The importance of adopting a multi-channel sales and distribution strategy has gained a lot of popularity in the past years. Offline distribution channels consist of mainly of the hotel sales team working on getting corporate and negotiated deals, along with working with wholesalers and the travel agents. Online distribution channels combine WBE (Web Booking Engines), GDSs (Global Distribution Channels), OTAs (Online Travel Agencies), Consortia and CROs (Central Reservation Offices) among others. Today, online distribution channels encompass 50% of the hotel bookings in Europe and 30% in the MENA region.
Despite the growth of online distribution channels in tourism, many hotels still do not fully exploit their own websites as a tool for selling hotel rooms directly and gaining competitive advantage.
As many reservations are made on the Internet, being able to guide your customer through the whole experience of your hotel becomes key. In fact, hotel websites represent an important channel for hoteliers to attract customers and convert them into bookers as the commissions related to that channel are very low. However, if the choice of technology in the design of the hotel website is not appropriate, it will be hard for hoteliers to appeal to prospective customers.
Despite the fact that creating original and compelling website content can appear to be an overwhelming task, it represents an important and integral part of digital marketing for hoteliers – it helps them promote their brand and manage their sales channel efficiently. Therefore, the hotel website is a major driver in creating perceptions and influencing people’s decision to book with a hotel or not. Hence, it is imperitive for hotels to have a dynamic, constantly updated and easy to maintain website.
A web content management system (CMS) is a software system that supports the creation and modification of digital content using a common user interface and allows multiple users to easily manage all of a website’s content – i.e. pages, images, text, photos or videos – in a collaborative environment, with little or no technical skills.
As search engines give more credibility to websites with constantly updated, fresh and relevant content, ‘static’ websites have started to disappear. CMS incorporates the ability to update automatically, without minimal cost to the users.
Many hotels have been very quick to adopt CMS because of the power and flexibility the system offers, such as:
Easy to deploy for chains
Multiple website content management –Promotions are launched quicker by adding content to one, selected or all hotel websites, then scheduled to go-live by choosing specific dates or hours within a day.
Responsive design – The CMS automatically scales and optimizes the website to fit tablets, mobile devices and smaller browser windows to deliver a consistent user experience for all customers.
Quick and easy page management –Any approved user can quickly and easily publish online without complicated software or programming.
Up-to-date at all times – CMS allows alerts to be set to notify the editor(s) when content needs to be reviewed, updated or removed. This will help prevent old data from being presented and misinforming users.
Remote access from anywhere with an Internet connection.
Search engine-friendly – The CMS helps to optimize the hotel website so that search engine users can easily find the hotel information.
Customize content based on an IP address – For instance, a French customer accessing the website might see different content then a German or American customer.
Region based promotions – i.e. a promotion for French customers can be different from a promotion targeting American customers.
The key to successfully deploying a direct booking strategy is increasing website personalization to ensure customers are gaining access to direct booking rewards when it means the most. With a good CMS, hotels can identify the customer’s location through his/her IP, and provide them with a more personal experience through packages and promotions targeted to that specific market. It is an advantage to offer an in-depth experience of the property and to provide more flexibility in terms of a room choice, reservation changes and price negotiations.
About the author
Serge Chamelian is the managing director of h-hotelier, a hospitality services firm that offers a holistic approach to business intelligence solutions, revenue management consultancy and training and development programs among many others.
For the past three years, h-hotelier has engaged in the development of hotel websites for its customers by adopting the CMS technology because h-hotelier believes that standing out in the crowded field of website design and content is challenging. The right content management system can help hoteliers cut through the clutter, attract customers’ curiosity and drive bookings to the hotel’s website.
By Serge Chamelian | July 12th, 2016
Thursday, July 14, 2016
free webinar- optimizing your hotel's OTA strategy
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Monday, July 11, 2016
NSV- connecting you to dynamic world of Happiness " The Way To Happiness"
Try not to do things to others that you would not like them to do to you.
Precept 19 - The Way to Happiness®
"Among many peoples in many lands for many ages there have been versions of what is called “The Golden Rule.” The above is a wording of it that relates to harmful acts. Only a saint could go through life without ever harming another. But only a criminal hurts those around him without a second thought." It is difficult not to have our attention focused on the chaos happening in cities across the planet, but that is what the chaos merchants want. We get what we put our attention on. It is much better to put our attention on creating unity, peace and solidarity. As the campaigns for unity, peace and solidarity expand across the planet I remind you that you have a tool you can use to help the process along and create peace. It is The Way to Happiness® book. We have special editions printed with the message of Unity, Solidarity and Peace on the covers that have been used in cities across Europe and the Middle East. We have special cover for Dallas and we will be sending thousands of books to the city to help provide hope and view to a peaceful and prosperous future. Please help support the printing and distribution of The Way to Happiness books for Dallas. |
Sunday, July 3, 2016
Four Most Important Types Of Tour Operators in Tourism Industry
Tour operators who deal and handle directly inbound foreign tourists, provide them various services on their arrival and departure such as transfer, accommodation, transportation, sightseeing, entertainment, currency, insurance services etc. acr known as inbound tour operators.
These tour operators formulate tour package individually or in collaboration with foreign tour operators. The packages may be marketed directly or by means of the intermediaries. In fact, inbound tour operators are the ‘image’ builders of a country as they convert all touristic resources of a nation into a sale-able commodity.
They also contribute valuable foreign exchange earnings to the economy of host country. Recognizing the vital role played in inbound tour operators in the healthy growth and promotion of tourism, every nation has extended several financial and non-financial incentives to these operators.
These categories of operators are specialized in promoting and designing multi-national tours especially foreign countries. The outbound tour operator sells a package tour to an individual or a group of people of his own country to another country or a number of countries for a specific pre-decided period.
The outbound tour operator arranges travel documents, transportation to a central point where the tour starts and contracts with inbound tour operators/ground operators to provide accommodation, transportation, local sightseeing and other services as needed throughout the tour. Generally, these operators work in liaison with the inbound tour operators/ground operators and offer services involving meeting inbound tour group at the airport, transferring the tour group from the airport to the arranged place of accommodation in town hotel, arranging/organizing local sightseeing that may be a single day or multi days tour of the home state, region or area. These may be in the form of business or leisure oriented tours.
Today, the domestic market has witnessed attractive growth rates as large players in the travel industry are aggressively entering and promoting this market. Leading tour operators usually focus on the international market where margins are higher but now, in addition, they are floating new packages to create a niche in this segment to tap the vast potential in the domestic market.
Even leading hotel chains are also receiving healthier response in this context. In the UK, USA, Japan, India, China and Hong Kong many tour operators are specialized in domestic
holiday packages. Generally, domestic tour operators operate within the boundary of home
country and cater the diverse needs of individual and group travellers. They promote tour packages both through their own outlets and other retail travel agents. In fact, they are contributing to the cause of national integration.
Ground operator is also referred to as, ‘reception operator’, ‘destination management companies’ and ‘handling agencies’ e.g. ground operators in the United States— ‘reception operator, ‘handling agencies’ in India and destination management companies in UK.
Ground operators are normally expected to provide ‘land arrangements’ at a particular destination. Thus, a ground operator who provides the services required by large tour companies where they do not have a local branch/office or are not dealing at the source with the principal suppliers such as hoteliers, transport operators, car rentals, entertainment organizations and so forth.
The reception operator secures, coordinates, supervises and handles accounts/payments of all services related to the tour in his region/area. His services are invaluable for an
efficient and successful operation of inclusive group as well as foreign
independent tours.
The travel industry is very young compared to other industries, globally. It did not really gain momentum until 1945. However, it has changed dramatically in just the past four
decades and there have been many drastic changes in the making of these fastest growing industry-deregulations of airlines in 1978,***** introduction of AMTRAK in 1974, information technology, globalization, changing public attitudes and so forth.
Many large scale travel agencies and tour operators have changed their product lines through merger, acquisition and franchise. In today’s volatile business environment, not only is the competition among travel agencies/tour operators intense but tourists have wide options of dealing directly with tourism product suppliers.
Tourists can now obtain his/her airline ticket, hotel booking, car rental and other services through computerized reservation system. Thereby, the success of travel agencies/tour operators is mostly determined by their ability to design package tours and operation’s service quality concept.
According to Sasser, Olsen and Wychoff, in order to design quality tour package, travel agencies/ tour operators must define the ‘service concept’ in terms of tangible features,
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