Most problems are relative to property management and issues arising from essentially what is a lack of professional property management policy and/or implemented house rules that set the standard of conduct relative to that property. I respect a lot of holiday home owners don’t want to be property managers but ultimately find themselves as owners of the property having to deal with and resolve short term tenancy issues.

As an owner of several holiday homes i don’t get involved in property management issues anymore and that’s because as i have a property manager in each region with a specific set of house rules to hand out to each person upon check in, these are also laminated on the wall in each significant entertaining area to ensure even visiting guests cannot escape from reading them.

Click here for an unedited version of my house rules that have proven to work! I suggest any home owners looking for inspiration about what needs to be written and included in their house rules reads the PDF.

Here are my top reasons you should give free Wi-Fi at your hospitality or tourism business;

• A recent survey by Hotels.com reported that free Wi-Fi is a must when choosing a hotel room and that it is now the primary in-room and hotel perk that they will base their decision around.
• 31% of those surveyed by hotels.com said they expect free Wi-Fi in a hotel now.
• People are more likely to mention and talk about your business on social media if they are given the opportunity to connect easily with free Wi-Fi.
• You’ll encourage roaming sales people to use your cafe or bar for meetings with people that live locally and will probably come back.
• Everybody knows how inexpensive internet is, by charging your customers; they know it’s just another way for you to make more money on top of their coffee.
• It can encourage people to stay in your cafe or restaurant for longer & spend more money.
• If you don’t, you’ll be put to shame by the Canyons Resort in Utah in the US, who have managed to offer free Wi-Fi from Canyon to Canyon covering its entire hotel, meeting space and ski fields!
• You’ll also be behind this little town in rural Otago that offers free Wi-Fi throughout the whole main street. (It works; I used to drive straight through!)
• By adding a landing page you’ll encourage more people to Like your brand on Facebook, Follow you on Twitter or check-in on FourSquare.
• The technology to set up a secure free Wi-Fi spot is now very affordable & the ongoing costs minimal.
• You’ll actively encourage new customers.
• If they can run to the cost of offering free Wi-Fi on buses and planes, why can’t you?
• You stop the complaints from people who expect it.
• Giving something for free will make you feel good inside.
• Most importantly, because your clients wants it!

If you oversee the website of an RTO or DMO why not try adding ‘places you can access free Wi-Fi’ to your home page. It will be great for your visitors and a compelling incentive for your operators to start offering it!

Do you offer free Wi-Fi at your business? Do you plan to during 2012?
Do you run a travel site? Do you let people filter by properties that offer free Wi-Fi?
Do you look for places with free Wi-Fi as a consumer? Would you like to see more places offer free WiFi?

I’d love to hear your thoughts as a business operator and as a consumer.

As always, if you enjoyed the blog post then please share it on Twitter and let other people have their say too!

When in Auckland a few weeks ago, it was interesting to have met with Kevin Francis, the new CEO at Jasons Travel Media and talk a little bit about their online plans, including the recently launched iPhone app; prompted by a 100% increase in visits to their site from a mobile device in the past year, most of which were from iPhones.

Alongside the functionality that users have come to expect like geo-location, maps and reviews, the new app has some nifty features including the ability to register and log-in using Facebook (allowing for quicker processing) and perhaps most impressive the ability to book directly from the app through a secure encrypted connection. A service that few, if any, New Zealand based companies have yet to release.
Whilst the application was launched a few weeks ago, it seems that this week ‘all systems are go’ at Jasons, in an all out effort to start encouraging its use. Alongside new signage with QR codes on Jasons brochure stands nationwide, from tomorrow all web traffic from an iPhone will be welcomed by encouragement to download the new app for better usability.

The application will certainly be of use to the growing number of visitors travelling with mobile devices, but what about the all important question of how much is it going to cost Jasons advertisers? I was happy to hear that Jasons have chosen not to charge advertisers any more for being listed on the app. A decision I welcome, believing that the cost in developing this type of resource is part of their business development, not a cost to be passed directly on to operators, as other well-known tourism promotion companies continue to do.

It is positive to see Jasons, who may have traditionally been associated with print, offering a range of on and offline solutions including mobile applications; to ensure it continues to service the needs of its advertisers and respond to the ever changing expectations of its end-users.

If you’re not already doing so, I’d recommend downloading apps that you are listed on, to familiarise yourself with what your customers are experiencing and to ensure you fully appreciate the ever-changing functionality available on these devices.

You can find the Jasons App by visiting the App Store from your iPhone or iPad.

They’ve been saying it was the year of mobile for a decade; social media is well and truly entrenched, so what’s new?

What changes do we predict might be normal by next Christmas?
To find out, Fossick’s Genevieve Atkinson decided to ask a few movers and shakers what they predict for the coming year.

James Hacon; Speaker, Writer & Entrepreneur in Tourism & Hospitality

Growth of Last Minute Bookings
When coupling the lowering of rates on ‘distressed inventory’ and the ease for travellers to book when on the road with mobile technology, I believe we will see further increases in last minute bookings. In fact with many of the largest OTA’s not supporting destination marketing and the continued undercutting of long-lead trade generated sales, I would suggest that as an industry we are actively encouraging our guests to leave booking their accommodation until the last minute. So don’t be surprised when you see an increase of walk-ins and a decrease in forward bookings.

Back to good old fashioned values
In a society where so many of us are constantly plugged in to technology, so much of our communication is through email and all too often we are just another number. I believe that we will start to see a further turn towards people wanting ‘real experiences,’ personalised service and attention. I believe the time is done for customers who are forced to choose between price and quality, our customers are expecting good service regardless of the price they pay!

Boycotting of establishments not offering free Wi-Fi
This is more of a hope that a prediction. I know many of my friends are no longer staying in hotels or frequenting cafes that don’t offer free Wi-Fi. Let’s hope those charging exorbitant prices for internet bring themselves into the 21st Century and realise that charging for internet is like charging to have a television or telephone in your room!

The growth of Google+ and slow in growth for Facebook
I don’t know whether you’ve noticed, but my friends don’t seem to be nearly as active as they once were on Facebook. Don’t get me wrong, I am certainly not predicting the downfall of Facebook – in fact I think it will continue to have market dominance. I would however be on the watch out for Google+ that has been slowly creeping up in popularity and infiltrating our email accounts one friend at a time. With people being more selective as to which social platforms they spend their time, they will also become more selective on who they will be engaging with. We’ll see smart companies, that understand social media is all about relationships and being social, continue to see great results, with companies seeing it as another PR platform fail dismally.

Veronica Nobbs;  Founder  Get a room – same day hotel bookings.

The growth of location-based services within the activity space.
Like many other sectors the activity industry continues to struggle. Yes coupon sites do provide another channel, however location based last-second ‘deals’ will prove to be more sustainable.

Smaller players getting better at social media
Smaller travel players looking to place smarter strategies around their use of social media, looking to add value to their customers as opposed to simply pushing advertising to them. A great deal of business still do social media terribly, and many in 2012 will look to reevaluate their approach.

Rise of booking travel on the go
Consumer behaviour within the travel space will continue to change with the continued rise of booking travel on the go, with the likes of Hotels.com and Expedia already experiencing notable growth in the mobile space. As a result more and more companies will seek to enter the space as well as established players introducing additional products.

Tony Marks;  Chairman Rotorua Tourism

Year of the Chinese Travel
Looking back from say 2016, 2012 will be seen as the year when the Chinese dominance of inbound tourism to Australia and New Zealand really started. Businesses will either have to adapt rapidly or see their market share of all inbound decline precipitously. Alternatively, we will have the rise of businesses who will unashamedly focus on the dwindling but yield positive USA or European travel

The growth of personal travel managers will accelerate
While some will operate from travel agencies, most will set up independent businesses and use an affiliated agency buying power. They will cater for an aging market prepared to do some research but really wanting someone who genuinely cares about their travel needs. The key issue will be getting sufficiently close to your customer to be able to not ask them the cliched ” where do you want to go ” but to supply great answers to the more critical ” why do you want to go ” ?

Airlines will become even more focused on ancillary revenue
They will continue to be vertically integrated , web based and seek to wrap up as much of the holiday dollar as possible – bit like the old charter operations in the UK. Being squeezed on a $ 2300 fare to London or a $ 200 fare across the ditch will be increasingly unattractive.

Michelle Ackers; New Zealand Tourism Industry Blog

2012 Will Follow Similar Trends as 2010/11

In general I think 2012 will see some keys trends for the NZ tourism industry continue, namely:

• Strengthening of the China and India inbound markets to New Zealand due to the increased marketing presence in these markets by Tourism New Zealand and various airlines’ commitment to increased flight schedules
• Continuing decreases from UK/Europe travellers visiting New Zealand. We can blame the state of their economies which are still in dire straits with exchange rates not in their favour for travel outside of their borders; increased British departure tax; and possible changes to the Air New Zealand flights from London…
• Continued growth of the cruise ship market for visitors to New Zealand. Cruise ship packages are cleverly marketed offering value for money in tough times. People love the inclusive food offer and the ease of planning a cruise holiday. Australians in particular are lapping this up – evens kiwis are jumping onboard in Sydney or Auckland to enjoy short cruise breaks.
• Slow forward bookings. This is still a problem for most tourism businesses, airlines, wholesalers, inbound tour operators and agents…people are just waiting to book anything until closer to their travel dates, making it a nervous wait until peak season hits.

Online Mobile Marketing in Tourism will Hit its Straps
Large tourism organizations have already become adept and clever with the use of mobile technology – smart phones, apps, social media etc but I think 2012 will see more of this coming from smaller businesses and organizations as they become accustomed to the technology and how to use it effectively.

Genevieve Atkinson;  Founder of Fossick. The locals guide to where to stay in Australia, NZ & the South Pacific.

Reviews will cross the divide into normal not new
For many properties reviews are still annoying, like smart phones or social networks, but as the social networks have crossed the line this year. I think the need and desire for guest reviews will cross the line in 2012.

The rise of permission advertising
We have permission marketing, but I think the advertising industry needs to be disrupted. Group buying sites were the tip of ice-berg and highlight the issue the most businesses today are struggling for consumer attention. My predication is that we have attention around the wrong way and we will see the beginning of self -selected advertising.

QR codes getting massive
Everyone else will say mobile will be huge, but my predication is that QR codes will help bypass the need for apps for everything and create ways for consumers to quickly engage with websites. However the websites needs to be more mobile friendly.

Disagree, have your own predication? please leave a comment.

If like me, you’re a Twitter addict, you’ll probably not have missed the amazing moments that guests started to tweet live from the event when Air New Zealand gifted each and every one of them a return ticket to Wellington! For those of you that haven’t seen it, check the Air New Zealand video out here:

For more information about the campaign, check out the WellingtonNZ page.

Watching this video reminded my of other cool tourism case study videos I’ve seen recently. Here are a few that I think can provide some ideas & inspiration- enjoy!

If you know of any others be sure to post them here in the comments!

With the majority of the attendees and speakers being US based, it must be said that most of the statistics are relating to the US market, although fundamental movement to mobile devices is a global trend.

I believe this technological shift is the biggest change to the tourism industry that we have seen since the introduction of online travel sites. For the first time ever, travellers can easily book accommodation during their trip, access tourist information from their car and perhaps most eye opening, check reviews about your business whilst standing outside!

Believe me, it happens! In fact throughout my trip to the US our iPad hardly got a rest (and it wasn’t through me tweeting, for a change) my partner was regularly checking Yelp for restaurant reviews, whilst I made the most of the FourSquare specials and booked accommodation for our next destination – at amazing online rates!

We are certainly not alone, throughout the Rugby World Cup it was interesting to see the constant flow of tweets from overseas visitors about Dunedin and so many people wandering the Octagon iPad’s in hand.

Recent US tourism research undertaken by Destination Analysts showed that 26.4% of leisure travellers are using mobile internet to access travel information. If, like me, you thought people were only using mobile internet during their travels, think again, of those using mobile internet, 80.5% were used it during thier trip, but a massive 65.8% used their mobile device to research their trip before departing!

Check-out some of the travellers were doing on their mobile device;
67.7%    Finding restaurant information
64.7%    Check the weather
56.0%    Look at maps
45.1%    Finding hotel information
36.1%    Finding sightseeing or attraction information
9.4%      Buy tickets (to an event, festival, museum etc.)

When you add to this that mobile internet access with surpass PC by 2015, the big question is…what does this mean? Here are my thoughts…

• If you don’t have a mobile site, you need one!
• If you have flash on your site, change it, it doesn’t show up on an iPad (which makes up 97% of tablet traffic) or the iPhone (which could make up to 13% of global smart phone market.)
• Ensure your booking engine and online payment solution is suitable for use on mobile devices, plus think about providing an option where the traveller doesn’t need to print a ticket or confirmation.
• Ensure that you are encouraging reviews on the major mobile based review sites.
• Register and regularly update your business profile on all geo-location and map services, likes Google Maps & FourSquare.
• Consider how easy it is for your clients to access your mobile site from your advertising mediums, perhaps think about QR codes.

An Overview

Before going any further, I must first say what a truly great event this was. It was brilliantly organised by Jake Steinman, Sofia Williamson and team at NAJ, offering a well balanced mix of inspiring key notes addresses, workshops in three tracks and the much needed opportunity to get one-on-one and round table time with speakers.

Perhaps most impressive was the number of high calibre speakers, from a range of companies including TripAdvisor, Facebook, Google, Expedia, Travel Zoo, Linkedin along with some of the major US based destination marketing agencies.

The stand out difference between this and other conferences I’ve attended, being that, speakers were not there to tout for business, nor to sell their product – instead to provide expert support and guidance as industry leaders.

If you get the opportunity to attend next year or in the future, I would most certainly recommend it.

Google Trip

The first day of the conference was a trip to Mountain View and the global Headquarters of Google and home of the Google Travel team.

The opportunity for a tour of the Googleplex was exciting enough, giving an insight into what it’s like to work for this corporate giant. With staff benefits including, but not limited to free meals, free home internet, shared company cars, swimming pools, flexible working hours, transport to and from San Francisco, onsite doctors and hairdressers, to name but a few, the conversation in the group certainly turned to where to email your application! Saying that, when you consider that on those buses to and from work, free wireless internet is provided for your company laptop and Android, it does make you wonder what kind of work-life balance Google employees really enjoy.

Within the tour we were also treated to a look at a super-size Android cell-phone and an awesome 360 Google Earth experience, just a few of the toys on display! Truly – another world.

After enjoying a Google-style lunch, with a choice of 6 restaurants (who says there’s no such thing as a free lunch), we settled for a much anticipated presentation by the Google Travel team. Here are the main points that I took away;

Don’t underestimate the power of search

It’s important to remember that search is still the number one travel planning resource for leisure travellers.  One stand out piece of advice was to target travellers with tailored messaging as they research sending them to specific pages within your site rather than a blanket approach with everyone landing on your homepage.

Travellers aren’t just visiting your website

When considering that travel bookers are visiting an average of 17.4 travel-related sites across the internet within an average of 8.1 research sessions as they plan a trip, it is important that you think beyond your own website. It is vital to build an expansive online brand for your businesses, utilising third party and social media sites.  Throughout the summit, many people questioned the long-term effectiveness of individual operator websites beyond being a reference point.

Remarketing

The idea of being able to re-target travel bookers who have already visited your website was something I hadn’t heard of before, but really excited me. Just consider that someone had visited your website in the early stages of their travel, but hadn’t booked – wouldn’t it be great if you could target them again, particularly as they’ve already shown an interest in your product. With Google Display advertising you can! We were told by putting certain coding in your website, Google can use their display network to ensure that your message is re-delivered in both text and banner format.

YouTube

Google have the world of search a little sown-up by all accounts. Owning both the world’s largest search engine (Google) and second largest. (YouTube) A massive 89% of personal travellers watch online video content when researching their upcoming trip. If you aren’t present, you need to be. A good start is to create a social hub with a free enhanced YouTube brand channel.  Until this visit I had never considered YouTube advertising, but by all accounts it can be good value, often coming in a lot cheaper than other major social media sites and search engines. Take a look at the YouTube Insights functionality and advertising opportunities. It looks like few destinations in New Zealand have paid results…perhaps a lost opportunity?!?

The concept of being on call directly to guests 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, was perhaps the area that I hadn’t thought would be so intrusive, particularly considering I’ve always been on call. It struck me half way through my ‘motelier’ experience, that the main difference was that when I was called in my positions at hotels, it was almost always a member of staff ringing – not the guests themselves. I couldn’t help but feel that the guests were waiting for me sit down before coming to ring the reception bell, and sod’s law, it was always the best bit of the film I was watching or right in the middle of dinner. I quickly discovered why my friends had MySky!

The diversity of work also caught me off guard. Whilst I was a General Manager of a hotel, I felt that I was a jack of all trades, helping to jump in the restaurant when needed, covering reception or even stripping beds if need be. What I had never really considered was that other than the food and beverage areas, the diversity of skills and duties was very similar. The only difference being, where in a hotel you have a number of team members to fulfill these roles, in a motel, bluntly, you don’t.

Another significant difference that really struck me was how lonely you can feel. In a hotel environment, there’s always someone around, whether it be a guest or another member of the team. In fact, one of the things that I miss most about working within a hotel is the social aspect of the work environment and role. Other than checking in, perhaps borrowing a DVD or seeking advice of where to visit, I hardly saw the motel guests at all!

After a couple of years of regularly conversing with a number of friends who own motels, as well as providing consultancy to a few too, here are a couple of my top tips to those running a motel style accommodation business;

• Look into getting a reservation system and channel manager, if you’ve not already got one. With all the things you’ve already got to do, don’t be wasting your time manually checking in to Wotif every time you sell a room. For a very little outlay each month with companies like Seekom, ResBook or Strait PMS, you could be saving yourself a lot of work!
• Take a day off. Make sure you find someone who can give you a day off every week or a short break regularly. With the amount of hours you work and the constant pressure of being ‘on-call,’ it’s important you give yourself a break. Not just for your sake, but for your guests too – the last thing anyone wants is a tired and grumpy host when on holiday!

I’ve stayed in a number of motels across New Zealand and received amazing service from friendly moteliers, through to the rudest from some of the most un-friendliest. I think you’ve got to be someone quite special to pull of being a good motelier. After just a few days in the shoes of a motelier, I can assure you, it’s really not my calling!

There were 4 topics that are worth revisiting.

1. Flash sites or daily deals.

Nothing seems to polarise opinion like the daily deals and travel, so I really enjoyed this debate. Clearly a large number of people don’t believe that the model is relevant or appropriate for travel – especially in regards to margin. Most daily deal sites take a high margin (often 50%) and require a huge discount on top.

Some of the interesting facts …

• the money is made by the top 4 players (none of which had a specific travel focus)
• the specific travel deal sites were struggling to get an ongoing supply of deals. It appeared that this was a sandbox that the major hotel chains were not playing in.
• the number of travel deals sold was increasing (whilst the number of beauty deals diminished).

Note: to a room full of men this appeared entirely logical, “how many facials could you really purchase” to which I mentally calculated that for many women – far more than holidays.

To me the most interesting thing was that the travel sites were playing by traditional travel rules - travel is sold in a particular way and they conformed and worked within that – namely to be able to get a steady supply of deals. In contrast, Spreets came across, not in an arrogant manner, but free from constraints as to how it was done. Their take – it’s a great advertising and sales opportunity – plenty of people willing to play, so take it or leave it. I guess that’s the luxury of having an audience of 2 million a day.

2. Mobile

Fascinating that the mobile discussion was being run by activities and insurance companies, not your traditional OTA’s, but this is where the innovation was. World Nomads, an insurance company, belief was that to be successful in mobile you needed to do something different and appropriate for the medium. So selling insurance services, boring – running a Q and A between all the customers that have bought insurance, interesting.

I thought these guys were right on the money and have been extremely successful. The irony is that this was, and probably still is, the key opportunity for traditional travel agents. Utilizing the community nature of your existing audience.

The other highlighted company was Viator, that sells activities. Again, no point just replicating their website, instead they created a “last minute” activities app, a platform they didn’t have and created in order to run the app.

Both achieved significant success, being featured by apple the holy grail of app release. However it was highlighted that Viator spent millions, both in creation and launch, taking over Youtube across the world.

3. Airlines

For those Kiwis out there Air NZ did a fine job showing up the Aussies in its significant worldwide success in social media. With classic underdog lines like -for a small airline at the bottom of the world – we achieved amazing reach. Which they have. I’m looking forward to the launch of the new Air NZ site, as well as Rico’s interviews with Lindsay Lohan and David Hasslehoff.

Although the parting question raised significant debate. The trick with this widespread reach was did it then convert?. Did it sell more airlines seats? The debate centered back on the age old, if its’ social – are you supposed to actually sell something too ?

We then had a panel of the three major airlines, which was tense and jovial. At one point a member of the audience queried Justin Montgomery, GM Virgin about their recent letter to her, a Qantas frequent flyer, offering to replicate her points status on Virgin, “Was this a blatant stealing of customers? ” – “yes – very blatant”. Right then.

To be honest the Qantas man John Lonergan, either wasn’t willing to fight in this context or seemed out of his depth, as he was remarkably quiet with Virgin and Air NZ dominating the microphone.

Around the lunch table, the debate was how Virgin got their list of Qantas Frequent Flyers.

4. The future of the GDS.

I’ll be upfront, I don’t know a lot about GDS’s, but if you know less than me, it stands for Global Distribution System and there are basically 3 companies that sit as the middleman in the distribution chain of flights and room nights. GDS’s have been significant players, but due to a number of direct to consumer models, aka low cost carriers and large OTA distribution systems, like Expedia – their relevance has been in question.

Martin pushed and probed but each replied with the same pat answers unwilling to fight their cause. Which made them dull and irrelevant.

Regardless of your position, it was apparent that they still made significant sums of money and billions of travel transactions. However in a Traveltech conference, not a single one could point to a clear point of difference amongst the 3 players – particularly in technology innovation.

5. Social Media & Facebook

Thankfully there was not a solid focus on social media, but interestingly as it should be, it was pervasive as part of the marketing mix throughout the talks.

Social is often touted as the free medium, achieving massive consumer word of mouth, reach etc etc for minimum spend. Although the spend might be less compared to traditional mediums like advertising. It was interesting to note of the successful campaigns talked about, social was still a significant cost. Creating video campaigns and hiring agencies is still not cheap. Air NZ and Tourism Victoria have achieved significant success, sure, but they still have reasonable budgets to begin with. For start-ups like myself it becomes far more apparent you still need money to make money – even with social media.

Last but no least – the Traveltech awards for best website – which went to Vroom, Vroom, Vroom, a beautifully functional site for car rental comparison. The criteria for the awards was being an Australian owned and run company. However, Martin has now agreed to include New Zealand companies next year. So watch this space for Fossick next year.

Take the time to listen to all of his presentation taken from the TED “Ideas Worth Spreading” website. The key take out for your business or organisation? “Don’t just manage what you can measure.”

Upon moving to New Zealand I remember pondering as to where the division between hospitality and tourism begins and ends. Thinking back I think these thoughts may have been prompted by having to classify your ‘sector’ on Linkedin. Coming from the UK, I would suggest that as a hotelier or restauranter you would have almost certainly consider yourself part of the hospitality industry; however in New Zealand I would many hoteliers would consider themselves part of the tourism industry.

In the past few weeks, I have again been contemplating the relationship between tourism and hospitality. This time the catalyst for these thoughts has come through my recent participation as a panelist in the Brand and Marketing seminar at The Restaurant and Bar Show. One of the key themes around seminars at the Restaurant and Bar Show was the Rugby World Cup and in particularly how restaurants and bars can make the most out of this fast approaching event. Of course many of the seminars were tailored towards what you can and can’t do in terms of the strict licencing of the RWC brand, ours was more orientated towards ways to promote and market your business as well as using the opportunity for brand awareness.

Upon speaking to Auckland Restauranter and fellow panelist, Luke Dallow, it became clear that both of us wanted to ensure what we delivered gave advice and thoughts around branding and marketing that would flow on beyond RWC 2011. Within the run up to the event, I conversed with a number of restaurant and bar owners. There is a clear distinction between those restaurants in key tourist resorts like Queenstown from those in destinations that rely more heavily on local traffic, such as Dunedin. Those in tourist resorts often seem to heavily promote themselves, whilst I would suggest that many outside of these areas don’t market themselves well, if at all.

Interestingly, for a large number of restaurant and bar owners outside the main tourist hotspots, I see that the Rugby World Cup has simply acted as an awakening, encouraging them to realise the potential in the tourism market. Whilst I understand that not all restaurants will receive a large number of tourists, there are certainly some low cost ways that these businesses can ensure they are, at least, on the radar of passing tourists.

For restaurants and bars who may not have seen themselves as a tourism operator until now, a good starting point is to contact your regional tourism organisation. It is important to know that the set-up of regional tourism organisations differs across New Zealand, with some being membership based, some being funded through your rates and others you may have to pay for services. You can find their details of your regional tourism organisation by following this link.

Here are a few ways that they may be able to help you;

• Connect you with marketing groups
• Advise you about the tourism market in your area.
• List your restaurant or bar to be listed on their website.
• Providing training and updates.
• Adding you to their databases, so you receive updates and information on upcoming opportunities.

What I’ve come to realise is that by putting a label on your sector, sometimes you may be closing doors. By embracing that your business is in the tourism and hospitality industry, you could well be seeing more people through your door! With around 2.5 million tourists visiting New Zealand yearly, the 85,000 visitors for the Rugby World Cup is the tip of the iceberg; don’t let the Rugby World Cup be the be all and end all for your restaurant or bar, use it as the prompt that helped you to realise the potential in international and domestic visitors.

I hope you found this blog post useful and as always please feel free to leave your own experiences or any comments. Make sure you rate the blog so I know whether you found it helpful. If you did – retweet it, to share it with others.

We hope to run two webinars a month over a three month period as a trial with an aim of speaking to people that are doing innovative, quirky or news worthy things in the New Zealand tourism scene.

We’ll be giving you an opportunity to leave questions that you’d like asked here on the Tourism Industry Blog a week before each webinar, then you can log-on and listen in or come and find the recordings afterwards here on the blog.

We’re delighted to have a few speakers confirmed, but we’re asking you – who would you like to see us chat to about what they are up to?

Leave us a comment to let us know.

If you are interested in being involved as a speaker then please contact me by emailing james@kiwi-dreams.co.nz

We look forward to seeing your suggestions!

The Rugby World Cup Is Not Showing Widespread Benefits

At this stage the RWC has not increased bookings for most of the travel organizations, if anything they are finding that people are avoiding booking a holiday to New Zealand over Sep/Oct because of the perception of highly priced accommodation and no availability.

Effectively only the RWC Official Travel Agents (OTAs) are benefiting from bookings  and only accommodation in key RWC locations are booked out for specific big match dates. For the rest of the tourism industry the normal travel patterns for spring look to have been displaced by rugby supporters, leaving a potentially patchy couple of months for most tourism operators around NZ and even Air New Zealand has indicated their bookings for this period are not more than usual.

If there’s still time to boost bookings then I suggest hotels and other tourism businesses bring their pricing into more sensible levels to give New Zealand a better image and attract a full range of visitors over this period. We are not yet fully booked!

Forward Bookings Slow

Forward bookings in general are weak. A combination of factors including uncertainty after the Christchurch earthquake, exchange rate fluctuations (weak USD and GBP, high AUD) and ongoing global recession recovery seems to be putting people off booking to this part of the world in any hurry, instead they are opting to leave it as late as possible to decide, giving the industry a poor indication of what the next season will be like.

On a positive note, it does seem that the luxury high end market is reasonably strong however, there are still people out there with large budgets for luxury holidays and so this market is remaining steady.

The Rise of the Cruising Market

The Cruise Ship industry are aggressively targeting the middle travel market with competitive packages that are successfully winning business off the group tour and FIT markets. This changes the dynamics of tourism experiences for visitors to NZ and has considerable effect on accommodation and some tourism activity operators. On the whole it’s not a positive trend economically as they simply don’t see as much of New Zealand and don’t spend as much – only regular cruise ship ports benefit but the benefits don’t run much beyond what people can do in a day visit within walking distance of the ship.

Were you at TRENZ this year? Did you make any other observations to add to this article – your input would be appreciated.

Whether I’m planning a meeting with the CEO at my local RTO, trying to increase uptake of my product from FIT’s through IBO’s or reading the latest newsletter from TNZ – it seems one thing is clear, we love acronyms here in the tourism industry.

The use of acronyms is thought to be a great way of accelerating discussions when conversing with experienced industry professionals, however I’ve come to realise it is all too easy to slip into using these abbreviations in a context when the meaning is not fully understood.

Many of my recent interactions with small and start-up tourism businesses have highlighted how using such acronyms really does ostracise many from the conversation.

In my first draft of this article I had very much concentrated on the need to raise the level of understanding from many of our ‘less informed operators,’ however, after a number of wearisome, yet humorous conversations , I’ve rethought my strategy.

In the research leading up to writing this article, I was very vigilant in avoiding making an embarrassing mistake and misinforming people as to the meaning of an acronym. In my thorough research, I decided I would approach the industry organisations most knowledgeable about each acronym in the New Zealand and Australia. To save embarrassment I did make it clear that I will not name the individuals or organisations to whom I spoke. What did become apparent is the lack of synergy between the use of certain terms.

Many laughed at the acronym ‘FIT’ as being an ‘easy one,’ although it resulted in the most confusion of all. Responses as to what the initials stood for included ‘Free Independent Traveller,’ and ‘Foreign Independent Traveller’.

Moving aside from the initials, I asked each organisation to describe the term.  Again, real disparity seemed to prevail. Only two organisations described the meaning in a concise way, some found it difficult to explain, one representative even openly asked me to hold on the line whilst they checked Wikipedia.

I was surprised with this trail of events to say the least. If the organisations that we willingly turn to, as experts in their field, don’t seem to understand the acronyms we utilise so regularly, what hope do the rest of us have?

It was my original intention to use this opportunity to explain a few of these terms. I’ll now be content in my cowardly admission that if the ‘experts’ can’t get it right – I think I’ll opt out on this one. One suggestion I will put forward, however, is that we should really try to avoid using TLA’s.

I best explain that one… ‘TLA’ = Three Letter Acronyms

Sales Results

• Go through your sales figures and do some analysis and graphs for different measures – e.g. Sources of bookings (direct, inbound agents, visitor booking offices, online websites, campaigns and advertising etc), Direct booking types (e.g phone, email, website, walk-in), Product Type sales (you may offer different tours, room types etc).
• Compare all of these sales results against last year’s figures too so you know where the changes have been.
• It may be that your current booking system doesn’t allow you to categorise your bookings in these ways – if not, is there a better alternative out there?
• Once you have analysed all of the sales measures that are important to your business you are then armed with great information to make better decisions about your what areas of your marketing and sales efforts need attention.

Your Website and Online Marketing

• This is now undoubtedly a key area for tourism businesses to get right. Have you invested the necessary time and money into delivering a quality website and comprehensive online marketing strategy including social media and networking?
• Does your website reflect the quality of your business and the experience you offer to travellers?
• Is it easy to book with you online?
• Are your number of direct bookings via your website increasing?
• What feedback do you get on your website?
• Do you use tools like google analytics to measure the performance of your website in detail so you know it’s performance rather than just gut feel? For example, knowing how many visits you get from external websites you’ve paid to list on is vital information when it comes to the decision on whether to renew for another year.

Customer Feedback

• Comments and feedback from your customers is always a vital way to improve your product and services, provided you seek out the information.
• Don’t be afraid to ask them, provide customer feedback forms or encourage your customers to place online reviews so you know what is working well and what isn’t.

Don’t just blame poor sales on the recession – in realty there are always areas you can control and plan for in marketing and sales to improve your performance.

Fletcher Building announced their new estimate of $20 billion to rebuild. Fortunately much of this cost will be borne by international reinsurers. In some ways, that can be seen as a massive injection of foreign capital into economic activity in New Zealand.

The real problem is what, where and how to rebuild?

As business people we must also consider the impact of the earthquakes on our businesses.  What will be the impact on foreign tourists? Will they now see New Zealand as a dangerous destination?  Will that fear, if it exists, extend beyond Canterbury to our region too? We just don’t know yet.

Frankly, we suspect that the impact of the quakes will be soon forgotten by tourists, and itineraries will simply be re-routed to avoid the damaged areas.

Meanwhile, shifts in exchange rates (the NZ dollar is falling, something likely to be accelerated by this morning’s cut in the OCR); international geo-political crises; the dramatic rise in fuel prices; carbon taxes, and so on are potentially greater influences on the tourism industry.

And will the earthquakes drive significant changes in New Zealand demographics?  We have already seen a great deal of migration out of Canterbury to the North Island.  Many of you will have had these refugees as guests over the last couple of weeks.  Question: is that likely to turn into a permanent flow north of Christchurch residents, including tourism and hospitality operators? Or will they return home to rebuild as soon as they feel secure to do so?

We hear, for example, that 40% of Christchurch’s hospitality businesses are ruined.  What can those business people do? It may be months before they can start to rebuild, assuming that they want to.

Dunedin has a wide and diverse offering of attractions and tours available to visitors, with so much to see and do. Having such a broad variety does have its down fall however, with many visitors staying only one or two nights, often people are unsure how to spend their short time. Members of the St Clair Beach Resort reception team regularly get asked what the ‘must do’s’ are for Dunedin – a hard question to answer with such a broad range of product. A question made easier through those businesses that package – and package well.

A product that the reception team have no problem in selling is Monarch Wildlife Cruises and Tours. John and Jenny Milburn, the owners of the Monarch have packaged a number of tour itineraries based around their core product – a cruise on the m.v. Monarch.

Yes, there are plenty of other good tour companies in Dunedin working with multiple products – so why have I highlighted Monarch as a good example? A professional operation, good products and a good reputation is always a good start, however I feel that there is a number of other reason’s why our reception team reaches for the Monarch leaflet first.

Range

As someone selling an attraction or tour, you don’t want to overwhelm the person with too much information at once. Often you don’t have too much time with the guest, but within this short time you want to ensure that they are going to get the best out of their experience. The last thing the guest wants is to be given too many options, but at the same time they want good recommendations.

Monarch offer four different tour packages, with an array of additional options including trips to a number of other notable attractions in the city. Whether the guest is looking to see Albatross or Penguins, visit Larnach Castle, check out the world’s steepest street, see the sights of the city or all of the above – an option is available right there in that three-fold brochure.

This makes the brochure a high contender when you are picking up just two or three for the guest to peruse.

Consistency & Regularity

When recommending a trip or tour, the last thing you want is a last minute cancellation, or any uncertainty that the tour will be available. Guest satisfaction is everything, no one wants something out of their control to impede on their guests enjoyment. Having to reach into a filing cabinet or log-on to a website to find out what days the tour is running is also very frustrating, often putting off the seller yet again.

As a consumer I understand the disappointment of unclear operating times and last minute cancellations only too well. A recent experience of this kind was late last year, when my partner and I stayed on Stewart Island. Like many tourists we had checked out all the activity websites before we departed and planned to book on arrival, only to find that all the tours had minimum numbers that were not going to be fulfilled at that time of year – resulting in a very quiet and disappointing three days for us.

Again, on this section the Monarch scores full points. They run multiple trips a day, everyday, with no risk of cancellation.

Ease

After you’ve made your recommendation and convinced the person that the trip or tour is right for them, you have to seal the deal as quickly as possible. All to often I see agents or sellers of product spend a cringe worthy amount of time explaining the logistics of travel and parking, followed by a root around in their draw for ten minutes trying to find a dusty voucher book which leads on to a phone call and another 5 minutes of writing the ticket out. The easier you can make the booking process for the agent, the more likely the sale and ultimately the better it is for you.

A few things that you can do to speed this up:

• Online availability and instant confirmation set-up through a channel manager is by far the quickest and easiest way for an agent to book. At St Clair Beach Resort we have recently signed up with Whyte Water for the RTBS system who promote an easy to use booking system for accommodation providers, avoiding telephone calls and voucher writing – an all round winner.
• Until you have this set up try having a quick phone option clearly displayed on your correspondence to your agents that tells them which option to choose on the phone, rather than hearing the 21 options.
• Send out availability for your attraction/tours to accommodation providers by email regularly. You should make sure it is going to reception to ensure it doesn’t just get deleted. (This will also help keep your product fresh in the minds of your agents. You can also fill distressed inventory through special offers.)
• If you are sticking with voucher books, make sure these are small and easy to complete.

The Monarch are currently investigating real time booking systems, however their current system is still straight forward with their leaflets giving clear information about pick up times and directions, leaving only a short phone call and voucher completion. No issue with explaining parking as with each of the packages we promote the guest will be picked up and returned to the hotel door for no extra cost.

Commission and worth the up-sell

As an agent or on-seller of tourism product, you will of course want to know that the activity or attraction offers commission. If you are the person selling the attraction or activity you will want it to be worth your while selling the product – in other words that the value of the ticket is a good amount. Like many accommodation operators, St Clair Beach Resort offers its reception staff an incentive in the way of commission. One of the main reason they’re encourage to sell a Monarch package is because they know the commission on a $100 or $200 package is quite considerable and hence worth their while spending the time recommending and up-selling to the guest.

Since being here in New Zealand, I have spoken to many smaller operators who find it difficult to attract the business of accommodation agents or information centre’s. For many the problem will be their low ticket cost, packaging with other attractions or transport companies often helps increase business in this case – although it must be remembered that you might have to give better discount to the company pulling the package together to make it worth their while.

Packaging and building in an allowance for commission of your product is the key, without the relevant incentive it is very hard to on-sell your product.

I hope you found this blog post useful and as always please feel free to leave your own experiences or any comments. Make sure you rate the blog so I know whether you found it helpful. If you did – retweet it, to share it with others.

In the past few days I’ve been creating accommodation packages for St Clair Beach Resort, in a move to freshen up our website and give more options to our guests, hence the prompt for writing this blog post.

Some of the key benefits of packaging are:

• The ability to leverage off the publicity or promotion of an existing product or event – this can be through web links, search engine results and often brochures too.
• You are offering a broader range of marketable products around your core business – accommodation. Remember that not many people will travel for the experience of staying with a particular accommodation!
• You are supporting other businesses plus ensuring that your guests depart with a great experience of your city and of course, your accommodation.
• Getting media attention for a hotel can often be hard, many hotels use packages as a great way to attraction good PR. (The Langham , Auckland is very good at this!)
• Increased length of stay and spend, not only good for your hotel but also the local economy too!

So, you understand the benefits behind packaging, but who should you package with? Three popular ways to package are;

Events

Whether it be Warbirds Over Wanaka, ID Fashion here in Dunedin, the V8 Supercars in Hamilton or Wellington on a Plate, we have some great local, national and international events right across New Zealand. There are a few different ways that packaging around events can work…

• Approach the organiser directly and investigate whether they would be interested in partnering with you, ultimately it’s all further exposure for the event.
• If you think the event is going to be a sell out, you could always buy the tickets and sell them within an accommodation package. Just be careful of the risk however, if it doesn’t sell out you might have a lot of space to spread out at that concert or event!
• You can create a package around the event, with transport or themed extra’s in the room for those people who have already got their tickets.

It’s also worth noting that the event doesn’t have to be on your doorstep, one of the packages I was involved with at Gleneagles, was a trip to the Edinburgh Tattoo. For those of you that aren’t too familiar with Scottish geography, Edinburgh is an hour from Gleneagles – the key is to make the journey part of the package experience too!

Activities and Attractions

Creating packages with local attractions or tour operators is always popular – working together in this way quite often helps your local attractions sell their higher end products whilst giving you the added benefit of a longer stay.

Rather than reinventing the wheel, have a look at what is going on around your local area and see what packages operators are offering. Don’t create yourself more work than you have to. We have been offering a self-created package, called Discover Dunedin at St Clair Beach Resort for more than one year. Although very popular, this package is not the easiest to book with 6 different operators, welcome letter and the issue of variable rates from some of the attractions too.
We will shortly release a wider range of accommodation packages utilising existing packages created by local tour companies along with additional extras like breakfast and arrival gifts in the room. As well as the traditional tourist attractions, packaging with golf courses, dining outlets and spa’s is also very popular too!

Don’t just think that creating these packages should be for large hotels – check out the website of Eichardts Private Hotel in Queenstown – they’ve created two distinct packages around local attractions.

Internal Packages

If you have a restaurant, golf course, casino or spa on site, make the most of it and create accommodation packages around these features too. It again, will help to guarantee the in-house spend before arrival.

One business that packages internally very well is SkyCity Auckland, who create packages around many of their internal products.

A couple of points of advice when you are putting your packages together:

• Don’t think that you always have to discount every element of the package to make it attractive. Many consumers like to book packages because of the ease of doing so, the safety of knowing someone else is looking after the arrangements or even because of its exclusivity. Don’t lose money where you don’t have too…try adding value rather than reducing revenue!
• Airlines, travel agents and wholesalers are always on the look out for the potential to package. Rather than doing all the leg work yourself you can always suggest the idea of packaging you product for an event or particular attraction to your contacts at your RTO or preferred wholesaler.

So you’ve got the perfect package, but how do you promote it?

Your own website is always a good start when promoting your packages but make sure your load them into your on-line booking inventory, anything that makes your package easier to book with encourage your potential guests.
Once loaded on to your on-line booking inventory make sure you distribute it through your channel manager so that people can book it using third party website like WOTIF or Expedia. (If you are doing this remember to make sure you take into account the commission rate.)  
You can also create the package on NewZealand.com and link it to your relevant article, this way people can book directly on your site, directed through the TNZ site – a great new feature that is working very well for us.  It may also be worthwhile checking with your RTO whether they promote packages on their website or through your local I-Site.

I hope this blog post useful and as always please feel free to leave your own experiences or any comments. Make sure you rate the blog so I know whether you found it helpful. If you did – retweet it, to share it with others!

Do you have an iconic or simply stunning view from your business or property? It’s worth considering whether a webcam at your location, could be part of your marketing mix that can drive traffic to your website. Tourism operators of any type and RTO’s can showcase their views and location as an information tool to visitors helping to make the vital booking decision.

There are a few Northland webcams from SnapitHD (used on the Takeabreak.co.nz website) that as a tourism business Salt Air uses daily to check weather conditions on where we are flying to, this has really helped our business in terms of operational decision making. The time lapse images enhance the applications even further.

Other than that webcams can simply be stunning to look at – the Mt Cook webcam has to be one of the most stunning examples (when the weather’s good of course…)

To many the changes to this act seem obvious to affect hotels, restaurants, bars, café’s and taverns, however it is also important to remember with changes to special licences and off-licences the changes could also effect wineries, ferries, airlines, gift shops, special events, festivals as well as entertainment and sporting venues. The changes to this bill will have effects right across the tourism industry.

I would very much recommend you visit the HANZ website, where there is more in-depth information on what the reforms could mean to different licence holders, giving you information on how to write a submission – http://www.hanz.org.nz/industry/alcohol_reform_bill.html

I have completed the submissions from our three licenced outlets, which highlighted a number of areas resulting in significant loss of revenue, extra staffing hours through the changing of procedures and additional costs through increased fees.

Many of the industry colleagues I have spoken to recently have not yet put in a submission – many unsure whether they will. If your business will be affected by these proposed changes I strongly recommend that you make a submission – ultimately that is the reason for this process. Submission close on 18th February – make sure you have your say!

Regardless of the cause of dissatisfaction there are a few things you can learn from these situations to help avoid them again in the future:

• Make sure communication to your customers is clear at all points of contact – don’t hide any details or extra charges
• Ensure employee training is thorough and effective so they are delivering the expected information, standard of service delivery desired and are competent to do so. You can’t expect employees to know information you haven’t shared with them or trained them to understand all processes and procedures. Have you got an effective operations or procedures manual to refer to?
• During delivery of the product or service continue to question the customer to ensure they are happy with how things are proceeding – don’t just assume all is well if they say nothing.
• Once the dispute is raised, listen, then handle it effectively and positively – regardless of who is at fault try to resolve it equitably and don’t play the blame game, take responsibility for your business at all levels. It always works well to tell the customer involved you understand their concerns and how you plan to resolve it rather than asking them what they want which could be unrealistic.
• Identify the point where things went wrong and put in place remedies to ensure it won’t happen again or at least lesson it’s likelihood
• Some people are just difficult to deal with so don’t take it personally, be the bigger person – learn from it and move on!

No matter how experienced or developed your business is things can come unstuck from time to time, so don’t worry it happens to the best of us and chalk it up to a fact of life of being in business.

Have you got some good examples of customer disputes or complaints and how you dealt with it? Share it here with us

Being very market focused, it was obvious that it will never be a popular decision to surcharge; however as someone that also has responsibility over the finances of the business it just doesn’t add up, not to.

At one of our outlets, we work on a 32% staffing cost. We don’t have enough staff to only have members of staff that don’t usually work that day, work (Especially when Christmas fell on the weekend!) We want to continue providing a high level of service, so I will not under staff our restaurant, hence we have no real option but to pay the time and half plus a day-in-lieu. Suddenly our staffing cost becomes 80%, leaving no room for our food/beverage cost or our overheads (of which we have many!)

When discussing our stance on this highly controversial issue with my management team, I had a mixed response…some said ‘let’s close,’ others said that we should spread the costs over the year whilst others suggested putting a 20% surcharge in place.

Rather than helping, I felt that this discussion had raised even more problems rather than solutions! As with most other regions, here in Dunedin we have those that choose to surcharge and others that decide not to. I can understand outlets with low staff costs and an increase in business on these day’s choosing not to surcharge, but for us neither is a reality.

Closing is not an option, we are a hotel and must be open for our residents – so why not be open to external guests, providing a service to our regulars and other visitors to the city.

To spread the costs across the year seems most logical, however with eleven public holidays and a number of other dates that are observed adding to the bill…it are a large expense to spread. You also have to ask yourself, is it really fair to add this cost onto the bills of everyone else throughout the year?

With most restaurants and cafés choosing to surcharge, most consumers presume there will be a surcharge. If we made a decision not to surcharge, it then bodes the question how do you let guests know? To those businesses with a high foot traffic simply putting a sign up would probably suffice, but what for the rest of us?  Perhaps I could follow in the footsteps of those who choose to advertise the proud fact that they don’t surcharge. To me this seems even barmier as this then adds to your cost of public holidays yet more!

I feel that the decision we made was a fair one, we charge a 15% surcharge on public holidays – not opting to follow the 20% trend of other contemporary dining restaurants. We ensure that any guest that reserves a table is aware of the surcharge from the outset, we display clear signs on our external doors and have a footnote on our menus throughout the year.

This way we are remaining open when many are not, ensuring we fulfill our responsibility to our regulars, residents and tourists. We communicate this to our guests clearly and thus leave it at the discretion of our patrons as to whether they choose to dine.

One year in, yes, we still get those who are unhappy with our stance, however these days tick over nicely and best of all – I have now come to peace with the decision we made to surcharge.

But we have to recognize that  online customer reviews are part of the future of the accommodation industry. Part of your future.  To help you understand the shift change, here is a list of some good articles on research into this user-generated content business. Most of the research is American based so not always directly translatable to our market – however it does give a good indication of where we are headed.

Brand Republic: Online reviews key to purchase decisions.

“..84% of respondents said they were more likely to check online for reviews before making a purchase than compared to 12 months ago.” Read the full article.

Hotel Marketing: Expedia’s Jennifer Davies on user-generated content and booking conversion

“..users look for authentic information that doesn’t appear too skewed towards the positive or negative…” Read the full article.

Bizzare Voice: Power of Word of Mouth.

“Most word of mouth is positive. Across all of Bazaarvoice US clients, 80% of product ratings are 4 or 5 stars out of 5. Across all of Bazaarvoice UK clients, 88% of product ratings are 4 or 5 stars out of 5. (“J Curve,” Bazaarvoice and Keller Fay)…” Read the full article.

Forbes: The upside of Bad Online Customer Reviews.

“eBags is among the only 50% of online retailers that offer online ratings and reviews, according to the latest figures from Forrester research. Meanwhile, 80% of Web buyers troll reviews when shopping online. The lingering fear: Negative reviews will send customers running the other way…” Read the full article.

Biz Report: 84% of Americans influenced by online customer reviews.

“What is more interesting is that half of respondents turned to online customer reviews early on in the decision-making process. “This is critical for companies to understand as they fight to be considered by consumers and look for ways to be ever-present through a variety of channels and media outlets….” Read the full article.

eMarketer.com: Customer Product Reviews – the next Generation.

“Customer product reviews are becoming a fixture on retail and consumer brand websites, with over 80% of retailers planning to feature them by the end of 2010. The accelerated adoption of customer reviews indicates a more enlightened approach to handling negative comments—that is, occasional negative reviews do not hurt sales…” Read the full article.

IT Business Edge: Online Customer Reviews: Take Bad with the Good.

“Taking a more proactive approach to participating in, monitoring and controlling online reviews may very well be one of the many ways organizations can influence both consumer consideration and, ultimately, the buying decision…” Read the full article.

Focus: Using Customer and Peer Reviews Efficiently for Cross-Channel Marketing Purposes.

“If you are brave enough to open your site and other online presences in a professional and “open” manner for honest customer reviews, you will benefit greatly: trust, a better conversion, SEO, links, buzz, cross-channel interaction possibilities, user-generated content, customer satisfaction, sales, important opinions for his business, you name it…” Read the full article.

Conversionation.net: Research confirms importance of opinions of others.

“The fact that consumers are influenced by others, is an opportunity, a threat and at the same time probably an expression of the sociological phenomenon that people seem to form their ideas less than before. However, what else can you expect from a world bulging with information and opinions?…” Read the full article.

So what can you do..

• Encourage reviews – Try to get everyone whose stays to write a review especially people who tell you they had a good time
• Stay informed – No point sticking your head in the sand.
• Find out what ‘s being said about you – Sign up for any free tools… Google Alerts, Fossick.com (we’ll email you when a review is left).

The best way to have a good reputation is to manage it, rather than waiting or reacting . Customize your listing, join in the debates, be active.

Will money be left on the table with World Cup accommodation next year? There’s a decent storm brewing over room rates in September/October 2011 with many fearing over-inflated room rates will dent New Zealand’s reputation and will make tourists feel as though they have had their wallets emptied at gunpoint.

Some of this talk is fair but most of it is overly black and white. You can’t speak of September/October 2011 as though it is one homogenous set of dates with the same level of supply and demand; there is a huge variety of likely occupancy levels even from one day to the next in the same city.  A game day means town will be full and prices are likely to be high but the following days might see a “normal” or even below average occupancy as fans and teams leave town for the next venue.

Should an accommodation business faced with those dynamics be forced to keep game day rates low just to artificially uphold New Zealand’s reputation, or should they be allowed to let demand determine their rooms rates to a fair degree?

Recent controversy over a Christchurch hotel charging $2,400 for a single room night has put a spotlight on the issue, but instances like this are likely to be few and far between, at least to that extreme.

What is it about the World Cup that gets NZ so worked up over price? Hotel rooms in Auckland on the nights of the recent U2 concert were going at well over $1000 but nobody seemed to mind. Even Wellington on Bon Jovi night last week saw people paying in excess of $500 for a room. Those guests probably didn’t want to pay that much, but hey, town is full and so prices are high. It’s a reality that in most situations people find acceptable.

But not the World Cup. Is it because rugby is so dear to our hearts as a nation? Is it an almost socialist sense of fairness that everyone should have access to low-price accommodation during the World Cup because it is our ‘national game’?

Whatever the case it is clear the industry has a clear division between those who want to make a bit more money per night and keep themselves as full as they can over a long period (ie not just game days) and those who want to ensure they squeeze every last dollar out of every available room.

Just last week we had a Travelbug booking cancelled by the motellier that hadn’t realised the rates he was selling for in September next year. Rather than take the hit, he emailed the UK traveller that he couldn’t sell his room for such a “ridiculously low” rate. But the motellier just down the road was willing to re-accommodate the same guest at an only slightly higher rate than he was selling at this year because he doesn’t see the point in ratcheting rates too high on non-game days.

So how will it wash up next year? No toothpaste on offer, toothpaste at $10 or toothpaste at $50? Only time will tell but if you believe the hype then the world is watching….

For the first time ever, TRENZ will be located in New Zealand’s strongest visitor region, showcasing the Southern Lakes. It will take place at the Queenstown Events Centre, 22-25 May 2011.

The new location is sure to be a powerful incentive for international travel and tourism buyers and media to make the time to travel to New Zealand for TRENZ 2011, Tourism Industry Association New Zealand (TIA) Chief Executive Tim Cossar says.

TIA manages TRENZ, which brings together selected New Zealand tourism operators (Exhibitors) with invited international travel and tourism buyers, and media. The event directly helps to grow New Zealand’s $9.5 billion international tourism industry. In 2011, the theme is “Book New Zealand”.

Southern Lakes chairman Dave Hawkey says hosting TRENZ 2011 is a significant opportunity for the region and its tourism operators.

“Hosting TRENZ 2011 will showcase the Southern Lakes region to influential tourism industry leaders and media, and provide a host of Buyers and Exhibitors the opportunity to experience this diverse and spectacular part of New Zealand. The three regions of Lake Wanaka, Queenstown and Fiordland combine to offer some of the most memorable landscapes and experiences New Zealand has to offer. This is the first time TRENZ has been held here in the Southern Lakes and we look forward to working with TIA in presenting another successful TRENZ to the world.”

The new location is bringing a host of other new features to New Zealand’s largest international tourism trade event.

TRENZ has traditionally been held in Auckland, Christchurch or Rotorua as these were the only centres with infrastructure to host such a big event which involves more than 1200 people. Moving to Queenstown offers fantastic new opportunities, Mr Cossar says.

“We want Buyers, Media and the New Zealand Exhibitors to experience the best of the Southern Lakes region. We’ve allocated a half day for delegates to get out and experience some of the region’s iconic tourism attractions for themselves. Strong famil programmes will help Buyers and Media get a real sense of the experiences available in the Southern Lakes,” Mr Cossar says.

“We’re also changing the format of some of the traditional TRENZ networking functions to allow delegates more time to enjoy some of the great things the region has to offer. This will provide more opportunities for New Zealand tourism operators to invite our international delegates out for drinks or dinner, extending their opportunities for doing business during the event.”

While the Queenstown Events Centre is the largest capacity venue in Queenstown, it does not have the same floor space as traditional TRENZ venues so Exhibitor booth sizes will be limited. Attendance fees for Exhibitors have been adjusted to reflect this.

Delegates will have the opportunity to schedule 51 fifteen minute business meetings during the three core days of TRENZ 2011. Unlike previous years, the event will begin on a Sunday and finish on a Wednesday. This will enhance the potential for international delegates to visit other areas of New Zealand before and after TRENZ.

“We have really tried to make some changes for TRENZ 2011. It will certainly be different to what delegates have experienced in the past,” Mr Cossar says.

Exhibitor applications for TRENZ 2011 will open on Thursday 25 November.

TRENZ is supported by Tourism New Zealand, Air New Zealand, Qantas, host region Southern Lakes and other industry partners.

After the initial disappointment of not fully realising a professional rugby career in the UK due to a consistent Achilles injury, Ryan turned to the corporate world where his aspirations and work ethics were rewarded with three promotions within two years, working within the Human Resources department for the Royal Bank of Scotland. However, his dream of returning home to New Zealand spurred thoughts of creating a tourism based business, inspired by a passion for travelling and adventure instilled an early age: to develop an adventure tour company that highlighted his favourite locations and activities with New Zealand.

With no experience in tourism, Ryan decided to follow this dream and develop an all-inclusive business plan for the venture. “I developed a comprehensive business plan and competitive analysis with the initial thoughts that I would find the business model unfeasible and I could finally let the idea go”. However, as the plan was further developed, he identified specific gaps in the marketplace that could be capitalised … the birth of Haka Tours.

“The concept behind Haka Tours was to create a high adrenaline fuelled adventure tour for the middle market, with a focus on small groups, personalised service and jam-packed itineraries. The flexibility to add-on a range of innovative adventure packs provides the customer to create an experience that is unique to their desires … while not breaking the bank”

Starting the business from the UK and operating remotely certainly provided challenges within the first 16 months of operations, where tour guides and managers were hired in New Zealand to provide the operational base for the business. Rather than utilising the traditional routes to market afforded to many tourist operations, Ryan took into account the changing trends in consumer behaviour which was tending greatly towards the searching for, and purchase of, services and products online.

“The utilisation of the internet and a central website allowed a direct line to the consumer, to build upon the growing trend of online shopping and changing decision making behaviour being expressed with the parameters of our target market, while keeping our adventure tours at a great price without the high commissions associated with many travel agency booked experiences”

After 16 months of 90 plus hours per week, with the dual roles of Recruitment Manager for the Royal Bank of Scotland while building Haka Tours, the tourism operation was becoming financially viable for Ryan to concentrate all his efforts on.

“One of the greatest feelings was building a business from scratch where it has now the financial viability to allow me to return home to New Zealand, where I could continue to develop Haka Tours into one of the world’s leading tourism operations”.

And from here, there was no stopping him. The vertical integration of product and service offerings, development of strategic relationships with key activity and accommodation suppliers, implementation of cost effective and innovative social media and video marketing campaigns and the development of a shared service business model has enabled the business to thrive. Rapid expansion plans has seen the purchase of a ten bedroom lodge in Christchurch.

The formal recognition of these efforts culminated in the presentation of the PATA Young Entrepreneur of the Year Award. Mr Sander’s prize includes $3000 cash, a trophy and ongoing management advice. “I feel truly honoured to receive the award as there were some great businesses and individuals who applied. This reward has strengthened my resolve and aims for building the business further and fine tuning our offerings to the market to create a tourist experience found nowhere else in the world”. With the determination to succeed and the obvious skills to make it happen, this is a space to keep a close eye on.

Obtaining online bookings for you property is much easier…and cheaper… than you may think. And it can be achieved in days – not weeks or months. This  four pronged approach will ensure your online bookings increase as well as allowing you to maximise revenue from each booking.

So, where do you start? Easy. You can achieve 75 per cent of your online strategy very quickly, cheaply and effectively. The remaining 25 per cent (if you need it) will take more thought and external assistance, but achieving the majority of your objectives instantly allows you to focus on getting the last 25 per cent right.

The first 75 per cent :

The first three  prongs of the approach require you to sign up to an effective channel manager, get yourself a top performing booking engine (a commission free one), and spruce up your website (the last thing you want is a great looking booking engine on a tired old site).

That’s the first 75 per cent of the strategy. Can it really be that simple? Yes, and here is why:

1. Channel Manager

This clever little piece of technology will allow you to list on a multitude of top performing online booking sites worldwide.  The good ones will also link to wholesalers, corporate booking sites and the like. Why is this so important?

Let’s look at a site like Expedia. Expedia invests many millions of dollars on internet search, TV and radio, travel agency relationships, affiliate programs and social media to ensure that your property is put in front of consumers worldwide. Not many accommodation providers can afford to give their property this kind of exposure, so allowing leading booking sites to do it on your behalf is a great way to participate, particularly since it is free to sign up, easy to manage through your channel manager, and you only pay a success fee when a booking occurs.

Have you ever wondered why the property down the road gets more customers from Asia or the UK than you? It could be because they are using their channel manager to update Agoda and Booking.com, the two  leading sites in Asia and the UK respectively.

So what to look for in a channel manager?

• Make sure your channel manager offers a rich selection of major overseas sites; you are limiting your success if you can only update local booking sites
• Make sure you go with a trusted name, that has a significant support team behind them and offers extras like weekend support.
• Ensure your channel manager offers a 2 way, pooled inventory system where inventory is automatically adjusted on all sites when a booking is made on any site. This will maximize your chance of getting bookings while minimizing overbooking risk. Tools that force you to split your inventory across sites and only offer one way updates are yesterday’s news.

2. Online Booking Engine For Your Own Site

This is the one you really want to get right. This determines if people coming to your site with the intent to book, actually end up booking your property or abandoning the booking and going elsewhere. Results from a leading online research company reveal that more than 40 per cent of all bookings on a hotel’s own website are abandoned during the booking cycle due to a complex booking process, as well as sluggish performance by the booking engine on the site (wait time).

So what you are looking for is a booking engine that is:

• Commission free (don’t pay someone else for bookings that are rightfully yours)
• Offers an easy to use, 2 step booking process
• Offers extremely fast response times.

It also won’t hurt if your booking engine looks sexy, allows rich media content like photo libraries of your property, rooms and online maps, and allows you to customise and colour match your website theme to ensure consistency of your brand.

3. Your Own Website

This is the face of your hotel to the entire world. Invest a little to make it appealing. It will pay you back many times. There are companies out there that can provide you with a quality hosted website, at a very reasonable cost.

One golden rule to remember when getting a new website is MAINTAIN OWNERSHIP OF YOUR OWN DOMAIN NAME! If you let your website provider own or take control of the ownership of your domain, you will be tied to them for life and at the mercy of whatever prices they want to charge you.

Owning your domain name means you control the destiny of your own website.

The last 25 per cent:

So, you now have 75 per cent of a solid online booking strategy. The last 25 per cent (the fourth prong of our approach) is a detailed and in depth subject, but is equally important as the first 75 per cent.

Assuming you are not 100 per cent occupied after getting a channel manager, quality booking engine and spruced up website, then you will want to consider: search engine marketing and search engine optimisation strategies (SEO and SEM), social media strategies (if applicable), and other direct marketing strategies to drive business to your own website – where of course your new booking engine will do a fantastic job of converting bookings.

If you do not have the expertise to devise and execute such strategies, then it is advisable to engage an external, independent online marketing expert to assist you.

An important note: If you intend on engaging an SEO expert to assist you in the future, then it is worthwhile engaging them prior to your new website being built. The website content and structure can affect SEO results significantly. The website designer/builder does not need to be the same person, but they should work together on the website to ensure best results.

Do not be scared of this last step. You do not have to spend thousands upon thousands – you can spend as much or as little as you want to achieve varying results. With SEO, you should ensure you establish a pay by the month deal so that you can stop at any time. On average, expect a time period of about six months for an SEO strategy to make a difference to the traffic coming to your website.

Accommodation providers using the Bookit system and on Travelbug will be able to login to Bookit to set up their auction for any of their room products and the commission will be 10% (including credit card fees).

For the winner of the auction they will provided with a link to a normal Travelbug booking page to complete the booking details and make payment online within 24 hours of winning the auction, so the booking confirmation and payments will be handled as normal via Bookit.

As with any type of auction you can set a reserve price and a buy now price.  The key requirement to place an auction on Trade Me for an accommodation booking is that the room availability must be guaranteed by the operator – so be careful about the date range you set for the date of travel and note that the availability is manually allocated, it is not linked with your Bookit availability.

Given operators have to be certain about the room availability to ensure the success of the auction I’d expect only operators with large inventory levels to be confident with using this and can imagine some awkward situations if the room auction dates get sold out through other booking channels prior to the end of an auction, hmmmm.

The set up looks easy enough though so it will be interesting to see how this gets adopted by accommodation providers, they can also develop packages to auction. Trade Me Travel also intends to add flights, event tickets and activities to this auction section on Trade Me.

Tourism marketing is no exception and it’s something I often say to tourism businesses who are wondering about how to improve their bookings but want to do it without spending (investing) any more money into it – if they don’t bother then nothing will change, bookings won’t improve and they will still be wondering about it.

The trick is finding that something that will give you a good return on your investment. Here are some ideas to help you find that something:

• Have a look around at some of your competitors that you respect and appear to be doing well – what do they do differently from you? Can you learn from them?
• Find people to help you who do know what works through experience or because it’s their business to know and implement these things.
• Never stop learning. There is a wealth of information online, go to workshops, conferences and study.  Arm yourself with skills to make changes and evolve your business.
• You may already have some ideas and know what you are not doing, perhaps you feel you have barriers and restrictions but if you delve into it are these just excuses or are there real options you can take?
• Have you fully explored all the different tourism distribution and sales channels available yet? Online, Wholesale, Retail, inbound tour operators, Information Centres, Tourism partners…
• Look for support from tourism organisations – especially your local RTO. They will have a lot of resources and initiatives to help you get ahead.
• When did you last do a marketing plan? Have you ever done one? It may well be all in your head but the process of putting it onto paper can solidify your ideas and help get you started.

Many of you are probably already entrepreneurial and prepared to put in the hard yards – that’s why you are in business. But there are always times when you can get too comfortable and the energy levels slacken.  Remember, it’s your business and your life so it’s up to you to make things happen – if you do nothing, nothing will happen.

Got any other useful ideas? Add a comment to share.