The A-Z of Marketing Your Property – Part II
Last week we handled the A to K of marketing, this week we’re back with L to Z to complete the list of 24 great ideas to market your establishment.
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Maps
The good news is Google has made it easy – put maps on your website showing where you are located and where tourist attractions are – a graphic picture means more than hundreds of words.
We have more helpful articles on Google Maps and Facebook Places to further assist. Read more 
5 Ways to get Your Website To Work for You
Your establishment website probably cost you a lot of money to put in place, and in return it should provide a return on this investment by earning income! We share 5 tips on making your site work harder.
1. Don’t over-SEO
Take a careful look at the first impression your site creates. Who is the site aimed at? Is it overpopulated with search terms for SEO? Remember, it is not Google that will come to stay! Sure you want the search engines to guide people to your site, but visitors will pick up on this and might get irritated by overuse of certain phrases.
Your site should be aimed at getting 3 important factors across in the shortest possible time:
1. Location
2. Comfort and
3. Value Read more
The A-Z of Marketing Your Property
Here is a helpful A-Z guide to help you market your establishment.
All Things To All People – Know Your Market Segment
The expression that you can not be all things to all people is never truer than with an accommodation establishment. Guest houses and B&Bs are selected over hotels for their “personalities”.
A businessman may seek the home touch whilst on his travels, but also need a quiet environment to carry out his work. If your guest house or B&B targets families you can be sure the business person will only stay once.
Become an Expert
Know your stuff – what’s good to see, where’s good to go and where’s a waste of time. Maybe compile something for your guest to browse through (whilst sipping on a nice glass of white from the honesty bar). Read more
It Could Happen To You: Review your Business Insurance
Guest House and B&B accommodation must have insurance against natural disasters. Photo courtesy telegraph.co.uk
We asked Dave Jack to give us some advice on hospitality insurance especially with reference to the damage caused by natural disasters. Dave is a director of BnB Sure, a specialist hospitality insurance company that offers customised insurance for B&B and Guesthouse accommodation. This is what he had to say:
All too often we hear “It’ll never happen to me” and when it does happen the comment is usually “I don’t know how it happened”. In some cases it is possible to lessen the chances, in others it is almost impossible to do anything about it and in many cases Mother Nature is involved. Read more
NightsBridge integration with Opera and ResRequest
NightsBridge is proud to announce full integration with 2 more Property Management Systems, namely Micros Opera and ResRequest. This enables even more establishments to distribute their availability through NightsBridge’s extensive network of local and international marketing channels.
If you want to take realtime bookings online and update your websites or agents with live availability data, your inventory needs to be updated somewhere. The best place to get the availability information is the system where you add all your bookings. E.g. when you get an email or phone booking, it goes into your front-office booking system (Property Management System, or PMS). Read more
The Consumer Protection Act
T
he Consumer Protection Act came into force in South Africa in 2011. Basically this is an act that protects consumers and brings legislation in South Africa in line with the legislation that exists in many first world countries.
It means that the consumer is entitled to get what he expects. So be aware of the expectations you raise if there is a possibility that you can’t fulfil them.
This includes overbooking since you are then contracting to sell a room which you actually don’t have available. Read more
How Blogging can Increase your Website Bookings
“No one comes to your website to be entertained. They have questions they think you can answer. Content answers questions.” ~ Jay Baer, Convince and Convert
The Phantom Forest Eco Reserve’s blog posts include mouthwatering recipies and green living tips
Regular, relevant and useful content published on your website will ensure that visitors will want to share items from it, revisit it and be comfortable enough to book through it.
If people spend more time on your site, they are more likely to become a customer. Provide them with useful information to read through and they will be more likely to book online. The simplest way to group all of this additional content together is in blog format. Read more
Facebook and Twitter Time Saving Tips
Post images of views in your area, or the events and activities in your area. Who doesn’t love a cute meerkat?
Engaging with potential and past guests on various social media networks can take time — which we know is in short supply. At NightsBridge we like to save you time and effort, so here are some tips to make it quicker and easier to manage Facebook and Twitter.
Tip: Post lots of lovely images
People love photos. Images are by far the most popular content on Facebook. Make sure you add pictures of your property, your view, the local area, events and other eye-catching images. If you talk about what a beautiful, sunny day it is in your town, post a photo to illustrate your point. Take the photos yourself or use images posted by others on Facebook. Read more
NightsBridge Tips from Knysna Country House
The Knysna Country House website has a Book Online link to NightsBridge on every page of its website
Erik Ekkelkamp and Ypie Kingma from Knysna Country House have been very successful in generating direct online bookings using NightsBridge. We asked Erik and Ypie to share their tips about how they use NightsBridge as a marketing, sales and business management tool. This is what they had to say:
How long have you been using NightsBridge?
We have been using the NightsBridge front desk booking system, online distribution tools as well as the booking link on our website since December 2010. NightsBridge was already installed when we took over our property. Ypie had used NightsBridge at another B&B for four years already.
What have you found to be the best position for the online booking feature on your website?
We have a “Book Online” link on every page of our website. This is located prominently on the right under the main image. We think that it is important that this link is on every page to increase direct online bookings.
Approximately how many channels do you link to via the NightsBridge links manager?
We link to about 30 different channels. Read more
E-Tourism Frontiers Summit TakeAways
NightsBridge attended the annual E-Tourism Fontiers Summit at the CTICC in Cape Town on the 13th & 14th of September and were once again reminded about the power of online channels in the future of the travel industry. Below are some of the key points we took from the Summit.
Let’s start with a definition of E-Tourism:
COMMUNICATE the right
CONTENT across a variety of
CHANNELS to the best value
CLIENTS who will
CONVERT to sale and keep
COMING BACK!
Reaching Your Customer
- 58% of all travel is researched, booked, bought & sold online
- 96% of all travellers start their research on the internet
- The tour operator model is diminishing to the extent that 24 major tour operators in the UK were declared bankrupt during 2011
- 40% of all time online is spent on social networking - making it more powerful and popular than TV and print media combined
Future travellers will travel less and expect more. They will not buy products, but experiences. You as provider will need to improve the value of what you sell. Read more
