Being polite brings B&B rewards.

Chris Parkin

Am I safe to assume you are polite?

 

I mean do you say please and thank you especially when talking to your guests? Do you thank them for staying with you, visiting the area or even the UK? I think you should and I think you will benefit from taking the ‘thank you’ message one stage further.

 

Since my bad experience with advertising, you might have seen my report on this site about it costing me £44.00 to get someone to pick up the telephone and ask me for a brochure, I have studied a lot of options when it comes to marketing my business. One such option, which has worked for me, is Direct Mail.

 

Please don’t be put off by the technical jargon, in this instance it really means keeping in touch, I am not talking about approaching list brokers and profiling databases but rather looking after existing clients who will return. I am polite to them during their stay and indeed when they leave but I go one step further for those customers that I believe may recommend my business to their friends and/or return themselves. I say thank you in a more memorable way.

 

When guests leave if I consider they are:

 

• Likely to return
• Recommend my business to another.

 

I send them a written thank you. It’s not as hard as you think and it does pay dividends. Here is my formula for getting my guests to remember me and return. I send them a postcard; yes it really is that simple.

 

Initially I purchased a postcard locally something picturesque and just wrote ‘thanks for staying with us recently’ (actually the children did it after we agreed a rate per card!) and sent it out, second class, to arrive within a week of their departure. This produced a satisfactory return, which of course is when I tried ‘tweaking’ the system, as I tend to do!

 

I attempted making the note more personal which again worked but I came unglued when we got busy and administration, including marketing, got shoved on to the back burner.  So then I ordered a small amount of postcards from a printer (not expensive using an online facility) and had them pre-printed with my ‘thanks for staying’ message. Again I chose a local scene for my picture but this time I inserted in the bottom corner of the picture a small photograph of my premises.  The clients could then associate the main picture with my business. That truthfully is quite a strong bond and very much worthwhile exploiting.

 

I am still tweaking my system, as I hope you would expect, and I have tried:

Setting up a template on a desktop publishing programme to print on to a large sticky label; great for very personalised messages when used in conjunction with my Guest Departure Questionnaire.

 

Offering a special deal if the guests returns within a set period of time i.e. Stay anytime in the next 3 months and we’ll only charge the same price as this time! (Obviously can only be used where seasonal charging rates apply.)

 

Including a special offer: Stay anytime again this year at the price of your last recent visit and we’ll include a free entry into? (You could work here with a local attraction.)

 

Some naturally work better than others BUT they all work!

 

So the next time you have a guest, whose company you have enjoyed, who you think might return or recommend a friend send them a ‘thank you card’. It can increase sales, done well, and you will fine-tune your own system over time, it can bring a major boost to your profits

 

Remember the formula:

 

• Decide if you think the guest might return or recommend you.
• Buy a pretty postcard
• Write a simple ‘thank you’ note on the back.
• Post it!

 

Its that easy… and oh very finally keep a record of who you have posted a card to, you need to test your system so that you can ‘tweak’ it!