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Interview With an Irish Hotelier that Consistently Receives Rave Reviews Online.
By Josiah Mackenzie
Friday, 2nd October 2009
 
Today we're going to talk with Micheal Rosney, and discover how the Killeen House Hotel consistently receives excellent reviews from their guests online…and how they received the TripAdvisor Travelers' Choice 2009 award.

Josiah: Tell us a little bit about your hotel.

Michael: The Killeen House is a 23 bedroom Country House style of Hotel, located just outside of the town of Killarney: Ireland's premier Tourist destination. It has been owned and personally managed by Michael and Geraldine Rosney since 1992.

Mainly targeted towards the upper end of the International Leisure Market, it is a uniquely Irish property, with the emphasis firmly placed on good friendship, good food and good water pressure in the showers! As much as 70 percent of all of our business is either direct repeat business or direct referral from past Guests.

This is a major plus for us, because it means that our Guests know exactly what we can offer them, and we know exactly what it takes to meet – and hopefully exceed – their vacation expectations.

How have you achieved the success you have on TripAdvisor?

We became hyper conscious – to the extent of being almost paranoid -  of it! When we first became aware of TripAdvisor a couple of years back, we immediately identified it as a tool that had tremendous potential for us to get the message and the ethos of our property out into a Marketplace that we otherwise had no hope of reaching.

We made all of the great people working with us aware if it, and explained to them that this was an opportunity that we felt would have very tangible and positive long term benefits for the Killeen House.

We have always operated our business on the basis of treating our Guests firstly as individuals to be welcomed and looked after in a personal and individual way, and secondly as new friends, who we want to show a great time to while they're visiting with us.

And anyone glancing through the reviews we have garnered on TripAdvisor will be clearly struck by the big number of them that specifically mention the PEOPLE rather than the PLACE. Its not within our power to make the bedrooms bigger, or to order up 80 degrees of sunshine, but it is very certainly within our power to ensure that all of our Guests receive a uniquely warm and Irish welcome from all of us here in the Killeen House…..

How are you encouraging guests at your hotel to talk about their stay online – and share their experience with others?

Given that we are a small operation, we have ample opportunity here in the Killeen House to meet most of our guests on a personal level, If we find our for example that they have heard of us via TripAdvisor, than that is a natural opportunity for us to ask them to keep on spreading the word!

Thankfully, we frequently receive notes and e-mails from our Guests after they have departed, telling us how much they have enjoyed their stay with us. Again, a great opportunity to ask them to post a TripAdvior review of their experience. We have found that after the initial first number of reviews, that it almost becomes a self-perpetuating thing

What other internet marketing tactics is your hotel focusing on right now?

A couple of months back, we launched ourselves on Facebook and we are delighted with the response. already we have over 600 friends and are growing daily. Each Friday, we send out a "Friday Funnies" piece, and receive great feedback from it. We also launched an Irish Photo Competition, which to date has attracted in excess of 300 entries – some of them truly World Class. In fact we are so happy with this initiative, we are planning on making it an Annual Event.

Another very effective Internet tool is our twice yearly Newsletter, which circulates to almost 10,000 recipients. (see samples of them on the home page of our website!). Because this is infrequent and newsy rather than regular and salesy, it gets a great response from everyone. Over this winter, we intend to seriously explore the potential of Twitter and blogs

In the past, which marketing tactics have performed best for you? Which ones don't quite live up to the hype?

Prior to the explosion of TripAdvisor onto the scene, we always had a Guestbook on our site for past guests to post comments on.

We always found it was well received and that it definitely influenced a potential guest's decision making process. Realising that 2009 was going to be a pretty tough year, at the start of the season we made a conscious decision to increase our presence on a number of third party distributor's sites. This has worked very well for us, with the month of July showing a 220 percent increase over July of last year.

What has been your biggest obstacle in designing or launching your online marketing campaign? How did you overcome it?

In an operation the size of ours, cost is invariably the single biggest issue for us to address. Also, given that all the work is done in-house, allocation of time is also an issue. Given the choice of sitting in front of a computer devising online strategies, or sitting with a guest enhancing their vacation experience, well, the guest will always win out here in the Killeen House!

Do you have any favorite marketing resources you would like to share with our readers?

For us, its definitely TripAdvisor.  Be aware of it….work with it….appreciate it….use it as a tool to influence policies and monitor performances! We have seen the very tangible results of a positive presence on this site. A number of people in the Industry (mainly those who don't currently fare very well on it!) tend to be a bit dismissive of its power, or even cynical about some of its content.

The bottom line is that no system known to man is tamper-proof, but TripAdvisor has over 25 MILLION reviews posted on its site. If for example 10 percent of them are in some way ‘questionable' this still means that well north of 20 million of them are the unbiased opinions of the people that count most to us all – our potential customers

What's the most exciting trend you see in hotel marketing? Why?

While we're not keyed in enough to specifically identify any individual trends, we are savvy enough to appreciate that online marketing is of vital importance to any hotel, anywhere in the World today. It is imperative for us to stay abreast of developments and to try and positively maximize our online presence and profile.

We use it to convey the type of property we are. Rate parity across the various channels is also very important, as it indicates the professionalism and integrity of the operation and it's operators. Proper and frequent (without being overly frequent!) communication is also very important, and we think, appreciated by both past and potential future guests.

Thank you for your time, Michael.

Original article: www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com/killeen-house-hotel-interview

About the author
This blog is written by Josiah Mackenzie, who enjoys exploring the relationship between emerging technology and the hospitality industry. 

www.hotelmarketingstrategies.com
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