Interesting Partnership Strategy for Hotel Rate Negotiating

While reading the article on hoteliers being pressured by OTA's to screw their prices down I came across the advert below on Priceline. I have to say that somehwere along the line the balance of power has to change. Can it really be good for anyone to be forced into a pricing strategy by sheer brute force? However you have to say the blame must lie at the feet of the hotel (chains?) who have let it happen.

Any thoughts?

Another Article on Why You need to Focus on Direct Sales

Sometimes when you're publishing articles on online marketing fro the hospitality industry generally and online reservations specifically, the articales can sometimes be seen as lacking independance through vested interests. Our view has always been that the arguments for focussing on improving any hotel's direct distribution is not only important but critical and cannot be argued against in any circumstances.

In saying that however when a third party comes in and supports the argument so strongly (even if it is using US statistics) we don't ignore that reinforcement.

An article from HotelsMag.com does just that emphasising in a series of strong arguments and financial case studies just why the independant hotelier should be concentrating and investing in their own online distribution channels

The article is clear and totally unambiguous. Dependance on OTA's must be reduced and quickly.

So the next time you're doorstepped by an online marketing distributor ask them how they view the balance between direct and indirect online business.

Ask them where the online business will be coming from and what the cost of that business is really going to be. And make sure you understand fully what it is that they are going to do in partnership with you to develop your own website sales.

Are they more interested in sales through their own channels? Is the booking page going to link out of your own website?  Does the landing page look like it belongs to another website? If so do you think your customers are going to close the new window down? Worse does it offer availability to your competitors if you don't have any availability for the dates shown?

You know if the answer to anyone of these questions was yes you should start asking questions. If the answer to them all is yes then you really have to question your online marketing strategy.

The article may make you think twice about your approach. If you need some advice on turning your online marketing and distrobution around drop us an email.

Happy Tartan Day Parade New Yorkers!

Now I could be wrong but it does look as though politics may yet have got in the way of a good idea? Is it just me again or has the traditional Tartan Day celebrations that normally got high profile coverage vanished off the press pages? I know there's a wee election just rolling but there doesn't seem to be much profile around as there has been before.

I picked up a press clipping this morning saying the Jim Mather is over in The States promoting business links but so far haven't found anything about tourism promotions going on anywhere and when you Google "visitscotland scotland week 2010" there's nothing from the national tourism agency. A press release on Scotland week  from the government site is singularly low key.

So what has happened? Well it has everything to do with the renaming of Tartan Week to Scotland Week a couple of years back by the Scottish bodies involved? (See The Scotsman article at the time)

Has it been a good thing? I can't be sure having not been there but the fact that the profile has dropped so dramatically can hardly be a great thing and again reinforces the argument put by some that whilst the heater, kilt and whisky profile is not entirely accepted by all as the way forward it does provide a unique selling point (which captrures attention) that other countries cannot compete with. Scotland Week just doesn't do it on a PR level.

Anyway today, 10th of April in just a couple of hours the 12th Annual Tartan Week parade will commence in New York - without Scottish governement support - and we're sure it will bethe success it always is.

Good luck to the guys in New York looking after Tartan Week and have a great parade. Join them on Facebook as well.

What Are You Doing for the 2010 Olympics?

Interesting link came through from the Chamber of Commerce this monring outlining the 2012 Games-related Tourism Objectives for Scotland.

Raising our Profile – We want to provide a sustainable boost to the visitor economy. Hosting football events at Hampden Stadium will raise the profile of Scotland and we will maximise the potential this opportunity creates.

Visitor Economy - Growing visitor numbers to Scotland before, during and after the Games, securing increased Scottish visitor numbers a lasting legacy. To persuade independent visitors to extend their stay with a visit to Scotland to offer a complementary visitor experience, such as taking advantage of the myriad of activities the Scottish landscape can provide.

Showcasing Scottish culture - We want to use the 2012 Games and the Cultural Olympiad as a catalyst for greater involvement in cultural activities across Scotland and to enhance the image of Scotland as a stimulating, friendly and bold place.

Improving tourism and hospitality skills - We hope to make use of new hospitality and tourism schools to improve tourism skills in readiness for the 2012 and 2014 Games

Encouraging athletes to Pre-Games Training Camps in Scotland

Plans for 2010 - 2011

Scotland's main plans for the financial year 2010 to 2011 are as follows:

• To encourage the Scottish travel trade to make links with Sports travel agencies and ticketing providers to develop add-on Scottish packages to those visiting the Olympics.
• To work with VisitBritain to influence their long-haul marketing so that it highlights Scotland as a wonderful place to visit before or after the Games.
• For the pre-Games period to encourage tourism to Scotland with Torch Relay and cultural activities, such as the Hansel of Light Voyage, a spectacular voyage of two yachts from Shetland to London, offering gifts of light to ports and highlighting the 2012 Games. 

You can find out more about these plans on the Visit Britain Scotland Olympics page

I would also recommend that you have a wee read at the press page for Scotland on VB's press centre. As others see us...

North East Needs Improved Accommodation

According to findings, published by Scottish Enterprise, “improved tourism accommodation is key to the future economic success” of the North East of Scotland area.

They say that a variety of niche resorts, boutique hotels, self-catering lodges, spas and quality fully services hotels are needed to fill gaps in the tourism market.

David Littlejohn, director of industries and infrastructure at Scottish Enterprise, said the area offered “significant opportunities” to attract “investors and developers in the tourism and leisure industry.”
According to the article in the Press and Journal, Scottish Enterprise, Aberdeenshire Council, Cairngorms National Park Authority and Scottish Natural Heritage are investing a combined £5.8m into the area’s tourism sector.

The Royal Deeside and the Cairngorm Destination Management Organisation’s tourism development manager, John Carnie, backed the reports findings saying, “There seems to be a shortfall in terms of serviced accommodation or hotel accommodation whereas there has been a 25% increase in self-catering accommodation over the past few years. We also think there may be potential for a small scale resort type development,” he said.

VisitScotland’s Regional Director, Ken Massie, added: “As is the case in many parts of rural Scotland, capital investment will be key to improving the visitor experience and guaranteeing a sustainable future in tourism for the region. Tourism growth is critical to the economic future of Scotland and rural areas have a huge role to play here.”

The article however finished with what seems to be the obligatory press statement for politicians across the country when asked about tourism, with north-east MSP Nanette Milne calling on VisitScotland and the Scottish Government to do more to promote the area’s tourism industry. She said: “I believe that there is not enough focus from VisitScotland on promoting the north-east, even though there is so much on offer."




So does North East Scotland need more varied accommodation?

Do Tourism Businesses Deserve the Public Sector Spend?

“Isn’t it time businesses asked themselves if they deserve support? Why should they get help when the butcher down the road does not.”
Peter Lederer

We have to say, "Well said Mr Lederer", but there’s more than a few of us who wish you hadn’t waited until a week before leaving your post as Chairman of VisitScotland to say it so publicly and with such clarity. Many will have been well aware of your feelings and how you fundamentally believe that tourism, perhaps the most free of free markets, needs to be driven by the private sector.

Many of us also fundamentally believe that over the past ten years it has been VisitScotland’s interventionism (in areas of product promotion, micro destination and micro-product marketing and most horrendously in the role Visitscotland decided to play in becoming a travel trade player with it’s disastrous VisitScotland.com strategy) that has impacted upon the dynamism of the private sector.

In intervening in these and other areas the smaller non VAT registered businesses have been spoon fed a diet of local, regional and destination marketing support that has become the staple, even sole, part of their promotional menu.

Unsustainable Tourism Information Centres still abound for no more than political purposes; an administrative heavy centralised national tourism organisation still exists with far too much involvement in far too many, too specific areas such as product promotions and, still, online selling.

As long as the public sector continue to carry on with these activities, the entrepreneurial tourism operator will have less opportunity to develop. They cannot compete with the public sector purse and therefore they do not innovate nearly as effectively as they would if the playing field was level.

In his interview as outgoing chairman interview Peter Lederer, “issued a stark warning to the Scottish tourism industry to rise above an ingrained “dependency culture” and learn to rely on its own resources and initiative rather than rely on public-sector support.”

It is clearly the right thing to say but why oh why did VisitScotland continue to oversee a growth in activities that were clearly counter to this ethos?

Peter Lederer continued, “I have been frustrated by sections of the industry not taking a lead and taking things forward themselves. It still feels like a large part of the tourism industry is living in a dependency culture. In fact it is one of the best-supported industries in Scotland at national and local level, and yet Government agencies can never do enough to please. Isn’t it time businesses asked themselves if they deserve support? Why should they get help when the butcher down the road does not. Are they doing their bit to support growth in tourism by investing in quality, and ensuring they understand and meet their customers’ needs?”

In short, the clear answer to the questions that he asks, is that businesses do not deserve the support. My local record shop is struggling away competing for business against online, off shore, non VAT liable, music giants and he doesn’t have a 120 page full colour brochure printed with his picture and contact details on it. Nor does he sit there expecting the local council to send him 50 CD buying customers to justify their existence. Why should a non VAT registered lifestyle business expect any different? Indeed why should any tourism business expect any different.

That probably sounds brutal but unfortunately life for many small businesses is brutal just now and Lederer is absolutely right; businesses must take the lead in developing their own products and services and understand the strength of good collaborations. They should not however expect these collaborations to be underpinned for a three year period by public sector funding “until they can become self sustainable”. I’m not sure that any more than a tiny percentage of government, VS, enterprise or council funded or supported tourism initiatives or organisations have ever become “sustainable”. We all can list a dozen organisations that have taken the money set up and vanished just as quickly.

That profligacy continues even today and somewhere in the country there will be another public sector funder pouring money down another three year hole.

The public sector role in tourism spending must be curtailed and curtailed sharply. I am pretty sure I must have written about this before but much of the expenditure is geographically protectionist and ultimately aimed at displacing visitors from one area of Scotland to another, to become Scotland’s 'must visit' destination. This puts Highlands against Fife, Aberdeenshire against the Borders and taking it to its most ridiculous East Ayrshire against North and South.

The counter to a diminishing role by the public sector therefore has to be a more mature and proactive private sector that has to build in realistic joint ventures and marketing plans – and expenditure – into attracting the business it needs to grow, reinvest and grow further. The responsibility for marketing Scotland therefore must shift.

But not everyone sees it in the same way and in an interview in The Scotsman today (31st of March) George Kerevan, former chair of Edinburgh Tourist Board, appears to argue that more needs to be spent [by the public sector?]. He rightly in my opinion states that “tourism remains a Cinderella industry at a UK level – with limited political support, a limited skills base and poor productivity” but then ruins it by saying that “Yes, it needs a bigger marketing budget but that is only part of the answer.”

When politicians come out and say tourism needs a bigger marketing budget the assumption is that they mean more expenditure by the public sector. Mr Kerevan hits out at cuts in VisitBritain budgets; yet many, perhaps most in the industry didn’t shed a tear at those reductions. Does he really mean that we should be spending more marketing money at VisitScotland level? Or council level? Or just “in general”?

Banging the same drum can become repetitive but it’s not that we’re not spending enough on tourism in and to Scotland; it’s that we’re not spending it efficiently nor effectively.

The VisitScotland shift to “buy in” opportunities where the businesses have to pay for what they get is undoubtedly correct but it has to be implemented with a system that allows that same private sector buyer to input to the strategy. Same drum again but a lack of appropriate structures will inevitably lead to lack of engagement.

In the same Herald interview David Smythe, chairman of the Association of Scotland’s Self-Caterers, said: “ “The fact is that the good people are taking a lead themselves and getting on with their business, just as the designation management organizations have taken advantage of the funding. There will always be some businesses who ask ‘What has VisitScotland done for us?’, and that’s just not fair. The organisation does the big picture stuff very well and I give Peter Lederer high marks in a very difficult job where you can’t please everyone.”

I would probably tend to agree. On the big picture stuff VisitScotland has turned itself around under Peter Lederer’s tenure, and in such challenging circumstances, they have actually done the “Big Picture” stuff increasingly well; international profile, destination marketing, effective branding have all been major plusses in the last decade. Surely therefore “concentrating on the knitting” should be the strategy going forward. Concentrate on the destination marketing development that is required and reduce the expenditure on the detail and leave the private sector to pick up the proverbial baton.

Perhaps it is time for government, at all levels, to recognise its role is to facilitate the development of tourism; it is time for the private sector to accept the detailed responsibility and the financial commitment required to make it happen.

PS.

And all the very best to Peter Lederer!

Administrators called in as Scottish airline fails

Sadly it has been announced that Scottish airline Highland Airways has ceased operating as administrators have been called in.

The carrier operated a fleet of nine aircraft on various contracts including routes from Inverness and Oban to the Western Isles as well as Cardiff to Anglesey.

Routes included Inverness to Benbecula via Stornoway and Oban to Tiree, Colonsay and Coll. Highland, which employs approximately 100 people, is in contact today with those passengers who had been expecting to travel in the coming weeks.

Bruce Cartwright and Graham Frost of PricewaterhouseCoopers in Scotland were appointed as joint administrators last night and warned of redundancies.

The company had experienced a period of difficult trading which was further exacerbated by recent bad weather which grounded the fleet for a significant period and the loss of three contracted routes in the last six months of trading.

Administrators said they believe there are around 800 forward bookings at an approximate value of £50 per flight. Funds for flights booked in the last two months and not flown have been retained separately from company funds, PwC said.

But no refunds will be made for cancelled flights and passengers are being advised to contact their credit card or insurance company.

Cartwright said: “The company had encountered trading difficulties including the loss of certain contracts.

“As a result they were in discussion with a number of parties over a period of time with a view to developing a new and viable operating model.

“The directors have now concluded that the option of maintaining operations while introducing a new investor is no longer feasible.

"As administrators we are conscious that Highland provided a valuable service within Scotland and Wales and we will be working with contracted customers to ensure an orderly handover of services to new operators wherever feasible.

“It is inevitable that there will be a substantial number of redundancies but we will endeavour where feasible to assist the work force in securing employment with the new service providers.”

Customers are advised to visit the Highland Airways website www.highlandairways.co.uk for further information.