Top 18 funny reasons a hotel says they don’t need a new website, booking engine, or online marketing strategy!

Few days ago I have read a great contribution of one of my network friends at LinkedIN. What a scary true! Let’s have some fun with all kinds of excuses about why hotels don’t need the e-commerce help.

1. We don’t need a new website, my nephew built ours.
2. We have a lot of repeat business, so we don’t need to use the internet.
3. We provide a high level of customer service so „we prefer“ that our customers call us.
4. I get 10 calls a day from India offering me everything you just offered me for $100 per month.
5. We already have an online reservations system (actually, what you have is an e-mail form).
6. Look, if you search in Google for the name of my hotel, we’re #1!
7. Well, I’d have to discuss it with my Director of Sales, who would have to discuss it with the GM, who would have to discuss it with the owner…
8. We don’t need that, we’re full all the time (at $39 per night)…
9. Sorry, we blew our budget on a stand at World Travel Market.
10. We don’t need that… we already fill our hotels with online business from Expedia.
11. My hotel does not need a SEO work; we are doing fine VS our competitors.
12. We are not participating in any of the social media activity; we are doing enough news ads and mail campaign.
13. Our hotel show in some booking sites, we do not need to participates on an OTA and extranet and pay commissions. We did not calculate the ROI or the business mix for the online booking engine or online marketing strategy, we are running good!
14. We can’t look at anything like an online distribution strategy, business is really bad at the moment!“ What it is so… That’s because you DON’T list on ANY of the high performing OTA’s or have a „Book Now“ tab on your website!
15. How about „Sorry, I have to check with my IT guy and he is on vacation“….IT guy? really?
16. We don´t think internet is the future….. It seems that they have spent a fortune on internet marketing in 2002…
17. Sorry we don’t need internet booking engine, our hotel guests are always calling or sending us a letter (by fax) … for those that want to book online, we have booking.com .. “ 🙂
18. We want to manage our own inventory and don’t want to give 3rd parties access to this

More will come… for sure 🙂

Wishing you all the best in your e-commerce!

Feel free to join my network at LinkedIn