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Hotel
bookings through the Internet, whether on franchise web sites or electronic
distribution channels, have risen exponentially. As reported by Travel Click in
a recent article in Hotel Online, GDS bookings increased in 2003 3.3% while the
Consumer Internet Channel bookings increased by 34.7%.
This has led many hotels
and hotel companies to re-allocate sales and marketing resources to managing and
manipulating their positioning on the Internet. They are quite correct in doing
so -- this is a trend that is not only not going away but will continue this
kind of growth for at least a few years into the future.
This percentage increase,
unfortunately, has not been characteristic of most hotel sales departments and,
as a result, the precious marketing resources available to them have, in many
cases, been reduced to accommodate the expenditures on Internet channels and web
presence. As a result, many hotel sales people have become frustrated and
discouraged to the point that they wonder if there is a continuing role for them
as this trend continues.
The answer to this
question is a qualified "yes." The traditional methods and modes of conducting
hotel sales will not produce the results that will alleviate this concern. It is
a simple case of "if you keep on doing what you have always done, you will
continue to get what you have always gotten."
In today's environment,
that leads to diminishing returns as travel and meeting planners turn to the
Internet more and more to evaluate rate and amenity positioning prior to ever
contacting a hotel. Often, the second step is to visit the web site of a
particular property, again prior to contacting the sales department.
What can sales
departments do to increase productivity, avoid becoming an in-house amenity or,
the worst possible case scenario, the dinosaurs of the industry?
Hotels need to include
the sales departments in their Internet positioning and web design so that the
message and offering is consistent across the customer touch points. In
addition, sales departments need to embrace the technology and use the Internet
to become more productive and efficient in conducting hotel sales at every step
of the sales process. For example:
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Target Market Prospecting In an
attempt to locate new markets as existing ones are producing less, the decision
is often made to target markets that previously were ignored. This can range
from government (all of a sudden per diems don't look so bad from a rate
standpoint), SMERF, Affinity groups, etc.
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- Traditional Sales
Locate existing or dead files for prospects in
these target markets then begin contacting them one at a time. If they weren't
producing before, why would they now and how long will it take you to contact
enough prospects in a new market to ascertain its depth?
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Cyber Sales Conduct a web
search that becomes increasingly specific until a prospect list or database
can be located on related web sites.
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Market Penetration Strategy In
most cases, it is impossible to ascertain the depth of a market or begin to
penetrate it without making contact with a significant number of prospects. How
to do this efficiently?
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- Traditional
Sales They are still contacting the "dead" files. Contacting
one individual or organization with a phone call is very time consuming and
not very efficient.
- Cyber Sales
Develops an email postcard or an email message with a
benefits tease, copies and pastes email addresses into a group on the email
address book, puts each name on the email as a bcc. and sends it off to groups
of ten or twenty at a time to avoid the appearance of "spamming" with the ISP.
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Initial Approach
The name of a prospective organization and key
contact information is available. Now what?
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- Traditional
Sales Pick up the telephone and call them. Upon routing to
their voice mail, leave a message with your name, the hotel's name and phone
number. Trace it for two weeks, repeat process. (Yikes!)
- Cyber Sales
Locate the e-mail address on the web site or call the central number, press
zero (normally there is still a human available) and ask for the contact's
email address. A recent client was absolutely amazed at how willing the
receptionist was to give out the email address.
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This is only a brief
glimpse at how hotel sales departments can incorporate the Internet into their
every day activities to contact more prospects more efficiently. Each of the
examples above are just the beginning of the techniques that hotel sales
departments can use to incorporate the internet into their activities to
penetrate target markets, develop new prospects and maintain relationships.
I am going to anticipate
and address an objection that I can hear coming about the lack of being able to
build a relationship with a prospective client using Cyber Sales. People are now
used to initiating and building business relationships through email, instant
messaging, etc. Once we have "touched" them enough times electronically, it is
then possible to make a telephone appointment to build on the relationship. A
telephone appointment is more efficient than leaving voice mails.
The message here is that
hotel sales departments can use the Internet in many ways to become more
productive and efficient. As the growth in use of the Internet channels
exhibits, our prospect find us in new ways -- we need to find them in the ways
that they locate us.
Yes, there is still a
role for hotel sales departments to play if they become more creative efficient
in conducting sales activity. It is exciting to be in a position to re-define
the hotel sales process -- use your imagination. |
