Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format. With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

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Search trumps loyalty for hospitality websites

Only one in four visitors to these web sites actually typed in the brand's web address or domain name to reach the website, although this number did actually increase over the past year, suggesting that promotional efforts may have helped with brand awareness and recall.

The share of visitors accessing hospitality and tourism websites via an email link also increased significantly from 2% the previous year to 7% in Q3 2012. This indicates that marketing efforts employed by brands has been working to drive visitors to their websites. Bookmarking tracked as a distant third with only 9% of visitors accessing the website through this channel. This suggests either that brand loyalty has not been optimised, or that typing in the web address serves as a proxy for bookmarking since recalling the address is a form of brand identification.

"The hospitality space is becoming exponentially more competitive and therefore it is imperative for brands they provide an intuitive website with content that is clearly laid out with a smooth, hassle-free booking process," said Duff Anderson, vice president of insight for iPerceptions. "Voice of Customer (VoC) data provides an excellent basis for which brands can identify what the pain points are for their customers, but understanding how they should be addressed and repaired can be complex. Usability audits compliment VoC research and, together, they can provide a roadmap for site improvement strategies and optimising overall online brand health."

Most hospitality and tourism websites experienced mostly repeat visitors (72%) in Q3 2012 and, because business travellers tend to be more frequent travellers than their leisure counterparts, repeat website visits were more common among this group. Importantly, however, first time visitors within the business demographic increased significantly over the previous 12 months.

The full 'Hospitality Industry Report Q3 2012' has been made available as a PDF download from the iPerceptions web site - click here (free registration required).

Have you seen How To SELL Anything?

This incredible sales handbook distils an expert's lifetime of sales and marketing experience and hands it to you on a platter, in a simple, easy-to-follow format.

With existing customers being the most valuable source of income for any business, this book will teach you how to increase your return business and make more profit from your most loyal customers - and even how to reduce the costs of dealing with your least profitable customers.

You'll learn to sell yourself, sell your products, and sell your brand on the internet, writing high-conversion landing pages, social media posts, and more. You'll start attracting customers you didn’t even know existed, and learn the top trade secrets for customer retention.

You'll become a lean, mean selling machine. See how the experts do it and learn to adapt what they've done for your own profit. You'll learn to write strong, powerful, effective sales copy, whether it's for a sales script, sales letter, flyer, insert, advert or just about anything else.

You'll learn how to sell whether you're selling by telephone, by mail, or even meeting prospects face-to-face. You'll find out how to size them up, present yourself, nail down their true needs, close the sale, and learn to tackle the tricky ones.

You'll discover the biggest secrets of successful direct mail sellers, sales letter writers, and how to segment and choose the right prospects for each campaign.

Get it on Amazon (Kindle/Print)