More Americans Planning Travel – Five Tips To Get Ready
November 18, 2009
A study released this morning by Deloitte reveals that nearly half of American households (45%) are planning an overnight trip that includes a stay in a lodging facility between now and March, 2010. This is good news on several fronts, none the least of which is that this could signal the long-awaited rebound in our nation’s economy. It also offers the potential for increased revenue in the dining segment of the hospitality industry, as travelers not staying with relatives or friends are very likely to patronize restaurants during their visit.
Can guests to your city find your restaurant online? Here are five no- or low-cost tactics to employ to get your restaurant website in front of hungry tourists:
- Check out TripAdvisor.com. 57% of survey respondents reported reading online reviews and comments related to travel when planning their trip and TripAdvisor offers business owners arguably the most robust features with which to communicate with travelers. If your listing is a bit lackluster, update it with new photos and/or video, add links to any online articles about your eatery and post management comments addressing any negative reviews. To interact further, join the forum for your home city or write an article on an appropriate topic. All of this can be done at no cost other than the time you invest. Go to the owner’s area of the website to claim your listing and begin your updates.
- Maximize exposure on your area’s visitors bureau website. Does the CVB in your area offer short-term advertising opportunities? Many will allow members to run banner ads on targeted pages of the CVB website for a limited time frame at moderate expense.
- Visitors to the area are likely to rely on search engine’s local/map functions to find restaurants that are close to or easily accessible from their lodging. Add, claim or enhance your eatery’s listing in local search portals to maximize visibility in these venues. A quick way to determine your restaurant’s local search reach is to visit GetListed.org. Enter your business name and zip code and in less than a minute you receive your listing score, which details on a scale of 0 – 100 how effectively your business is marketed on four local search platforms: Google Local, Yahoo Local, Bing Local and Best of the Web. The only cost associated with this endeavor is the time taken to ascertain your restaurant’s current local search exposure and to claim/update its local search listings.
- Social networking sites such as Facebook and Twitter offer no-cost opportunities to engage with would-be guests. Quite often visitors will poll their friends and followers for dining suggestions when visiting a new area. Listen for the “where should I eat in ….” conversations by performing searches on Twitter and Facebook for <your city> <restaurant>, <where to eat in> <your city> and offer responses when appropriate.
- Create a “visitor’s guide” area on your restaurant’s website that lists local tourist attractions, the contact info for those businesses, directions to and from your restaurant and any special services you may offer in relation to these attractions. For example, if you offer late seating on show nights, make sure that is mentioned when discussing nearby theaters.
With a small monetary investment and a bit of elbow grease, your restaurant could be hosting many new visitors in the months to come. Overwhelmed? Schedule a no-cost, no-obligation evaluation of your restaurant’s current online reach in the tourism segment by filling out this form and include the phrase “free website evaluation” in your message. TwoTables will complete a thorough survey of your website’s online exposure and email the results to you within two business days of receipt of your request.
Capitalize on Increased Holiday Search Volume
November 11, 2009
People in the U.S. are beginning to research their Thanksgiving dining options online. Google insights shows that the annual spike in search volume for Thanksgiving restaurants has begun, with the highest search volume occurring in Massachusetts, Maryland, New Jersey and Colorado. The top five thanksgiving-related searches are shown in the table below:
What should a restaurant do to attract these searchers? If open for the Thanksgiving holiday, post a distinct page on the website that clearly lists hours of operation, links to online reservation portal, directions to the restaurant and the menu offerings for the day. The Inverness Hotel website, The Fort and Villa Mosconi have specific pages already posted on their websites. To further market Thanksgiving dining, a restaurant could set up a pay-per-click campaign that was targeted to searchers located within their state, metro area or even within a particular radius of their location. Facebook is also a great marketing option because of the ability to add events to company pages and the powerful advertising platform that Facebook offers.
Another study, conducted by HitWise, shows that the search traffic for holiday recipes and menus is also on the rise. Consider posting a few recipes or a video of the chef preparing a holiday favorite to capture these searchers, if this material is available or can be created soon. This type of link bait can be re-purposed in social media venues; for example, a video could be uploaded to YouTube and the recipes could be posted on the restaurant’s Facebook page.
Bottom line? A restaurant needs to get creative this year and utilize all the options available to maximize holiday revenues. Taking advantage of every online venue to market the restaurant and its unique offerings is smart business, plain and simple.
Entice Diners with Creative and Fun Events
November 10, 2009
Well, it can’t all be good news. Of course, it can’t all be bad, either. As usual, the latest report from the consumer front contains a bit of both. AlixPartners LLC recently published the results of a study in which 1,000 consumers said they planned on spending an average of $11.49 per meal this year – a buck 76 less than the average from a similar survey conducted 9 months ago. On the flip side, weekly restaurant visits are up – 63% of respondents said they dined out at least once a week over the past 12 months – 11% more than in the March report.
And really, that makes perfect sense. Summer soothing from financial experts reporting the recession has “bottomed 
out” probably calmed folks down enough to go out a bit more, but its resonating effects and the obvious evidence the road to recovery will not be a short one has brought a stronger reluctance to part with their hard earned dollars.
So what does that mean? All they want is McDonald’s? You’re doomed to snobbish obscurity if you can’t proffer an answer to the 5 dollar foot long? Of course not. It means it’s time to get creative, and to make sure your creativity is being seen by as many potentially interested diners as possible.
Good Example of Creativity: Recently, Ella, an upscale restaurant tucked in the middle of Main Street in the diminutive mountain town in which I reside, hosted a five course dinner paired with and highlighting beers from the Stone Brewing Company of San Diego. Price? Forty bucks. And this place is no joke – the menu is top notch. What a great example of enticing people to come in by offering something different that sounds like a lot of fun and isn’t going to completely drain the checking account.
Good Example of NOT Using Online Marketing to Promote It: Ella doesn’t have a Twitter account, so spreading the word via online social networking was left to Twitter members foodieaspen, EatingAspen, and AspenRestaurant. Ella didn’t blog about it on their website (they don’t have a blog, actually), create a unique page on their website for it, 
or most likely advertise for it via pay-per-clicks or email marketing campaigns. And, of course, there’s a very good reason for that. Being where they are, in a small Rocky Mountain valley in which word-of-mouth sweeps through more swiftly than the wind, they probably packed ‘em in without having to do any of those things. It’s off-season, so it was more for the locals, and the locals were going to find out about it one way or another.
Those of you in bigger markets, however, in which people are searching online every day for the most fun and interesting ways to spend their money, would be wise to follow Ella’s example of creativity, and do everything they didn’t do to promote it online. It’s the perfect combination. People don’t want to stop dining out – it’s too enjoyable. So give them a reason to come to your restaurant, give them the ability to easily find that reason on the Internet, and make the reason one that will have them raving about it online the next day.