SURPRISE! SURPRISE! The Secret to Repeat Bookings

You have a beautiful B&B, you serve an excellent breakfast, the local attractions wow your guests every time, but it’s not enough… there’s one more thing that I guarantee will make people come back…

“SURPRISE!” Exceed expectations every time by providing things that your guests never expected.

Speak to any good salesman and they will tell you that the secret to making sales is to get people to remember you. Any good sales pitch has elements in it to surprise and excite buyers.  In a competitive market, buyers may see lots of products, but are far more likely to use the one they remember.

As an accommodation provider, what you are in essence is a salesman, selling your product – your B&B. The advantage you have over a traditional salesman, (once you have clients through the door and your sales goal is to get them back) is that they are in your house, in your domain and you have the upper hand.

Here are some suggestions to wow and surprise your guests, which will ultimately lead to more sales of your product (return bookings!) or lead to guests selling on your behalf with recommendations.

If you know your guests' purpose of stay then it becomes easy. Gently find out this information when you put in your customer service call after they have booked online, or whilst they make the booking.

Let’s say the guests are coming on a walking holiday. Print out the local walking routes online and leave them in the room with a note. ‘Dear Mr and Mrs Walkers, thought this may help you choose your routes…’

Perhaps they have a conference in a nearby town. Find out where it’s at and print off directions to the venue.  Have a look in the local paper (or online through voucher sites) and find out if any local restaurants have deals on.  Print them off and put them in a plastic wallet with the directions. Conferences are a stressful and expensive experience and if you can do anything to help their day it will be much appreciated.

Taking this idea one step further why not speak to all local restaurants and tourist attractions and ask them for vouchers for guests, or a special rate if they quote your B&B for a discount.  The restaurants should lap up the recommendations and they could, in tern recommend you.  As a guest when you are in an area you are not familiar with, help like this can be invaluable.

These are the kind of things you can plan and have ready for almost every type of guest but they must have an individual flourish and seem like you did this just for them. After you have wowed them with local knowledge, your local business partnerships and help with their trip’s purpose, then you need to think on your feet.

Have some ice creams in for when it’s hot to give them for free. Some of the top brands can be bought in bulk for very reasonable prices. After a day at a conference if someone hands me an ice cream I’ll love them forever! Make some yummy treats that they may never have tried before, perhaps something that’s native to the area. If it’s really cold (like last winter, remember that? *Shudders*) fill a water bottle and pop it on their bed just in case.  

Ask a local musician/entertainer/poet you may know to pop by and give your guests a quick 10-minute rendition. Now that would be a talking point! 

What do you do to wow your guests? I'd love some suggestions to build up a lovely comment list. The winner of best surprise wins a... surprise gift!

Introduce Online Booking or Die...

MONDAY RANT The Frustrating Search For a Hotel - Why 'Distribution Channels' Have Ruined the Internet

"Just give me a hotel's OFFICIAL website! I don't want 20 lists of prices from 200 different companies!"

While I was trying to watch some heart-breaking post-match analysis last night, I couldn't help but get distracted by the sound of a frustrated girlfriend's squawks. "I bloody hate booking holidays!" She said. "Just find a hotel that you want from the list, copy its name into the search engine and it will bring up the hotel's official website," advised Mr Smug. She did just that and the same thing again. Rows and rows and rows and rows of search results from the big name comparison channels, half of them not even for places in the same area!

Expedia, Last Minute.com Booking.com, Low Cost Hoildays.com Alpha Rooms.com,  We'll-buy-any-car-you-have-even-if-it's-a shed-and-has-no-wheels.com! You name it, every man and their mother's dog wants you to use their website to book a room, apart from the hotel's OFFICIAL site!

I thought of another way; "Try putting the hotel's name in the browser followed by dot com. That might come up with the official site?" It didn't. "I just want to have a proper look at the place before I book" she said, "The pics on these sites don't give me a good look at all. If I can see what the actual hotel site looks like then I can decide if its somewhere I want to stay."

We spent all evening looking for it but we never found the OFFICIAL hotel website on anywhere but the channels.

Fail. 

Frustration is the word here and I'll bet it's the same for everyone trying to book a hotel abroad. The choice is huge but mightily confusing and the channels are just so... off-putting. 

I won't book through a distribution channel because I know that I'm taking money from the hotelier and I don't know if the prices will be higher or not through a third party. Also I fear for my online security. There's just so many of these companies that it makes me feel unsafe. I don't know who has my bank details. Bookings seem to get diverted here there and everywhere and for all I know I might end up paying each one of these companies 25%!

I have no proof of any of this but it's just the way they make me feel. 

How can it be good for the hotel industry, that to get a chance against the other hotels on these lists you have to be cheapest to get to the top, then give away commission to the channel for selling the room? It just doesn't make sense. It's like someone saying, "I'll sell your bike for you but it has to be the cheapest bike in the world and I want 25% for the privilege!

I know the hotels don't give all their rooms to the channels, so take a hit to fill up the hotel, but in the long term it must be self-defeating for the industry. The hotels surely would have a rosier future if they concentrated on building their own sales channels rather than piggy-backing someone else. 

Instead of giving these people a percentage why not spend money on SEO, Google Local, a few blogs about the location. Get their sites translated into three common languages and invest in some translation for adwords in the most common areas where guests are coming from. It really isn't rocket science. 

The sales channels will argue that without their investment into global marketing and selling hotels around the world the hotels' simply wouldn't be able to reach into previously untapped markets like the channels do. Maybe this is the case for some areas but I disagree that Spanish hotels can't successfully sell themselves to the English without a big name piggyback.

It's about investment v the quick buck and while sales channels offer hoteliers quick sales on rooms, they don't offer a sustainable future of profit and growth. 

So i call on you hoteliers, please stop feeding these multi-million pound monopolizing monsters and invest in selling your own hotel. Without you feeding their bank accounts with your hard work they wouldn't be ruining the online sales environment and then I might get a bit of peace, to watch some seriously awful football.