Customer acquisition

One of the pain points for hotels in this part of the world is acquisition of guests. Most African hoteliers are not realising that most of our life has changed and moved to internet. Travellers often use the internet to plan their trips and the experience they would like to have. Therefore it makes sense to showcase the most up-to-date image of your hotel and the experience you provide. Online!

While this might sound like a daunting task, it should not be. And even if it does, don’t worry…do you worry that you’re not a good chef?

The internet has created many opportunities to sell products and services globally. This is how you can do it:

• Get a website which showcase the uniqueness of your hotel…don’t copy and paste what you have see on other hotels’ websites. If you don’t have a unique selling point, then fix that first. If you already have a website, make sure the information is up to date. Add online payment to it if you can!
• Optimise your website for search engines - it allows your website to be found by potential guests. Again, standing out from the crowd comes in handy here. Focus on what you do better than your competition.
• Get on social media with a plan. The plan needs to consist of who is your target audience, what you want to say to this audience, how often do you want to talk to them, how you want to sound to them.
• Remember social media is a social communication tool first, not a marketing tool by origin. So be social and human first. Talk to your audience as if you’re talking to them when they are inside the hotel and they are seeking some information. Tell your story!
• Leverage a number of popular websites that exist in this area. Get a listing on there for enhanced visibility. Some will take a commission but that’s after you made a sale. Some of these are booking.com, expedia.com and others.

Planning and doing the above should get you a number of guests but you should not sleep on your laurels.

Retaining customers

As they say it’s hard getting to the top, but it’s even harder staying there. So once you get the guests, strive to keep them.

• Customer service is what makes guests come back and recommend you to others publicly or via word of mouth.
• You wonder, since we are in the digital age and selling globally, what has the word of mouth got to do with it? Word of mouth has also gone digital and is using social media reviews and comments, TripAdvisor.com and google reviews. Most likely, a satisfied customer will leave a review but it does not harm you to ask or gently remind them.

Recommendations

It is clear and important that hotels in Africa emvrace the digital revolution to stop lagging behind. I have only scratched the surface of ideas to think of. The above ideas can and should definetely be developed further with your in-house marketing team or you can hire an external marketing agency.

Entrepreneurship is like an illness that makes you suffer on one hand, and on the other hand, makes want to live so badly. The type of results that comes from that depends on how hard the entrepreneur fights and whether she conquers the illness and stays alive or succumbs to it. Those who stay alive are destined to greatness.

It’s not for the weak. Contrary to what people say it’s not stylish only hard work. It’s for those who want something bigger than themselves. It’s for those who want to change the world in big or small ways. It’s for those who desire to fulfil their life purpose.

It’s always difficult to fight a great battle by yourself. Choose the right battle mates and lead them diligently to greatness.

So keep on fighting, strive to live, even if you fall down, its okay as long as you get up and keep fighting.

Courage!

I was born in Rwanda in the 70s where opportunities were limited. Not only was getting into secondary school difficult at the time but also what some in developped countries consider as a given like career guidance were non-existent. The latter is still one of the gaps in many African countries.

Kids grow with no clear guidance of what they want to become at a later stage.

So I was no different. My ambition, like many kids nowadays, was to go to school graduate and get a job. Which job I wasn’t sure!

Later, I was lucky to be exposed to the British education system where kids 5 years younger than me had a clear vision of what they wanted to be and were already working towards that. I was lost at what was wrong with me but this also opened my mind to what I needed to do. Finding my passion…Computers….When I bought my first computer, I did not sleep that night. And that’s when I discovered what I wanted to do. My passion.

Looking back, while I did well at school, I could have done better if I knew where and in what I wanted to practice what I was studying in my earlier student life.

As I see my daughter and son growing, I want them to discover as early in life as possible what they are passionate about and encourage them to follow it.

Thank you for reading.