GDU Ninja Update 36 - Potentials Scams and what is DSA
Yes, its happening! In most of our markets (except Asia) it looks like there is a slow down in the accommodation sector, especially Ireland, probably due to worldwide economic uncertainty. Keep this in mind when setting your room rates for 2025.
https://www.irishexaminer.com/business/economy/arid-41583490.html
European DSA
Following the implementation of the Digital Services Act many OTA's have been contacting accommodation properties in Europe to collect information. It would appear that some accommodation providers have not seen these requests, have not complied and as a result have been shut off from the OTA platform.
Potential Scams
Some of our hotels are contacting us to tell us about customers complaining of making a reservation on a channel that attracts a Booking Fee which is not refunded when the reservations is cancelled. These 'channels' appear to be using a legitimate feed of inventory from one of the major OTA's. We cannot judge if it is a genuine scam or not, but below we include a link to 1072 Trustpilot Reviews from one of the channels mentioned;
https://www.trustpilot.com/review/hotelvalue.com
Another issue we are seeing is scammers getting access to an OTA account and deactivating the Channel Manager. Its really hard to understand what lies behind this (and what the scammers are getting out of it), but it can cause major disruption to your business.
Do you have your Marketing Plan in place for the year?
Below is an example from Joleene McDermot, one of our Marketing Partners www.marketingfortourism.com
How an accommodation provider increased revenue in December by 38% while also reducing occupancy by 12%
A solid social media strategy does wonders for a property looking to increase revenue without increasing costs on the business.
Together with the general manager and starting way back in August we formulated our plan of action for December. This is normal for me as in marketing you are always working months ahead to be ready for when the interest starts to build (in Christmas) and I know from experience this is from when schools go back in September. This is when families start planning their festive Santa activities as demand is high and they want the best experience for their children and are prepared to book in advance.
Together we worked on what the Christmas experience was going to be and I created the website content including web page detailing the offers, graphics and optimising the page for SEO. Then I created lots of content to promote the offer for when we go live. We worked on numerous email campaigns from lists that we had started building to get interested guests into our funnel.
Then we launched and watched the bookings go up. Within 2 weeks it was sold out and we had the base of our December filled.
This strategy managed to grow their December revenue by 38%. Why? Because they were prepared and had a plan that I implemented. This was without paid ads as well.
For December occupancy declined compared to previous years by 12% which the property didn't mind as it meant reduced costs to deliver the service and revenue was up.
What can you learn from this? Working ahead, with a solid organic marketing strategy to implement and focusing on what the market wants is key. Want to see if this can work for your business? If want someone to do it all for you so the heavy lifting is done and all you have to focus on is delivering an exceptional service to guests.