely used in the UK - yet - but are sure to catch on soon. Read more about it here or view this online video
and I think they could prove really effective in terms of local F&B marketing promotions.

Google also appear to be planning on using Google Maps (and LBC data) more in the future by providing hotel information and online bookings. Read this article.

Hotels not working with these free Google tools and services are definitely missing a trick - are you one of them?

Robert Smith

Thursday 11 March 2010

Best Western Premier Blunsdon House wins awards

I was delighted to hear a client of Complete Hotels Services, the Best Western Premier Blunsdon House Hotel in Swindon has won not one but two accolades.

Firstly, the hotel has joined the Green Tourism Business Scheme (GTBS) was recently assessed by the GTBS on over 200 individual “Green” criteria and awarded a prestigious GOLD award, the highest standard available. They are the first hotel in Wiltshire to achieve this exceptional award and one of only a handful of larger four star properties in the country to attain it.

Secondly, at the annual Best Western GB conference they were awarded the Best Venue in the country. That's some accolade when you consider there are 290 odd members in Best Western GB!

Well done to all the management and staff at the BW Premier Blunsdon House Hotel.

Monday 8 March 2010

What facilities & services do business travellers most value in a hotel room?

We have now been managing the Plough and Harrow hotel in Birmingham for 10 days and are starting to consider what services and facilities we should be aiming to provide in the bedrooms when we start our refurbishment. The hotel will be operating in the mid 3 to 4 star market in close to the centre of Birmingham.

As a person who stays in hotels in this market on a regualr basis I have formed my own opion about what I expect to find but would like to know what other people think.

So what tell me what, in your opinion, you want to see in new bedrooms. To help here are my top 10:

1) Larger beds - 5 or 6 foot minimum with quality duvets, pillows and bedding.
2) TV with freeview
3) Ipod docking station
4) Free internet access
5) Good levels of lighting
6) Plenty of power sockets - at desk level
7) A good quality desk chair
8) 24 hour room service
9) Laptop Safe
10) Interesting biscuits on the tea and coffee tray

Post your views using the comments link below.

Thanks
Robert Smith

Saturday 27 February 2010

My Twitter account was compromised - could yours be next?

I try to use my Twitter account for communicating to friends and business associates so imagine my horror when I woke up yesterday morning to find my account had been compromised and a direct message, the content being distinctly adult in nature, had been sent to a number of people following me. Why do some idiots have nothing better to do with their time than cause problems and create mayhem?

My apologies to everyone who received the message and my thanks to those people who replied saying they new it was not from me and advising me that my account was compromised. I immediately changed my account settings and scanned my computer and hopefully there will be no repeat.

So how did my account become compromised?

I believe it was as a result of a direct message I received from someone I was following which stated "LOL is that you?" and without thinking I opened it up to see who it was from as I did not immediately recognise the sender. A foolish thing to do, especially for someone who takes great care when it comes to virus and identity protection. So a kind word of warning to everyone out there - be careful it can happen to anyone!

Now, I can go back to concentrating on the Plough and Harrow Hotel - http://www.ploughandharrowhotel.co.uk/ which we succesfully completed the purchase of last Monday. So far it is proving to be an exciting time and we look forward to developing the hotel over the coming months and years.

Best Wishes

Robert Smith


 

Sunday 21 February 2010

Completing on the Plough and Harrow Hotel - Birmingham

Its been a hectic few days since last Tuesday when we exchanged contracts on the Plough and Harrow Hotel  in Birmingham. The deal is set to complete tommorrow morning Monday 22nd February and it has been a real challenge to try to get supplier deals in place within 5 days!
Thank goodness for some old supplier contacts from my days at Paten Hotels who have managed to fast track account applications and with one or two exceptions, Fruit and Veg and diary, I am confident we are almost there and ready to go.

Now as to the choice of GDS and PMS supplier for the Plough and Harrow I have finally settled on a combination  of Clarity Hotel Systems for the PMS and Synxis for the GDS and WBE services.

The choice was extremely difficult and I was surprised by how competitive the proposals were, not to mention the excellent products put forward by Clarity, Guestline and Protel for the PMS and Travelclick, Evolution, Synxis and XN Hotels for the GDS.

I am sure that Clarity and Synxis will develop and excellent working relationship with us over the coming years and together we will develop and effective and rewarding distribution and operational framework for the hotel.

With this important decision now made I will be focussing my attention on turning the Plough and Harrow Hotel back into a first class individual hotel like it used to be before it went through 15 to 20 years of being owned by corporate groups who failed to invest in the product.

Exciting times and you can follow what we do on our website which will be http://www.ploughandharrowhotel.co.uk/ ( a temporary page will go up in the next few days) and if you are ever in Birmingham then come and see us.

Best Wishes

Robert Smith    



 

Tuesday 16 February 2010

Just exchanged contracts to buy the Plough and Harrow Hotel in Birmingham

I am delighted to announce that myself and two partners (ex directors of Paten Hotels)  have finally managed to exchange contracts to purchase the Plough and Harrow Hotel in Birmingham. The sale is expected to complete on the 22nd February 2010.

It has been a long road to get to this point since I first viewed the hotel in May 2009 but we have stuck with the process as we believe that with investment and independent management this unique hotel will soon return to being one of the most sought after hotels in central Birmingham.

I look forward to telling everyone more about it as we get to work.

Cheers

Robert

Sunday 31 January 2010

The government think the recession is over but is it really? Here's my list of what Hoteliers should be doing in 2010 to really beat the recession.

The governments official figures showed that in the last quarter of 2009 the economy grew by all of 0.01% and hence "officially" the recession has finished. Or has it?

Hotels which I am speaking to certainly do not feel as if the recession has ended, and as many hotels continue to go into administration, it will most likely be many months or even years before the hotel industry consider the recession has ended.

So what can hoteliers do to beat the recession?

Here are a list of things which I will be encouraging my clients to do over the coming months:

1) Review your distribution channels (GDS, WEB and Voice)  and learn about where your accommodation business is actually coming from and then plan marketing activity to target similar business. If you are not using GDS as a channel you are most likely not even being considered as a possible venue by corporate agents and travel management companies.

2) Arrange a meeting with your GDS representation company to review the statistics including your ARR, length of stay and lead times. Review your rate plans to make sure these are right for your market.

3) Invest in a revenue management system such as IDEAS - http://www.ideas.com/. This is highly effective software which can help you to maximise your revenue and is effective in independent hotels of most sizes. Revenue management is not just something the corporate hotel groups do - its something all hoteliers should be doing.

4)Make sure that every client that comes to your website knows they can book online and make sure that all your rates and packages are available and in line or better than your competitors. Simple research will highlight dferences with your competitors.

5) Content (images, descriptions, facilities etc) are really important both on the web and in the database systems of the many hotel booking agents and travel management companies. If your property's data is out of date or the images and descriptions are poor an agent is less likely to place a booking with you. A simple way to keep the data up to date is to use the ABC Connections system http://www.abcconnection.com/ which specialises in distributing data to the major UK agents and TMC's including the Hotel Booking Agents Association.

6) Make time to review your customer databases and how these are segmented for marketing purposes. How many customers stay at your hotel but are allowed to leave without you learning about their buying habits and are never contacted by you again? Set up systems to stops this happening.

7) Invest in an effective email marketing system to benefit from cost effective, targetted niche marketing using your revised database.

8) Review your marketing costs and make sure you are getting a good return on investment. Don't simply renew advertising because "we always advertise there", look for new marketing opportunities, particularly online, which can be tracked and the return on investment measured.

10) Highlight the areas of your business where you have fixed operating costs but no revenue. In a lot of hotels, and with conference business really depressed, lunchtimes are are a prime example of this. In this case consider how you can generate revenue which at least pays the fixed costs and bring you in some new customers which may stay with you when good times return.

These are just a few of the areas you can look at which could help your business to beat the recession once and for all.

Good luck

Robert Smith
Complete Hotels Services

Thursday 14 January 2010

A new blog entry in an new year - worn out by GDS and PMS discussions!

It's almost halfway through January and finally I'm finding time to update this blog. Firstly, Happy New Year to everyone and I hope that you all had a good festive period and are optimistic towards the outlook for 2010.

The reason I've been so delayed in writing this is because of exciting times at Complete Hotels Services. We are now very close to concluding a management contract on a 45 bedroom hotel in Birmingham and at the same time acquire a lease on a beautiful 9 bedroom country inn in Northamptonshire. I hope to be able to give more details in the next 3 to 4 weeks so watch this space. The last few weeks have been spent working on these deals and a lot of time has been dedicated to speaking to PMS suppliers and GDS representation companies. It amazing that whilst the suppliers ultimately all sell the same thing, albeit with different features and service levels, it was some years since I had done research into these two areas and the costs and the way that they are presented have surprised me.
In general the PMS costs seem to have reduced, probably because of web based solutions making savings on hardware, but the GDS representation services seem to still be as expensive as ever with many bookings likely to cost in excess of £10 per booking without including the origintaing agents commission!
When I decide who we select I'll let you know and if anyone out there is researching GDS and PMS systems then feel free to drop me a line at robert@completehotelsservices.co.uk

In addition to this we have been speaking with a number of potential clients about the services CHS offer and how we can work with them to acheive increased profits in 2010. In particular sales and marketing, and especially in the areas of web marketing and SEO.
I was delighted to see that according to Google analytics a clients website traffic had incrased by 90.5% year on year from 2008 to 2009. They haev certainly seen increased sales as a result.

Finally, tomorrow I'm attending one of my favourite annual events, the Hotel Booking Agents Association annual dinner and I'm looking forward to catching up with many old friends and colleagues and discussing many industry related issues. If you have any which you would like my opinion on then let me know by leaving a comment.

All the best
Robert Smith