The best bar trick ever - The Cherry Trick by Jason Crawley from the iPh...

Top 10 Hotel Management Tips for Managers in the Hospitality Industry

Why corporate training usually fails

Successful digital marketing for hotels

Hotel’s engagement for successful digital marketing 

Digital marketing is identifying promotions that drive measureable return on investment.

Digital marketing produce amazing results for hoteliers with successful planning and implementing.

Hotel digital marketing initiatives that can bring good results to the hotels: 

Multi-pronged campaigns:

Integrate public relations, social media and advertising, centered on guests who stayed in your property and getting interactive and participating in the campaign with their real time experience get you amazing results. Even the guest relations and Front office staff getting involved in the initiative.

Blog:  start blogging now! Hoteliers invest in a website and think that is it for the next 3, 4 or even 5 years and treat it like an online brochures .The website's content is completely static or stagnant. Make a blog using Wordpress or Blogger. It’s as simple as writing an email.

Write about tourist information, shopping and local attractions.

Put your staff members in the spotlight. 

Add fun picture so guests can recognize them during their stay.

Add a new seasonal menu in the restaurant.

Plenty of topics, there should be no shortage of what you could write about. There surely are interesting events, festivals or trade-shows in your hotel or resort where guests visit or attend. Write about food festivals, restaurant and bar tips.

Youtube: Have a youtube channel of the hotel and keep uploading guest experiences at the hotel where there are parties, celebrations and experiences at the reception or in coffee shop or fine dining restaurant and upload on your hotels you tube channel. Add multiple language selection on the channel.

Facebook:

Design the page differently from your competition: the most appealing aspect is logo. Provide a strong hotel overview page that is both informational and fun. When creating your new hotel facebook page with rich colors, textures and the experiences about the property.

Tagging photos spreads the word: take a good picture and share engaging users tagging them.– Take pictures of your guests, and tag them on Facebook.

Upload The restaurant menu items and engages users: Make an easy-to-use and user-friendly page with easy navigation.3 or 4 menu items are enough: hotel overview, rooms, special offers and a map are probably good enough.

Promotions, discounts and sweepstakes bring guests back: provide social incentives to visitors so they choose your property over the competition. Creating special offers on your Facebook page and offering sweepstakes or discount coupons will create a loyal following.

Stay updated on Facebook: You can upload rates discounts and availability on Facebook. Let guests check rates and availability. Display a longer-term view of the rates and availabilities so that guests can choose the perfect vacation or business trip according to their needs and possibilities.

Website design and SEO:
Redesign the website with rich large photos of rooms, restaurants, banquet halls with rich texture and colors to drive traffic.

The old, outdated websites with heavy text heavy will take time to lad and guest may get bored and turned away. Make it data-driven. Take search-engine marketing approach, including the purchase of keywords. Create more pictures with little text and engage the guests.

Mobile App:

Develop a mobile and tablet app.

Tailoring websites on user needs:
Develop the website with specific goal of behavioral targeting, or personalizing the hotel or resort’s website for each potential guest.

Cumbersome and too long to find information make a guest disinterested. Create good pages for each POS to different type of guests like restaurants banquets and rooms, health club, tennis, golf, spa, retail, recreation.

Driving mobile bookings
the growing popularity of last-minute apps such as Hotel Tonight, the Wyndham Hotel Group has embarked on a strategy to increase direct, same-day bookings by creating new mobile websites for all 15 of its brands.

The experience was built around the same-day booking goal. The traffic was growing a lot faster than expected

E-marketing best practices
hotel email blast is sent to 3,000 people and will generate good bookings. Hoteliers  should review and analyze results, act fast on it,getting back to the customers and keeping engaged in conversations.

To maximize the efficiency of email targeting the number of email addresses, the open rate and the offer appeal. Constantcontact and mailchimp are two good e-mail clients. You can engage even local e-mail marketers.

The sales & marketing, Front office and F & B team should collect more email addresses by asking for business cards or a drop box at POS., over the phone at time of reservation, on Facebook

Good subject line, time of day an email sent is critical. Tailoring an email to guest‘s relevant need and choice is the best option.

Don’t be bogged down by negative reviews
Value online guest feedback and scores, over traditional marketing feed backs as well. Take immediate action by answering or taking corrective action on negative feedback immediately. Culminate positives scores on various review sites like tripadvisor or your own website, Facebook page or blog.

Download Free e-Books

Find and Download Free Books for Kindle

While most eBooks available on the Amazon Kindle store are paid, here are some simple ways by which you can find and download free Kindle books for your reading pleasure.

Read Kindle Books without the Kindle Reader

If you don’t have the Kindle device (i.e., the hardware), you can still download any of these Kindle books and read them in your web browser (read.amazon.com) without having to install any software. Amazon also offers reading apps for your Windows PC, Mac, Android, iOS, etc. so you can enjoy your favorite books on your desktop computer, tablet or mobile phone without having to buy the Kindle Reader.

Free Kindle Books downloads

Project Gutenberg, Open Library, Google Books, ManyBooks and FeedBooks

Most popular websites that offer a large collection of classics and on public domain (copyright expired) in standard formats like MOBI that you can easily transfer to your Kindle over USB or Wi-Fi.

Google Books are available in ePUB format which is incompatible with the Kindle but you can use the free Calibre software to easily convert Google ebooks from .epub to .mobi, a format that Kindle can understand. Calibre does not however support conversion of DRM protected ePUB files to Kindle format.

Also, the Internet Archive website mirrors the free eBooks that have been scanned and digitized by the Google Books program and here they also offer the same title in MOBI format that you can read on your Kindle without conversion.

Free Kindle Books on Amazon

Amazon.com allows readers to down load zero dollar books ,the free eBooks ,on  Google Books you you’ll mostly find public domain books, Amazon may sometimes even offer some of the newer ebooks as free downloads. Find free Kindle books on Amazon:

Kindle Book Search – Add the Kindle search engine to your web browser and you’ll be able to find free books on Amazon directly from your browser’s search box.

Sort by Price – When you search for a Kindle book on Amazon.com, it displays search results by relevance.If you change this default sort order from “Relevance” to “Price: Low to High”, you’ll get a list of all Kindle books that match your search keywords but are available for 0$.

Popular Classics – This is an official listing of all ebooks that are available as free downloads on the Amazon.com website. These are Public Domain Books that have been converted from print to digital format by Amazon.

Listmania - This is another resource where you can discover Kindle books that are available for free.

Listmania Lists are basically a list of products compiled by Amazon users. You can use search phrases like “free kindle books”, “kindle freebie”, “penny kindle book”, etc. to discover lists that are built around free books you are looking for. For instance, here’s oneListmania List of classic books for Kindle that are absolutely free.

You can find on Google search also.

RSS Feeds for Free Kindle Books

Here are some RSS feeds that you can subscribe to and get alerts when new titles are available:

Gutenberg Feed (Books recently added to Project Gutenberg)

Official Amazon RSS Feed (Free)

Kindle eBook pricing for International users

If the price of a Kindle book is mentioned as $0.00 on the Amazon Store, it may sometimes show up as $2.00 if the country associated with your Kindle account is not United States. This happens because Amazon charges a $2 roaming fee for “international downloads”.

Now you can buy e-books with your international debit and credit card from India.

GDS corporate booking volume back on track

www.hotelmarketing.com reports ;

According to new Pegasus data, December closed 2012 on a positive note overall for both business, with future hotel stays suggesting plenty of potential. Corporate booking volume through the GDS channel is back on track worldwide, while rates continue to push ahead of 2011.

The global GDS channel took a reassuring upturn in December after intensified political uncertainty bred hesitation in November. Net bookings rose to match last year’s substantial volume, a feat only achieved three other months in 2012; one being February, which was lifted by leap year’s extra day. Rates also turned up a notch in December, keeping pace with prior year, and surpassing December 2011 by +1.8%.

Corporate travel will play a primary role in the travel industry’s stability and success. Business booking volume can vary against prior year month-to-month, but volume remains robust at rates that are dependably solid.

In an international survey conducted by Frequent Business Traveler magazine in conjunction with Flyer Talk  business travelers will reportedly be taking to the road more in 2013. Almost 50% of those surveyed expect to be on the road more often than they were two years ago, while more than one-third anticipate more trips in 2013 than in 2012.

Get the full report at Pegasus (PDF 3.7 MB)

Technology advancement for hotels’ reservations and MICE.

Competition demands technology advancement for hotels’ MICE.

During the years, technology has transformed the meeting planning process. Now leading hoteliers are started developing and introducing proprietary applications to take brand advantages in the highly competitive market.

Inter Continental Group (IHG ) Takes Meetings Online with Passkey’s GroupMAX™ Technology

 Innovative hotel booking tool provides meeting planners and attendees a seamless experience with less work, less worry and less risk.

IHG (InterContinental Hotels Group) has launched a new meetings and events booking tool across 23 of its Australian and New Zealand properties, giving meeting attendees a seamless way to book their hotel rooms and planners a more efficient process to work with IHG hotels.

The industry-leading GroupMAX reservations technology, developed by USA-based Passkey, allows hotels, event planners and attendees to fully automate their group reservations process – offering more convenience, greater economic value and a more streamlined meetings process for all parties.

Hosted entirely online, GroupMAX is designed for use by any standard web browser or smartphone. It is also equipped to handle various unique business needs including multiple types of events and attendees, as well as a wide range of booking methods, payment types, languages and currencies.

Online Hotel Booking:

 Attendees can now use web and mobile hotel reservations service, and will be able to enjoy a wide range of accommodation and amenity options, with exclusive offers negotiated specifically for the event. Hotel availability and rates are displayed online, helping to encourage more attendees to book within the block, and availability can also be embedded across various social networks.

Live Event Tracking:

 Meeting organizers can optimize their room block contracts with a set of online tools including live tracking, accurate reporting and  “smart alerts” for attendees.The real-time tracking helps meeting planners better mitigate financial risks.

Automated Room Lists:

 MICE organizers will appreciate all attendee data contained in GroupMAX’s room list tool is PCI (Payment Card Industry)secure – eliminating the risk associated with transferring private financial detail across email. The automated room list tool also enables planners to self-manage any amendments to the.

Increased Pick-up:

GroupMAX enables forward-thinking planners to deploy automated email reminders to attendees, thus gaining traction over control of a room block. This pre-emptive tool can detect poor pick-up against historical pace, helping to keep the planner better informed, and potentially negating the need for post event audits.

Professional Email Marketing:

The 23 participating IHG hotels are able to leverage GroupMAX’s integrated email marketing platform to create new service opportunities which can be communicated to attendees prior to arrival, during the event/conference and after they have departed. The new service opportunities include accommodation upgrades and special food and beverage offers.

IHG is now a key user of Passkey in Asia-Pacific utilizing Passkey’s GroupMAX tool.

Omni Hotels & Resorts :

 Unveiled an iPad-based mobile app that helps meeting planners keep track of a barrage of data and manage their events on-site in one of Omni's flagship meeting properties.

Developed in consultation with an advisory board of top meeting planners from across the country, the new app—created in partnership with tech provider eMarketing360—replaces the age-old, three-ring binder planners carried during meetings with a high-tech alternative. But it also delivers more comprehensive and customized information than the usual hotel platform.

Analyze at the the tabs at the end of the day:

Automatically uploaded food-and-beverage bills at the end of each day that allow planners to review and approve charges as accurate each evening.

The new app also allows planners to more easily control the temperature in meeting rooms or manage audio-visual equipment by easily sending a message to the engineering or A/V department.

The new app is now live in Omni properties in Dallas, Ft. Worth, Texas, and Amelia Island, Florida. It is being rolled out to several other major meeting hotels in markets such as San Diego and Atlanta.

Pullman hotels (Accor group)’s iPlan.

Pullman Hotels & Resorts, Accor's brand of upscale global hotels, rolling out a similar iPad-based meeting planner app called iPlan, based on technology from MeetingMatrix.

 The new app has already been used more than 14,000 times by meeting planners all over the world.The benefit is that it allows gathering and managing information more easily and quickly.

Pullman is extending the app to its major meeting properties in Barcelona, Paris, Germany, India and in the Asia-Pacific.

Destination Hotels & Resorts’ RFP route

Operates meeting hotels, resorts and conference centers, Destination Hotels & Resorts has targeted the RFP process as a fundamental way to engage and build relationships with meeting planners.The company has worked with Elite Meetings to customize its SpeedRFP tool to make the process more efficient for planners and more effective for sales managers at the company's 40 U.S. properties.

 Boca Raton Resort & Club, a Waldorf-Astoria Resort‘s virtual site visit :

Florida’s  one of the U S A's premier meeting properties, has developed a state-of-the-art, gyroscopically-based app dubbed Boca Meet 360 that provides planners with a detailed tour of the resort while also luring them into a social media-based relationship.

Available for iPhones, iPads and Android devices, Boca Meet 360° includes a live Facebook feed and LinkedIn group feature that empowers the hotel to better engage and develop communication with existing and prospective customers.

Top 5 mobile apps:

1. Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin

2- Omni Hotels

3- Choice Hotels

4- HotelsByMe 

5- Starwood's SPG