the 'Negotiator' Conference - a briefing

Some 500 of Britain’s top agents met yesterday at The Negotiator Conference. Branding, marketing and social media were the subjects of three of the discussion forums and HelpHound was there to meet with our clients and so we could brief those of you who were unable to attend.

Branding 



Giles Redmayne, Business Director at Purpose, was refreshingly honest in his analysis of estate agents’ online presence. Commenting on the ‘general tendency to overuse adjectives’ (‘passion, integrity, professionalism’) Redmayne remarked ‘You guys all use the same type of language on all of your websites - if you claim it you have to prove it.’

He acknowledged that ‘there’s a recession’ (‘I run a business too,’ he said) but argued that ‘establishing your brand and reputation, which need not be expensive, is the best way of surviving any downturn and emerging from it stronger.

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Marketing

Ian Laverty, an expert in marketing and business development, agreed with Redmayne’s comments on the ‘striking similarity of estate agents’ websites. He advised those attending to ‘start doing things that highlight how you are different and better’ (‘Don’t claim to be unique’ he added) and to ‘make sure whatever you do ‘is credible.’ 

Social media

Streetsmart’s Tracy Wood’s social media segment focused on ‘engaging with your clients, satisfied or not.’ Her message was a powerful one: ‘If you take your business seriously and want to be around in five years time you must engage with your clients.’

HelpHound was delighted to hear Wood speak about ‘the need for structured and planned communication with clients’ and she stressed how a 'complainer with an issue resolved can be transformed into a valuable client.' ‘You need a means of settling issues through the web, but offline; public spats are never good’ she concluded. 

Clients will be reassured that HelpHound's Dialogue™ ticks all the boxes highlighted by the issues raised in these presentations

If you would like a more detailed briefing on any of this, please contact Freddie Manson at HelpHound or your business membership advisor. 

Profit both ways - occupancy and rates

At HelpHound we recognise that our hotel clients face a very competitive marketplace: and that there is pressure in two main directions - occupancy and rates.

Occupancy and Rates

Keen rates can help here, but so can a great reputation. Guests will pay a premium for a hotel with a better reputation than its competitors on TripAdvisor and Booking.com. Some clients ask: 'We are happy with our occupancy, so why do we need Dialogue?' 

The answer is twofold: higher rates and lower commission payments. Guests are influenced by rankings on TripAdvisor and scores on Booking.com. A hotel that ranks well on TripAdvisor and scores well on Booking.com will be able to charge a premium over the equivalent hotel with a lower ranking/score. 

This may be self-evident. But we meet hoteliers every week who are struggling to address their rankings and scores, and this is costing them dear. Not just in occupancy (sometimes we are proudly told 'We are full all-year round' by London hotels ranking well into the hundreds) but in rates and discounts.

The web is full of horror-stories from hoteliers, and they often stem from heavily discounted offers: here is one from a Bournemouth hotelier on Quora. So anything that can help you keep rates up without sacrificing occupancy has to be given serious consideration.

Dialogue for rates and occupancy

Dialogue, used effectively, can only benefit your hotel: it can only make your hotel look better on TripAdvisor, Booking.com and all the other OTA sites - and therefore it can only help fill rooms and enable you to discount less or increase rates in line with the improvement in your ranking and scores.

Member - and proud!

Members have been displaying evidence of their membership for over three years now - so we thought it was high time for a re-design. Here are the results (click to enlarge):

And some ideas about where and how to display them:

• Shop and Office windows /doors
• POS - counter/reception
• Letterhead/invoices
• In advertising and on promotional literature (brochures/leaflets)

And, most important of all:

• On your website

We can supply you with artwork in all the common (and some not-so-common) formats. Just speak to Karen or one of her team or email karen.hutchings@helphound.biz

Linking to external sites - a warning

Links - so beloved of web designers and especially SEO experts - are a double edged sword. Here we explain why.

The first rule of web marketing: 

"Once you have attracted  potential customer to your website do everything in your power to hold them there to [place an order/book a room/make an appointment]"

So far so good, but the second rule in some marketer's books seems to be:

"embed as many links to as many other sites as possible"

And the third?

"Link to external review sites"

We have no issues at all with Rule 1. Almost all of our clients' marketing spend is designed to attract potential custom to their websites. With the other two we would like to strike some words of caution:

External links

It is important to remember that for every visitor to your site that follows an external link, some will not return. How many less will depend on (a) how powerful the message contained on your site is (do you show independent and verified reviews, for instance) and (b) where that external site is likely to lead your visitor (potential customer).

Examples:

Hotels commonly link to local sites that they feel may be of interest to their potential guest - sites of interest and local tourist boards are common. Here's a screenshot of Visit Devon:

Click to enlarge

Note the helpful links in the drop-down. Could you be sure you wouldn't lose a booking?

How about linking to TripAdvisor?

How absolutely sure are you that they'll come back? After all, TripAdvisor is a very helpful site: showing other hotels in the area and hotels that rank above the one being viewed (we met with a potential client in central London last week who ranked in the 300s on TripAdvisor and was linking to them on their home page, we cannot be sure but we reckon they were losing almost everyone who followed that link).

There are estate agents who send potential clients to see this kind of thing:

Which may be equally unhelpful.

So, link by all means, but always ask the key question "will they return?" before you do.

TripAdvisor - Playing the numbers game

This post is dryer than some, but we feel this subject is so important to clients that we would encourage you to persevere!

What do we mean by 'the numbers game'?

All review sites have algorithms. These are invariably secret (for good commercial reasons), but it important for us at HelpHound to do our very best to understand how they work. TripAdvisor's algorithm affects our clients. Here we will try and explain how:

TripAdvisors' algorithm is based on a formula which takes the total number of reviews for a hotel, factors in the hotel's size (basically the number of rooms) and then the proportion of the positives against the negatives. 

Let's address each of these in turn... 

1. Total number: more = better for you. How do we know? We have compared hotels with exactly equivalent proportions of 'excellents' and so on, and the hotel with the most reviews wins
2. Size: We know! You can't do anything about this. But you can punch above your weight: we know 50 bed hotels that manage to get more reviews than 200 bed hotels, and they're winning the size battle. We know hotels that get one review a day, we know some that hardly get one a month (and there's no excuse for that)!
3. Positives/negatives: This is where Dialogue comes in - getting you positives and enabling you to manage negatives before they reach the web

So: to see your ranking rise:

• Engage with your guests
• Get as many reviews as possible
• Ensure that your reviews are as good as can be 

'Simples' really (with Dialogue)

- as Aleksandr would say

Blackmail

At the recent Independent Hotel 12 TripAdvisor session many of the questions from hoteliers related to an increasing and worrying phenomenon - the guest requesting a discount "because you wouldn't want me to post a 'one star' review."

Alistair from TripAdvisor found this a difficult one to answer, because, as one hotelier pointed out: "You don't insist on verification [real name/date of stay] so we can't positively identify the 'blackmailer'."

We have encountered this with clients, and we have thought long and hard about the best way to deal with this that doesn't involve TripAdvisor. Our conclusion: let guests know that this kind of thing simply won't be countenanced. Nicely!

How?

By displaying a notice something like this:

You will, of course, decide on your own wording, but the final statement that effectively says "Don't wait until check-out to complain - and don't expect a discount." is, we think, the key.

TripAdvisor - face to face

HelpHound attended the TripAdvisor business session at the Independent Hotel Show 12 at Olympia yesterday, and here's our report for our clients:

Alistair MacGregor, who heads up their Business Listings in the UK, spoke. No startling revelations, but his theme was consistent - "your potential guests are reading our reviews." Not just a few, almost all - even if they're not booking through TripAdvisor. At first, this might seem like old news, but we meet with dozens of hoteliers every month, and denial persists; there is a tendency to see one's TripAdvisor listing in a vacuum...

How so?

First, and most harmfully, the ranking tends to be ignored as long as the balance of the reviews is OK (plenty of 'excellents' and 'very goods' and few or no 'poors' and 'terribles'. This ignores human nature: there are some great hotels in London ranked in the 2 and 300s in London, There are some very good hotels (spotlessly clean and great value) listed in the 5 and 600s. But many potential guests ignore them because of their rankings.

Alistair was asked, obliquely, about ranking, and he made it pretty clear that it was done on a combination of the following:

• The ratio of positives to negatives
• The volume (with the size of the hotel factored in)
• 'Old' reviews were heavily discounted

We know this, and we have designed Dialogue to specifically address this for our clients. Dialogue gives you:

• A mechanism to get positive reviews to your website, and then to any open site of your choice - deals with 'positives' and 'volume'
• A mechanism (Resolution™) to manage negatives before they are posted - increases the ratio of 'positives' to 'negatives'
• A constant stream of 'fresh' reviews - means 'old reviews' can safely be discounted

What else did we learn?

The question and answer session was notable for its negativity. All the questions focused on two aspects which are a recurring theme: getting unfair negatives removed and dealing with 'blackmail'. Alastair's response was consistent, if not overly popular: "Contact the business centre'. The question of verification: "Why can't TripAdvisor make our guests identify themselves?" was met, in effect with a "50 million visitors can't be wrong" kind of response.








Keep an eye on the HelpHound blog: coming soon - detailed posts dealing with these two issues as well as one on 'how to play the numbers' game'.