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 If your property's data is out of date or the images and descriptions are poor an agent is less likely to place a booking with you.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

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