How hotels can regain 1 million dollars in lost revenue superfast!

So we are at the end of this Dubai trip. It was great to meet some clients for digital marketing. The urgency about this trip was how to help hotels get extra revenue that they've lost in this month because of lower revenues.

So they can make up more than.

Make up for it in the next.

Six to nine weeks.

So six to nine weeks is a very short time. So what are the quick things that they could do? So one of the things that was suggested was hotels. What are your three major geographies? So the hotel said, especially this part of Dubai, they said, you know, the Russian market is down, so uk, Germany and Spain. So if it's uk, Germany and Spain, three we actually spoke to guests, requested them, gave them free upgrades, asked them to make videos in their own languages talking about the hotel, talking about the amenities, talking about Dubai, the city. And these short videos are uploaded on their website and then a paid campaign.

Is done which is the German.

The campaign in Germany on Google or Facebook shows only in Germany. The one in UK shows only in UK and one in Spain. The landing page is Spanish respective of that country with the video. So the chances of booking 100% go up by at least 3 to 4x because somebody sees that I'm going to a new country for the first time. But these people are used to handling gas from my country and a lot of people from my country have said that they're happy and they're talking in the same language. So that brings a lot of comfort level. This is what I suggest to hotels across India. In India we have so many languages, you know. Yes, a lot of people speak Hindi, a lot of people speak Punjabi or English. But I'm also comfortable with my mother tongue Marathi, if I had Marathi with my mother tongue or Gujarati or for that matter Konkani or you know, whatever. So now websites like Amazon and all these big sites are thinking of regional languages.

Why not hotels, you know, why not.

Make it more comfortable for the to say, you know, welcome Pranam vanakam or whatever you want to say. Plus with the whole text in video or whatever and the website optimized for that person. It's all about personalization. This whole campaign, this whole video shooting, even if it's done professionally with the landing page and all of that does not cost much. But yes, it's a lot of coordination to make sure that your landing pages are tested back and forth. These are campaigns which can work in six to nine weeks for your hotel. Again, I don't see a lot of people doing this but I think It's a great idea. I just thought I'd share one of the tips that we shared with hotels day before yesterday and now that I'm on my way back to the airport, I thought I should before we get back into the office and get busy with everything else, just wanted to share this tip with you before reaching the airport. We are doing one last meeting and this is again with a client who's almost done everything there is to do in Internet marketing.

Back to the office. It's always great to be back to the office. A lot of running around. I hope you like the video and the questions that we got from our clients in Dubai. We were able to help them with some of the really urgent strategies that they needed and I hope they're going to implement them and go to find success. Now that I come back, I see a lot of questions waiting on my LinkedIn and Facebook pages. So I wanted to address some of them before getting into the day. It's about 9am in the office and I wanted to start my day with the videos by the end of the day, you know, you sort of slow down. If somebody once told me read in one of my favorite books, you know, the smaller concentrated version of the Gita, which, you know, it's a book I like to quote from, it said that during the day your human body is getting energy from the sun, just like the plants, photosynthesis and all of that. That is when you should do the most difficult things, things which require the most energy and your mind and body is needed to make that happen. So start doing a lot of things in the morning. So by 12 o' clock most of your work, important work is done, your important phone calls, your accounts, meetings or whatever and then get into the day. So I thought, you know, I'm going to follow that. So it's 9am And I thought we'd start with the video. So the first question is which digital.

Marketing service best for my hotel business?

Now that's a good question. You know, we actually get that a lot. Which is the best digital marketing strategy that you recommend or which service do you recommend now? You know, what if it was a Facebook or a Google or an Expedia or any of these brands and you go to them and you say what kind of services that you have? They have multiple marketing packages, even TripAdvisor today have multiple business listings, local listings, TripConnect, Xperia has advertising, Google has display advertising, text based advertising. Facebook has in post advertising, advertising on display, targeted. But eventually what you want to do is you have to have a coherent marketing strategy. Now this is where it becomes tough for small business friends of mine. I know a lot of you people are small businesses that are taking off. Travel agency, real estate, whatever business you're in, you're taking off and you don't have that much budget and you want to start somewhere small. So I would say Facebook. I love Facebook. It's easy to start, swipe your credit card, start doing some ads and it allows you to do those ads, see how those ads are working. But eventually you need a startup or a small company which is going to be dedicated to your project, which will help you do those Facebook ads. Once you've understood and you've started seeing that you spent a few thousand dollars or a couple of lakh of rupees and you got 4 or 5x return, you've really understood the power of Internet marketing, then you start doing a little bit of everything. Just doing any one service is not going to help. You cannot say, first I'm going to do my SEO and it's going to build up, then I'm going to do my ppc, then I'm going to do my website, then I'm going to do a mobile strategy. Unfortunately, all of these things have to work in tandem. By the time you might argue the website doesn't have to do anything with all of this, I can first do a great website and then start marketing. You know what, when we do websites or when I suggest my friends and designs to do websites, we always try to test them, test those pages by running a few ads and seeing what people are saying. Just maybe like a Hollywood movie or a very big budget expensive movie before it goes online, it does a bit of testing to see how people are going to respond to the movie. That's when your movie or your website comes up really good. So unfortunately, you will need an agency, you will need people, you will need experienced people. You might be, you can do it in house with a lot of experienced people hanging around all over the Internet ecosystem today. But you need to do all of these together. Your photography, your videos, your Internet marketing. And unfortunately it is a lot of, well, it's common sense, it's a lot of knowledge and it's also a lot of putting things together. So I hope that helps. Just one strategy, one service is not going to help. We have to put all of those things together. But great question by the way. Now the second question is from a friend of ours who says, I know.

My property needs a strong digital marketing strategy and high Revenue generating website that drives direct online booking as an action plan to help my property lessen its dependence on the ota. I realize all of this is dependent on choosing my digital marketing partner wisely.

Now this is a very interesting question. We get it a lot and it's been there in the marketplace for such a long time. How do I get rid of the OTAs? Why would you want to get rid of the OTAs? Listen, the experience of the world, the travelocities or the big companies, the make my trips, the IV boards, every ota, small, big, they give you a lot of business, right? They spend millions of dollars to reach markets where you can't. I've been to hotels, I've been to hotels in the, in the Himalayas. We get business from Japan. Guess what? That 10 room beautiful cottage in the middle of heavenly atmosphere has never been to Japan. How does he get people from Japan? These guys barely step out of the Himalayas. So these people do a lot of advertising and marketing to get your clients. So I don't think that we can ever do without OTAs or we should even plan to have a strategy which is going to be OTA free. I mean, I don't know, I'm a hotelier myself, I would never want a strategy like that. But yes, I have understood the fact that you pay millions of dollars in commission sometimes and those commissions can be negotiated or those commissions can be lessened. But I don't know how many of you are doing a precious, a lot of stuff to make to counter that strategy. So if your cost of acquisition of getting a guest from one time for one time is anywhere from say 15 to 25%, well, you give that, you give 10, 15% to a travel agent, you give way higher, lower rates to higher commission, lower rates to people from groups and travel agencies. Why not get give to the ota? Cost of acquisition of a guest is one time and then your general manager, front office manager, everybody, the whole ecosystem should be geared to maybe attract those people towards your own loyalty program. I know the OTL have the loyalty program, but it's more personalized when the hotel has its own loyalty program which wants the guest to come by. So unless you have an offline strategy to ensure that your guest is coming back to you next time, the guest is again going to find either another hotel or your hotel through any of these OTAs. And book three today, TripAdvisor meta searches like TripAdvisor are also serving as OTAs. So there is a lot of competition out there. The only thing that I Say in the favor of hotels here where they can lessen their commission and have more people coming to them directly during their next trip is to personalize the experience. And why do you have the opportunity to personalize the experience? Well, because they get to spend more time with you, don't they? They're staying in your hotel for at least 24 hours. Well, impress them. Make sure everybody, it's a personalized experience and the guest comes back to you next time. And this strategy will help you save at least 20% in those extra donations that you feel you're giving. But to get rid of OTAs 100%, I don't think you should even aim of doing that. It's going to be a coherent and a mixed strategy with little bit of OTAs, a little bit of direct, more direct bookings. One more thing I like to say is that your website in most cases, I'm sorry to say, but in most cases I don't see websites really ready to get direct traffic. How many of you have done these three things? How many of you track your Google Analytics to see where your customers are exiting from? How many of you are actually looking at bounce rate to see where all and how much is your bounce rate and how you can improve it? How many people are actually investing into videos and pictures and all of that to see if you can improve? Number one, which is my exit and number two, which is my bounce rate. If you are actually doing all of that, you will start getting more direct traffic and you'll be able to counter the third party channels. But if you're not and the other people you know, the third party channels are optimizing their sites and working hard, then guess what, the person who's working hard obviously does deserve more business than what you're getting. So work on it and I'm very sure that you'll be able to save divert direct traffic and be able to save a lot of money. If you're still confused, send a mail to us, send us your case study. Let me have a look at it. I'll be happy to guide you in the right direction. But that's also a very good question. By the way. Thank you for watching one more episode. We started in Dubai, we're finishing the episode here in Delhi back in the office. Thank you very much for watching this episode. Do send in your comments in the comment section below and let me know what questions you would like to ask and have our team address for the next show. We would be waiting for your questions and look forward to helping you through the Askaviyare show. Thank you once again for watching and see you next time. It.