Using Google Analytics to Make Better Marketing and Business Decisions

Let’s be honest. A lot of hoteliers and marketing managers are just not comfortable with number crunching or data analysis at all. Who has time for spreadsheets and interpreting stats? Don’t we have accountants and analysts in place for that kind of work?

But even arithmophobiacs (a real word, I looked it up) have to admit that you can’t run a business entirely based on gut instinct and intuition (important as these skills are!). You need reliable information and you need to know how to interpret that information at some basic level to be able to make informed and profitable business decisions.

So on top of the daily management reports, occupancy forecasts revenue & expense budgets, income statements, guest satisfaction scores etc that hoteliers have to pour over, here’s another often overlooked source of mission critical data to add to your toolkit: Google Analytics.

In a previous post I highlighted some of the benefits of using Google Analytics and how to set it up. Just to recap quickly Google Analytics is a free tool offered by Google that provides detailed information on traffic to your website. Some persons are happy just having an idea of how many “hits” they get to their website on a monthly basis and whether it is growing or not. But why would you not want a little more detail on how persons interact with your website or how they get there in the first place?

There are hundreds of articles out there describing Google Analytics and how it can be used. But what I am going to do here is highlight three ways in which paying attention to trends noted on Google Analytics has allowed us to make better marketing and business decisions and to improve our profitability:

1. Demographic information:


What the report shows – where does your traffic come from? Which countries, regions, cities? What languages do they speak? You might be very surprised at the results gleaned from the Demographics section under the “Audience” tab in Google Analytics (see screen shot below).

What we noticed – We were not surprised that the US made up our largest source of visitors, but Canada and Trinidad and Tobago being ahead of the UK? Given that traditionally the UK has been our largest source of business, this was a surprise to us. What was also surprising was that upon drilling down into the US data we found out that one of our largest sources of web traffic from the US came from California. Again surprising given the distance and the length of the flight to St. Lucia.

How we used this data to increase profits – focus additional marketing efforts (both on and offline) on locations that show significant interest in our properties and find ways to convert “looks” to “books” for these locations. We have continued to see our business from Trinidad grow and we have also been able to determine (using Google Analytics) that a lot of our online bookings from Trinidad are being influenced by our marketing efforts on Facebook and Google Adwords.

2. Sources of Traffic:


What the report shows – there are 3 basic ways that persons get to your website. Direct (someone typed in your url directly into the browser or got there via a bookmark), Referral Traffic (via a link from a listing on another website such as Tripadvisor), Search (from a search engine such as Google or Bing, both paid and organic). This report breaks it down for you (see screenshot).

What we noticed – we noticed very quickly that some sites who claimed to be sending us significant “hits” to our website were not sending us enough traffic to justify the cost. We continue to be amazed at the amount of high quality referral traffic that is generated by Facebook and we even know which key search terms are generating hits to our website (what are persons searching for when they find our site on Google or Bing).

How we used this data to increase profits – we immediately cancelled marketing campaigns that were not working for us and no longer need to guess if a listing on a website will generate profits. We can simply ask for a 1 or 2 month free trial listing and then see how it performs via Google Analytics to determine whether to continue. This has helped us to increase our ROI from our online marketing activities tremendously and we have seen bookings from our website double over last year (it is now our largest source of business) and this had a lot to do with tweaking that took place after reviewing these reports. We also noticed that most persons who were getting to our website via Google (organic) searches were getting there by searching for Bay Gardens Resorts, Bay Gardens Hotel or other Bay Gardens specific search terms. Not bad in and of itself but it did mean that we were dependent on the person knowing about our properties in the first place. Ideally you want persons to find your website after searching for “St. Lucia hotels” or “Saint Lucia resorts” or other similar search terms. We have therefore invested more in search engine optimization (SEO) through both in-house and external efforts which is producing better results for us. There are so many other ways that you can use traffic sources reports. It almost deserves an article to itself!

3. Conversions

What the report shows – what’s the point of a website if it does not generate revenue? Google Analytics Conversion reporting helps you to determine if your site is achieving its true potential. There are two basic types of conversions from Google’s standpoint. Actual bookings from your website (if you have a booking engine hosted on your website) also known as “e-commerce” conversions can be tracked via Google Analytics. This requires a bit of assistance from your website administrator as some tracking code needs to be installed on the booking engine’s pages. If you use a booking engine hosted on another site (Sabre, Globekey, Siteminder etc) you can still do this but you would have to ask the booking engine that you work with to set up a Google Analytics account for your hotel’s booking engine website which would be seperate from the GA account for your hotel’s website. A little more complicated but still worth looking into. If you don’t have a booking engine on your site, you can still track other “conversions” that you consider important such signing up for a newsletter, completing a wedding or conference inquiry form or watching a promotional video.

What we noticed – we took a listing with the Knot.com and were a little dissappointed at first when we noticed that we were getting very few inquiries from our profile listing on the Knot.com. We would have probably pulled this listing after the year’s contract was up if we had not set up conversion tracking on our wedding inquiries on our own site. We soon noticed that quite a few persons who were referred to our website from the Knot.com were inquiring with us directly rather than with the Knot.com. We also know exactly how much online revenue is generated via our website by property, by room category, by country, by state and by city. Great information to have at your finger tips.

How we used this data to increase profits – it has helped us to better determine our ROI from our marketing activities. As mentioned above we were able to determine that the Knot.com was in fact driving valuable traffic that was converting into leads and sales. Same for our Tripadvisor Business Listing (although it worked better for some of our properties than for others). We were able use a combination of Demographic and Traffic Sources reports to determine that 80% of our Trinidadian web traffic was coming from our Facebook ads and this was behind the dramatic increase we had seen in revenue from this market. We also cancelled a lot of online marketing contracts that were costing us thousands but not producing enough traffic to be justified by the cost. Finally, by linking our Google Analytics account to our Google Adwords campaigns we were able to determine which ads were working and which keywords were converting and which were not. I was very disappointed for example that a Google Adwords campaign targetting the conference and events market was not working out and paused it to refocus our efforts on a Weddings campaign that was producing fantastic results in terms of the quality of the traffic and conversions. Google Analytics helped us to determine what worked and what didn’t.

There are many other uses of Google Analytics and at it will require another posting for sure. But just to highlight a few:

1. Quality of traffic – sure a particular ad campaign sent a lot of traffic but was it high quality? By that I mean,  how much time did they spend on the website on average, how many pages did they visit on average? Did they get to critical pages (“Book Now” or “Sign up for our Newsletter”) and how often?
2. Effectiveness of your web design team or SEO consultant – so you paid a web designer thousands to redesign your website. Did it work? Are visitors more engaged than they were before? Are they getting to the critical conversion pages more often. Same for your SEO consultants. If you don’t see an increase in organic search traffic (it may take a few months so be patient) then you need to question how effective their efforts were.
3. Effectiveness of your selling cycle – at what point in the booking process are persons “abandoning” the shopping cart? Are there too many steps in the booking process? Are persons stopping right at the point that they have to put in their credit card (in which case some sort of online security seal such as Verisign should be considered to increase customers comfort levels)? Google Analytics’ “Funnel Visualization” helps you to determine this.
4. Technology – what devices are being used to get to your website? We have noticed a significant increase in the use of iPads and iPhones by visitors to our site but alas quite a few of the features on our site are Flash dependent. So we may long term have to change some of these Flash rotating banners to Javascript or something that can be viewed on an iPad.
5. Exit pages – at what point are persons leaving your website? If a page has a high exit rate, then perhaps it is a page that needs to be tweaked or “optimized” as the online marketing experts call it. It may be as simple as changing a few photos!

There are so many other uses of this valuable tool. The key with any analytic tool is to understand what it represents and what it doesn’t. It is important that you focus on long term trends. Don’t get overly excited by one-off events.

I don’t expect every hotel GM or owner to start using this tool every day. But certainly invest some time in understanding it and ensure that someone in-house is looking at it daily and providing weekly reports to the management team. Google’s “Conversion University” provides a full online training portal (there’s even an exam and Google Analytics Qualification!).

These insights into your web traffic will help you make better decisions with how you allocate your limited online marketing resources and will help you generate higher profits. Even if you aren’t a fan of numbers and analysis that has to be music to your ears!

The Groupon Effect and Caribbean Hotels – The Rise of Flash Sale Sites

No doubt about it. When is comes to hotel rates we are in a buyers market. Clients can “name their own price” on Priceline and online travel agents (OTAs) like Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity are constantly coming up with new 48 hour sales, Black Friday sales etc and they all specify a minimum of 30, 40 and 50% off on top of 20-30% commissions! The things we do to get heads in beds!

In every recessionary environment, new fads come and go and some stick around long enough to become viable business models. One of these new trends has been the rise of flash sale sites such as Jetsetter, Living Social Escapes, Tripalertz among others. These sites take discounting to a whole new level offering discounts of at least 40% off the “lowest searchable rate”. So take another 40% off that 30% off special you are running on Expedia and that is the rate that you would sell your rooms at on one of these flash sale sites (before commissions that can run as high as 50% of whatever is left after all that discounting!)

Admittedly some of the deals offered on these sites are clearly at levels that are barely above the incremental cost of filling that room. Why would anyone do this? Is it worth it? Are hoteliers really that desperate to move inventory? What about the long term effects of publicly displaying such a low rate on a site like Living Social with tens of millions of subscribers. Won’t that cheapen your brand in the long run?

These are all the questions we asked ourselves at Bay Gardens Resorts when we were first approached by Sniqueaway earlier this year. Sniqueaway, owned by Smarter Travel Media (Tripadvisor’s parent company), is a newish entrant to the flash sale market. At the time we were looking at a very soft summer and fall (sound familiar?) and we were willing to try something new. Our flagship property Bay Gardens Beach Resort and Spa was one of the first St. Lucian properties to run a sale on Sniqueaway and we have no regrets.

The number of room nights generated from the sale were not enough to turn our summer around but it did provide a boost in occupancy at rates that were substantially above our marginal cost of filling the room, even after commissions. What was even more important to me was the dramatic increase in traffic to our website as a result of this sale. We experienced about ten times our normal volume of traffic to our site and we were able to determine that virtually all of this traffic came from Sniqueaway using Google Analytics, a tool that all hotel marketing managers should get familiar with.

The marketing value of such exposure is immense! One has to look beyond the low rates and the high commissions and think of the marketing exposure that being in front of millions of high income, well travelled potential customers can provide. Since our first experiment with Sniqueaway we have partnered with several other flash sale sites such as Jetsetter, Bloomspot, Living Social Escapes and the 800 pound gorilla and Flash Sale King, Groupon Getaways.

My own experience with this is that is has been worthwhile for us but before you jump into this you have to be clear about your goals. If your goal is to increase occupancy 20% and to sell hundreds of Groupons or Living Social Escapes then forget it. Travel to the Caribbean from our traditional source markets (US, Cananda and Europe) has become extremely expensive of late and no matter what price you sell a package at, people are going to think long and hard about booking a trip when the airfare is $700 and up. But if your goal is to get exposure and generate traffic to your website that you can turn into potential leads down the road then Flash Sale sites are a great low cost option as they take nothing upfront and only take a commission on whatever is sold.

I also think it is important to debunk some of the misconceptions about working with these flash sale sites as we have now lots of direct experience with this medium:

1. Flash sale sites charge 50% commission – Huh?!? I heard that too after working with several of these sites on 70/30 and 80/20 revenue shares. This is the same commission that is taken by OTAs. Remember travel is a new product offering for several of these sites so they are willing to negotiate.

2. The calibre of clientele that these sale sites attract is low – there was some evidence of this but it does not apply to everyone. Quite a few of these guests were high income earning professionals who can afford to pay regular prices but take pride in paying 1/2 price. For some of them its about bragging rights. Bay Gardens Beach Resort offers a Vacation Ownership program and I was pleasantly surprised when a client who booked an escape with Living Social actually bought a vacation ownership (timeshare) week valued at $15,000! Clearly they had disposable income and they will be back every year for the next 25 years!

3. Publicly displaying such deals is detrimental to your brand and your ADR long term – an interesting argument but I have not seen any evidence that persons expect these flash sale prices to continue indefinitely. I  think the market understands that this is for a limited period of time and we certainly have not seen any drop in the pace of our bookings for our peak or shoulder periods going into next year despite the fact that our rates have increased. Good properties in desirable locations will be able to attract strong ADRs in the long term and a few flash sales here and there will not permanently change that dynamic.

4. The rates that you get after commission are not worth it – I don’t disagree in some cases. But at the end of the day if you feel you are better off letting a room remain empty rather than selling it at or below cost then no flash sale site can compel you to make a bad business decision. I have walked away from just as many flash sale opportunities as I have jumped on. If it it does not make good business sense even factoring in the additional exposure then don’t do it!

Flash sales have become a permanent part of our marketing strategy, especially for soft periods in the summer and fall. We have received incredible exposure from these sales and in addition to the room nights generated at critical times we have received perhaps 30,000 visits to our website in a short space of time directly linked to our participation in flash sales. A conservative estimate (again derived from Google Analytics) puts our conversion rate at about 1%. So long term about 300 of these visitors may eventually make a booking with us. Maybe more. At an average booking value of $1000, that’s a potential $300,000 in bookings in the long run in exchange for no more than $15,000 in commissions paid to flash sale sites to date. That’s an incredibly high ROI for any marketing effort!

If you are considering signing up with one of these sites here are a few quick tips on how to make sure you get the most out of it:

1. Pick the right time to launch the sale – we are in the midst of one of the busiest travel booking periods right now (Thanksgiving) and are currently running our second Groupon sale which is performing quite well in terms of exposure and bookings. http://www.groupon.com/ch/getaways/deals/ga-m-bay-gardens-beach-resort
2. Offer more expensive room types that are tough to move – we often offer our more expensive suites that are tough to sell in low season when persons are more budget conscious. This way we don’t end up tying up inventory that would otherwise be sold. It also increases the chances of coming up with a package that still generates some profit even after the 50% discount and the commissions!
3. Make use of value add-ons – we offer lots of high margin added products and services that don’t cost much to throw in but offer great value to the customer. This makes it easier to discount the entire package 40-50% and still generate some profit.
4. Negotiate! – whatever their standard revenue share is, it is always negotiable. Watch for hidden costs as well such as credit card processing fees that are often added to the regular commission.

I am hoping that more and more Saint Lucian resorts participate in these sales as getting the word out about St. Lucia is an expensive endevour for our local tourist board and with each new flash sale the island will get more and more exposure and gain better top of mind awareness which will benefit all of us.

Social Media for Small Business – Is it Worth the Effort?

I have to admit that on a personal level I was a very late adopter of social media. I must have been one of the last of my friends to open a Facebook account and I have all of two followers on my Twitter page which was last updated in 2010! I have never left a review on Tripadvisor (or any review site for that matter) and let’s not even talk about Google+, Digg, Reddit and all the other social media tools out there. Who has the time for all that?

But despite my late adoption of social media on a personal level I realized from very early the importance of social media for a business, especially a small hotel with a limited marketing budget. I am sure that most of you have read many an article espousing the benefits of social media and why you should jump on this trend before you get left behind by your trendier competitors. I am not going to do that here, but what I will do is highlight how embracing social media has benefited us at Bay Gardens Resorts.

But first let us start with some of the reasons why many small businesses are still holding out on implementing a properly planned social media strategy:

1. It is just a passing fad – yes, even with 800 million active users, the world’s second most visited website (after the online marketing giant, Google) and $4.3 billion in revenue (with $1 billion in profit according to some sources) there are still some who doubt the long term viability of the world’s largest social media company (Facebook of course!) and of its potential as a marketing tool. Yes larger companies have failed after initial success, but clearly those who still believe that Facebook is just a passing fad only popular among persons born after 1980 are in the minority.

2. It takes too much time – there are hundreds of social networking sites out there and monitoring and making use of all of them can be daunting. Some claim that monitoring social media is a full time job and in the midst of this Great Recession, small businesses cannot hire additional staff for something as frivolous as social media that will not generate additional revenue. And adding social media to the task list of the few staff who remain after several rounds of lay-offs and cost cutting would just be unfair.

3. You can’t control it – its not like traditional marketing where you can control the message. How do you plan for something like that?

4. It won’t generate additional profit – and isn’t that why we are in business in the first place?

There is some merit to most of these arguments so why jump into this? And successful businesses-people don’t like to go into anything half-heartedly. If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all!

But here are three of the best reasons (from my perspective) why small businesses (especially hotels) should get started:

1. Be part of the conversation – I am sure that no hotelier reading this would be surprised to know that many studies show that almost of 1 in 3 clients first become aware of their hotel through referrals from friends and family. Referrals and word of mouth advertising has been recognized as one of the most important sources of new and repeat business long before “social media” was even in the dictionary. The difference now is that with social media you (and everyone else) can monitor what others are saying about your brand online. Good and bad experiences are documented in real time on Facebook and Twitter and review sites such as Tripadvisor and Yelp have rendered manual comment cards almost obsolete (though some people still use these so don’t throw them out just yet!). Tripadvisor, in particular is probably mentioned at Bay Gardens Resorts by someone on our team at least ten times a day. Did you see what the Johnson family said about us on Tripadvisor? Fantastic! Show it to all the staff! Can you believe that last Tripadvisor review? Completely untrue and off the mark! Must have been written by a competitor or disgruntled employee! And, our General Manager’s favourite: We are ranked #2 on Tripadvisor, let’s get to #1! Love it or loath it, what guests say about you on Tripadvisor and other social media sites means more to potential clients than anything you put on your website or on a brochure and on television or radio. It has a feeling of authenticity and independence and in this environment where persons have options and limited funds, that means everything. So don’t think for a minute that these sites have little or no influence on persons travel plans. They do. So rather than stay on the sidelines, it is best to be part of the conversation and understand that while you can’t control it you can turn it to your advantage in many ways. Be proactive in managing your own reputation online!

2. Increase traffic to your website – this does not happen right away, but having an active, consistent presence on the major social media sites will help to drive high quality traffic to your site and will help improve your overall search rankings on Google and Bing as these are certainly seen by the search engines as links from “authoritative sites” (SEO geek-speak that I will discuss in a subsequent blog). It is interesting to note that according to Alexa.com, 3 of the12 largest sites in the world are social media sites: Facebook (#2), Twitter (#9) and Linkedin (#12). Also in the top 12 are sites such as Youtube (#3), Wikipedia (#6) and Blogspot (#7) which are also considered social media in some circles. See http://www.alexa.com/topsites for a full list of the Top 500 Global Sites.

3. Potential to generate sales – believe it or not we have been able to generate a positive ROI from our time and financial commitment to social media and we are able to measure it. It is not going to increase your sales overnight but it is possible to generate exposure from social media which will in turn lead to increased revenue and profits and because of the newness of this medium it is still relatively inexpensive compared to other forms of online and offline advertising. I will discuss this in more detail in a separate post.

There are many other potential benefits as well such as the ability to glean useful information from potential customers in real time on new product ideas, share important news instantly and the ability to gain exposure and brand awareness in a cost effective manner that larger businesses spend millions trying to gain. I always remind our guests that leaving a good review on Tripadvisor helps small businesses like ours who can’t afford a prime time ad on CNN to get the word out there.

Now that you are hopefully convinced on the need to make a start, here are a few practical tips from my experience over the last two years:

1. Focus on a few key social media sites – there are so many out there and if you try to focus on too many at once you will become overwhelmed. My advice is to focus on Facebook, Tripadvisor (or if you are not a hotel, restaurant or attraction whatever is the top review site for your industry and your market) and probably Twitter if you have time (if you want to take a shortcut, you can download this app that allows your posts on Facebook to be posted automatically to Twitter http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/). It would not be a bad idea to have a presence on Youtube as well, the world’s second largest search engine but I would give priority to the first three first.

2. Setup the right kind of account – several persons set their businesses up as personal profiles with “Friends” on Facebook rather than as a business profile page with “Fans” (or “Likes” as they are now called) on Facebook. I am seeing a lot of restaurants and hotels with hundreds of Friends now having to cancel their profile page and set it up the right way. Better to get it right the first time. See http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php. If you are looking to set up a profile on Tripadvisor, what you want to do is “claim” your listing as an “owner” so that you can manage it. See http://www.tripadvisor.com/Owners.

3. Be committed and update frequently – it does not have to take a lot of time. But if you don’t update your Facebook page at least once a day you will not see your fan base grow and persons will lose interest an “Unlike” your page. One update a day takes a matter of minutes.

4. Don’t be overly focused on selling and marketing your product – at least not right away. I have found that our 4900+ Facebook fans are more interested in our “Wacky Wednesday Riddles” or random photos of our garden or cocktails than they are in our latest specials. Build a relationship with your fan base first and they are more likely to respond positively to marketing-related posts. People don’t want to feel like they are constantly being marketed to on Facebook. I would say have at least as many (maybe more) “conversational” or “social” posts as “marketing” posts on Facebook and Twitter.

5. Measure your results – don’t just set this up and hope that it works. Facebook offers “Insights” that allow you to measure the size of your fan base, how engaged they are, where they are from, gender, age among other interesting stats. Use this as well as Google Analytics to determine how much traffic these various media are sending to your site and whether they are converting into sales. Even Tripadvisor offers analytical reports comparing your review performance to your competition. Read them, understand them and share the results with your team. There are more sophisticated tools out there offered by companies such as Revinate that allow you to monitor all social media sites at once and this provides a wealth of data but I would not advise such tools starting off.

6. Get your team involved – I started off doing 90% of the updates on my own but when you are a GM, owner or director in a business beyond a certain size, you have to delegate this. Within a few months I had handed control over to staff in the marketing department who were younger (I am only 30 and already getting obsolete!) and more, let’s say “social” (pardon the obvious pun) than myself and the results were remarkable! I still monitor daily, assist and provide guidance but management of our Facebook and Twitter pages and responding to reviews on Tripadvisor is no longer solely my responsibility and the diversity is good for the medium. But even here rules and guidelines apply and be careful that the person who is responsible for this has appropriate knowledge of the business and writing skills. Even on Facebook and Twitter grammar and spelling mistakes are frowned upon when coming from a company!

I will be going into more depth in future posts on how we have been able to monetize our time and financial investment in Facebook and other social media tools but suffice it to say that we have been very satisfied with the results so far. Referrals from Facebook and Tripadvisor make up a substantial portion of our site traffic and thus account for a decent portion of our online bookings as well as bookings made offline.

Social media represents one of the best marketing opportunities for small businesses. Embrace this tool and “Friend” it. You won’t regret it.

Using Google Analytics to Make Better Marketing and Business Decisions

Let’s be honest. A lot of hoteliers and marketing managers are just not comfortable with number crunching or data analysis at all. Who has time for spreadsheets and interpreting stats? Don’t we have accountants and analysts in place for that kind of work?

But even arithmophobiacs (a real word, I looked it up) have to admit that you can’t run a business entirely based on gut instinct and intuition (important as these skills are!). You need reliable information and you need to know how to interpret that information at some basic level to be able to make informed and profitable business decisions.

So on top of the daily management reports, occupancy forecasts revenue & expense budgets, income statements, guest satisfaction scores etc that hoteliers have to pour over, here’s another often overlooked source of mission critical data to add to your toolkit: Google Analytics.

In a previous post I highlighted some of the benefits of using Google Analytics and how to set it up. Just to recap quickly Google Analytics is a free tool offered by Google that provides detailed information on traffic to your website. Some persons are happy just having an idea of how many “hits” they get to their website on a monthly basis and whether it is growing or not. But why would you not want a little more detail on how persons interact with your website or how they get there in the first place?

There are hundreds of articles out there describing Google Analytics and how it can be used. But what I am going to do here is highlight three ways in which paying attention to trends noted on Google Analytics has allowed us to make better marketing and business decisions and to improve our profitability:

1. Demographic information:


What the report shows – where does your traffic come from? Which countries, regions, cities? What languages do they speak? You might be very surprised at the results gleaned from the Demographics section under the “Audience” tab in Google Analytics (see screen shot below).

What we noticed – We were not surprised that the US made up our largest source of visitors, but Canada and Trinidad and Tobago being ahead of the UK? Given that traditionally the UK has been our largest source of business, this was a surprise to us. What was also surprising was that upon drilling down into the US data we found out that one of our largest sources of web traffic from the US came from California. Again surprising given the distance and the length of the flight to St. Lucia.

How we used this data to increase profits – focus additional marketing efforts (both on and offline) on locations that show significant interest in our properties and find ways to convert “looks” to “books” for these locations. We have continued to see our business from Trinidad grow and we have also been able to determine (using Google Analytics) that a lot of our online bookings from Trinidad are being influenced by our marketing efforts on Facebook and Google Adwords.

2. Sources of Traffic:


What the report shows – there are 3 basic ways that persons get to your website. Direct (someone typed in your url directly into the browser or got there via a bookmark), Referral Traffic (via a link from a listing on another website such as Tripadvisor), Search (from a search engine such as Google or Bing, both paid and organic). This report breaks it down for you (see screenshot).

What we noticed – we noticed very quickly that some sites who claimed to be sending us significant “hits” to our website were not sending us enough traffic to justify the cost. We continue to be amazed at the amount of high quality referral traffic that is generated by Facebook and we even know which key search terms are generating hits to our website (what are persons searching for when they find our site on Google or Bing).

How we used this data to increase profits – we immediately cancelled marketing campaigns that were not working for us and no longer need to guess if a listing on a website will generate profits. We can simply ask for a 1 or 2 month free trial listing and then see how it performs via Google Analytics to determine whether to continue. This has helped us to increase our ROI from our online marketing activities tremendously and we have seen bookings from our website double over last year (it is now our largest source of business) and this had a lot to do with tweaking that took place after reviewing these reports. We also noticed that most persons who were getting to our website via Google (organic) searches were getting there by searching for Bay Gardens Resorts, Bay Gardens Hotel or other Bay Gardens specific search terms. Not bad in and of itself but it did mean that we were dependent on the person knowing about our properties in the first place. Ideally you want persons to find your website after searching for “St. Lucia hotels” or “Saint Lucia resorts” or other similar search terms. We have therefore invested more in search engine optimization (SEO) through both in-house and external efforts which is producing better results for us. There are so many other ways that you can use traffic sources reports. It almost deserves an article to itself!

3. Conversions

What the report shows – what’s the point of a website if it does not generate revenue? Google Analytics Conversion reporting helps you to determine if your site is achieving its true potential. There are two basic types of conversions from Google’s standpoint. Actual bookings from your website (if you have a booking engine hosted on your website) also known as “e-commerce” conversions can be tracked via Google Analytics. This requires a bit of assistance from your website administrator as some tracking code needs to be installed on the booking engine’s pages. If you use a booking engine hosted on another site (Sabre, Globekey, Siteminder etc) you can still do this but you would have to ask the booking engine that you work with to set up a Google Analytics account for your hotel’s booking engine website which would be seperate from the GA account for your hotel’s website. A little more complicated but still worth looking into. If you don’t have a booking engine on your site, you can still track other “conversions” that you consider important such signing up for a newsletter, completing a wedding or conference inquiry form or watching a promotional video.

What we noticed – we took a listing with the Knot.com and were a little dissappointed at first when we noticed that we were getting very few inquiries from our profile listing on the Knot.com. We would have probably pulled this listing after the year’s contract was up if we had not set up conversion tracking on our wedding inquiries on our own site. We soon noticed that quite a few persons who were referred to our website from the Knot.com were inquiring with us directly rather than with the Knot.com. We also know exactly how much online revenue is generated via our website by property, by room category, by country, by state and by city. Great information to have at your finger tips.

How we used this data to increase profits – it has helped us to better determine our ROI from our marketing activities. As mentioned above we were able to determine that the Knot.com was in fact driving valuable traffic that was converting into leads and sales. Same for our Tripadvisor Business Listing (although it worked better for some of our properties than for others). We were able use a combination of Demographic and Traffic Sources reports to determine that 80% of our Trinidadian web traffic was coming from our Facebook ads and this was behind the dramatic increase we had seen in revenue from this market. We also cancelled a lot of online marketing contracts that were costing us thousands but not producing enough traffic to be justified by the cost. Finally, by linking our Google Analytics account to our Google Adwords campaigns we were able to determine which ads were working and which keywords were converting and which were not. I was very disappointed for example that a Google Adwords campaign targetting the conference and events market was not working out and paused it to refocus our efforts on a Weddings campaign that was producing fantastic results in terms of the quality of the traffic and conversions. Google Analytics helped us to determine what worked and what didn’t.

There are many other uses of Google Analytics and at it will require another posting for sure. But just to highlight a few:

1. Quality of traffic – sure a particular ad campaign sent a lot of traffic but was it high quality? By that I mean,  how much time did they spend on the website on average, how many pages did they visit on average? Did they get to critical pages (“Book Now” or “Sign up for our Newsletter”) and how often?
2. Effectiveness of your web design team or SEO consultant – so you paid a web designer thousands to redesign your website. Did it work? Are visitors more engaged than they were before? Are they getting to the critical conversion pages more often. Same for your SEO consultants. If you don’t see an increase in organic search traffic (it may take a few months so be patient) then you need to question how effective their efforts were. 
3. Effectiveness of your selling cycle – at what point in the booking process are persons “abandoning” the shopping cart? Are there too many steps in the booking process? Are persons stopping right at the point that they have to put in their credit card (in which case some sort of online security seal such as Verisign should be considered to increase customers comfort levels)? Google Analytics’ “Funnel Visualization” helps you to determine this. 
4. Technology – what devices are being used to get to your website? We have noticed a significant increase in the use of iPads and iPhones by visitors to our site but alas quite a few of the features on our site are Flash dependent. So we may long term have to change some of these Flash rotating banners to Javascript or something that can be viewed on an iPad. 
5. Exit pages – at what point are persons leaving your website? If a page has a high exit rate, then perhaps it is a page that needs to be tweaked or “optimized” as the online marketing experts call it. It may be as simple as changing a few photos!

There are so many other uses of this valuable tool. The key with any analytic tool is to understand what it represents and what it doesn’t. It is important that you focus on long term trends. Don’t get overly excited by one-off events. 

I don’t expect every hotel GM or owner to start using this tool every day. But certainly invest some time in understanding it and ensure that someone in-house is looking at it daily and providing weekly reports to the management team. Google’s “Conversion University” provides a full online training portal (there’s even an exam and Google Analytics Qualification!). 

These insights into your web traffic will help you make better decisions with how you allocate your limited online marketing resources and will help you generate higher profits. Even if you aren’t a fan of numbers and analysis that has to be music to your ears!

Social Media for Small Business – Is it Worth the Effort?

I have to admit that on a personal level I was a very late adopterof social media. I must have been one of the last of my friends to open aFacebook account and I have all of two followers on my Twitter page which waslast updated in 2010! I have never left a review on Tripadvisor (or any reviewsite for that matter) and let’s not even talk about Google+, Digg, Reddit andall the other social media tools out there. Who has the time for all that?

But despite my late adoption of social media on a personal level Irealized from very early the importance of social media for a business,especially a small hotel with a limited marketing budget. I am sure that mostof you have read many an article espousing the benefits of social media and whyyou should jump on this trend before you get left behind by your trendiercompetitors. I am not going to do that here, but what I will do is highlighthow embracing social media has benefited us at Bay Gardens Resorts.

But first let us start with some of the reasons why many smallbusinesses are still holding out on implementing a properly planned socialmedia strategy:

1. It is just a passing fad – yes, even with 800 million activeusers, the world’s second most visited website (after the online marketinggiant, Google) and $4.3 billion in revenue (with $1 billion in profit according to some sources) thereare still some who doubt the long term viability of the world’s largest socialmedia company (Facebook of course!) and of its potential as a marketing tool.Yes larger companies have failed after initial success, but clearly those whostill believe that Facebook is just a passing fad only popular among personsborn after 1980 are in the minority.

2. It takes too much time – there are hundreds of socialnetworking sites out there and monitoring and making use of all of them can bedaunting. Some claim that monitoring social media is a full time job and in themidst of this Great Recession, small businesses cannot hire additional stafffor something as frivolous as social media that will not generate additionalrevenue. And adding social media to the task list of the few staff who remain afterseveral rounds of lay-offs and cost cutting would just be unfair.

3. You can’t control it – its not like traditional marketing whereyou can control the message. How do you plan for something like that?

4. It won’t generate additional profit – and isn’t that why we arein business in the first place?

There is some merit to most of these arguments so why jump intothis? And successful businesses-people don’t like to go into anythinghalf-heartedly. If you can’t do it right, don’t do it at all!

But here are three of the best reasons (from my perspective) whysmall businesses (especially hotels) should get started:

1. Be part of the conversation – I am sure that no hotelierreading this would be surprised to know that many studies show that almost of 1in 3 clients first become aware of their hotel through referrals from friendsand family. Referrals and word of mouth advertising has been recognized as oneof the most important sources of new and repeat business long before”social media” was even in the dictionary. The difference now is thatwith social media you (and everyone else) can monitor what others are sayingabout your brand online. Good and bad experiences are documented in real timeon Facebook and Twitter and review sites such as Tripadvisor and Yelp haverendered manual comment cards almost obsolete (though some people still usethese so don’t throw them out just yet!). Tripadvisor, in particular isprobably mentioned at Bay Gardens Resorts bysomeone on our team at least ten times a day. Did you see what the Johnsonfamily said about us on Tripadvisor? Fantastic! Show it to all the staff! Canyou believe that last Tripadvisor review? Completely untrue and off the mark!Must have been written by a competitor or disgruntled employee! And, ourGeneral Manager’s favourite: We are ranked #2 on Tripadvisor, let’s get to #1!Love it or loath it, what guests say about you on Tripadvisor and other socialmedia sites means more to potential clients than anything you put on yourwebsite or on a brochure and on television or radio. It has a feeling ofauthenticity and independence and in this environment where persons haveoptions and limited funds, that means everything. So don’t think for a minutethat these sites have little or no influence on persons travel plans. They do.So rather than stay on the sidelines, it is best to be part of the conversationand understand that while you can’t control it you can turn it to youradvantage in many ways. Be proactive in managing your own reputation online!

2. Increase traffic to your website – this does not happen rightaway, but having an active, consistent presence on the major social media siteswill help to drive high quality traffic to your site and will help improve youroverall search rankings on Google and Bing as these are certainly seen by thesearch engines as links from “authoritative sites” (SEO geek-speakthat I will discuss in a subsequent blog). It is interesting to note thataccording to Alexa.com, 3 of the12 largest sites in the world are social mediasites: Facebook (#2), Twitter (#9) and Linkedin (#12). Also in the top 12 aresites such as Youtube (#3), Wikipedia (#6) and Blogspot (#7) which are alsoconsidered social media in some circles. See http://www.alexa.com/topsites fora full list of the Top 500 Global Sites.

3. Potential to generate sales – believe it or not we have beenable to generate a positive ROI from our time and financial commitment tosocial media and we are able to measure it. It is not going to increase yoursales overnight but it is possible to generate exposure from social media whichwill in turn lead to increased revenue and profits and because of the newnessof this medium it is still relatively inexpensive compared to other forms ofonline and offline advertising. I will discuss this in more detail in aseparate post.

There are many other potential benefits as well such asthe ability to glean useful information from potential customers inreal time on new product ideas, share important news instantly and the abilityto gain exposure and brand awareness in a cost effective manner that largerbusinesses spend millions trying to gain. I always remind our guests thatleaving a good review on Tripadvisor helps small businesses like ours who can’tafford a prime time ad on CNN to get the word out there.

Now that you are hopefully convinced on the need to make a start,here are a few practical tips from my experience over the last two years:

1. Focus on a few key social media sites – there are so many outthere and if you try to focus on too many at once you will become overwhelmed.My advice is to focus on Facebook, Tripadvisor (or if you are not a hotel,restaurant or attraction whatever is the top review site for your industry andyour market) and probably Twitter if you have time (if you want to take ashortcut, you can download this app that allows your posts on Facebook to beposted automatically to Twitter http://apps.facebook.com/twitter/).It would not be a bad idea to have a presence on Youtube as well, the world’ssecond largest search engine but I would give priority to the first threefirst.

2. Setup the right kind of account – several persons set theirbusinesses up as personal profiles with “Friends” on Facebook ratherthan as a business profile page with “Fans” (or “Likes” asthey are now called) on Facebook. I am seeing a lot of restaurants and hotels withhundreds of Friends now having to cancel their profile page and set it up theright way. Better to get it right the first time. See http://www.facebook.com/pages/create.php.If you are looking to set up a profile on Tripadvisor, what you want to do is”claim” your listing as an “owner” so that you can manageit. See http://www.tripadvisor.com/Owners.

3. Be committed and update frequently – it does not have to take alot of time. But if you don’t update your Facebook page at least once a day youwill not see your fan base grow and persons will lose interest an”Unlike” your page. One update a day takes a matter of minutes.

4. Don’t be overly focused on selling and marketing your product -at least not right away. I have found that our 4900+ Facebook fans are moreinterested in our “Wacky Wednesday Riddles” or random photos of ourgarden or cocktails than they are in our latest specials. Build a relationshipwith your fan base first and they are more likely to respond positively tomarketing-related posts. People don’t want to feel like they are constantlybeing marketed to on Facebook. I would say have at least as many (maybe more)”conversational” or “social” posts as “marketing”posts on Facebook and Twitter.

5. Measure your results – don’t just set this up and hope that itworks. Facebook offers “Insights” that allow you to measure the sizeof your fan base, how engaged they are, where they are from, gender, age amongother interesting stats. Use this as well as Google Analytics to determine howmuch traffic these various media are sending to your site and whether they areconverting into sales. Even Tripadvisor offers analytical reports comparing yourreview performance to your competition. Read them, understand them and sharethe results with your team. There are more sophisticated tools out thereoffered by companies such as Revinate that allow you to monitor all socialmedia sites at once and this provides a wealth of data but I would not advisesuch tools starting off.

6. Get your team involved – I started off doing 90% of the updateson my own but when you are a GM, owner or director in a business beyond acertain size, you have to delegate this. Within a few months I had handedcontrol over to staff in the marketing department who were younger (I am only30 and already getting obsolete!) and more, let’s say “social”(pardon the obvious pun) than myself and the results were remarkable! I stillmonitor daily, assist and provide guidance but management of our Facebook andTwitter pages and responding to reviews on Tripadvisor is no longer solely myresponsibility and the diversity is good for the medium. But even here rulesand guidelines apply and be careful that the person who is responsible for thishas appropriate knowledge of the business and writing skills. Even on Facebookand Twitter grammar and spelling mistakes are frowned upon when coming from acompany!

I will be going into more depth in future posts on how we havebeen able to monetize our time and financial investment in Facebook and othersocial media tools but suffice it to say that we have been very satisfied withthe results so far. Referrals from Facebook and Tripadvisor make up asubstantial portion of our site traffic and thus account for a decent portionof our online bookings as well as bookings made offline.

Social media represents one of the best marketing opportunitiesfor small businesses. Embrace this tool and “Friend” it. You won’tregret it.

Redjet Now Flying to St. Lucia – Discount Airlines and Regional Travel

Yesterday Redjet, a Barbados-based discount airline owned by Irishman Ian Burns, announced the start of its much anticipated route between St. Lucia (UVF) and Barbados (BGI). With fares starting at $9.99 (one-way before taxes) this is great news for the small hotels in St. Lucia who rely heavily on the Barbados market. It also breaks the nearly decade-long stranglehold that LIAT (the largest regional airline operating in St. Lucia) has had on the busy St. Lucia-Barbados route. 

A press release yesterday from the low fares carrier said that it will be flying from the 16th December in time for the Christmas and New Year break.

It is interesting to note that with taxes included, this fare of $9.99 each way quickly balloons to $75 return. Clearly further work is needed on the part of the regional governments to reduce the taxes and fees that often account for more than 50% of the cost of a regional flight. 

For the last 5 years, St. Lucia has witnessed double digit declines in arrivals from the Caribbean market. Regional leisure travel as all but dried up with many Barbadians preferring to pay an additional $100 to fly to Miami rather than pay $300 and up for a 40 minute flight to St. Lucia. 

The arrival of Redjet into St. Lucia hopefully marks the beginning of a turnaround in arrivals out of the 

critical Barbados market. But the small hotels who rely on this should not celebrate too quickly. While Redjet’s fares are substantially lower than LIAT’s there are other hidden costs (beyond the taxes alluded to earlier). There are additional charges for checked baggage (between $10-$20 per bag). Persons who are used to flying with Europen discount airlines such as Easyjet or Ryan Air would not doubt be accustomed to this but this would be new to Barbadians and St. Lucians. 

It will also be interesting to see how Bajans who have become accustomed to the 20 minute, $20 USD taxi ride from George FL Charles Airport to the hotels in the north of the island adjust to the 90 minute, $80 USD taxi trip from Hewannora International Airport. The idea of a 90 minute drive after a 40 minute flight may not appeal to all and the additional taxi fare may cause some to  be indifferent between LIAT and Redjet. Only time will tell but it brings into focus the need to create an faster, alternate route from Vieux Fort in the south (where Hewannora International is located) to Castries/Gros Islet in the North (where many of St. Lucia’s 

hotels are located). Some hotels in the north (primarily Barbadian favourites Bay Gardens Resorts and Coco Resorts) may well consider including airport transfers in their packages to defray that additional cost. Moreover, some of the hotels near to UVF in Vieux Fort are likely to benefit greatly from having Bajan arrivals so close to their doorstep (Coconut Bay in particular). 

So celebrations of Redjet’s arrivals to our shores should be tempered but nonetheless this is good news for both St. Lucia and Barbados. 

The Groupon Effect and Caribbean Hotels – The Rise of Flash Sale Sites

No doubt about it. When is comes to hotel rates we are in a buyers market. Clients can “name their own price” on Priceline and online travel agents (OTAs) like Expedia, Orbitz and Travelocity are constantly coming up with new 48 hour sales, Black Friday sales etc and they all specify a minimum of 30, 40 and 50% off on top of 20-30% commissions! The things we do to get heads in beds!

In every recessionary environment, new fads come and go and some stick around long enough to become viable business models. One of these new trends has been the rise of flash sale sites such as Jetsetter, Living Social Escapes, Tripalertz among others. These sites take discounting to a whole new level offering discounts of at least 40% off the “lowest searchable rate”. So take another 40% off that 30% off special you are running on Expedia and that is the rate that you would sell your rooms at on one of these flash sale sites (before commissions that can run as high as 50% of whatever is left after all that discounting!)

Admittedly some of the deals offered on these sites are clearly at levels that are barely above the incremental cost of filling that room. Why would anyone do this? Is it worth it? Are hoteliers really that desperate to move inventory? What about the long term effects of publicly displaying such a low rate on a site like Living Social with tens of millions of subscribers. Won’t that cheapen your brand in the long run?

These are all the questions we asked ourselves at Bay Gardens Resorts when we were first approached by Sniqueaway earlier this year. Sniqueaway, owned by Smarter Travel Media (Tripadvisor’s parent company), is a newish entrant to the flash sale market. At the time we were looking at a very soft summer and fall (sound familiar?) and we were willing to try something new. Our flagship property Bay Gardens Beach Resort and Spa was one of the first St. Lucian properties to run a sale on Sniqueaway and we have no regrets.

The number of room nights generated from the sale were not enough to turn our summer around but it did provide a boost in occupancy at rates that were substantially above our marginal cost of filling the room, even after commissions. What was even more important to me was the dramatic increase in traffic to our website as a result of this sale. We experienced about ten times our normal volume of traffic to our site and we were able to determine that virtually all of this traffic came from Sniqueaway using Google Analytics, a tool that all hotel marketing managers should get familiar with.

The marketing value of such exposure is immense! One has to look beyond the low rates and the high commissions and think of the marketing exposure that being in front of millions of high income, well travelled potential customers can provide. Since our first experiment with Sniqueaway we have partnered with several other flash sale sites such as Jetsetter, Bloomspot, Living Social Escapes and the 800 pound gorilla and Flash Sale King, Groupon Getaways.

My own experience with this is that is has been worthwhile for us but before you jump into this you have to be clear about your goals. If your goal is to increase occupancy 20% and to sell hundreds of Groupons or Living Social Escapes then forget it. Travel to the Caribbean from our traditional source markets (US, Cananda and Europe) has become extremely expensive of late and no matter what price you sell a package at, people are going to think long and hard about booking a trip when the airfare is $700 and up. But if your goal is to get exposure and generate traffic to your website that you can turn into potential leads down the road then Flash Sale sites are a great low cost option as they take nothing upfront and only take a commission on whatever is sold.

I also think it is important to debunk some of the misconceptions about working with these flash sale sites as we have now lots of direct experience with this medium:

1. Flash sale sites charge 50% commission – Huh?!? I heard that too after working with several of these sites on 70/30 and 80/20 revenue shares. This is the same commission that is taken by OTAs. Remember travel is a new product offering for several of these sites so they are willing to negotiate.

2. The calibre of clientele that these sale sites attract is low – there was some evidence of this but it does not apply to everyone. Quite a few of these guests were high income earning professionals who can afford to pay regular prices but take pride in paying 1/2 price. For some of them its about bragging rights. Bay Gardens Beach Resort offers a Vacation Ownership program and I was pleasantly surprised when a client who booked an escape with Living Social actually bought a vacation ownership (timeshare) week valued at $15,000! Clearly they had disposable income and they will be back every year for the next 25 years!

3. Publicly displaying such deals is detrimental to your brand and your ADR long term – an interesting argument but I have not seen any evidence that persons expect these flash sale prices to continue indefinitely. I  think the market understands that this is for a limited period of time and we certainly have not seen any drop in the pace of our bookings for our peak or shoulder periods going into next year despite the fact that our rates have increased. Good properties in desirable locations will be able to attract strong ADRs in the long term and a few flash sales here and there will not permanently change that dynamic.

4. The rates that you get after commission are not worth it – I don’t disagree in some cases. But at the end of the day if you feel you are better off letting a room remain empty rather than selling it at or below cost then no flash sale site can compel you to make a bad business decision. I have walked away from just as many flash sale opportunities as I have jumped on. If it it does not make good business sense even factoring in the additional exposure then don’t do it!

Flash sales have become a permanent part of our marketing strategy, especially for soft periods in the summer and fall. We have received incredible exposure from these sales and in addition to the room nights generated at critical times we have received perhaps 30,000 visits to our website in a short space of time directly linked to our participation in flash sales. A conservative estimate (again derived from Google Analytics) puts our conversion rate at about 1%. So long term about 300 of these visitors may eventually make a booking with us. Maybe more. At an average booking value of $1000, that’s a potential $300,000 in bookings in the long run in exchange for no more than $15,000 in commissions paid to flash sale sites to date. That’s an incredibly high ROI for any marketing effort!

If you are considering signing up with one of these sites here are a few quick tips on how to make sure you get the most out of it:

1. Pick the right time to launch the sale – we are in the midst of one of the busiest travel booking periods right now (Thanksgiving) and are currently running our second Groupon sale which is performing quite well in terms of exposure and bookings. http://www.groupon.com/ch/getaways/deals/ga-m-bay-gardens-beach-resort
2. Offer more expensive room types that are tough to move – we often offer our more expensive suites that are tough to sell in low season when persons are more budget conscious. This way we don’t end up tying up inventory that would otherwise be sold. It also increases the chances of coming up with a package that still generates some profit even after the 50% discount and the commissions!
3. Make use of value add-ons – we offer lots of high margin added products and services that don’t cost much to throw in but offer great value to the customer. This makes it easier to discount the entire package 40-50% and still generate some profit.
4. Negotiate! – whatever their standard revenue share is, it is always negotiable. Watch for hidden costs as well such as credit card processing fees that are often added to the regular commission.

I am hoping that more and more Saint Lucian resorts participate in these sales as getting the word out about St. Lucia is an expensive endevour for our local tourist board and with each new flash sale the island will get more and more exposure and gain better top of mind awareness which will benefit all of us.

Internet Marketing Advice for Hotels: Hotel Internet Marketing Tip – Getting Started wit…

Internet Marketing Advice for Hotels: Hotel Internet Marketing Tip – Getting Started wit…: When I first got introduced to Google Analytics, I was like a kid in a candy store. Here was this free tool that allowed me to know exactly…

About Me – Not your typical internet marketer

Hi there!

Thanks for visiting my blog. I certainly don’t consider myself to be a traditional online marketer. I am an accounting and finance person by profession who after 4 years of working on Bay Street (Toronto’s version of Wall Street) decided that it was time to come back home to my lovely island of St. Lucia and help take my family business Bay Gardens Resorts to the next level.

Bay Gardens Resorts is a highly successful, locally owned hotel chain consisting of 3 hotels totalling 195 rooms in Rodney Bay Village, St. Lucia’s entertainment capital. But maintaining such high year round occupancy and profitability in the face of the Great Recession is not easy and we have been just as affected by the tough economic times as anyone else. 

With my background as a Chartered Accountant (CA) and Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) everyone on the Board and in management assumed that I would focus on internal controls, accounting, banking, balance sheet reconciliations etc (you know the stimulating stuff that I got my formal training in). And I have done a lot of that, but what nobody bargained on was the amount of my own time that would be spent on internet and social media marketing and business development.

It might seem strange that an accountant would develop such expertise but it actually makes perfect sense. I’m a business person first and foremost and my accounting and finance background means that I understand return on investment. No matter how you look at it all marketing dollars spent are meant to generate additional profit (not just revenue but incremental profit margins over and above the cost of the marketing itself). Yes, sometimes it is difficult to measure the ROI from certain types of marketing (PR, TV ads etc) but no hotelier would spend good money on any of this if they did not think it would benefit their bottom line in some way.

Internet Marketing – Great ROI for Small Hotels

That’s what I love about internet marketing. It is so much easier to measure your ROI. When you place an ad in a magazine or in a tour operator’s brochure don’t you wonder how many persons actually read and respond to these advertisements and actually make a booking? It is not impossible to measure the response to these types of ads but it is really tough. With internet marketing it is much easier to measure your return on investment. I know how many persons visit my website from a Facebook or Google Adwords campaign and furthermore I know how much revenue is generated from it. I can even tell you which city generates the most revenue from my online marketing activities and what room category persons from a particular zip code booked most often.

I think that the internet provides an excellent medium for small, independent hotels in smaller markets (such as the Caribbean) to gain amazing exposure to a variety of markets that are prohibitively expensive to break into via traditional marketing methods (TV, print, radio). Best of all I have seen it first hand from the perspective of an owner/manager who is not an internet marketing guru. And because of my financial background I can speak first hand of the financial impact that our increased focus on online marketing has had on our bottom line at Bay Gardens Resorts in terms of increased occupancy and ADR and better ROI on marketing spend.

Internet Marketing – Not just for “techies” and “gurus”!

There are a lot of so-called internet marketing experts out there and they charge anything from $100 – $200 US per hour and up to do things that you can honestly do on your own. Some of the things that I manage in house (with the assistance of my talented marketing department) include:

1. Set up and management of various social media accounts (Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin Youtube) and advertising through these media. We have perhaps the most active hotel Facebook page on island (www.facebook.com/baygardensresorts) with 4000+ fans and counting.

2. Set up and management of various pay per click campaigns including Google Adwords, Yahoo/Bing, Bookingbuddy, Travelzoo, Kayak, Expedia among others. 

3. Limited search engine optimization (SEO) – we did outsource some of the more complicated functions but the basics were done (and is still being done) in house

4. Email marketing using Constant Contact – great tool that is really easy to use and affordable.

And much, much more on top of my other functions in accounting, finance and general operational management.

My goal with this blog is to empower independent-minded owners, general managers and marketing managers with information that I have gathered through experience with a variety of internet marketing methods. I am also hoping to get ideas from you about some of your own experiences with internet marketing as well as hospitality management overall.

Happy reading!

Sanovnik Destang, CA, CFA, Google Adwords Qualified Individual

Assistant Managing Director, Bay Gardens Resorts
Board Member, St. Lucia Hotel and Tourism Association (SLHTA)

Hotel Internet Marketing Tip – Getting Started with Google Analytics

When I first got introduced to Google Analytics (thanks Keitha!), I was like a kid in a candy store. Here was this free tool that allowed me to know exactly where my website traffic was coming from, what online marketing campaigns were working and which were not, which zip codes were generating the most traffic etc. A treasure trove of information!

Getting introduced to this tool is what got me hooked on internet marketing. But let’s back up a bit. What is Google Analytics and why do I care as a hotel/business owner or general manager?

Google Analytics is a free tool offered by Google that gives you deep insight into how your website is performing. You can sign up for an account here so long as you have a Google Account (does not have to be a gmail account). http://www.google.com/analytics/.

Setting up an account is extremely easy. The only aspect of it that is a little “technical” is adding some javascript code to your website. This code is automatically generated by Google Analytics when you are setting up the account so all you have to do is copy and paste this code onto every page that you want to track immediately before the closing </head> tag. If you are like me and your HTML knowledge is limited to one chapter in one university IT course 10 years ago, then you can have your webmaster do this for you. If they charge you for this make sure they charge you for no more than 15 minutes of their time as this is about how long it takes.

If you want a step by step guide on how to set up Google Analytics on your website, this article is really helpful. http://knol.google.com/k/how-to-install-google-analytics-in-5-minutes-or-less#

That’s it! Within 24 hours or less your Google Analytics account should be activated and you will start to get extremely useful, detailed information on your website visitors including:

1. Traffic Sources – how do potential customers get to your site? Is it through search engines, referrals from other websites or through a bookmark (direct traffic). This is a great way to find out which online marketing campaigns are actually working.
2. Visitors – demographic information on your visitors, detailed down to the city. These reports also provide information on how engaged website visitors are (how much time did they spend on your site, how many pages did they visit), which web browsers they were using, even the speed of their internet connection.
3. Conversions – if you have a booking engine on your website this is absolutely critical. Where do your bookings come from? What country/region/city? Through which referral sites or search engines? Google Analytics can help you determine this in most cases. If you don’t have a booking engine on your website, Google Analytics can still help your track important site visitor activities (conversions) that you consider important such as signing up for your newsletter, filling out an inquiry form or watching a promotional video.

One article cannot possibly capture the full potential of Google Analytics and its importance to hoteliers but I hope that this helps you to get the ball rolling. Using this tool is an important first step in fine-tuning your marketing strategy both on and offline.