Hotels and Airlines are like Restaurants…. We thought this comment by Onsite Consulting (www.onsiteconsulting.com) in a recent Gerson Lehrman report was worth noting and could be applicable to the restaurant community: “Hotels/Airlines when the large aggregators or portal sites became a large provider of traffic often paid little attention to their own online reservation systems and had justification based on the increase in traffic from the aggregator. As margins declined and the aggregators had more leverage based on the hotels/airlines giving them their customers we saw a swing back to the hotel/airline pushing for customers to reserve through their own portal. Some airlines/hotels in fact offered poorer service standards to aggregator purchased flights/stays to added benefits to guests that booked directly. Some have gone as far as to no longer use such systems and have invested significant dollars repurchasing their own customers.” |
Is Google timing the check-in thing right? Does it matter? This author has a very interesting point about Google’s timing on check-ins. Given Google’s size, it may not matter if they are late or not. http://www.mediapost.com/publications/?fa=Articles.showArticle&art_aid=144199 |
What is Google Places? With Google Places and Hotpot, Google is offering a very familiar, standard user interface for finding and rating “places”. I am not sure if you have used it, but I like it. I like the clean white sparse interface as Google and every time I see that Google Places link I know what to expect. If Google continues to direct users to their Places pages or their ratings engine, then this means they “sit on top” of everyone else. It could change the landscape for restaurant or travel-specific sites. If you are a restaurant owner, and you don’t have a (free) Places page, you should get one! This video will get you excited: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rOFVQUwaPoM |
What makes a guest loyal?
I was startled by a recent article in the Harvard Business Review. The title was, “Stop Trying to Delight Your Customers.” The title did its job and caught my attention. The premise, it turns out, is that companies are trying too hard to exceed customer expectations. Over the top efforts such as giveaways, upgrades, and promotions, have margnial effects on guest loyalty. As it happens, guests just want to have their problems solved easily. If your product or service makes it easy for me to solve my problem, I’ll be loyal to your company. |