1st Place to the prepared

Happy New Year, it’s going to be a good one…. but it’s important to have everything in the right place for 2013.

Here are 3 “must do” things for 2013:

1) Ensure you have rates loaded for the whole of 2013 - January is one of the busiest times of the year for new bookings. Early bird customers are looking to book dates throughout the year. Don’t lose out. Have your rates loaded until the end of summer or even the end of the year. If you don’t have rates loaded they can’t book.

2) Create at least one special offer…especially for your low season dates - If you have some low season dates in the winter months load a special offer to help persuade customers you have the best value. Do a last minute offer or a longer stay offer, eg 10% off when you stay 2 nights or more.

3) Show off your very best images on your freetobook widget - Pictures are so important, customers will look through all your images and make an assessment of what you offer. It’s quick and easy to make a judgement on appearance, so make sure they get the right impression with a great set of photos.

more direct bookings

As with any engine, they all need a bit of a shine every so often and a little oil….

We have recently completed an integration with TripAdvisor to enable Freetobook customers to advertise on their TripAdvisor (TA) page. We believe this makes good

TripAdvisor Show Prices button for direct bookings

business sense because potential customers visiting your TA page are at a late stage in the purchasing cycle – in other words they are ready to buy, a perfect time to advertise your direct link to them.

As part of our service, Freetobook provides an interface to show how many clicks/searches you have paid for and which bookings have resulted from the clicks.

TripAdvisor click analysis graph and stats

This keeps you in control and gives you the information you need to calculate your profit from advertising on your TA page. The graphs and figures are easy to read and monitor.

What does the new TripAdvisor upgrade mean to the “Show Prices” button ?

TripAdvisor call this upgrade their “meta interface” and it has some big advantages over their older system. Show Prices button is clicked by customers after they have put in their desired dates.

1. A neat interface showing customers your available rates on searched dates as provided by various suppliers.
2. If you are not available (sold out or closed) you will not show on the list and therefore no click charge can occur from the “Show Prices” button.
3. You only pay when the customer clicks the (Book) button

See an example of the new “meta interface” page below.

Clearly this has major advantages to advertisers. You will not pay if the customer is searching for dates when you are full or closed, nor will you pay if they are speculatively checking rates and availability. You only pay if the customer clicks on the (Book) button. Obviously a click on a (Book) button is far more valuable than a click on a (Show Prices) button.

With the new “meta interface” (live API) click prices will be higher than for the old system but the number of clicks will be far lower. There will also be a different price for TripAdvisor’s mobile pages. We are currently busy completing the new integration to the “meta interface” which we are confident will be a great benefit to freetobook customers.

The Meta Interface page is fed by the live API. A customer will see this when they enter dates and click the (Show Prices) button.

Meta Interface TripAdvisor live API results (example)

1) The top 4 advertisers with a live API are shown in Cost Per Click price order

2) The top paying advertiser (Expedia in this case) is highlighted with a bigger box, different coloured ‘book’ button, one additional room type shown and a marketing tagline (in this case “120,000 hotels all over the world”) which is provided by the partner

3) Other advertisers with an API who are not in the top 4 show at the bottom with a price

4) Advertisers without an API show at the bottom as a text link

5) Advertisers with an API who did not have availability show, but you are not able to click on them (in this case LateRooms)

Scotland’s Best B&Bs – a highly regarded group of nearly 100 bed and breakfasts, all rated 4- or 5-star by VisitScotland– have awarded Freetobook a major contract to provide commission-free online booking. www.scotlandsbestbandbs.com

Scotland’s Best B and Bs

Freetobook’s technology enables customers to select from any of the available properties on the group’s website and book them immediately. Thanks to us, Scotland’s Best B&Bs are now open for business throughout the world, 24 hours a day. No potential booking need slip through their fingers just because someone couldn’t answer a phone or reply to an email enquiry. As you can well imagine, a small B&B group like this one doesn’t have enormous resources, so Freetobook’s agency solution is ideal for its members. Set up costs are minimal and bookings are commission-free.

Freetobook has several similar group projects under development, helping independent properties harness the power of cutting-edge technology and benefit from strength in numbers.

It pays to get “together”

together you get more

With “together” a new solution by freetobook, properties can can easily co-operate to maximise their bookings. It’s great for associations, tourism groups, destination marketing and anyone else that just wants to get together. You can even use it for an independent chain of properties.

All you need is a group of properties that want to work together and we will build a website for your group. We will provide the customised graphics to brand it, we will host it for you and best of all we will provide a professional booking system to generate bookings for your group.

We all know it’s easier to stand out and get noticed as group. Getting a bookable website for your group makes perfect sense in terms of marketing and as a long term asset that you can invest in and grow over time. That’s why it pays to get together.

get together video

Collaboration pays with more bookings. From time to time properties get fully booked, so it makes sense to keep the booking within your group. When one is full the chances are that some of the others have accommodation available. This makes the customer’s life easy and means you don’t lose any bookings – more bookings for the group means more bookings for each member. Nothing wasted, nothing lost – that’s why it pays to get together.

We already have a few examples (check out our blog articles) on Ayrshire Bed and Breakfast Association and Scotland’s Best B and Bs – we welcome more co-operating groups.

You know it pays to get together: Find out more and tell us about your group. Contact Iain or Craig by email or phone. Contact details at the bottom of freetobook homepage.

More “togetherness” thanks to freetobook

Wasn’t there a hit song out a few years ago called “Better Together”? Can’t remember, off the top of my head, who sang it, but here at freetobook, we’re all about “togetherness” too, and it’s one of the main things that’s helping our customers go from strength to strength.

When we talk about “togetherness”, though, we’re talking about a lot more than just a warm, fuzzy glow of cooperation. An affordable product unique to freetobook users, TOGETHER is specifically designed to enable smaller businesses to market themselves more effectively as a group, as you can see HERE.

The latest group of forward-thinking accommodation owners benefiting from our TOGETHER product is the Fort William Accommodation Marketing Group (FWAMG), who’re using it improve their current website and booking process.

“Using freetobook’s TOGETHER was a no brainer as far as the members of FWAMG were concerned. We had already benefitted from freetobook individually. This new product gave us an affordable opportunity to collectively generate additional commission-free bookings whilst maintaining the local identity that is so important to us and our visitors”

–  Andy Keen, Chairman, FWAMG

So what do the Fort William folk get from TOGETHER? Here are the benefits:

1. They can offer their customers a fully functional online booking engine that increases conversions on their group website

2. Members using freetobook don’t need to update any other system

3. Each member can track the bookings through their “Together” booking engine

4. Bookings are kept and shared within the group

5. It’s a real marketing asset for the group, tracking the success of any marketing campaigns

6. If members are full, they can use the booking engine to see who else is available

7. It’s a great resource and benefit to offer and attract new members to the group

8. No technical knowledge is required…we do the clever stuff!

And, best of all…

9. There’s no commission on any bookings!

Well done to FWAMG for getting it up and running in under a month! You only have to look at their great site HERE to know that the future really is “Better Together.”

Why your widget is so important to your business!

A sports car may be beautifully styled, but if it can’t go anywhere it’s just… well, a sculpture. In the same way, no matter how good your website looks – and no matter how much money you spend getting people to it – if it doesn’t have a robust “engine” under the hood, no-one is going to book on it. Your booking engine really is the “business end” of your website.

We’ve put a lot of thought and effort into making those bookings happen for you, but that can be wasted if you don’t spend a little extra time making sure your widget looks fantastic.  Your room details page is usually the 2^nd most visited page on your website. Why? Because people, quite understandably, want to see what they’re getting for their hard-earned money!  Showing customers what they are getting whilst they’re considering prices and availability will increase their likelihood of booking….it’s as simple as that.

Here are our 5 top tips to making your widget wonderful!

1. Room images that keep the customer in the “booking zone”
2. A list of room facilities that avoids any doubts/delays (i.e. is there a hair dryer?)
3. Short and clear room descriptions that sell the benefits (i.e. free WIFI, a view etc)
4. An enticing breakfast description that reinforces the value
5. A beautiful header image that says “you’ve found the perfect place….”

The right level of information at the right time with a clear “call to action” (i.e. “Book Now”) is what great marketing is all about. That’s what will get you more bookings. Guaranteed.

freetobook sponsors “Small Hotel of the Year” 2013

Quality is the key. What makes the VisitEngland Awards so important for the accommodation world – and so important to freetobook as a sponsor – is the fact that they’re not just an excuse for a boozy meal and a lot of back-slapping. Instead, they’re a beacon of excellence for all tourism businesses. By rewarding excellence, they play a key role in encouraging everyone involved in English tourism to raise their game even further. They highlight good practice amongst the very best hotels, B&Bs, guest houses and self-catering cottages in the country and, in doing so, allow other properties to learn from them. Simply by taking part, accommodation owners are inspired to improve their business performance in terms of turnover, profitability, quality, sustainability, staff morale and customer satisfaction.

This relentless focus on quality and making things better is what freetobook is all about as well. We provide cutting-edge booking technology, but we also offer a huge range of advice on boosting your online business and getting the very best out of a fast-changing digital world that is full of just as many opportunities as it is pitfalls.

With this in mind, freetobook is once again delighted to be sponsoring the “Small Hotel of the Year” category at the 2013 VisitEngland Awards for Excellence. The ceremony will take place on Monday 20^th May at Lancashire County Cricket Club, Old Trafford.

Here are the finalists in the freetobook-sponsored “Small Hotel of the Year” category. Click their names to view their websites and connect with them via Facebook & Twitter (all, of them, interestingly enough, are strongly active on Social Media):

Brockencote Hall, Worcestershire

Gidleigh Park, Devon

Holbeck Ghyll, Cumbria

Northcote, Lancashire

The Scarlet Hotel, Cornwall

And given the fantastic range of our customer base, we’ll also be keeping an interested eye on the “Bed & Breakfast / Guest Accommodation of the Year” category too…

Alkham Court Farmhouse Bed and Breakfast, Kent

Fern Cottage Bed and Breakfast, South Gloucestershire

Pendragon Country House, Cornwall

The Bear’s Paw, Cheshire

The Salty Monk Restaurant with Rooms, Devon

Best of luck to all the nominees!

freetobook connecting with VisitScotland

One of the most exciting things on the horizon for freetobook is our new connection with VisitScotland.

VisitScotland has a new accommodation search system that allows all B&Bs, guest houses, small hotels etc in Scotland to be displayed regardless of their relationship with VisitScotland itself (this is known as a “polling” system).

What this means is that very soon all Scottish freetobook properties will be able have their rates and availability appearing on VisitScotland’s site whenever a prospective customer does an accommodation search.

1^st June is the current “go live” date for VisitScotland’s new system. Keep checking our blog for further details and updates.

8 Things You NEED to Know about the TripAdvisor Changes

Are you up to speed with the changes at TripAdvisor? Not knowing could lose you bookings.

TripAdvisor is Changing into a Booking Website. If you don’t have online booking you can lose bookings that you used to get from TripAdvisor.

1. TripAdvisor is now a booking website, you can check live rates and availability.
2. TripAdvisor will soon be advertising on TV just like other booking websites.
3. The TripAdvisor home page (Image Below) now asks for a destination and your travel DATES.
4. If you are on TripAdvisor looking for somewhere to stay they will show you availability and rates from Booking.com, LateRooms, Expedia, your property etc….
5. You can now advertise your own direct availability on TripAdvisor next to the OTAs(Video Below)
6. If you don’t work with any of Booking.com, LateRooms, Expedia and you don’t advertise your own availability on TripAdvisor you will lose bookings you used to get from TripAdvisor.

What do you need to do to get your rates and availability on TripAdvisor ?

7. You need an online booking system that can connect with TripAdvisor.
8. Alternatively you need to work with an Online Travel Agent (OTA) like booking.com that will advertise your availability on TripAdvisor.

Here is a short video to show you how to add rates and availability to you TripAdvisor page using your booking system.

Click Here to see the Video

As TripAdvisor grows their booking strategy you can expect more and more links to the booking process. It is likely that more of the page space on TripAdvisor’s website will be devoted to directing the customer to rates and availability.

This is a copy of the TripAdvisor home page, as you can see its asking for a destination, arrival and departure dates so they can show you rates and availability.

TripAdvisor Pay Per Click advertising

Great Visuals Sell Accommodation

Big hotel chains have the largest marketing budgets, so their websites must always be the ones that attract the most attention. Right? Wrong. In the USA recently, it’s the websites of smaller, boutique hotels – and even B&Bs – that have been generating the most buzz in the media. Why? Because these smaller hotels are much better (and quicker) at adapting to what customers want when booking accommodation online. And these days…

It’s All About Images!

A strong visually-oriented layout is the only way to go, because (and this can’t be emphasised often enough)…Photos sell rooms.

1. Good photos.
2. Big photos.

And, most importantly…

3. Prominent photos

Here’s a great example of a rooms page (courtesy of the Lion Inn, Winchcombe)…

Don’t force your customers to hunt around for images that will tell them what the place they’re thinking of staying at actually looks like. Put them front and centre. You own a great property – let the world know about it!

So, even if you don’t want to redesign your whole site, at the very least get your web designer to boost the size and number of quality visuals on the front page and all the room pages. And, ideally, add a big, unmissable link on the front page itself that shouts, “ROOM IMAGES.”

At freetobook we have been tweeting, facebooking and blogging about this change for months – Now its official from TripAdvisor themselves – they are a rate comparisson site with booking links. (8 Things You NEED to Know about the TripAdvisor Changes)

press release [start]

No More Pop-Ups Crop Up as Hotel Price Comparison Search Finally Goes Live

Applying radical common sense, TripAdvisor^®, the world’s largest travel site*, announces the launch of its all-in-one Hotel Price Comparison search, now live

Video of TripAdvisor show prices and availability

worldwide.  TripAdvisor *is* the first to match real-time pricing and availability with the more than 100 million original reviews and opinions of TripAdvisor travellers.

“Our bad,” said Steve Kaufer, co-founder and CEO of TripAdvisor. “We want to help travellers plan and have the perfect trip, not drive them crazy with endless annoying pop-ups before they’ve booked it. We are excited to offer real-time hotel prices and availability in one convenient display.”

“I recently searched a popular New York hotel, hit the ‘See All’ pricing link and — expecting to wade through countless pop-ups — I went to grab a cup of coffee,” said one TripAdvisor “member.” “When I came back to sift through the results, there was only one display…one!  Can you believe it? A unified price comparison search is a dream come true!”

TripAdvisor now displays an easy-to-read layout of pricing and availability from multiple booking partners in one view. This means that travellers can apply a simple method for choosing top-rated hotels at a great price: research a hotel for their chosen dates of stay, compare options at a glance to select their favorite, and click through to the booking partners’ sites to complete the transaction.

“This was the most logical step in the evolution of TripAdvisor,” said Kaufer.  “Pairing our best-in-class user-generated content with pricing in one display gives a better experience to our travellers and even more qualified leads to our hotel booking partners.”

Book Direct for the best price

The new price comparison search display is now live for hotels in every country in the world and is available on all TripAdvisor sites and all mobile platforms.

press release [end]

See the freetobook view on this change with our Video and Blog article.

Click here to see the VIDEO

Click here to see the Freetobook view BLOG

Get the news first with freetobook, our online booking solutions empower you to make the most of the online world.

TripAdvisor is changing into a Rate Comparison and Booking website. How does this affect accommodation owners ?

Some accommodation providers could lose bookings from TripAdvisor as a result of these changes, others will gain. Here are a couple of videos to help you understand where you stand.

First Video about the changes, how they look to potential bookers

 Second Video about how you can deal with them

Another couple of blog articles might help you understand the changes. Official TripAdvisor is a Rate Comparison engine. And also 8 Things you need to know about TripAdvisor

5 More Ways That Great Photos Can Boost Your Bookings

Great photos can massively enhance the first impression guests received from your website – and therefore boost your bookings. Here are a few clever strategies to really drive home the benefits that excellent visuals provide…

1. Collect lots of terrific photos of your property by all means. In particular, make sure that your room photos present your accommodation in the very best and most flattering light. But once you’ve done this, chose a SINGLE PHOTO that you’ll use to convey everything you feel is best about the experience your offer your guests. Use the photo as a kind of unofficial logo anywhere you can – on Facebook, on Twitter, on Google Places (and whatever other ‘must do’ social media channels are lurking over the horizon!) Once people see it often enough, they’ll associate it instinctively with your property.
2. When you (or your web designer) is updating the photos on your site, make sure you think carefully about how you name them. Well-named photos add a lot of Search Engine value to your site. It may seem a bit unwieldy, but make sure the file name for each photo includes the name of your property and where it is (e.g. mayfield_guesthouse_norwich_bedroom1.jpg) rather than just (room.jpg). Lots of people find accommodation by doing geographic searches like “B&B in ­____” or “guesthouse near ­____”. Naming your photos in this way will help them find you. Congratulations, your site just got “Searchier”!
3. Great photos of rooms are the gold standard when it comes to visuals that will entice people to stay with you. But other types of photos can also be great when it comes to really emphasising the cosy, personal experience that people crave. If you take great pride in your home cooking, for instance, have some great photos of your meals on your site. If you’re on the coast with spectacular views, emphasise those. In other words, find your unique selling point and push it as clearly and concisely as possible through your visuals.
4. Putting guest reviews (even TripAdvisor reviews!) on your site can be a terrific way of establishing trust (i.e. “Look, we’re a wonderful property with nothing to hide and here are the reviews to prove it.”) But some people these days don’t even have the time/patience to read reviews. A Guestbook page with a few photos of you with your guests (ideally smiling!) creates an instant and very powerful positive message. They’re also great for your Facebook page.
5. Going back to how people search, it can be immensely useful to have a “Local Area” page on your site, with lots of smartly-labelled photos showing nearby attractions. Placing yourself within your community means that you become a strong part of its online presence and an advocate for it. It also means that you’ll score well, once again, with Search Engines if anyone searches for a local attraction then starts looking for accommodation.

Every day, more and more people are using iPads, iPhones, Androids etc to book hotels and B&Bs.

Pretty soon more people will be booking travel via mobile than on old-fashioned desktop computers. Google – the (current) kings of all things search – regularly produce stats on the growth of mobile. Here are some of the most eye-catching latest figures:

(1)   Almost half (47%) of all travellers now start their travel planning from a mobile device.

(2)   Today, 40% of leisure travellers and 36% of business travellers use mobile search engines to find hotels and book overnight accommodation.

(3)   By the second quarter of 2013, travel-related search queries will increase by 68% from smartphones and 180% from tablets. As you can see here…

But perhaps most important of all is the news that far more last-minute bookings are made these days from mobile devices than desktop computers. Properties whose websites are not optimised for mobile are missing out these bookings, since, according to Google, 36% of last-minute travellers said that difficult mobile navigation is the main deterrent from booking…

So don’t put it off any longer. Get a mobile-optimised website and a mobile app today. You know it makes sense!

Accommodation associations the length of the country are benefiting from freetobook’s innovative “Together” product, which allows them to market themselves more effectively as a group.

It’s already revolutionising life for members of the Fort William Accommodation Marketing Group (FWAMG) up in the Highlands. Now it has also been adopted by the Torbay Booking Association down in Devon.

The Torbay group consists of over 20 hotels, B&Bs and guest houses, ranging in size from 6 – 14 rooms. Their new ”Together” site, which went live last week, is called www.torbaybooking.co.uk

Now these small, individual properties will no longer have to go it alone in an increasingly competitive world where big budget chains dominate more and more. Thanks to “Together”, they’ll be able to benefit from strength in numbers and take advantage of all these innovations:

(1) Increasing conversions by giving customers a fully functional booking engine

(2) Bookings are kept and shared within the group

(3) If members are full, they can see who else is available

(4) They can track bookings through their ”Together” booking engine

(5) They can also track the success of any marketing campaigns

And, best of all…

(6) All bookings are commission-free!

Scotland’s Best B&Bs and the Ayrshire Bed & Breakfast Association are also using our terrific “Together” product. You can find out more about it HERE

Bookings are already flooding in from VisitScotland to properties using freetobook, don’t lose out and get yours at no cost whatsoever.

If you are an accommodation in Scotland you can get free bookings from the VisitScotland website. No signup fee, no annual fee, no commission – using freetobook system you can feed your rates and availability onto their website and get bookings FREE.

Get connected to VisitScotland with freetobook

This is a NO-BRAINER, bookings are already flooding into freetobook properties from VisitScotland and there is no cost from freetobook and there is no cost from VisitScotland.

How do I get free bookings from VisitScotland ?

1. You get a free listing on VisitScotland (this is free)
2. You have an account with freetobook (this is free)
3. If you don’t have an account with freetobook get one today (this is free)
4. VisitScotland and freetobook are connected (you get free bookings)

Find out more about how to do it – click here

Is overbooking a sign of marketing success, process failure or just bad luck?

There’s a real stigma attached to over/double booking. Why?

•  Is it the failure to deliver on a personal promise made to your customer?
• Or is it the fear of your contractual obligation once a booking has been made?

Fear of overbooking can lead to empty rooms!

In these days of litigious customers and a compensation “culture”, it’s no wonder that small businesses err on the side of caution. These valid concerns appeal to our most human of instincts: fear. Yet when you de-construct the problem, it’s not as bad as looks!

Most businesses need to maximise their chances of getting bookings and the most effective place for this is online.  The more places you can be found and booked, the more bookings you are likely to attract. But by increasing your exposure online you may also increase the risk of double booking.

Many businesses have held back from maximising their online advertising for fear of double or overbooking. There must be thousands of lost bookings every night because businesses don’t feel confident offering their full availability.

So if you sell across a variety of places online (i.e. channels like Booking.com, Bed & Breakfast websites etc.) then you need to ensure various systems are kept in sync. It’s time consuming and can be a stressful process.

One option is to show only a selection of rooms on each channel, so they are distinct and when they run out they can’t overbook. It’s not very efficient and you need to know what channels will sell what rooms best and when.

Effective channel management can avoid lost bookings

Another solution is to have your booking system linked to your various sales websites (or channels), so that your one diary keeps all the other channels up-to-date. This means any phone bookings you add to your diary update all the channels and any website bookings automatically appear in your diary. This technology is usually called “channel management”.

When you consider the benefits of extra exposure, additional bookings and time saved updating various sites – not to mention the end of all that worrying – channel management can represent great value. Ideally you want a channel manager that works with the key channels, is flexible and isn’t too expensive. There are some clever “pay-as-you-go” options available where you pay according to the number of bookings you receive.

This technology can free up a lot of time and allow you to disappear for the odd week (or longer) without having to take the mobile phone and diary with you!

Even if you don’t go for any of the above options, I would stress that the fear of an overbooking should not stop you selling your rooms.

After all, the definition of overbooking is the deliberate practice of hotels to take more bookings than they can accommodate in order to avoid empty rooms, on the basis that there will be no-shows and cancellations.

This is hardly a claim that could reasonably be levelled at a B&B or guest house. Most customers, if contacted quickly, will understand that with modern technology it’s a rare possibility and not a result of negligence or greed on your part.

That’s a different story if you are a large hotel that regularly overbooks and then “bumps” or “moves” a customer on arrival and just blames someone else! Been there and got the scars to show it!

TripAdvisor has just let us know that they are planning to enable properties with business listings to display rates and availability and booking functionality (planned for Q4 2013). An official press release is due later this week from TripAdvisor. No final decisions have been made about what the interface will look like or what the bidding model will be.

This is an interesting addition to the TripAdvisor offering coming hot on the heels of their new meta search rate comparisson. This will give small properties worldwide the chance to show their rates and availability alongside some of the biggest travel companies.

Look out for further details and compare it with the current TripAdvisor Pay Per Click advertising explained in a previous blog.

USPs can be powerful sales tools

USPs are all the rage these days, because they make you stand out in an increasingly crowded marketplace. Given how full of character – and, yes, “quirky” even! – B&Bs and guest houses can be, they’re in a great position to sell themselves in this way.

Having said that, figuring out your USP can sometimes be a bit of a head-scratcher, so here’s some food for thought.

For one thing, the great advantage that all independent properties have is that they’re unique in relation to chain hotels: they’re smaller, more intimate and offer a more personalised service. But, as the owner of a bed and breakfast or guest house, how do you distinguish it from all the others in the area? Here are some things to think about…

• Are you family-run?
• Do you grow your own fresh produce?
• Do you have a herb garden?
• Do you do some home baking?
• Are you pet-friendly?
• Do you have a log fire?

If you can think of something, you’ll find it a lot easier to attract customers and get extra bookings,

Mind you, it’s not just a case of being unique; it’s also important to be unique in the right way. If you’re looking for a unique attribute that you can use to sell your property and nothing comes readily to mind, it might be a good idea to start by looking at your recent customers:

• Who has booked your property in the past few years?
• What kind of people are they? What are they interested in?
• Have they written reviews on your website, or on TripAdvisor? If so, what have they said?
• Have any of them told you that they booked your property for a special reason?
• Has a certain local event or landmark brought them to your area?

In terms of finding something unique, customer feedback can be your most valuable resource.

If, having done all this, you still feel that your property still doesn’t have an obvious unique attribute, there’s always the option of creating one. If you’re in an especially beautiful part of the world, you could study some local history and offer walking tours that focus on that. Seasonal unique selling points are another great way to keep business coming in all year round: you could focus on an outdoor facility, like a patio garden, in summer, and an indoor facility, like a real log fire, in winter.

Once you’ve settled on a unique attribute that you’re confident about, the other most important strategy is not to undersell it. Make sure it’s prominent on your website and try to complement it, if possible, with the best possible photos.

There are good + bads ways of dealing with guest reviews.

We’ve all been there, whether we’re accommodation owners or not. We’ve all imagined we’ve done something well only to be brought up short when we’re told we haven’t. It leaves us feeling baffled and hurt – especially if we imagined we’d done our best.

If you’re the owner of a B&B, guesthouse or cottage and you receive a less than glowing review, the feeling is even more acute, because your property is your home – it’s not just a building where you go to work every day. The temptation is to take any negative feedback personally and react instantly. But if you allow yourself to do so, it can result in real damage to your online reputation. And in the modern digital world, where there’s so much scope for people to review absolutely everything, that’s something you want to avoid at all costs. What you need to do is take a deep breath, count to 10 and keep these (appropriately enough) 10 DOs and DON’Ts in mind…

1. DON’T Ignore it, no matter how unjustified or unfair it is. You might imagine that you’re maintaining a dignified silence, but to other users of the site (e.g. TripAdvisor) it’ll look as though you don’t care enough to respond. The review in question will therefore acquire unearned credence.

2. DON’T Respond in a defensive way that personally attacks the reviewer. You’ll do just as much harm as you would by ignoring it.

3. DO Thank the reviewer for his/her contribution.

4. DO Highlight any positive aspects mentioned in the review first.

5. DO Express surprise and disappointment that the reviewer had an experience that was in any way negative (thus implying that it was extremely unusual.)

6. DO Point out any factual inaccuracies in the review, but politely. By being polite and expressing regret you not only show that you care about your guests’ experiences. You also take the higher ground.

7. DO Take the conversation off-line: suggest that the guest contact you at your private email address, thus defusing the possibility of a public row.

But it’s not just negative reviews that require a response. Positive feedback on review sites is an incredibly useful free marketing tool, so it needs to be acknowledged too…

8. DO Once again, thank the guest for taking the time to write.

9. DO Highlight any specific aspects that they praised – if it’s good, it’s worth repeating.

10. DO Make sure your response includes details of your website, making easier for any fans of your property to pass on those details and book again.

Think before you respond to reviews

With the huge increase in the number of people using social media, a guest’s opinion of your property is no longer limited to whatever site it originally appeared on. Reviewers can now also link back to their opinion on Twitter or Facebook. Other Twitter/Facebook users can then retweet/share it, allowing it to gain more and more traction online. You can’t afford not to be part of this conversation. But by getting involved in a dignified, circumspect way, you can turn it to your advantage and defuse its potential threats or get added value from the positive.