Posts Tagged ‘accommodation’
Central Motel in Port Fairy gets a Website Makeover
Peter and Linda from the Central Motel in Port Fairy recently engaged us to give their old website a makeover. The usual goals:
- Make a Good Presentation of their Accommodation, Central Motel is an attractive accommodation with a great location in Port Fairy. It was easy to make improvements to the old website simply using new images and layout.
- Improve Search Engine Results, keywords like Great Ocean Road and Port Fairy have been emphasized along with basic terms like accommodation and motel.
- A Flexible Website that can be easily Managed, we’ve used BurgundySky again to make this website as it consistently provides great results. We’ve used Google Maps, embedded video hosted on YouTube and Online Booking to simplify sales.
At the same time we updated their website, we also looked at inbound links, additional sales channels and opportunities to improve online bookings.
Tags: accommodation, BurgundySky CMS, Google Maps, motel, SEO, websites, YouTube
Alice Springs Airport Motel Gets New Website
Airport Motel in Alice Springs recently engaged Web Reservation Systems to set up a new website and develop Internet Marketing strategies that would help to attract more bookings. Gary and Karen wanted a website that was fresh and fun looking to reflect their business and the work they’ve done to renovate and improve. At the same time we’ve been working on websites, we’ve been updating their Local Business Listing in Google, developing Global Distribution options to attract inbound tourists and travel agents and working with local agents to develop new sales channels.
Alice Springs Airport Motel offers affordable accommodation in the heart of the Northern Territory. Whether you’re flying in to Alice Springs to tour Uluru (Ayers Rock) or driving through Australia’s Red Centre for business or pleasure – the Alice Springs Airport Motel has the well appointed accommodation conveniently located 5 minutes from the town centre.
All rooms are fully air-conditioned with all the amenities. Our Standard first floor rooms with balcony views of the MacDonnell Ranges and we offer interconnecting rooms for families and friends. Premier rooms have courtyard gardens. Relax by the pool and barbeque area after a day of exploring the many natural wonders of ‘The Alice’.
Airport Motel has a Tour Desk staffed by locals happy to share their knowledge of the local area and major attractions such as Uluru (Ayers Rock), Kings Canyon, Historic Hermannsburg with one of Australia’s oldest missions, Alice Springs Desert Park and the Alice Springs School of the Air. We can provide transfers to town, the railway station and airport.
Airport Motel in Alice Springs: phone +61 8 8952 6611 for international calls or Toll Free 1800 896 124 for calls inside Australia.
Tags: accommodation, Airport Motel, Alice Springs, Google Local Business Centre, motel
Are links from Facebook and Twitter valued by Google
Matt Cuts (Google’s spokesman) has provided a pretty good explanation about how Google values inbound links from Twitter and Facebook.
It’s a natural question. If you have inbound links that is good. If you have inbound links from highly ranked websites that is better. Facebook and Twitter are obviously very highly ranked although you must consider the value of the page and not just the value of the website, i.e., a link from Facebook’s Home page would be more valuable than a link from a fan page.
I actually start to think that a well crafted Facebook listing for an accommodation is a good thing, but not for links. I think it’s possible to create a fan page that would allow guests to make comments on what they think of the property and area and use that to make recommendations to their friend – a classic social networking model.
But for inbound links…. doesn’t look like it will have much effect.
Tags: accommodation, SEO
New Website for Bear Gully Coastal Cottages
I’ve been working with Jill Butterfield, owner of Bear Gully Coastal Cottages in Walkerville Victoria for many years. I’ve always been fascinated by her business because it looks like such a nice place to stay. Recently Jill mentioned that she was feeling the impact of the ‘economic slowdown’.
Jill went to a Travel Show in Sydney and had the devil of a time with agents because none of them knew the geography of Victoria well enough to understand where she’s located. If I wasn’t in this business, I wouldn’t know either. Bear Gully Coastal Cottages are located between Walkerville and Cape Liptrap. They are beach front on the Waratah Bay looking across the water to Wilsons Promontory. The Region is known as Gippsland.
In fact, Wilsons Promontory is an amazing National Park on a peninsula that is Australia’s Southern Most Point (not including Tasmania or other islands). It is about 2 1/2 hours by car from Melbourne. It is one of those Australian Destinations that is spectacular, amazingly beautiful, pristine nature, etc, etc. But, few people know about it.
Finding one of these great places can make for a very rewarding holiday. Figuring out how to do the marketing to get found is a nightmare. Jill has done all the right things: featured in travel shows like Getaways, spreads in newspapers and travel magazines and she’s won Victorian Tourism Awards for excellence.
So, our mission is to build a website and Internet Marketing process that will attract people to this little known destination and make them aware of Bear Gully and all that it has to offer. That will include a new website, linking and marketing strategies and a Pay-per-Click campaign with a small budget.
Tags: accommodation, BurgundySky CMS, Google Maps, holiday houses, Victoria
New Website for Goulburn Motel – Lilac City Motor Inn
Lilac City Motor Inn – a motel in Goulburn NSW; has just added a new website using Burgundysky’s latest free-form template. This template is slightly different from the others because you have a wider array of design options. You can set backgrounds, widths, navigation styles, banner images and site images.
Lilac City Motor Inn has engaged us to build a website, as well as working on local search optimization – hope to see it coming up soon at the top of search results. With any new website, it requires some work to develop links and get the Search Engines to index pages and rank them in results.
I just happened to be passing Goulburn, so I made a ‘quick and dirty’ video with my camera. The sound could be a lot better. We’ll probably upload a better video when we get one. I’ve both embedded this video object on the home page and linked it to the motels Local Business Centre. Adding an embedded element is said to give a web page better search results and certainly it helps wth ranking in Google Maps. I’ve also Geo-located the video in YouTube so that it will display for Google Earth.
Tags: accommodation, Goulburn NSW, Lilac City Motor Inn, Motel Website, YouTube
Driftwood Strahan Villas gets a New website
We’ve just set up a new website for Driftwood Strahan Villas on the West Coast of Tasmania. I find it interesting to build websites for places like Strahan because the more you learn about what to see and do, the more you realize Australia is an amazing place.
Strahan is located on Macquarie Harbour, which turned out to be 6 times bigger than Sydney Harbor. The area is World Heritage Listed with amazing cruises on the Gordon River, Old Railway lines with Steam Engines, wild stretches of beach, and islands with wild tales from the convict days when they were building great ships from the Huon Pine. Strahan looks like a very cool place to go.
The website follows a pattern that we’ve found to work well. One item we added for this was an embedded like to a Live Webcam Overlooking Strahan. That seems to have worked well. The camera is a project funded by the local tourism organization and it gives the website visitor a great feeling for being in Strahan.
This website is built using BurgundySky. It will give the owners a website they can self-manage as their motel changes. The property is very new and has been winning a lot of awards for being Environmentally Friendly. They also have an interest in promoting Tours and Activities in the area, so they may be adding new pages to help their neighbor businesses.
One of the challenges with this website was finding the right keywords: is it a Motel, or Holiday Units, or Self-contained Apartments, or Self catering Cottages, New Affordable Accommodation in Strahan Tasmania – well I guess it is all of the above. Hopefully, people looking for a great place to stay will find the website.
Tags: accommodation, BurgundySky CMS, motel, Strahan, Tasmania, villa rentals
Zero Inn Motel in Nhill Victoria
We’ve recently added a new website for the Zero Inn Motel in Nhill. It uses a simple template system with links to check availability.
The Zero Inn is a Comfort Inn and they want to build up their direct branding so that guests can book direct. We’ve found the same need for many chain motels. Both Best Western and Comfort Inn have good website marketing, but they tend to drag all guests in through their corporate systems which can delay cashflow as payments go through the group. Costs can also be higher for bookings processed by the Groups.
Previously, Zero Inn had no website at all. After the website was turned live, we updated their Local Business Centre in Google and found generic searches like motel in Nhill displayed them immediately at the top of results based on maps…. Got to love that!
It will be interesting to see how the website goes. They have already received bookings. Accommodation in Nhill Victoria is not the most competitive term.
Tags: accommodation, BurgundySky CMS, Comfort Inn, Google Local Business Centre, motel, Nhill Victoria, Victoria, Website, Zero Inn
Using YouTube for Viral Marketing
Viral Marketing – sounds like you could get sick.
No seriously, how can you play the social media game and get exposure to your website for a small investment? YouTube is turning into an interesting option.
Here’s an example where the Hans Brinker Budget Hotel in Amsterdam made a humorous video poking fun at their facilities. This video has turned out to be very popular with over 25,000 views.
Does this help you sell more accommodation?
I guess humor is always a risky proposition – but if you’re lucky enough to catch people’s attention it can certainly work. Despite the video, Hans Brinker has a lot of guests checking in because they want to stay with people that have a good sense of humour. If nothing else, they’ve done something worthy of a post and got an inbound link. I think they are brilliant!
You may find that just a simple video about your property and location is good enough. It gets you listed in a new type of distribution with links back to your website. Your videos start to display in Google Earth and more.
Making and uploading videos to YouTube are not that hard. I highly recommend it!
Tags: accommodation, hotel, Marketing, YouTube
Using YouTube to Make a Big Impression
YouTube is really an interesting way to extend the marketing of a website. On the one hand, video can make a website stand out and it delivers really interesting impressions of your accommodation or surrounding area. On the other hand, it creates new ways for customers to find you.
When you use Google, you can search for websites, maps, images and videos. You may also find your video linked in Google Earth. You can also link videos to your Local Listing in Google, which in theory could boost the ranking you get with maps. YouTube also seems to show up as a website with an inbound link to where videos are embedded.
No matter how you look at it, uploading video to YouTube is a winner.
Making a good video may not be easy, but the actual part of uploading and linking a video is easy. YouTube takes out all the hassles of hosting and bandwidth. They also provide simple steps to embed the video in your web pages.
Here’s an excellent example from Lamplighter Motels in Melbourne’s Oakleigh suburb. We’ve linked it on the main website as well as on their Golden Chain Melbourne Motels listing.
Here’s the embedded video.
Tags: accommodation, Embedded Video, Lamplighter Motel, Melbourne, motel, Oakleigh, Video, YouTube
Posting on Forums relevant to your website
Some people think that if you build it they will come or make a website and get instant traffic. I wish that were true, but life ain’t that easy.
We recently set up a website for 90 Mile Beach House & Villas in Golden Beach Victoria. The location is in the East Gippsland Lakes area not too far from Sale and down the coast from Lakes Entrance.
Anyway, Richard (the owner) has be very proactive looking at groups that come to his area and then promoting his accommodation in their forums. He’s obviously done it well because he got a couple of hundred visits. Links like this can be taken as spam or they can serve genuine interest. In his example, he knew of a Kombi Club that makes regular runs to his area.
I wish all of our customers would do the same. We try to help them where possible with inbound links, but the fact is that they need to stay involved. Inbound links are very important and when they resonate with buyers they’re worth gold.
Be sure to check the rules of the forum. Some will allow you to post links to websites. Some will also allow you to place links to websites in your signature.
Mark
Tags: 90 Mile Beach, accommodation, beach house rentals, Gippsland, Golden Beach, holiday houses, Nintey Mile Beach, VIC, Victoria, villa rentals