Easy marketing when tourist travel with tour operators.
Tourism industry is very fragile. It depends on many other factors such as political, economic, natural, etc. A political or natural development in your country or area may devastate your business immediately. This is why, marketing can not be made for the long timeframe in tourism.
For hotels in the holiday destinations, working with tour operators is inevitable. B2B system or through social media finding clients may be enough for relatively small hotels but for bigger ones the only solution is working with tour operators.
There are enormous advantages for clients to travel with tour operators. Everything is combined and organized. Hotel booking, airways/domestic transportation, teams in the field to help in terms of need.
For example; when earthquake and tsunami hit Thailand in 2004, or when a military coup took place in Egypt in 2011/2012 it would be very difficult to flee for B2B clients.
But there is a price to pay when working with tour operators. You have almost nothing to say about your hotels destiny. You cant make its marketing. By signing a contract with a tour operator for a market you leave everything about your hotel in their hands.
Tourism fairs are important events in marketing. However, I don't think they are very vital.
Fairs are show but events for hoteliers. Appearance in such events is important for hoteliers for sure. However no one has an expectation to receive a single booking during the fair but still they are important.
For every event you attend for marketing the expectation must be ROI.
This is the rule of business. ROI expectation might differ from immediate to a long time, this depends on you. But in the tourism/holiday industry, generally expectations are for a relatively short time frame, limited to the coming season only.
Besides, attending fairs is quite an expensive event for most hoteliers. Fairs are being organized constantly in most major cities. Organizers do organize as many as possible because this is their business but for hoteliers, many organizations become too expensive to attend. If you intend to attend a few of those events, you need to spare a substantial budget for those organizations.
But let's assume you attend some of those organizations, what is your expectation?
Fair organizations aim to bring Service Providers (hotels in the countries that expect tourists to come for holiday, cruise line organizers) and Booking Agents (who make clients holiday reservations) together. For organizers, this is the real aim of fairs.
For attending Service Providers (especially hoteliers) the aim is to meet as many booking agents as possible give them their hotel brochures, and request them to recommend their hotel to clients.
Because every hotelier knows that those booking agents have the MOST impact on client's holiday decisions. Where is trendy, where is cheap/expensive, etc. They also know which hotels are good and which ones are not as good as they seem in their advertisings.
For clients, you need to contact some of those booking agents if you will make a holiday plan.
They will give you a more clear picture. And of course, their recommendations are very important for clients. Because the client is sure he will find the booking agent when he returns from his holiday.
Tourism fairs cover a very limited region only.
Usually, it covers the city that the fair is organized in and its close surroundings. So hoteliers can meet Booking Agents who live in or around the area where the fair is organized only. To meet Booking Agents who live in the other parts of the country, you need to attend other fairs.
But why the booking agent should recommend yours?
The booking agents does not have any reward for recommending yours specifically. The tour operator wants the client to a hotel in the portfolio only. That's all.
The booking agent will get the same percentage as the booking commission in return. So why he shall recommend your? There should be a reward for recommending yours. Otherwise you need to be lucky. Tourism/holiday industry is a professional job for booking agents too. Every hotelier wants clients for himself only. And trust me, there are many hoteliers in your position.
Those are some difficulties for Service Providers (hotels) while working with Tour Operators...
But there are even bigger and more complicated possibilities ahead:
Assuming;
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Eventually, some of them agree to recommend yours to their clients. They have clients but the tour operator declines their reservation by saying that "yours is fully booked on days the client wants" (in fact it is available). The neighboring hotel is offered as a substitute by the tour operator. Eventually, your client is sneaked to the neighboring one.
What can you do? Do you have any chance to know about those events?
Tour Operators work with closed booking agents network system. They don't allow hoteliers to have any interference in their own hotel destiny.
They don't want the hotelier to make marketing for collecting clients for themselves via the tour operator. Simply the Tour Operator is the one deciding for the hotelier's destiny. If they say there are clients, then there are. But when they say there isn't, then you must believe, you have no way to ask any questions.
Tour operators working with a very closed system brings even bigger risk for hoteliers!
Every year, some Tour Operators bankrupt. This is traditional with the tour operating system. Recently we read about the? German FTI Groups crash through media. Every tour operator's bankruptcy brings dozens of hotels down too.
They bankrupt during the high season or at the end of the season. You don't have time to find a new one. Most times substantial amount of payment for each hotel that was working with the bankrupt tour operator is also evaporated.
What is the solution?
We developed an online system (www.heberi.com) that enables hoteliers to have a say about their hotel's destiny when working with tour operators.
We combined booking agents and hotels in one online system as two different users. Our system is a kind of control mechanism for hoteliers when they work with tour operators. With our new system enabled hoteliers:
This special commission is an extra payment for booking agents to motivate them for more to come. The payment is done through the PayPal payment system;
The payment is sent directly to the booking agents PayPal account that he/she defines under his/her profile.
What else for booking agents with www.heberi.com?
We also enabled excursion organizers to insert their offers and make its advertising to booking agents.
Booking agents can make excursion reservations too for their clients wherever they go on holiday and get an additional booking commission if it is predefined. The booking agent can see whether the excursion organizer offers a booking commission for bookings and its rate.
Lets remember that clients do attend many excursions during their holidays and we believe booking agents deserve benefiting from those activities too.
At this point, we believe tour operators will benefit the most by preventing their clients from being chased by pirate organizers at holiday destinations. This will increase booking agents earnings which will chase more agents to attend the tour operators booking agents network.
for Hoteliers, Excursion & Cruise Line Organizers only:
1-Click Hotel Signup or copy & paste the following link for Service Providers account (https://www.heberi.com/SendPromotionalLinks/Register?RegisterCode=6580 ),
2-Click the activation link in the coming email to activate your account.
3-Login to your account and register your service via ADD NEW PROPERTY by following steps till end.
There is User Manual, info tooltips with tutorials at necessary points for property registration.
for Booking Agents only:
1-Click BOOKING AGENT ASIGNUP or on www.heberi.com, fill the form and SAVE.
2-Activate your account by clicking the Activation Link in the email that you will receive automatically within max 5 min (check your junk folder too).
3-Access your account with your credentials and click BOOKING AGENT to upgrade, fill the coming form and SAVE. Your account will upgrade to booking agent account automatically.
4-Relevant User Manual is available under your account