I received an email from Eaves Hall today, detailing a special offer that they are running throughout June 2009, with room rates from £99 per night, including dinner, bed and breakfast. A standard room with breakfast (but without dinner) at this time of year would normally be £100, so you’re effectively getting dinner ‘thrown in’ for free. A good offer, so I thought I’d pass it on (despite the comments that follow!).
Curious, I went to the hotel’s website to have a bit more of a read. Although I think they’re a good idea, the majority of hotel websites don’t have blogs so I was curious to follow the site-wide link to their blog. Oh dear, what a disappointment. Only four blog entries, three of them uncategorised, not using a consistent font, and last updated on 5th November 2007, approximately 18 months ago. Similarly, the latest news page has just two items on it, both pertaining to 2nd July 2007. We’re fast approaching July 2009 for goodness sake!! This really doesn’t look good, particularly for what should be a reasonably good hotel and, for the most part, has favourable Tripadvisor reviews.
It didn’t stop there, either. Eaves Hall is part of the Richardson Hotels of Distinction group (with which we’re familiar as their Beech Hill Hotel on the shores of Windermere is a stone’s throw from us) so I clicked through to that site. A banner in the middle of the homepage highlights a competition to win a cruise which, on clicking, I discover has closed. At least there’s the animated link on the right hand navigation notifying me of the “2 night short break to be won every month” in their prize draw. Strangely, that has also closed. There’s also “currently no news stories” on the latest news pages, but you can at least access the archive to find two articles from 21st August 2007.
When hotels start neglecting their websites, it makes the prospective guest start wondering – rightly or wrongly – whether other aspects of the hotel are similarly neglected.
Please hoteliers… keep your websites up to date! And to the Richardson group, if you’d like some assistance with your online presence (I really think you could also benefit from some good SEO advice as you are currently at risk of a Google penalty with the manner in which you interlink your various sites), then feel free to get in touch.
4 Comments
It’s not only Hotels that have trouble keeping updated !! I know of businesses that have someone to update their site once a year, and they think they are doing well.
I think when most hoteliers start a blog, they know they should update frequently, but coming up with new topics is a challenge. I think being aware of the different posting styles can give a blogger more options:
http://www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com/hotel-blogging-best-practices-part-4-publishing-topics-and-style/
For a hotel blog, I find it’s useful to blog frequent questions from guests and little barely-known attractions in your area. Guests want insider information, and by becoming a source for that you’ll draw interest.
Darren Rowse also wrote a good post on mindmapping for ideas – it’s worked well for me:
http://www.problogger.net/archives/2007/12/14/discover-hundreds-of-post-ideas-for-your-blog-with-mind-mapping/
In all honesty, I don’t think it’s actually that difficult to come up with new material. Posting on a hotel blog at least once a week would look acceptable in my opinion, and it’s really not that difficult to come up with something on that degree of frequency. You could write about anything from events and attractions in the local area, special offers, upgrades to the hotel, recent functions, seasonal changes, awards, restaurant menu changes, local walks, guest feedback, the weather… all manner of things!
Paul, I agree with you that it’s not that difficult to come up with new topics…but I’ve found that hotel blogs that only write about the weather, special offers, and awards won have difficultly building and keeping a reader base. What has your experience been?