12 Reasons Not to Use Third Party Online Sales Channels, by Disgruntled Hotelier

I received an email from a hotelier yesterday, who has just decided to stop using any online sales channels. He wrote 12 reasons why he was 'sick to the back teeth of them' and asked if I'd like to use them for the blog. I duly obliged, and got to work at once deleting his swear words and typos! Thanks Mr Anonymous, I was going to write about bedding today!

Mr Anonymous calls the sales channels 'CC-OTA's' for Commission Charging Online Travel Agents.

1. If a guest wants to cancel or re-arrange a booking I hate the fact that someone else is dealing with them. I can't rely on another company's customer support to treat my customer right, especially if they're on the other side of the planet. 

2. When a CC-OTA loses any of my potential customers before the final click you can't track them, with Analytics etc. I could be losing 75% of punters just before the last click and wouldn't be any the wiser. I can track that on my own site with Google Analytics easily. 

3. They pushed my price down to the lowest common denominator in my local area. Competing on price alone is for mugs.

4. They take up to 15% of my rate - which can be as much as 80% of my profit in an average month.

5. The way my place looked on their pages was just amateur and I felt it devalued everything we are trying to offer with the business.

6. I often got email/fax confirmations from CC-OTA's up to 30 minutes late, which has often lead to double bookings. 

7. It won't integrate seamlessly with my own online booking system, which leads to lots of messing around and manual time wasting.

8. I have been experimenting with adwords and am fairly confident that if I spent half the money I saved in commission on Ad-words promotion and mail-shots I'd sell more rooms at full prices.

9. Having a third party run my business made me lazy, it made me focus on selling the sausage, not the sizzle!

10. Some customers are starting to see that the 'dynamic' pricing that I had to use with channels was a rip off. They say 'why have you got six different rates?' I don't want my customers to hate me like some low cost airlines.

11. The customers CC-OTA's attract sometimes, are not my kind of customers because they've booked on price alone. They have been known to upset my regular customers.

12. CC-OTA customers tend to spend much less in the bar and restaurant. 

 

Distribution Channels Explained By Gareth Gaston - The MD of Octopus Travel

Get More Guests Through Facebook

My ultimate goal with this blog and the social networks is to build a global community of like-minded B&B owners.

However I'm as guilty as anyone for spending far too long on Facebook, and not always using the time to focus on my goal.

It's easy to get distracted on social networks and not stick to your goals. 

So, (if this is your goal) how can you get more customers through Facebook? Everyone raves that it's a fantastic tool but are the majority of marketeers using it to its full potential? I suspect not.

Here's just one suggestion that I'm confident will gain your B&B more bookings. 

Find as many groups (not pages because you can't contact the creator) as you can that your customer base will regularly see the updates from.

If you have a vegetarian B&B in Cornwall then find the groups relating to travel in Cornwall and vegetarians.

Then send the creator a message similar to the one below. 

Dear ____ ,

Would you please do me a huge favour and give your group members the opportunity of winning a stay in my B&B. It will give added value to your group members and will help us to gain exposure for our B&B, through your large and impressive community. 

I would like to give away a free stay for XXX nights for XXX amount of people. Could you please post the following into your update:

Paul's luxury Veggie B&B in Cornwall is offering a free stay to all XXXXX group members. To win simply answer this question and post the answer on Paul's Facebook page.

What is Paul's Veggie B&B's breakfast speciality? (This is the unique selling point of your B&B - make sure that is the focus of your question).

Is it;

a) 14 inch local veggie sausage

or b) muesli made with local raspberries

To find the answer visit www.paulsveggiebnb.com

I hope you can help, please let me know if I can help you in any way.

Thank you very much indeed etc etc

Ok, so my example is a bit naff but you get the idea. Do this same competition with as many groups as you can that have a large amount of visitors, who could be interested in what you have to offer. The groups will be constantly looking for content so will certainly be up for it.

 Unfortunately you will have to give away a bit of your time and a room, but I promise it will really build awareness if done properly. And if your guests have a good experience then, (because they won the stay) there's a great chance they'll come back.

Is that a more pro-active way to use Facebook? I think so.

Just a thought...