HospitalityEducators.com The #1 Independent Website for Hotel Owners & Managers

Is Your Sales Force Mediocre? Five Questions For Leaders Dec 30, 2013: Lisa Earle McLeod

Peter Drucker once said, “Profit is not the purpose of a business, it’s the test of its validity.”

If I were to ask your sales team, “What’s the purpose of your organization?”

What would they say? If their answer is something along the lines of ”make quota” or make “money” , you’re very likely headed for mediocrity.

How to Respond to Challenging Guest Reviews. Dec 27, 2013

From Pricing Complaints to Personal Attacks: How to Respond to Challenging Guest Reviews.

By Daniel Edward Craig

Responding to online reviews has become routine for many hoteliers, and yet every once in a while a real zinger comes along that makes you catch your breath and clench your fists. How should you respond? Or should you respond at all?

If you don’t respond, you leave travelers to draw their own conclusions. If you do respond and say the wrong thing, you risk make things worse.

The “Call Me Back After Christmas” Objection and How to Deal With It Dec 18, 2013: So why is it that the buyers and decision makers give us the Christmas objections? There are various reasons for this. Sometimes, there’s a genuine reason why they can’t proceed with a booking until January – perhaps a colleague is away that needs to be involved or perhaps there isn’t a budget until next year. But, in a number of cases, decision makers use Christmas objections as a convenient way of getting salespeople and hotel owners to go away. Far too many salespeople and hotel owners fall for these objections, take the decision makers at their word – only to be surprised come January when they can’t get hold of that person.

A tongue in cheek look at the need for clear communication Dec 9, 2013: A 30 second reminder

Google+ & SEO: How Google+ Impacts Search Results Nov 25, 2013

Real-time Reservations Nov 12, 2013: Instead of manually inputting reservations received from the online channel into your PMS, it is possible to have your reservations delivered automatically to your PMS. As well as being convenient, there are many other benefits to automatic reservation delivery tools.

TripAdvisor to Remove Negative Reviews after Hotels Renovate Nov 8, 2013: TripAdvisor has been applauded for agreeing to remove old negative reviews after hotels undergo refurbishment.

Steve Tate, chairman of Hotel risk management body CheckSafetyFirst.com, said the online travel reviews giant should be commended for reviewing its policy towards hotels which want to "wipe the review slate clean" after major renovations have taken place.

Hoteliers Wary of Discounting as they Evaluate the Long-Term Effects on Brand Perception Oct 29, 2013: Five years ago, as the recession hit and consumers began tightening their purse string, hotels have responded with discounts and sales. Consumers have quickly become addicted as shown by the Hotwire® 'Britain on Sale' report released earlier this year: more than half of today's consumers never or rarely pay full price when they shop, 57 per cent use discounts and buy items on sale, and 90 per cent say they will continue to look for discounts and sales in the same way even if their economic situation improves.**

Three Steps To A Better TripAdvisor Rating Oct 16, 2013: According to ehotelier, an increase in your property’s TripAdvisor rating can have a drastic impact on your revenues. If a hotel increases its TripAdvisor review score by one point, room rates can be increased by 11.2% without a drop in occupancy. A 1% increase in a hotel’s online reputation score leads to a 0.89% increase in price (as measured by the hotel’s ADR), up to 0.54% increase of occupancy and up to 1.42% increase in RevPAR.