David Morton is a revenue specialist with Bamboo Revenue in London. Today, we discuss what you need to know about encouraging direct bookings.

Our conversation is less than 19 minutes, and I highly recommend you listen to the whole thing – especially if you’re a smaller, luxury hotel:

[Prefer to listen on the go? Download the mp3 file]

For those of you who prefer to read, here’s the summary of the talk:

• Why don’t more guests book with hotels directly? Many hotels release a few rooms to external OTA sites at lower rates, and don’t realize that savvy guests will easily find those rates and book outside of the hotel’s system.
• Avoid retail marketing tactics; maintain consistency across all booking channels.
• For example, “In conversations with hoteliers, I see that some of them have defended [rate disparity] to me, and they’ve explained, ‘Oh, Dave, well actually, what I do, is on my own hotel website, and/or through my luxury brand, I will sell from my second-lowest room category up.’ So, if we’re talking about a historic hotel property, they’ll say, “Well, the old maid’ rooms and the tiny rooms up in the attic, I don’t have on my own website, but I’ll put those through third party websites.’ And again the conversation I have with them is, ‘Look — people are coming to your hotel website, they’re salivating over the gorgeous Michelin starred-restaurant, the beautiful oak-paneled library, your amazing spa. They just wanna be under your roof.”
• This type of behavior “trains” guests to not book directly, and is damaging to the hotel’s brand.
• “If you’re a niche product, as long as you’re in the top ten or twenty of the hotels on Trip Advisor ranking for your location, as long as you’re delivering a good product, good service, you can and you will get a lot of those bookings direct, if you’re offering rate parity.”
• It’s important to carefully control distribution through OTAs and focus on who you partner with. Read the fine print. Don’t assume that “the more partners, the better.” Work with OTAs that are “in synch” with your hotel’s brand.
• Guests prefer to book through sites that are SSL certified.
• Foreign guests prefer to book in their home language and currency.
• “Don’t become distracted by the mass-consumer market, because that’s not the market that you’re in.”

Where and when you ask for something on your website plays a HUGE role in how effective you are in getting people to perform whatever action you want them to take.

This works so well because you’re reaching people in the perfect frame of mind. After someone has emotionally and financially committed to your brand, opting in to receive messages from you is a logical next step.

Take recruiting Facebook fans, for example. You can be like 99% of hotels out there and include a Facebook button on your homepage. Or you can make a compelling offer immediately on your website booking confirmation page. In the limited testing we’ve done so far, Facebook pages that used to idle for months with just a few new fans now have hundreds.

Are  you taking advantage of these “white hot” online touch points?

Hotel Marketing Strategies Insider’s Circle Silver members: sign in to access my favorite places to ask for website interaction, along with screenshots and instructions.

[photo credit: respres]

I’ve wanted to re-design this blog for a very long time, and now its finally live! My friend David did a great job with the design, and I wanted to point out the marketing strategy that went into the layout.

“One Big Thing” on the homepage

Traditional blog layouts – with the newest post on top – can lack focus. There is no “One Big Thing” for a first-time visitor to click. With the new layout, I prominently feature one important post at the top of the homepage.

Quickly display new & best content

I wanted to adopt a magazine-style homepage for two reasons: 1) to quickly show what has been recently published, 2) to display some of the site’s most important content (we’re calling this “HMS 101″).

Encourage email signup

I’ve been talking a lot about email the past few weeks, so by now you should see why I want everyone reading this blog to receive my weekly email summary. Because of this, I’m making the email signup box a prominent part of the sidebar.  I have exclusive VIP content planned for email subscribers, and want as many people as possible to get in on this.

Encouraging participation

I really want to open up the content here to other voices and viewpoints. While I’ve tried to encourage this in the past, I’m making the options for participating very clear in the sidebar design.

Integrating video

Video will play an increasingly important role in the future, and it’s something I want to do a lot more of in coming posts. Our new YouTube channel will be a mix of me talking into the camera, live interviews, and how-to screen captures. Again, I wanted the design to reflect this new priority.

Improved comment area

Blog communities revolve around the comments section. Typically only a small percentage of readers post a comment, so I wanted to improve the comment area to encourage more discussion. The big things we added are threaded comments (so you can reply to others), and comment subscription (so you can be notified when someone replies to you).

Focus on new “Insider’s Circle” program

This is something I’m very excited about: a toolbox for hotel marketers. It contains everything my colleagues and I use for the day-to-day management of hotel marketing campaigns out in the “real world.” So it’s more than theory and strategy – it’s very practical use-it-now stuff.  The “Insiders’ Circle” is opening to the public on Tuesday, and I’ll post an explanation then…

—

I would love your feedback on this new design: What do you think? Do you see any little improvements I can make on it?

Landing pages are the first thing people see when arriving on your website. If you can create a special page that matches your email offer, conversion rates will improve dramatically. This is because these pages can focus on the offer received by the email subscriber, so that when they come to your website, they are more inclined to act on that offer. They won’t get distracted by everything else you have on your site.

Images and headlines should match the email creative. Aim for a seamless experience for the recipient.

Design the page layout to focus the visitor’s attention. You may try:

• Increasing the font size
• Eliminate multiple columns and navigation
• Include a very clear next step

If you want to get really fancy, do a two-step landing page sequence to segment your audience and offer – like Howard Johnson did here:

But don’t let complexity scare you into inaction. If you’re currently sending email traffic to a generic page, experiment with a basic web page that mirrors the offer.

Email works best when it is part of an integrated campaign. And building email campaign-specific website landing pages is the first thing you should do to integrate.

For more on this topic, read 10 Ways to Improve Your Landing Pages

Learn more ways to improve email conversion rates in the Savvy Hotelier’s Guide to Email Marketing

A landing page is the first page a visitors sees after arriving on your website. Because people make snap judgments online, they are a critical element in your Internet marketing campaign’s success.

In less than 3 seconds, most people have decided whether they’re going to spend more time on your page or move onto another website.

By optimizing your landing pages, you increase conversion rates and ultimately sell more. Here are 10 ideas for you:

#1 – Understand your visitors. When you know what your target audience is looking for when they arrive on your website, you can provide that information quickly and easily. You’ll be able to develop a message that resonates with the visitor and encourages them to take action.

#2 – Match landing pages with promotional creative as much as possible. Establishing a link between the advertisement that someone sees, and then the first page they see on your website is very important for consistency and reducing confusion.

#3 – Use persuasive images. A recent study showed something very interesting: When a face in stock photography looks away from your copy, people are likely to look away as well. Make sure that all elements of your website — including the visual ones — focus on your sales message.

#4 – Give visitors what they’re looking for… quickly. Provide easy access to the information promised. Prioritize page elements according to their importance. Don’t emphasize something that is not very important.

#5 – Focus on the content: the offer itself. Avoid getting carried away by the latest and greatest new media if it doesn’t contribute to website goals. In nearly all sales situations a focus on the written text – the copy – is what sells and brings you money.

Read more…