17 great marketing articles

I recently added Conversation Marketing to my Google reader (thanks to Google's recommendations built into Google reader).

I was really excited to see this article:

17 Conversation Marketing Articles You May Have Missed

One of the best articles was 3 Ways to Kill SEO Suicide.

All 17 have some excellent ideas. For tourism operators I would add the following additional items in relation to your booking system.

• Is it easy and simple to use.
  
• Ask a friend to test it out
• Check the email responses are ok.
  
• Can you to track bookings from all your agents, websites and other marketing sources
  
• Does it display the correct rates to the general public but provide the ability to display agent rated as appropriate
  
• Is it hosted on a secure, backed up server.
• Are credit card details stored securely.
  
• Will the system update other booking systems
• Is their a simple calendar to display availability
• Does the system allow you to enter a start date and then a choice of departure day or number of nights.
• Do you control the booking and payment terms?

These are just some of the items to consider and is why I recommend Seekom as the booking system of choice for accommodation and rental car operators.

If you are interested in discussing further feel free to contact me.

How Secure is your data

I read the following interest blog on Saasu's blog today called Winning The SaaS Security Challenge

Of particular importance are the following questions:

• Can you achieve better security than us?
• Is that laptop of yours (with accounting software on it) safer in your car, home or office than in our international data centre?
• Does your laptop have a guy with a gun standing in front of it to protect it?
• Do you back up your data as many times as day as we do?
• Do your store credit card numbers in your MYOB or Quicken file? What is your liability if you lose these?

You might ask the same questions about your online booking system.

So here is another reason to choose online systems compared to off line systems.

For example Rainbow Tourism uses Saasu accounting software and all our invoices and documentation is stored online safely and securely for a small annual fee. We email all invoices and receive all invoices electronically. This saves a large amount of money in paper, postage and printing and reduces our environmental footprint.

Similarly Rainbow Tourism uses the Seekom booking engine to manage all our bookings again storing all our documents securely.

So the question is how secure is your data?

Online Availability - Make your life easy

One of the biggest issue accommodation providers and other tourism providers face is ensuring that their rates are up to date on all websites and availability is up to date.

The simple solution is to use an online booking system on your website that it is part of the Open Distribution Network (ODN).

Why is this important you ask?

The concept behind ODN is one of shared inventory i.e. you update inventory and rates in one place and all your suppliers access this shared inventory.

This means instead of updating availability rates for example:

• via email to your agents who might sell one or two rooms a year
• blocking out rooms for resellers who may not sell the rooms
• updating wotif.com
• updating hotelclub
• updating worldchoice travel
• updating your own website
• updating your manual book

You can update all rates and availability in one place.

Rainbow Tourism uses an ODN software called Seekom. We strongly recommend this product as it has all the above functionality and the New Zealand developers of this product have worked hard to intergrate this product with other systems.

Seekom also has a number of wholesalers and agents which you can automatically access with minimum of fuss.

Examples are:

• Jason's Travel Media
  
• Tourism Distribution Systems
• and the list goes on.

What Seekom does is operate a good Open Distribution Network online booking system and provide it at a very competitive rate. So what are you waiting for - compare systems today and then compare prices and you might be surprised. Seekom is not only full of features but very cost effective.

What 21st Century features do you offer?

So you have a good website and booking system but how do you distinguish yourself from the competition.

You can always try price but ultimately that won't work as everyone can meet your price.

You have your rack of information brochures, great breakfast service, warm and comfortable beds but is that enough to get someone to book you place and also as importantly recommend your place.

So what you 21st century features do you have - some things you might want to consider are:

• Free wireless internet and/or a free computer so visitors can access there email accounts. If you are on ADSL a wireless network can be established very easily at little cost but your guests will love you for it. Having been charged $25 a night at some Australian hotels means you never ever use their service and also know next time not to book there as effectively you are paying another $25 a night.
  
• Provide a VOIP phone. Whether it be Skype, your local ISP or some other provider. This means you can charge a minimal amount for phone calls - and most systems allow you to track this in real time so you know what to charge guests.
• After hours phone answering service. At a minimal cost why not have your phone calls when your are not able to answer go to an answering service. Better still use a call centre service like Global Help linked in with Seekom and you can have all booking inquiries managed centrally saving you time and money. Simple requests of do you availability, I am lost how do I get to your place can be answered quickly and promptly allowing you to attend to guests. Any calls that need to can be transferred directly to you. In some cases the service may even be able to handle foreign languages.
  

These are just a few things that a good operator should consider. They are not expensive but make your business more professional.

Yes there is a cost to all these services but if you look at it from the number of extra bed nights booked you will see it won't take much to payback. Remember a guest who also gets a bit extra will recommend your place.