Increse your corporate bookings !

3-Step Guide to Increasing Bookings on Corporate Channels

Step 1: Consider What Customers Want

It’s important to tailor your messages to the types of visitors you want to attract. Since we’re talking about corporate channels, you know you’re looking at business travelers – or individuals booking travel for their colleagues. Think about what they will be doing during their stay at your hotel and then what your hotel offers that would be beneficial to them.

Business Travel News notes that complimentary in-room Internet remains the most important amenity for business travelers

• Complimentary breakfast

• Promotions and discounts

• 24-hour business center

• 24-hour fitness center

Step 2: Offer a Great Shopping Experience

Although travelers on corporate booking websites are shopping for business trips and not for leisure, it doesn’t mean they don’t want an enjoyable experience while shopping online. When a potential customer sees two comparable hotels, with similar features and amenities, what’s going to make them choose you? – A great shopping experience can be the key differentiator between getting that reservation and losing it.

1.       Instead of just showing standard room images, add panoramic images of your rooms – one that shows off the things that matter to business travelers. You can also include floor plans to help your visitors really visualize themselves in your rooms.

 Don’t just list your amenities – show them off! We’ve already established that business travelers want a fitness room and a business center; why not offer virtual tours of each, or a short video demonstrating what each has to offer?

Step 3: Customize Your Media for Corporate Booking Channels

1.       Rich visual media – such as videos, virtual tours and high definition photos – helps you tell your hotel’s unique story to online shoppers in a better way. It amplifies your hotel’s strengths, attracts new guests and creates a loyal following. Customize your rich media on corporate booking sites to amplify the amenities that matter most to business travelers– meeting rooms, conference centers, executive suites and so on. By showcasing the features that these travelers need, you put yourself ahead of the competition and give the traveler more confidence to book with your hotel.

Watch HILTON HOTELS AND RESORTS PROMO VEDIO !

2.    93% of corporate travelers watch video online and 68% watch travel related video when planning and researching their travel2 - so why not take advantage of this and create a video that is targeted specially for business travelers.

3.      

Novotel Sydney Manly Pacific - The Conference Hotel

A   A short video of the recently renovated Novotel Sydney Manly Pacific Hotel showcasing the facilities, accommodation rooms and conference/meeting rooms. By customizing the rich media that they syndicate to corporate booking channels, they have differentiated themselves from other hotels in the area.

In addition, remember to:

• Highlight the things business travelers want up-front;

• Keep your feature lists organized and concise;

• Use inviting, easy-to-digest text alongside images that back up your descriptions.

Start targeting business travelers today!

Google/OTX, The Traveler’s

Meet the chef

                                                                 Meet The Chef

                                                                 Chef Birbal

Works at MSTAR GROUP as a Corporate Chef for the Group.

HAS BEEN A MAJOR CONTRIBUTOR IN OPENING SOME OF THE FAMOUS INDIAN RESTAURANTS OF BJN GROUP OF HOTELS. 

ANGEETHI,SAMARKAND, BOMBAY POST, SAHIB SINDH SULTAN, 

FIRANGI PAANI, CAFÉ MASALA, NAWABGANJ SAFARI, KHANSAMA 

 AND COPPER CHIMNEY GROUP OF HOTELS LTD (MUMBAI)

MSTAR Group has finest vegetarian Restaurants namely Jalpaan and Eatstreet in Bangalore.

They serve authentic South Indian,North Indian food and their Curd Vada is excellent.

                                                                  Chef's Recipes

                                

                                  Makai Chaman Ke Sheek

                                                  

A seekh kebab with corn and mixed vegetables and spiced with fresh herbs. Served with mint chutney.

No of portion-                                                            04

Ingredients                                                      Quantity

1.      Corn niblets                                    40        gms

2.      Cabbage                                        50        gms

3.      Carrot                                            10        gms

4.      Cauliflower                                     30        gms

5.      French beans                                  20        gms

6.      Cottage cheese                               15        gms

7.      Chopped ginger                              05        gms

8.      Chopped green chilli                       02        gms

9.      Ginger garlic paste                          10        gms

10.  Yellow chilli powder                       05        gms

11.  Turmeric powder                            02        gms

12.  Garam masala powder                    03        gms

13.  Oil                                                  25        ml

14.  Cashew nut                                    15        gms

15.  Whole cumin                                  03        gms

16.  Bread crumbs                                20        gms

17.  Roasted channa powder                 05         gms

18.  Salt                                                        to taste

Method:-

1.      Chop the vegetables and set aside. Grate cottage cheese and chop the ginger and chilli separately. Heat oil in a khadai, add cumin, as it takes colour add ginger garlic paste and sauté.  

2.      Add the vegetable and sauté.  Add the spices, salt and cook over a slow flame till it leaves water. 

3.      Add grated paneer and cashew nuts, and cook until the vegetables are done add little breadcrumbs to soak the excess moisture. 

4.      To make seekh kebab add breadcrumb and roasted chana powder to the mixture and blend well. Make a seekh kebab out of it. 

5.      Stud it with corn nibblets and cook on a medium hot tandoor until done, sprinkled with kebab masala 

6.      Serve with a garnish platter and mint chutney

                                               

                                           KASHMIRI CHAMAN

     

INGREDIENTS                                                         QUANTITY

Paneer Cut Into Batons                                                     100                  Gms      

Capsicum Diced                                                                50                    Gms

Green Peas                                                                         20                    Gms

Potato Boiled & Diced                                                     40                    Gms

Veg Gravy                                                                          50                    Gms

Tomato Gravy                                                                    20                    Gms

Rara Gravy                                                                         20                    Gms

Cashew Nut Paste                                                              20                   Gms

KastooriMethi                                                                   02                   Gms

Salt                                                                                      To Taste

Sugar                                                                                   05                   Gms

Garam Masala Powder                                                      02                   Gms

Green Chilly Chopped                                                      10                   Gms

Butter                                                                                 10                    Gms

Cream                                                                                 10                   Gms

Red Colour                                                                         02                   Gms

GARNISH

Cream,Maida,Sugar, Salt, Coriander Leaves  (White Colour)

METHOD

1.      Take a pan, add veg gravy, tomato gravy &rara gravy.  Stir it with  cashew nut paste.

2.      Add Kastoorimethi powder, salt, sugar, garam masala powder, green chilly chopped add all the vegetable. Stir it and  add cream, butter & check  for salt

3.      Add little colour&remove  from fire.  Serve it in a platter garnished with  a roux made of cream, maida and coriander leaves

4.      For the recipe of tomato, veg and rara gravy refer intermediate recipe of gravies

METHOD

1.      Take a pan, add veg gravy, tomato gravy &rara gravy.  Stir it with  cashew nut paste.

2.      Add Kastoorimethi powder, salt, sugar, garam masala powder, green chilly chopped add all the vegetable. Stir it and  add cream, butter & check  for salt

3.      Add little colour&remove  from fire.  Serve it in a platter garnished with  a roux made of cream, maida and coriander leaves

4.      For the recipe of tomato, veg and rara gravy refer intermediate recipe of gravies

AnjeerHalwa

A Delectable Indian fig pudding.

No of portions 20

Ingredients Quantity

Anjeer 1 kg

Kaju(whole) 500

Sugar 500 gm

Green elaichi 25    gm

Ghee 300 gm

Saffaron         1 gm.

Rabdi 200 gms

Chopped almonds 50 gms

Pista 50    gms

Method:-

1. Take anjeer and kajutogetherand soak it in water for 3hrs.

2. Now make a paste through pulverizer.

3. Mix sugar together with anjeer paste.

4. Take kadhai, put it on slow fire, add ghee, when becomes hot, add above paste and bhunao it on slow fire till oil comes von surface.

5. Remove it from flame.

6. Set it in a serving dish and pour 2 spoon rubdi on top, garnish with silver leaves, pista and and almond flex. 

Method:-

1.      Take anjeer and kajutogetherand soak it in water for 3hrs.

2.      Now make a paste through pulverizer.

3.      Mix sugar together with anjeer paste.

4.      Take kadhai, put it on slow fire, add ghee, when becomes hot, add above paste and bhunao it on slow fire till oil comes von surface.

5.      Remove it from flame.

6.      Set it in a serving dish and pour 2 spoon rubdi on top, garnish with silver leaves, pista and and almond flex.

The Professional Chef

Dining Trends of the Year 2012

Clarity

People are become more inquisitive  about the truth about ingredients and dishes, like Artisan, Natural, Healthy, Organic, Farm to Table, and Hand-crafted.  These words were used previously by the chefs and culinary experts. 

Now a days  we a notice increase in the use of these descriptive words for products that lack credibility for the use of these descriptions. These descriptions are used  for exploitation and for  commercial use without much value added to the guest experience, and this robs the true value and people who produce authentic food.

A fast food restaurant starts claiming that their product to be artisan related, it is time to refuse, and many chefs today say that time is up now!

From Nature to Kitchen compatibility (Foraging)

(Foraging is searching for and exploiting food resources. It affects an animal's fitness because it plays an important role in an animal's ability to survive and reproduce. Foraging theory is a branch of behavioral ecology that studies the foraging behavior of animals in response to the environment where the animal lives-Wikipedia)

Everyone will not search for natural food i.e. forage (searching for food) for their dinner, it is country specific.  Sitting in a woods, next to a lake or water body or a in a valley. One can see lush green grass and vegetation. This is country specific trend.

In these natural surroundings, what the forager sees in Dandelions, Amaranth, wild Asparagus, Clovers, Chicory, Chickweed, Sheep Sorrel and more in the lush green natural surroundings. Nature turns delicious. 

Some restaurants are allowing one cook to be a forager for the week. Some are employing external foragers with much success in creating a sense of the true nature-kitchen partnerships. 

When you go on jungle trip, take along a Forager's Guide  the foragers harvest 

( A Guide To Identifying, Harvesting, And Preparing Edible Wild Plants(Paperback ) by Samuel Thayer  some olive oil, herbs and lemon.)

Molecular Cooking





Molecular Gastronomy: Exploring the Science of Flavor (Arts and Traditions of the Table: Perspectives on Culinary History)

Understand the cooking process, beauty and taste of the end food.  Cooking isn't the gorgeous presentations, it's grasping the chemistry of the ingredients, cooking process and dedicating, understanding everything that occurs to create superb flavor, aroma, color and presentation.

Diners strongly believe in the molecular gastronomy evolution & revolution some years ago  and today also.  This knowledge of the physical and chemical transformations of ingredients, occurs while cooking, pleases our taste buds and enriches our culinary exploration without taking away the natural aroma of a grilled steak, roasted prime rib with potatoes.

The idea is to recognize the real culinary artist from the dramatist, disappearing pouch raviolis or reverse specification* will succeed unless it also provides wonderful flavor and evokes a sense of discovery.

*(Spherification is the culinary process of shaping a liquid into spheres which visually and texturally resemble caviar. The technique was originally discovered by Unilever in the 1950s (Potter 2010, p. 305) and brought to the modernist cuisine by the creative team at elBulli under the direction of executive chef Ferran Adrià.

There are two main methods for creating such spheres, which differ based on the calcium content in the product to be spherified. For substances containing no calcium, the liquid is mixed with sodium alginate, and dripped into a cold solution of calcium chloride or calcium carbonate. Reverse spherification, for use with substances which contain calcium, requires dripping the substance into an alginate bath. Both methods give the same result: a sphere of liquid held by a thin gel membrane, texturally similar to caviar.-Wikipedia)

 Diners can be a Part of the Process

Tradition goes like this : customers ordering from a menu, meal is cooked, and the service staff serving the guest.  Now a days that trend is changing, especially in avant garde restaurants.

Reputed and successful restaurateurs know that guests want to be informed of the cooking process and ingredients etc., during dinner, in the due course of wonderful meal.  Restaurateurs are responding with a dining environment that allows guests to participate in the process. Tours of the Chef's herb garden prior to dinner, bartender creating  a specialty cocktail with guest’s choice of ingredients, sampling the wine or cheese menu and knowing about the  flavors, or watching live, Chef prepare a multi-course meal.

Guest’s involvement in the dinner is an engaging process. 

Gluten Free

(A gluten-free diet is a diet that excludes foods containing gluten. Gluten is a protein found in wheat (including kamut and spelt),barley, rye, malts and triticale. It is used as a food additive in the form of a flavoring, stabilizing or thickening agent, often as "dextrin". A gluten-free diet is the only medically accepted treatment for celiac disease,^[1] the related condition dermatitis herpetiformis, andwheat allergy.

A gluten-free diet might also exclude oats. Medical practitioners are divided on whether oats are an allergen to celiac disease sufferers or if they are cross-contaminated in milling facilities by other allergens. Oats may also be contaminated when grown in rotation with wheat (wheat seeds from the previous harvest sprouting up again in the oat field and being harvested along with the oats).

The term gluten-free is generally used to indicate a supposed harmless level of gluten rather than a complete absence. The exact level at which gluten is harmless for people with celiacs is uncertain and controversial. A 2008 systematic review tentatively concluded that consumption of less than 10 mg of gluten per day for celiac patients is unlikely to cause histological abnormalities, although it noted that few reliable studies had been done-Wikipedia)

Gluten free diets should be more than just serving steamed vegetable or boiled beans etc.

The ethnic culinary cooking provides excellent gluten free recipes that have been evolved naturally over time, originating from various parts of the all over the world. Pan Asian and North African ethnic foods served by chef’s gluten free, preserving the richness and the flavors of the dishes.  Most cities and even and towns now produce gluten free pastries without the preservatives, whole wheat pizzas that are truly delicious, and some of America's classic recipes are gluten free.

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Make a Hotel Website poductive

How many guests booking through your hotel website?

Your hotel’s online competition set account with those hotels which appear, with your hotel, on search results.  Your hotel's name and description tags are very important.
We can be sure to name all the hotels in the local market, but do we know which hotels compete with our hotel online?
Hoteliers have spent money to develop a website. What is the rturn on investment ? In search engine results appear, how many visitors are clicking-through to your website? How many hotels competing with your hoel online?
Search engines have become convenient, user-friendly, and accurate that online guests are being converted into bookers. Search engines are essential part of the Internet.Many hotel websites that are not yet search engine-friendly and have not improvedthe hotels content to accommodate organic search and sales optimization through search engine optimization.
Hotels are using PPC( pay-per-click) advertising to cut short the organic search process. It results in a temporary traffic boost, and it is a continual investment. Many web designers encourage hotels to use pay-per-click to increase traffic to a poorly designed website.
Many hoteliers don’t bother about it. Hotel websites are getting more attractive, hotel markters simply ignore the basic information which is easily searchable and functional on a web site. Design of the site and the text content make a lot of difference to the search results of the site. Search engine compatibility is not complicated nor does it have to change the the pages of a website. Minor changes can make a lot of difference.
It is very important to attract as many visitors as possible to your website. A hotel’s website  meaningless unless people can see it. But website's content design and layout has a great influence on how search engines view and show the website on search results.
The sales team should not r be satisfied with website designers who simply track the number of visitors to your site. Search engine optimization, should convert the vistors to book a room,confence  or a table at the fine dine  restaurant. Attracting the visitors to see a hoel website is only a part; the easier part. How many visitors are actually making a reservation?


Bookings from the Hotel website

The only way to increase bookings is to attract more visitors. Optimizing the design of the site is more important as those additional visitors will make a reservation.
Many hotel websites has lot of unwanted long description and information, and they thing it is necessary to include as much information as possible. The think it will make lot of difference. Sometimes small is beutifull.The information should be brief informative and give a reciprocal features like what you want to give and what the guest is looking for. Hotel websites continually display information which is out-dated, due to simple neglect. A web site is not your hotel's online brochure; It is a sales tool.
If your site is not getting enough bookings, it can be simply be fixed with search engine optimization (SEO). Getting more visitors to a static sitee, doesn’t serve the purpose. Creating an effective hotel website involves a lot more than simply having pretty pictures and tariff sheet,conference info and restauarant info about the facilities and amenities of the  hotel. The website  should be designed using sound hotel marketing principles;It has to be designed to sell the accommodation, conference halls and the food and beverage.
 Content makes all the differnnce. Many web designers spend more time composing large photos and flash elements rather than developing SEO words,links, the important parts of of a website.
Experts will advice that a website's title and description tags are extremely important. The website should be found on search results,for which  title and description are the maketing tools. That drives the decision which hotel to be booked.
A website designed to make more  sales  and you should make your website designer responsible for that.
If possible include online chat,esrvation form,and online payamnt gateway,which can be integrated to the reservation sstems.


 As per the industry expert statistics average resvation booking engines converts 3.48% of all visitors.
 It should be much higher. Convrsion rate out of 100  only 4 out of every 100 people that is not healthy for hotel business.