Tablet Time For Hotels

Gosh! Here’s some food for thought from HotelInteractive! and Mr. Larry Mogelonsky – CHA

In case you haven’t noticed, there’s this great new piece of technology gaining massive acceptance, generically called the Tablet PC.  Your guests will be arriving with them.  Your competitors will be finding ways to use them.  So what are you doing about it?

If you’re not convinced this new technology is important, consider this: Apple, the world’s leading tablet computer manufacturer, shipped over 14 million iPads in Q1 2012 alone, nearly quadruple the amount of laptops (MacBooks) they sold in the same period.  On an industry scale, sales of tablets are up about 300% year-over-year, while sales of notebook PCs have basically plateaued.  This adoption rate is faster than just about any new technology to hit the marketplace in recent history, including the DVD player, PC, or smart phone.

The first question to ask yourself is whether or not your hotel is tablet friendly.  Have you checked your website on a tablet to see how it looks?  Can customers book from a tablet as easily as they can on a computer?  Most tablets will only have two plugs – one to connect to a computer or power source and another for headphones.  Without an Ethernet port, you better have WiFi available for your tablet guests and ideally, at no additional cost.  Excuse the pun, but hardwired Internet just doesn’t cut it anymore.

Once a guest arrives, there are many other interactions where tablets can make a strong impression.  Rather than having your concierge show someone a paper brochure for an amenity or activity, why not present it to them on a tablet?  It will impress your guests and allow you to show them a variety of material without interruption; introducing and enticing them to use more of your services.

At your restaurant, try showcasing your wine list with an app for users to browse by type, price and vintage.  You’ll save big on reprints.  Many wine list apps today can integrate with your inventory to only show those that are presently available, as well as ideal food pairings.  You might even consider using tablets to replace the paper menu all together!

At check-in, consider having a tablet available so that your front desk staff can use them to up-sell rooms.  It is easy to create simple presentations on features and benefits in a quick slideshow of illustrious photography.

What about behind the scenes?  Think about how your staff members can keep track of guest requirements.  Integrating a tablet app with your property PMS can go a long way to help reduce the waste associated with daily room printouts as well as speed up internal communication.  Applications such as the dashboard system I have developed, Inn at a Glance, are designed to work seamlessly in a tablet configuration for this purpose.

These are just some of the ways that tablets can integrate into your hotel’s operation.  Mind you, it’s not an overnight adjustment because there is the fixed cost of purchasing each unit and there are some security issues (never mind that you might have to install WiFi throughout your hotel).  However, with their exponential adoption rate, you’ll need to be tablet-compatible and tablet-chic if you want to attract the younger tech-savvy crowd. 


Best get with the program before it’s too late!
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7 Deadly Sins Of Marketing

The Seven Deadly Sins of Hotel Marketing
That’s right. Don’t be a sinner, be a marketing winner. This is the perfect marketing crib sheet.
The picture above gives you seven more!!

by Mr. Larry Mogelonsky – CHA from HotelInteractive
   
“If you have not done this already, it’s time for you to start thinking of how you are going to make this year different. Based on more than 30 years’ experience helping various hotels around the world with their strategic planning needs, I believe that marketing is still an area for vast budgetary improvements. Here is my version of the ‘Seven Deadly Sins’ as a quick message for what to do and what to avoid during this sometimes turbulent process.

Pride:

Do not ask the director of marketing to produce a multi-tabbed, hundred-page marketing manuscript.  Rather, call for a document that is a useful working tool for the business. Define appropriate strategies for each segment of the marketplace, and once these are set, adhere to them for the entire year, modifying tactics as necessary and readdressing only if dire circumstances intervene.

Sloth:
Make sure your team does their homework and reviews what worked and what did not work the previous year. Ask the question: how can we learn from my mistakes and not repeat them ever again? Strategically plan advertising purchases, do not aim to just buy remnants, or “one-off” media on deep discount. Rather, work hard and strive to build a direct relationship with the audience based on generating frequency with a selected publication.

Wrath:

Don’t overanalyze everything that’s done in the marketing department. Look at campaigns instead of individual ads or events. Listen and reflect rather than acting impulsively from a reactionary standpoint.

Greed:

Don’t increase rates without justification. Your guests will know when greed has set in, and they won’t be impressed. On the flipside, don’t aggressively increase occupancy targets without prudent rationale. And above all, don’t illogically increase BOTH rate and occupancy while at the same time reducing marketing funds.

Envy:

Social media is here to stay. Don’t just pay lip service to social marketing, but embrace the concept by responding to customers and enhancing your relationships. There are so many ways to stand out and make an exceptional impact via these online channels. Be original in your thinking and not just a copycat of other similar properties.

Lust:

Once a budget is set, don’t create a “stretch budget” without rewarding the team that delivered that base budget plan. Unless there are extenuating circumstances, stick to the document you have and don’t overzealously fine-tune it while stalling execution. Focus on diligently marketing your property, directing your lust not at the budget itself, but at your property’s exceptional aspects and its quality of guest service.

Gluttony: Refocus on your own website, your own supporters (travel agents, Facebook fans, etc.) and the strength of your own franchise.”

 
 
 
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Managing Through Social Media

I enjoyed this one from Mr. Larry Mogelonsky – CHA, on HotelInteractive for you hoteliers out there!

“Here’s a marketing creed that was scribed into textbooks well over 30 years ago, back when I was an MBA student: People connect with other people, and not necessarily with businesses.  For a long time, this wasn’t exactly feasible.  Even in the hospitality world where personality is king, managers meeting customers on a one-to-one basis wasn’t always in the cards.

Nowadays though, sites like Twitter and LinkedIn are paving the way for a resurgence of quality communication from management directly down to the consumer.  But look closely at this practice: nothing has really changed.  Even with the leaps and bounds of electronic messaging systems, people still crave that personal touch.

Hence the title.  Whenever, or wherever, you can get your guests to ‘meet the managers,’ you’re not only giving your hotel a real face, but drastically enhancing client retention.  With this in mind, social media presents both a challenge and opportunity to accomplish this task.

The challenge is that managers have to commit themselves to a role in the public eye, albeit even when reluctant.  People are the new brand; no longer just the hotel logo and top brass.  What managers say on their personal online accounts is now intrinsically linked to their respective properties, whether for good or for bad.  Luckily, many have already found the opportunity within this trend, harnessing these new channels to build stronger personal connections and grow their businesses.

Obvious from the introduction, embracing social media is imperative for this process, but a first step should always involve a trip to HR to see whose job descriptions might curtail social media responsibilities.  From there the answer is in the specifics, so let’s go through a few choice techniques I’ve seen work in recent years.

When it comes to LinkedIn, every manager should have an account and join your company group.  Although the site is chiefly for professional networking, it will open your staff to a worldwide forum for business ideas, emerging trends and potential partnerships.

Twitter offers a host of options for building these bridges.  For your generic company account, only one or two people should be tasked with posting material, giving them space to add some zest and initialize direct messages.  Next, talk to your managers about their own profiles and how they would use the site to converse with guests.  The idea here is to form person-to-person connections; something much harder to accomplish when a guest converses with a faceless corporate account.

The prospects are good for Facebook, too.  You can easily design a tab to introduce each manager (with a picture) or even build a custom fan page for each department and link them all to the main page.  Managers should also be active participants on the wall, commenting on what fans are saying as well as providing original insights.

Blogging is the fourth big one here.  Most blog content management systems allow you to designate regular columns authored by specific staff members.  You’d be surprised how far the phrase ‘By XX Manager’ goes when at the end of an entry.  Or, you could even run a ‘Manager of the Month’ editorial to highlight your team’s characters and fun stories.

The online possibilities are aplenty; even including video which I did not previously discuss.  But to me, however, they are just a launch pad.  You still have to find ways to squeeze in some face-to-face time for maximal efficacy.

To start, personalized greeting letters should be in every room; the power of a handwritten note working its charm.  Seeing managers in the lobby welcoming guests is another powerful statement, especially when it comes to a VIP arrival or a group coordinator.  A sharp uniform can exacerbate their presence, too.  Beyond that, you have to get creative.

Look to what your hotel offers and to where staff might interact with customers.  If you run a golf resort, how about a tournament where guests are paired with managers?  Perhaps a manager could greet and eat with patrons at the lobby bar.  How about a follow-up phone call after a guest has left?  Not only are these personal, but they’re great avenues for constructive feedback.

So, what I suggest is you sit down with your fellow managers and discuss your strategy for heightening interactions with guests; both online and face-to-face in a winning combination.  Have a plan and stick to it.  Sure, it’s a lot of effort, but the rewards are definitely worth it.”

Good advice in my opinion!

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Pinterest For Hotels

 
Mr. Larry Mogelonsky – CHA on HotelInteractive has this to say about Pinterest for hotels. You can find me on Pinterest at richardchanters. I use the site to post photos of Victoria Falls, the lodge, Zambia, wildlife, family and then random stuff that gets my attention. I love it! Anyway here’s the piece:
Late last year, I was made aware of one of the newest and most interesting social media sites – Pinterest – and I was far from alone in this regard.  Pinterest now holds the record for crossing the coveted 10-million-unique-visitors-per-month statistic, completed in November 2011, the fastest stand-alone website to do so in the history of the Internet.  In fact, Mashable.com recently cited Pinterest as the third most popular social network in the United States, right behind the family names of Facebook and Twitter with 104 million users.

With all this fever, Pinterest is next to impossible for hotels to ignore.  But, as always with social media, will an investment of time and money into this new website actually bear fruit?  Or, will it be yet another cantankerous divergence of much needed human resources?

Set to a clean, minimalist design, Pinterest is a type of online scrapbook where members can ‘Pin’ visual media to their profiles, organized under a series of ‘Pinboards’.  From there, it works much like Facebook and Twitter whereby you can follow other users and their Pins will appear in your newsfeed, leaving room for you to like, comment or ‘Repin’.  Easy to grasp, Pinterest works almost as a system of anonymous recommendations, helping you find and share ideas based on common preferences.  As well, members can utilize the ‘Tastemakers’ page when browsing for more relevant Pins or Pinboards. Pinterest integrates with Facebook and Twitter via a seamless notification system and a mobile version is already available.

So, how can hotels use Pinterest?  Due to its photo-centric design, this social network can act as a valuable tool to increase inbound traffic to your website or Facebook page.  All pictures shared on Pinterest contain a click-through link back to the source – all the more reason to upkeep your website with high quality photography.  Guestsourcing is also a possibility, allowing you to Repin material from other sources to your Pinboards.  Think of it as ‘curb appeal’ for your property.  You give users of the site a sneak peak of what’s in store for when they visit your website, and hopefully, for when they arrive onsite.

For starters, the website is not a place to advertise your brand, but rather to express a certain lifestyle by posting interesting photos, offering suggestions to other members and, as always, engaging your audience through comments, likes and Repins.  The modus operandi of Pinterest is that content drives conversation.  You need to have good and current visual content to get people to notice you and drive traffic to an external website of your choosing.

But the difficulty is that this has to occur on a continual basis in order to achieve a desirable efficacy.  Suppose you’ve chosen to use Pinterest to highlight three unique aspects of your hotel (that is, via three different Pinboards) including Cuisine, Décor and Weddings.  Not only does this mean more work for your PR Department (or for whoever manages your social media), but also for the other departments who generate the content.  It takes time and consistency to add real value to your profile.  This will require your chef, weddings specialists and other managers to work in tandem with your web gurus to produce the necessary photography or videos for Pinterest as well as write their external host pages, rich keyword descriptions and links between your main site and other networks.

In short, the time adds up, especially when compounded by all the other social media which may be deemed as requirements for business these days.  Due to Pinterest’s visual nature, it requires a full effort, both in terms of strategizing how you will distinguish your brand through various Pinboards and in upkeep.  In addition to all this, the lack of direct analytics makes it difficult to measure results over a brief period.  Moreover, there hasn’t been any significant evidence to suggest that the heightened brand awareness from Pinterest has any immediate correlation with increased activity on booking engines.

These negatives aside, Pinterest can be a winner for you if your property has a distinctive character already in place and the photography to boot.  So, take a minute and think in terms of furnishings, crafts, architecture, weddings, spas, food, golf, gardening and other popular hobby topics.  If you can add to the conversation in any one of these areas on a continual basis, then perhaps Pinterest is worth your time.  But it nonetheless requires a significant investment and if you treat it as a blanket marketing solution, then your efforts will be in vain.

 
 
 

Mr. Larry Mogelonsky – CHA on HotelInteractive has this to say about Pinterest for hotels. You can find me on Pinterest at richardchanters. I use the site to post photos of Victoria Falls, the lodge, Zambia, wildlife, family and then random stuff that gets my attention. I love it! Anyway here’s the piece:
Late last year, I was made aware of one of the newest and most interesting social media sites – Pinterest – and I was far from alone in this regard.  Pinterest now holds the record for crossing the coveted 10-million-unique-visitors-per-month statistic, completed in November 2011, the fastest stand-alone website to do so in the history of the Internet.  In fact, Mashable.com recently cited Pinterest as the third most popular social network in the United States, right behind the family names of Facebook and Twitter with 104 million users.

With all this fever, Pinterest is next to impossible for hotels to ignore.  But, as always with social media, will an investment of time and money into this new website actually bear fruit?  Or, will it be yet another cantankerous divergence of much needed human resources?

Set to a clean, minimalist design, Pinterest is a type of online scrapbook where members can ‘Pin’ visual media to their profiles, organized under a series of ‘Pinboards’.  From there, it works much like Facebook and Twitter whereby you can follow other users and their Pins will appear in your newsfeed, leaving room for you to like, comment or ‘Repin’.  Easy to grasp, Pinterest works almost as a system of anonymous recommendations, helping you find and share ideas based on common preferences.  As well, members can utilize the ‘Tastemakers’ page when browsing for more relevant Pins or Pinboards. Pinterest integrates with Facebook and Twitter via a seamless notification system and a mobile version is already available.

So, how can hotels use Pinterest?  Due to its photo-centric design, this social network can act as a valuable tool to increase inbound traffic to your website or Facebook page.  All pictures shared on Pinterest contain a click-through link back to the source – all the more reason to upkeep your website with high quality photography.  Guestsourcing is also a possibility, allowing you to Repin material from other sources to your Pinboards.  Think of it as ‘curb appeal’ for your property.  You give users of the site a sneak peak of what’s in store for when they visit your website, and hopefully, for when they arrive onsite.

For starters, the website is not a place to advertise your brand, but rather to express a certain lifestyle by posting interesting photos, offering suggestions to other members and, as always, engaging your audience through comments, likes and Repins.  The modus operandi of Pinterest is that content drives conversation.  You need to have good and current visual content to get people to notice you and drive traffic to an external website of your choosing.

But the difficulty is that this has to occur on a continual basis in order to achieve a desirable efficacy.  Suppose you’ve chosen to use Pinterest to highlight three unique aspects of your hotel (that is, via three different Pinboards) including Cuisine, Décor and Weddings.  Not only does this mean more work for your PR Department (or for whoever manages your social media), but also for the other departments who generate the content.  It takes time and consistency to add real value to your profile.  This will require your chef, weddings specialists and other managers to work in tandem with your web gurus to produce the necessary photography or videos for Pinterest as well as write their external host pages, rich keyword descriptions and links between your main site and other networks.

In short, the time adds up, especially when compounded by all the other social media which may be deemed as requirements for business these days.  Due to Pinterest’s visual nature, it requires a full effort, both in terms of strategizing how you will distinguish your brand through various Pinboards and in upkeep.  In addition to all this, the lack of direct analytics makes it difficult to measure results over a brief period.  Moreover, there hasn’t been any significant evidence to suggest that the heightened brand awareness from Pinterest has any immediate correlation with increased activity on booking engines.

These negatives aside, Pinterest can be a winner for you if your property has a distinctive character already in place and the photography to boot.  So, take a minute and think in terms of furnishings, crafts, architecture, weddings, spas, food, golf, gardening and other popular hobby topics.  If you can add to the conversation in any one of these areas on a continual basis, then perhaps Pinterest is worth your time.  But it nonetheless requires a significant investment and if you treat it as a blanket marketing solution, then your efforts will be in vain.

 
 
 
 
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Wimdu

Heard of Wimdu? If you’re in the hospitality business it’s probably important that you know about them, so here you are!

Wimdu was started with a small international team in March 2011, but has quickly grown into a tightly-knit group of 350 dedicated employees worldwide. Still growing rapidly, Wimdu is an online platform with a wide range of private accommodation that stretches as far as your imagination is willing to take you. Whether it’s a room in a Berlin shared apartment or a New York designer flat, Wimdu’s range of over 50,000 properties in more than 100 countries ensures that everybody can find exactly what they’re looking for: exciting accommodation in fantastic places, and it’s cheaper than a hotel!

They say they connect guests and hosts all over the world, inspiring unique encounters that allow you to discover a new way of traveling, staying true to their slogan ‘Travel like a local’. But not only that. Wimdu also lets you rent out your own place and make money as you help others explore the world!

Wimdu was founded by Arne Bleckwenn and Hinrich Dreiling, two close friends who met each other at university and had successfully founded two companies together before establishing Wimdu. The two passionate backpackers came up with the idea behind Wimdu on a year long trip around the world. Bored of the monotony of hotel rooms and the increasing austerity of hostels, they started staying more and more often in small rooms offered by locals: living with them, getting insider tips and spending evenings getting to know them. Motivated by their experiences and an internationally spreading interest in personalized rentals, they decided to start a company that would combine technical know-how with passion for travelling and a closer attention to the individual needs of its users, all rooted in the unique flavour of Berlin.

The result of this is Wimdu, a diverse team of highly-qualified and enthusiastic people all aiming to turn private, home-grown rentals into an easy to use global norm. They say they want to change the way people travel into something more real and personal, to help them ‘travel like a local’, as their slogan suggests. Their large team of over 350 people is located not only in their Berlin headquarters, but is spread out in many locations all over the world.

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The Milli Jam Ingredient!

Because of understandable family commitments on Christmas Day it wasn’t possible to bring an outside guest on to the Chanters Lodge Experience on Sunday night for our last show of 2011, so we turned the tables on Milli Jam (above) and put him on as our guest! So, for one week only the show was ‘The Chanters Lodge Experience with the George Soulchild Ingredient featuring Richard!’ ‘The Experience’ is our weekly radio programme airing every Sunday from 20.30 hrs for an hour on Zambezi 107.7 fm, Livingstone’s leading local radio station. The show, a great mixture of music and chat, is popular locally, partly because we give away a prize every week to the first listener to text us telling us who’s singing our ‘oldie of the week’! On this particular show the prize was a dinner for four, two more than usual – because it was Christmas Day, and also because no-one had won the week before. The track was Brandy’s ‘Piano Man’ and the winner was Keilher from Maramba! Great stuff!
“So, why are you called Milli Jam and what’s your real name?” George wanted to know at the top of the show. Milli Jam explained that his real name is Milimo Jack Mudaala. ‘Milli Jam’ was created from the ‘Mili’ of Milimo the ‘Ja’ of Jack and the ‘M’ of Mudaala. “Ah!” We said! “Are you married?” We wanted to know. “Very, very married!” Came the reply with what we felt was undue emphasis on ‘very’! Milli Jam went on to tell listeners that he has 7 children altogether. He’d lived in Livingstone since 1985 and had worked at 107.7 fm since 2006. Although he’d been offered full time employment with the station he’d preferred to remain part time as he was also now a manager again at Fairmount Hotel in Livingstone. “You’ve had a long love/hate affair with that place” I commented and Milimo admitted that his current stint was the third time he’d worked at the Fairmount! “They keep wanting me back!” He explained. “Yes” we said, grinning.

The music on the show was as good as usual. We opened with ‘Cannonball’ by Little Mix – last week’s number one in UK I told listeners, but added that Military Wives with ‘Wherever You Are’ was the new UK Christmas number one as we went on air. Katy Perry’s ‘The One That Got Away’ was next up. George chose ‘Hampa Nawe’ by Manas ft Recho, a new hot Zambian track, back to back with ‘Feeling Feeling’ by Macky 2. We dropped ‘Right Here’ Nicole Scherzinger’s hit coupled with ‘Talk That Talk’ the title track from Rihanna’s latest album. After the oldie of the week we played Rizzle Kicks – ‘Mama Do The Hump’. “It must be a dance” George speculated. “Certainly hope so” I replied!!

Milli Jam told listeners that time had prevented him being able to do many of the activities available to tourists in Livingstone such as the bungee jump, lion encounter and elephant ride. Nothing to do with fear. “Yeah!” Said George, “you’ve only been here since 1985!” Some of us laughed, others didn’t! Milli Jam told listeners how he just loved Arsenal Football Club. His all time favourite player was Ian Wright and his current favourite inevitably Robin van Persie. No surprise there! His favourite music is and has been R&B and hip-hop, and his all time favourite artist is Micheal Jackson – ‘King Of Pop’. Milimo is famous in Livingstone for his great MJ dance routine but admitted that these days he needs about six Savannas before he can ‘get in the mood’.

Milimo told listeners he’d love to have his own business in Livingstone10 years down the line, and on our part we thanked both he and George for their super presentation of our show since 2007 through 2011 and we looked forward to a successful 2012 for Chanters Lodge and Zambezi 107.7 fm.

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Richard Experiences The ‘Experience’!

 
Check the photo above! Yes that’s me on The Chanters Lodge Experience as the guest last Sunday with host Milli Jam over my shoulder! The tables were turned! ‘Why would you guest on your own show’ I hear you ask. Well our scheduled guest had a last minute problem and was unable to appear, so co-hosts Milli Jam and George Kaufela quickly said ‘it’s a long time since we interviewed you Richard, you’ll have to do it!’ For the uninitiated The Experience is our weekly radio show airing every Sunday evening at 20.30 hrs on Zambezi 107.7 fm and is a great mixture of music and chat. Each week we give away a prize of a dinner for two to the first person to text us the answer to a simple question – usually who’s singing our ‘oldie of the week’. This week the answer was James Blunt and the response was fantastic – not always the case.

So, what did they ask me? How long had I been in Zambia? – 32 years. When did I open Chanters Lodge? – 1998. What was I doing before I came to Livingstone? – I was general manager of what is now called Southern Sun Ridgeway Hotel, then just Ridgeway Hotel in Lusaka. How did I get into the hotel industry? – I studied hotel management at Middlesex University for 4 years. What did I do between the time I qualified and the time I came to Zambia? – A lot! Namely, working in various hotels in UK followed by stints in Mombasa Kenya, Mahe Seychelles, Lake Malawi and Jos, Nigeria. I was able to give listeners some insights into the highs and lows of working in the hotel industry across Africa.
 

The music on the show was great, once we’d sorted out one or two technical issues (it was one of those nights I’d say!) The guys opened with ‘World In Our Hands’ a great new track from Taio Cruz back to back with Drake’s smash single ‘Take Care’ recorded with Rihanna. George chose Naeto C’s ‘5 & 6’ – topical as the star is due to perform in Lusaka this Friday night. He coupled this track with Pompi ft Exile and their ‘Chipolopolo Remix’. Milli Jam featured Kelly Rowland’s ‘Work It More’ back to back with Ace Hood featuring Chris Brown with ‘Body To Body’. James Blunt’s ‘You’re Beautiful’ was the ‘oldie of the week’ from which we moved on to Trey Songz hit ‘Top Of The World’ closing with ‘Do Ya Thing’ by Rihanna.

The guys asked me about my ‘history in broadcasting’ and I explained to listeners that my first experience of the media was in Nigeria where I occasionally appeared on state television in interview programmes. During my time in Lusaka we had organized Christmas and Easter entertainment specials featuring the Cool Knights, Lubumbashi Stars, Akim Simukonda etc in conjunction with Field Ruwe, Errol Hickey and late Timmy Mvula. I’d become well known on radio through the Ridgeway Radio Request Show, a very popular Sunday night music show on national radio in 1984/5, which I hosted. We had started the Chanters Lodge Experience on 107.7 fm in 2007.

Asked where I would like to be and what I would like to be doing in 2021 (!), I said I hoped I was still in Livingstone but working rather less, and that my children were all doing well.

The tables were turned indeed!

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Hotels Online

I liked this by Melanie Nayer on 4Hoteliers not surprising, I suppose, considering the amount of time I spend on line! Here’s the piece:

“As more consumers move online, it’s becoming more important for business to maintain trust and respect on social channels. Without face-to-face conversation, your consumer needs to rely strictly on your word. Bottom line: if they don’t trust you, they won’t buy from you. So, how can you ensure you’re building trust through social media platforms like Twitter, Facebook and FourSquare?

I consulted a few hoteliers to get their thoughts:

“We view social media as a powerful channel to build consumer trust and deliver on our brand promise, which is to surprise and delight our guests by providing service that is gracious and sincere,” said Mac Joseph, Social Media Marketing Manager for Mandarin Oriental Hotels, which currently has 8100 followers on their main Twitter page @MO_HOTELS. “We focus on building genuine relationships with consumers on Facebook and Twitter by engaging in two-way dialogue. Through listening first to our audiences, we are able to add value to their experiences with our brand online.”

Joseph told me that Mandarin Oriental recently came across a tweet from a guest at Mandarin Oriental, Barcelona, wanting a guestroom with a bathtub. Joseph said his team connected with the hotel, who were able to move the guest to the desired room type that same day. “Through this open dialogue, the guest and our audiences witnessed first-hand that we are not simply pushing content through our social media channels but also listening, in the hopes of making a difference in the guest experience,” he said.

InterContinental Hotels
, which also has various twitter accounts for individual hotels but one main channel, @InterConHotels, with over 7,200 followers, recently made headlines with their new mobile platform and iPad accessibility in worldwide hotels. The hotel group also uses social platforms to introduce guests to local information before they check in, giving them a sense of environment before they arrive at their destination. “Even though we are interacting with our guests and our friends as a brand, we try to be as human in our interaction as we can,” said Charles Yap, Director, Global Brand Communications for InterContinental Hotels. “This means being conversational with our approach, highlighting some of the fun discoveries our guests have made in their travels, providing local assistance through our InterContinental Concierge teams to those who need it, and taking every opportunity to help should things go wrong.”

As a consumer and industry expert, I’ve found a few things to be beneficial when working with hotels online:

    Constant tweeting and Facebook messages are great ways to promote the hotel and converse with guests, but it’s also a great idea to post testimonials from your clients. These reviews are coming from the guest themselves, and other potential guests will rely on the feedback of their peers before making a purchasing decision, especially when it comes to travel.

    Keeping it personal adds a level of emotion to your conversation. By putting a name with a Twitter account or Facebook post, you’re introducing your guests to other hotel employees, allowing guests to learn a little more about the hotel and destination on a local level.”

The picture? The stunningly beautiful Lake Malawi, I worked there some time back!

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Hotel Trends

Here’s some future hotel trends for you to ponder from the USA via:

msnbc.com

It all left me rather bemused. The photo?  Le Meridien, Picadilly, London – the first hotel in which I ever worked, a long time ago. It was simply Picadilly Hotel in those days and I was a commis chef!

Increasing fees:
Your hotel bill may include some unpleasant surprises. Not just the usual $20-a-day resort and amenity fee, which you pay whether or not you use the tennis courts and pool complex, but how about a required $12 housekeeping surcharge or a fee for storing your luggage in the lobby? Total fees and surcharges collected by U.S. hotels are increasing from $1.7 billion in 2010 to a record $1.8 billion in 2011, according to new research from Bjorn Hanson, dean of New York University’s Preston Robert Tisch Center for Hospitality and Sports Management
Lobbies as social hubs:
Colorful seating, free Internet service and trendy cocktail and coffee bars are helping to turn once-sterile hotel lobbies into social hubs. Hanson says while baby boomers might see the lobby as a place to meet at 6 p.m. sharp before heading to a prearranged restaurant location, younger travelers may prefer to gather more informally in the lobby, hang out for a while, socialize and take their time choosing where they’ll spend the evening. They might check email, go online using a cell phone or iPad to look for dining recommendations, or try whatever snacks or drinks are readily available from the lobby market or bar.
Disappearing tubs:
Unless you’re booking a suite, your next stay in a hotel room may not offer the luxury of a bath. Many newly built hotels are offering showers only. Marriott, for example, is “advising our newly built hotels to put showers in 75 percent of the rooms and bathtubs in 25 percent of the rooms,” according to Marriott spokeswoman Laurie Goldstein. “Our research shows that business travelers prefer showers to baths but families like the flexibility of a bathtub as well as a shower.”

Pump dispensers:
The advent of pump dispensers in hotel bathrooms is good and bad news for those guests obsessed with the tiny bottles of shampoo and individually wrapped soaps that have been a beloved amenity for decades.
The good news: If you need more shampoo than what may be as little as a half-ounce in those small plastic containers, you can pump as much as you want from the dispenser. You can also feel greener if you use the pump. No more adding plastic throwaways to the waste stream.
The bad news: What if you simply love those little bottles? The hand lotion is the perfect size to slip in your purse; and if you have leftover shampoo, the container is small enough to get through airport security. Or what if you find the pump dispensers unappealing?

Checking in electronically:
Who needs to wait in line at the front desk to check in? Some of Starwood’s Aloft hotels are offering “Smart Check-In” to Starwood Preferred Guest program members. Members are sent a keycard with radio-frequency identification technology, and on the day of a planned stay, a text message is sent to the guest’s mobile device with a room number. Upon arrival, the guest proceeds to that room, and the keycard will open the door.

Locavore options:
The locavore and hyperlocal trend that has taken over the food world is fast becoming de rigueur in the hotel industry, particularly at high-end and boutique properties where chefs are growing their own herbs and even hosting their own beehives. The W in San Francisco in September had a local beekeeper, Jack Ip, install hives on a rooftop with a goal of eventually producing honey for use in the hotel menu. In New York City, the Andaz Wall Street hotel in Lower Manhattan sponsors a farmers market May through November in an arcade next to the hotel where produce, bread and other goods are sold by farmers and other vendors. The Andaz also sells fresh-squeezed juices and sandwiches in the market, and customers include hotel guests and neighborhood residents.
 
 
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Hotels In Africa

Here’s an interesting piece by Wendell Roelf that I saw on Reuters concerning the expected expansion of the hotel business in Africa. The picture is InterContinental in Lusaka.

Global hotel chains are poised to spend hundreds of millions of dollars in Africa over the next few years to meet increased demand from both international tourists and the continent’s own fast-emerging middle class. Africa was the only region in the world to show growth in tourism in 2009, according to the World Tourism Organisation. In 2010 international arrivals rose by 6 percent to 49 million, slower than Asia or the Americas but double the growth rate for Europe.

Industry executives say that as consumer spending stalls in developed markets, more multinationals are betting Africa’s growth will eventually translate into meaningful revenue — if they can negotiate the considerable regulatory and infrastructure challenges of doing business there. InterContinental Hotel Group, Accor, Starwood and Rezidor Hotel Group, the group that operates the Radisson Blu chain, are among those looking to capitalise on the continent’s urbanisation and build up its underdeveloped hotel industry.

“In the last 48 months we’ve added 33 hotels — some already opened and others under development — to the African continent,” Andrew McLachlan, Rezidor’s vice-president for business development Africa and Indian Ocean islands, told Reuters in an interview in Cape Town, one of the continent’s tourism hot spots. “If we don’t have any curve balls, we should open another eight hotels in 12 months across five countries,” he said, adding that almost all of developments were being undertaken by local owners.

Among the projects planned was a $40 million Radisson Blu upscale hotel in the Mozambican capital of Maputo and a 120-room 300 million rand ($42 million) lodge in South Africa’s Kruger National Park, expected to open in 2013.

“When looking for growth it’s only natural to look at Africa, (which is) not as badly affected by a slowdown. There is potential for higher growth for hotels here than in traditional markets,” said Martin Jansen van Vuuren, a director at consultancy Grant Thornton Strategic Solutions.

Sub-Saharan Africa’s economies are expected to grow at an average of 5.5 percent in 2011 and just under 6 percent in 2012, according to the IMF. While that’s still short of China’s blistering pace of expansion, it handily outpaces most of the developed world.

“We consider that there are a large number of capital cities in this continent where we either have no representation or insufficient, and if you ask me what my objective is for the next five years, it is to begin to redress that imbalance,” said Michael Cooper, InterContinental’s vice-president development for sub-Saharan Africa.

Encouraged by the economic and political outlook, InterContinental is looking for opportunities in Cape Town, Dar Es Salaam and Addis Ababa as well as Africa’s west coast, Cooper said. IHG is currently building three new luxury InterContinental hotels in Kampala, Luanda and Lagos.

But expansion in the world’s poorest continent does not come easy. Many of the hotel developments come up against the ubiquitous challenges of infrastructure constraints, corruption and regulatory hurdles, which combine to cause higher costs and lengthy delays. In the Angolan capital of Luanda — the world’s most expensive city — Rezidor is expecting to import everything except cement for its flagship Radisson Blu, already delayed for 15 months after local authorities decided to build a road through the site after initial plans were agreed, McLachlan said.

“Sometimes, even when you are a city centre hotel, you’ve got to design your hotel as if it was on an island with your own water purification, sewage plant, and even generate your own electricity.”

Yup! That’s about it!

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