The new year has come and travel industry experts already foresee all
major changes in the online promotion for the tourism sector. In these
times it is customary to talk about forecasts and future scenarios on
which to focus our attention and to invest the most of our resources,
both time and economic.
All these opinions are to be agreed with, each one for its own
micro-industry and various to each other for topics and ideas. All with
one common denominator: giving life to the future, riding the new
trends, new technological solutions and seize the opportunity given by
the new methods of communication such as blogs, social media and mobile.
But, what do you have to communicate? And what would it help to sell? The rooms of your hotel? Quite right .. but, is that all?
I like to think of the Internet as a wonderful information,
communication and sales tool... information, communication and sales. We
all agree that information regarding hotel rooms are now everywhere:
websites, portals, blogs and, for some time, even social media and
mobile devices. Indeed, mobiles have allowed hoteliers to leverage their
own bedrooms and offers as an argument of communication in order to
interact with their own customers online and, more generally, with web
users.
Hotel rooms are the core business of any hotel, but we know that they do
not just sell holidays and more and more hotels are now looking to
expand their reach by offering a range of services
closely related to the night stay: restaurants for food and beverage
services, conference centers and mice facilities, tours and travel
services, spa and wellness centers, golf and tennis clubs.
All information properly published and advertised, but still not sold on the web.
To make a parallel, the NO bookability of amenities is very similar to
what happens when a customer tries to book a room online but can not
find availability for the dates requested. Result: lost customer. In
fact, There are a few possibilities that the client be adapted to other
dates in order to stay in that particular hotel, and virtually no
possibility that the hotelier is able to make direct contact with the
customer before he leaves the research, trying to propose him other
valid solutions.
Very often we make the mistake of thinking that it's sufficient to
publish such information on the web site and other platforms, including
social media and mobile, to believe that we have done the best we can to
get sales. But, similarly to what happened 10 years ago, when the
Internet started to become mass media and hotels began to be present and
to make reservations on the web, now also for ancillary services it is
not enough we to publish them on the web; it is necessary to propose
them. Simply put, selling when the customer finds what he seeks and,
above all, what he is stimulated from.
We should all be a little psychologists to understand what is dictated
by the stimulus and what it entails. The human brain assimilates and
processes a limited number of information simultaneously. When the
customer decides to book a hotel room, his only goal is to reach the end
of the process: making a booking. For this reason, very often, the
customer may not know what other services may be right for his needs.
The website from which the customer makes the reservation, whether it's
the hotel site rather than a portal,
is the prime source of inspiration that can cause the client to be
stimulated to buy, but if this desire is not supported by the chance to
proceed with its reservation, the effect could backfire dictated by a
sort of delusion after a no fulfilled desire.
I know, such as concepts are a little bit too abstract, and perhaps even
extreme but, actually, the interesting thing is that all this has been
tested with real data and the results are astounding. Data that compare
the first period of adoption of the proposed line with the previous
period where, in cases less optimistic, sales doubled quickly and, in
many cases, the data can't even be compared because the online has
allowed hoteliers to sell products and services that before remained
almost completely unsold.
The web and its tools that allow to exploit its potential to be used as a
purposeful and proactive system, not just a passive channel to receive
purchases. A resource which still remained unexplored, although
available from the birth of the Internet.
Well so is the future, with its changes and innovations, new
technologies and strategies that will ensue, but why not to try making
the best use of what is already in our hands?
Madeep.com
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