A well thought out, attractive website and a reliable, easy-to-use booking engine are the fundamentals to getting more business for your B&B. But how do you make potential customers aware of your existence? The traditional way is to advertise. This can still be an effective strategy, but it needs to be targeted.
Here are a few suggestions for getting the best out of your advertising…
Like other small businesses looking for new ways to advertise, many BandBers will probably have considered Facebook at some point. They may even have tried it and being disappointed with the results.
However, having commissioned a study from research company Datalogix, Facebook is claiming that online advertisers who judge the success of their Internet campaigns on click-through rates alone are doing it wrong. What they seem to be implying is that Facebook ads should be regarded as more like television ads, where there are general viewing figures but no specific data on how many people rushed out to buy the product being sold.
TripAdvisor’s “Show Prices” displays a property’s booking engine as a pop-up with pre-selected dates filled in. It often appears alongside several other pop-ups from Online Travel Agents (OTAs) selling the same property (e.g. Expedia and Booking.com). It’s a cost-per-click model for the hotel or OTA that chooses to be present amongst the pop-ups. From a potential guest’s point of view, it’s most useful in that it allows him/her to compare the property’s own rates against those of OTAs.
Groupon made a lot of noise at its IPO last November ($12.8 billion valuation), but harsh reality seems to be catching up with it pretty fast. One of its main problems in the US seems to be refund liabilities on unused vouchers. This is particularly relevant in the travel sector.
