[denny (member)]

Originally Posted by Torquay

HI, new member here from guest house in Torquay. I have a couple of questions concerning advertising - can anyone tell me if they use the "iknow" websites for advertising, such as "iknowdevon" "iknowyorkshire". They promise a certain number of enquiries depending on what package you are on but how can they make promises like that. I have signed up with them and have had a few enquiries but no conversions. This also links to my second question, what is the opinion of everyone when an enquiry comes in, should you reply by email or ring them up to give a quote, I dont come from a sales background and find the second option daunting! But if experienced guest house owners get more success then will seriously consider this. Any sales lingo would be greatly appreciated.

We have been trading in the B&B for 23 years now, and find reccomendations are the best advert going, but to answer your question, if an enquiry comes in by email, I answer by email, with web site address, phone number etc; if they need any other information, they can then contact us, or check out the web site.
The site Iknow, has not generated any bookings for us, you could try some web site's that advertise for free for maybe first 3 to 6 months, then pull out after this time if you have not had any bookings with them. The only draw back is that they tend to phone, and waffle on about what they can do for you if you pay for a bronze, etc. I say our expediture is allocated now for this years advirtising.
We have gone with Eviivo this year, not keen on there charges, we cannot add much onto our prices because of this, we have had some bookings with them, but do loose out with the charges made for the online bookings,. So block out dates when we know we are busy, and only take 2 nights min at weekends. Good luck.8-[

[Der Alte Fritz]

There is an easy test for Eviivo to see if it is for you. Take your existing turnover, divide it by 2 (for 50% of bookings coming in as online as opposed to telephone) and then times it by 6% to get the commission charge. This is the cost of the system on your sales before they add anything.

So for a 6 bedroom property (with about £12k turnover per room being normal) it would have a turnover of £72,000 and online bookings through its own website of £36k which means commission of £2,100 a year. That is before any agent commission or sales are added in.

Now go out into the marketplace and see what £2k buys you. And you will find that you can afford a Hotel grade PMS and online booking system like Hotel Perfect or HotelLinx or a smaller system such as iBex which gives you PMS, online booking and channel management (ie selling through agents) for more or less the same money.

So Eviivo is convenient and easy to set up and use and may link you into your local Tourist Information Centre but with a little effort you can get the same or better results by other means.

We found that Eviivo added about 10% of sales but that was mainly because we switched from telephone bookings to online bookings. We signed up to all the agents (about 60) but only got bookings through 10 of them the best being Book Direct Rooms (Eviivos own site) which accounted for 50% of the bookings. All these agents and their high commissions only grew our sales by less than 5%.

So for us the agents did not really contribute anything much and Eviivo is rather expensive as just an online booking engine and PMS system.

[Need To Get Away]

Hi,

We, my partner and I owned a hotel in Blackpool before deciding with my IT experience to develop a number of IT based solutions given the cost of advertising in the industry. We welcome your feedback if you don't mind.
To give my 2p worth, unless you are a small, well established business in a non competitive corner of the world, you have to consider very seriously about advertising online....and I mean to do it.
When we had the hotel, we had great success with Booking.com, however they were too expensive to use for the long term. I then started to optimise our own business website and installed an online booking system on our own website. This reduced other agency fee's approx 30-40%. I would say that our door knocking bookings would be no more than 1% of our total, and that's being generous.

Points I would recommend to those new in the industry or new to IT based selling;

1. At a bare minimum, you should consider having the ability to book online your own website. Either have a system installed on your current site at cost, or use a commission based model. We charge 1%, Eviivo charge 6%.
2. Be very particular who you advertise with if it costs you money. There is no point paying for sites that don't get scene.
3. Pay for a good quality website and good photo’s. Check our old hotel site as an example (www.windsorhotel.co.uk ) & our friends (www.theoldcoachhouse.co.uk) I cannot stress enough the photo’s, but don’t oversell a picture, if it’s actually a building in a current state of construction.
4. Have an email address with a proper domain, ie. Not Yahoo or MSN based email addresses. This isn’t vital but it’s all about providing the correct image and it doesn’t cost any more to have a info@yourhotel.co.uk if you already have the website.

[Elaine Stubbs]

I think that the 'I Know' site is rubbish. I signed up with them in September and have only had about 8 enquiries and none have led to a booking. I think they have a team just sending random emails to all their advertisers so that it looks as if they are generating enquiries.

Eviivo however has been really good for me. Their commission works out about 6% but at least you have all the money up front and I do get plenty of bookings through them.

[greenbarncottages]

Originally Posted by Elaine Stubbs

I think they have a team just sending random emails to all their advertisers so that it looks as if they are generating enquiries.

Interesting notion Elaine. I had my suspicions - lots of email enquiries for dates already booked, other email enquiries that didn't convert - but we've had some bookings via Iknow and I'm a trusting soul. Silly me! Had an interesting chat with a nearby rental owner who had the same story to tell......... Coincidence? :-k

[Der Alte Fritz]

At the end of the day, the only criteria you can use for success is 'does it bring me in business?' If you get lots of enquiries but no business, all it has done is waste your time, so dump them on renewal and claim any refund you can get.

[Monobry]

Originally Posted by Need To Get Away

Hi,

We, my partner and I owned a hotel in Blackpool before deciding with my IT experience to develop a number of IT based solutions given the cost of advertising in the industry. We welcome your feedback if you don't mind.
To give my 2p worth, unless you are a small, well established business in a non competitive corner of the world, you have to consider very seriously about advertising online....and I mean to do it.
When we had the hotel, we had great success with Booking.com, however they were too expensive to use for the long term. I then started to optimise our own business website and installed an online booking system on our own website. This reduced other agency fee's approx 30-40%. I would say that our door knocking bookings would be no more than 1% of our total, and that's being generous.

Points I would recommend to those new in the industry or new to IT based selling;

1. At a bare minimum, you should consider having the ability to book online your own website. Either have a system installed on your current site at cost, or use a commission based model. We charge 1%, Eviivo charge 6%.
2. Be very particular who you advertise with if it costs you money. There is no point paying for sites that don't get scene.
3. Pay for a good quality website and good photo’s. Check our old hotel site as an example (www.windsorhotel.co.uk ) & our friends (www.theoldcoachhouse.co.uk) I cannot stress enough the photo’s, but don’t oversell a picture, if it’s actually a building in a current state of construction.
4. Have an email address with a proper domain, ie. Not Yahoo or MSN based email addresses. This isn’t vital but it’s all about providing the correct image and it doesn’t cost any more to have a info@yourhotel.co.uk if you already have the website.

Absolutely Correct, I have perused around 500 websites for guest houses and B & Bs in england over the past few weeks and I can tell you that there are a lot of really terrible websites out there. People tend to under estimate the importance of paying good money for a website. Ultimately a website is how people form there first impression of your establishment. As a designer I would suggest a budget of at least 500 pounds, but thats just my opinion.

If you are computer literate you can actually make yourself a decent website with a "sitebuilder" from a decent host. But to really do things properly you should pay a professional developer. A good way to find one is to find a few sites you like the look of and there is usually a link to the developers website at the bottom of the main page. Contact them and ask them for a quote.

Pictures are also important, I suggest paying a professional to do it.

And about the booking systems, yes i would say it is important to have one on your website. Remember to fill the site with useful info about things to do in the local area.

If anyone needs some advice about website design, marketing or search engine optimisation (publicising your website) I'm happy to answer.