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Hotels and B & B's should be doing better on the web

Written by: Alastair McIntyre

Article Overview: How to promote your Hotel or B & B on the web. Let's stop publishing brochures and make it personal!

Hotels and B & B's should be doing better on the web

Hotels and B & B's should be doing better on the web

The web is the most fantastic communications medium we've ever had so why is it that Hotels and B & B's have an inability to promote themselves on the web?

You need to get out there and take lots of day trips using your hotel as a base. Take day tours on different themes...

Car journey to beauty spots, historic sites, etc. Take tours based on golf courses, fishing, pony trekking and other sports. How about walking tours? How about cycling tours?

You take lots of pictures on each day trip and then post them up on your site and then add text to each set of pictures to describe what people are seeing.

This will achieve a variety of things...

1. It will let people see the country that your property is based in and may encourage them to stay for extra days.

2. It will let people know that you care about your visitors to have done all that work.

3. It will also give you a chance to have reciprocal links with other web sites in your area giving you greater exposure.

So if part of a day tour you're taking people around the shops in the area you can take pictures of some of these shops and do a wee write up about them. As you are also a business in the area I'll bet that these shops would be happy to trade links with you on their web site.

Then you need to ensure you tell people why they should stay at your property. Put up a picture of yourselves and tell people your names. Of course you need to tell people about the facilities but make sure you also tell them other more personal things about your property. For example, do you stock any special beers or liquor? Are you known for any special food? Why not take some photographs of meals you prepare?

Is there anything special about your property or is there something really special in the area? For example if you are just a bed and breakfast are there any really good restaurants in the area you could recommend and why?

Do you yourselves come from a certain background or members of a special society. For example, if you were a member of the Masonic order then that might well attract people that are masons. You might have a real passion about some hobby and again attract others with a passion for that same hobby.

In other words your promotional web site needs to be a real source of information on you, your property and the area.

Finally... if you are doing all this work then get the word out about your web site. For example let's say one of your trips was going to a famous battle field then why not donate your pictures to sites that feature the battle and all you ask in exchange is a link to your own web site in acknowledgement. That is not too much to ask and gives you valuable exposure and all for free.

And talking about money... all of this costs you nothing other than your time. With digital cameras you can even take a few small videos of the area and even give a personal video interview welcoming people to your web site and telling them what they can see on it.

So... having read this please do something about it :-)

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Article Tags: beauty spots, bed and breakfast, beers, car journey, communications medium, cycling tours, day trip, day trips, fishing, golf courses, hotels, liquor, other sports, personal things, photographs, pony trekking, reciprocal links, restaurants, walking tours



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