Independent Hotels- Technically ready for Recovery

Now that the shock of shut down has past and we adjust to the new reality, just what can the Independent Hotelier do to come out of this extraordinary situation fit and ready to accelerate recovery?

Over the last decade, following the global economic downturn, hotels in Ireland and all over the world have been rebuilding their businesses. The shock of the 2008 crash had a very sobering effect on the industry in Ireland. Hoteliers focussed on their costs and on the quality of their product. The result was a lean and proactive hospitality sector.

With the recovery came investment, it was apparent from the downturn that those properties that concentrated on quality and guest experience were the businesses that recovered more quickly and the need to maintain that quality and experience has become central to the long term plans of hoteliers.

The result is that today Ireland has some of the best hotels in Europe across all categories, from budget hotels to the super luxury and the recovery of the Irish hotel industry in this time has been remarkable. Now, as we are reeling from the impact of the global pandemic, it is this investment in our properties that will allow us an early recovery.

While we rebuild our businesses, we can do so safe in the knowledge that the product we offer is of a superior standard to that offered in many other destinations and we can therefore, concentrate our resources on strategies for recovery.

Just what should those strategies be? Many hoteliers are feeling powerless in the face of enforced closure and a near-zero demand. How long will this last? Where will our guests come from? When will they start to travel again? All these questions and many more are spinning around in the minds of hoteliers as all they see are cancellation after cancellation.

There are some things we do know.

1.    This will pass. While there is no definitive timeline, the actions taken by our government are having a demonstrable effect in preventing the spread of the virus and as the crisis peaks, we can reasonably expect a relaxing of the restrictions on movement. International travel is another matter. The attitude of the authorities in our feeder markets and the ability of the airline industries to ramp up capacity will dictate the speed at which our overseas market is restored.

2.    Domestic markets will recover first. There will be a huge pent up demand for domestic travel, the short break away from the same four walls. Should the restrictions lift by July we can expect to see a surge in domestic demand over August and September. It may take longer and maybe county by county. For the Independent leisure hotel dependant on traffic from the capital or other centres with higher infection rates, the return of domestic guests may be delayed.

3.    Competition will be fierce. There will be tremendous competition for the domestic market to fill the gap left by our overseas visitors. The danger is that there will be a race to the bottom and rate will be sacrificed. This should be avoided; any short-term gain will be sacrificed in the longer term as rates remain depressed.

4.    Ireland will probably be one of the first countries in Europe to see the return of North American visitors. Viewed as a safe and welcoming English-speaking destination we are also on track for being one of the areas in Europe least affected by the virus. With the exception of Greece, all the major tourist destinations in Europe are experiencing a far greater instance of Covid-19 than Ireland.

So, what should the independent hotelier do now in preparing for the recovery? When traffic resumes every euro of revenue must be optimised. To achieve this, we must have a solid tech infrastructure. Data will be king, and the prudent use of that data will make all the difference to the profitability of our businesses. So, time for some tech housekeeping.

While there are myriad technologies available to assist in Revenue Management and some are near essential, the backbone of any hotel's revenue management system is comprised of four essential foundation stones.

1.    The Website

2.    Online Booking Engine

3.    Property Management System

4.    The fourth element is the person driving your revenue management. The human factor can never be undervalued, technologies can be intuitive but cannot replace the knowledge, experience and sheer gut feeling of a good hotel revenue manager.

I would suggest that every hotelier take some time now to examine their tech infrastructure and most importantly these three critical cornerstones. Let’s start with our websites.

The Website

Is your website fit for purpose? It is a given that you must have superb photography and excellent copywriting to truly invoke to beauties and qualities of your property. However, the idea that simply having a website as a shop window is no longer valid. Your website is the foundation of your digital identity and should be a dynamic part of your digital marketing activity. There are various audits that can be conducted to assess the worthiness of your current site which will, in turn, direct you when considering upgrading or redesigning your online presence and booking portal. In discussion with Alan Rowe of Aró Digital Strategies, the most critical measures we identified were.

·      ONLINE REPUTATION

Online reputation contains the key data from the travel platform websites (TripAdvisor, Google My Business, Booking.com, Facebook, Instagram and Twitter) that travel consumers use to help them make decisions about where to stay on their next trip. If you are not on top of your online reputation you will miss out. Research by online reputation management firm TRUSTYOU shows that Ratings outweigh Brand and there is a direct correlation between the volume of business and strength of reputation.

·      ONLINE AUTHORITY

Domain Authority (DA) is a search engine ranking score developed by Moz that predicts how well a website will rank on search engine result pages (SERPs). DA is calculated by evaluating multiple factors, including linking root domains and number of total links, into a single DA score.

·      SEARCH ENGINE OPTIMISATION (SEO)

SEO is a key component of any hotels’ Digital Marketing strategy. For any hotel that wants to achieve over 30% of their room revenue through their own website, there are 4 areas where they should excel. It is essential to have an excellent performance across the technical components of SEO, Images, Organic Searches and Organic Positions.

 ·      WEBSITE PERFORMANCE

This section measures the overall performance and in particular, the speed performance of the hotel’s website. The first indicator is the Google Lighthouse score for overall performance, followed by the GT Metrix’s Speed performance and finally the Google Page Speed score for mobile and Desktop.

·      VISITOR PERFORMANCE

This considers the overall visitor performance for each hotel’s website, including the number of visits, unique visits, pages per visit, sessions, average visitor duration and bounce rate.

 ·      BEST PRACTICE

You must measure the hotel’s website across a selection of key best practice indicators including Google Lighthouse Best Practice Score, Lighthouse Accessibility, Client Errors, Schema.org, Text/HTML Ratio, W3C Validator and HTTPS Secure. Basically, you need to know your site was built properly. A site that scores poorly on any of these will rank poorly on search engines. Your service provider should guide you on these.

 ·      BOOK DIRECT STRATEGY

Just how serious is each hotel about managing their ‘book direct’ strategy. If you are promoting your book direct strategy & selling packages on your booking engine, but you do not have a branded Pay per Click ( PPC) program in place or Google Hotel Ads driving your customers back to your own website, you will not maximise your return.

 ·      CUSTOMER ENGAGEMENT

Maximising customer engagement on your website is critical in helping to maximise conversions and so checks to see if you are implementing the key functionality indicators that we know maximise customer engagement should be carried out. These include having an open booking panel, visible room videos, offers on the home page or special offers on all secondary pages. For example, not having an open booking panel can result in losing up to 20% of bookings. Also, not having your rooms presented on your rooms landing page with video can result in about 30% less engagement.

 ·      CUSTOMER CONVERSION

Maximising customer conversion when they land on any hotel’s Online Booking Engine (OBE) is also key in increasing bookings. Just how focused is your hotel is in this area? For example, do you have full availability over a 12-months, do you use strikethrough & discounts or have key selling points presented on your OBE? All well-known customer conversion indicators.

Our websites should be our pride and joy. We should show them to the world like proud parents. However, while captivatingly beautiful and reflecting all the great things about our hotels and resorts, they are little more use than a printed brochure if they are not designed and maintained to be a dynamic part of your digital marketing strategy. Always ensure that whomever you commission, or have commissioned, to build your site demonstrates a clear understanding and strategy to drive more traffic to your site and convert that traffic.

There is never a good time to start anything in our industry, we are always so busy! But this is as good a time as we are going to get, and, there was never a greater need to do it. Hotels that are on top of their website and Booking Engine can drive in excess of 50% of their room sales through their own site. Those that are not, often achieve as little as 5%. Depending on the size of the property this could deliver an additional €100k to your bottom line.

Next up; The Booking Engine.                                                                          

Are you a hotelier or Revenue Manager with further insights on the efficacy of the hotel website? If so what do you feel is most important?

Patrick O’Flaherty is an experienced luxury hotelier with a career spanning the UK, Middle East, Russia and Ireland. Working with luxury hotel companies, opening resorts and iconic city hotels he was appointed Revenue Director for Marco Polo Hotels in the former Soviet Union where he concentrated on Revenue Strategies and optimising sales. Patrick returned to Ireland in 1997 to take up the position of General Manager of Ballynahinch Castle Hotel & Estate in Connemara, Co Galway. Ballynahinch Castle is today one of the most successful boutique luxury hotels in Europe. Patrick has recently exited Ballynahinch Castle to establish his own business providing Revenue Management advice and strategies to the Hotel Industry.

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