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The festive season for hotels and restaurants.

The Festive season 1st December to 2nd January.

Overview;
Tens of thousands of people enjoy and celebrate the festive season every year all with their own special requirements and reasons for doing so, with family on special occasions, with work on annual office Christmas parties or just to relax and get away from it all.
The internet is increasing the choice through on-line awareness for people looking and wanting to stay, eat or celebrate locally or nationally.
As internet business grows globally both for user’s looking and businesses advertising, it’s becoming increasingly hard to find what you are looking for without specific information. It will either get more confusing and muddled with the mass of information on line, or it will have to become streamlined to be effective as a search tool and an advertising medium for businesses.
One area that’s taken off over the last few years is hotel room bookings on-line, with hundreds of sites advertising tens of thousands of hotels in Europe alone. Not one of these sites is dedicated to a growing and huge market which is the Christmas and the New Year period, thousands of people each year will visit friends and family all over the UK. Not all will be able to stay with their family or friends as they won’t have room for them, not all will want to stay with them either! Some will want to or have to eat out on one or more occasion, some will want to treat their friends or family to a special lunch or dinner over the Christmas period, and some will just want to book a Christmas break somewhere. Then there’s the over sea’s market, wanting to stay in the UK over the Christmas and New Year period with the same needs and requirements. But where do they look as not one site is dedicated to this area?
With up to 12 million independent sites advertising (not one of them dedicated, Google September 2007) for key words like; Christmas Breaks, Christmas Hotel Breaks, Christmas Breaks 2007 etc, it soon became clear how ineffective this area was for both the customer and businesses wanting to advertise.
Most establishments will think about pricing their packages or party nights for the festive season July to August and start advertising from September. As a catering professional I can see why as the season usually is dictated by the seasons, Easter, May Bank holidays, Summer season, August Bank Holidays and then just Bonfire night before Christmas.

Is this though how the public look at it, or large businesses trying to organise their office parties or the overseas market planning their European trips? As an establishment in the hotel and catering market, regardless of how successful you are over the festive period, are you maximising all that you have to offer over the festive period?
Do you consider that by not advertising your establishment year round for the festive season, you might be loosing bookings?

The current dilemma.
Put yourself in someone else’s shoes for a moment, whether it’s an overseas gentleman planning his family’s month long European trip, a family wanting to spend Christmas together for a special event, or a company secretary trying to organise the Christmas office party, would you leave it until September, October etc. before looking around and trying to book? I know each and every establishment will have their loyal following who book year in year out for hotel packages, Christmas Day lunch etc. But what about the market who only knows where they would like to stay i.e.; London, Kent, or Cornwall, how do they find you?
How much potential business are you loosing?

(My searches were always through Google and I started in July through to October 2007)
I always tried to use generic search terms for example, trying to find a Christmas break in a hotel I typed “hotel Christmas breaks”. These generic search terms created more and more problems for me, I kept getting millions of results for each search term, but each listing seamed to be a web-site not advertising for the festive season, but different packages and services including day trips to Spain, car or household insurance, plane tickets etc. Also how would I advertise my hotel (advertising as being seen by the internet users), as there were millions and millions of results on each Festive search term!
Also, and with the greatest respect, how are we selling our industry on-line to the public. Who honestly has the time to search millions of listings to find a hotel package or Christmas party over the festive season? I did break down my search terms into counties which reduced the results down to a few million, but it didn’t really help. I did find a few hotels, but not in the area’s I had put into my search term, or I found the area (county) but no hotels were advertising for the festive period.
My solution at the time and only solution was to click through twenty to thirty results and try to piece from each search term what I wanted or was looking for. Even the big web sites that book the rooms on-line didn’t have or were advertising for the Festive season. A few hotel chains were advertising their festive activities, which was good if you wanted to just stay with that particular chain.
All these negative results and diluted web sites made me question whether there was an on line Festive market in the UK, were people looking and if so what were they typing in their search terms to find their perfect getaways or parties.

I booked an appointment with my local government marketing office and asked him to check the search terms for July 2007 on Google. Although I couldn’t find figures for each search term, I did find out that ten’s of thousands were looking using the same or similar search terms that I had been, and this was in July! The top generic search term was “hotel Christmas breaks”. Google also ranks each search term against advertising, the top ten search terms or phrases being typed had massive advertising potential due to the shear numbers looking.

Why then has nothing been done or created in this area, to improve search ability which will increase local, national and international presence and increase visibility and bookings for establishments wishing to advertise for the festive market.
It seems if you want to book a European Christmas holiday, no problem, a few sites and a few mouse clicks and you’ve booked and paid for your festive break abroad. If however you want to stay in this country for Christmas, unless you know the area and hotel you’re looking for you’ve got little or no chance!

A Festive on-line UK directory for accommodation providers and restaurants?

Could this then be the answer for the public looking and Businesses wanting to advertise and more importantly be seen?
Why then hasn’t it been done?
Maybe like my self the registration of £300 to £1,000 for annual registration to these diluted and competing sites was too much? Again, as I did, maybe you thought you would have to advertise on two or three sites just to have a chance of being seen?
Surely a directory that lists by county throughout the UK, whether hotels or restaurants or just accommodation providers will get the businesses seen, and help the public by listing these establishments within the area they want to visit. If you’re looking for a Christmas party for your company or want to just celebrate with friends and you live in Kent, wouldn’t you want a festive on-line directory to list all restaurants and hotels offering Christmas parties in Kent? Wouldn’t you want it to do the same for hotel packages, B&B’s, Guest houses etc, am I missing something, it all sounds very logical to me.
As a company I would know that I would be listed in my county or town every time someone was looking for what I was advertising, so I’d have more of a chance in getting potential customers and new and return business.
As a customer looking for Christmas hotel packages, Christmas parties etc, I think a reasonable result would be three or four mouse clicks of their search enquiry to list what was available, instead of facing millions of listings without any reasonable results.

So what about a site that advertises throughout the UK for…..
Hotel Christmas Breaks, two, three or four night breaks, Christmas (office) parties, Christmas Day Lunch, Boxing Day Lunch, New Years Day lunch, New Years Eve Dinner Dance, New Year packages one, two night packages, accommodation for party nights, bed and breakfast and self catering.
….and gives the public results within three to four mouse clicks for any of the above search terms.

User and business user friendly
Search results within three to four mouse clicks
Refined search capabilities from the home page
UK map divided by country or county, type in or click county direct from the map
Affordable registration to hotels and restaurants
Free to B&B’s and Self Catering establishments
Dedicated advertising page to all registered businesses including photo’s
Fully automated and customisation facilities for each dedicated page advert
All year advertising, with automated prompts for pricing etc

Public;
Any festive search for hotels, restaurants, B&B’s, Guest Houses or Self Catering establishments, will give a result to the public within three to four mouse clicks. Also if a general search isn’t needed the public could define their search straight from the home page, giving more refined searches as needed.
A UK map showing counties regardless of the country, click the map on the county or area you wish to stay in, or type in the area in the text box. A list of establishments registered to your search enquiry will be listed for that area.

Companies;
Registration for hotels and restaurants to be affordable based on the annual charges being charged by other web sites. Annual registration based on one dedicated page for that particular business, and offering advertising for the services they provide for the festive season. (Listed above). Free registration offered to businesses with the least to gain from the festive season, those being B&B’s and Self Catering establishments.

I am a hotel director for a small 3 star country hotel and I believe in my convictions and feel passionately about my industry. I also believe that there are different ways to advertise more efficiently and effectively with more rewards and with the potential of more business from the internet that currently exists.

Kind Regards,

Chris George.

About the Author

I've been involved in the hotel and catering industry for over twenty years and have spent the last year developing a new on-line festive web site; www.hotelchristmasbreaks.com

Article Source : ClickEasyArticles.com

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