Louis Godin of HotelEPacket.com officially released data today showing that the hotel industry is losing millions of dollars each year through unorganized virtual sales procedures and a lack of virtual sales and catering staff training. The data also show that the hotel industry must incorporate traditional selling techniques in its virtual sales procedures. The organizational data supporting these findings is based on 18 years of sales management and customer service experience in the hospitality industry and 10 years of hotel Internet marketing, sales and advertising research.
Based on a 2002 census of 46,295 hotels and motels in the U.S., with each lodging facility and event facility providing two virtual sales calls per business day annually, at an average estimated cost of $25 per call, the industry would save over $600 million each year. At four virtual sales calls per business day annually, the industry would save over $1.2 Billion. This estimate does not include wasted productivity or the thousands of tons of material added to landfills each year by paper-based sales materials.
According to Godin, there should be no need to access snail-mail, faxes, e-mails, attachments, word documents, Web links or PowerPoint and PDF brochures once an inquiry or sales call is complete.
"The Internet offers many cost-effective resources and tools to forward virtually unlimited sales information that will capture prospective business," said Godin. "Web sites are good marketing tools, but they do not provide hotel and event planning sales professionals with the resources and education needed to streamline the service sales call. The hotel sales industry must start analyzing its cost effective virtual options, organize its virtual sales procedures, train its sales staff and begin distributing and presenting sales information to include traditional sales standards to ensure an increase in profits and a decrease in annual marketing budgets".
To review additional findings, visit:
http://www.webeventplanner.com/
