|
Hotel and training centre, Melksham, Wiltshire
High quality accommodation for course delegates, business travellers and the leisure visitor too.
|
| Home | Accessibility | Bedrooms | Book Here | The Mouth | The Area | Resources | Find Us | About Us | Contact |
|
Printed Directories - the start of the updating season
I don't know how many business directories there are - but I do know it's the season for all the directory providers to start phoning around and sell spaces in their publications. I have spoken with two in the last two days! So it's very fortunate that Lisa and I spent Saturday going through the 2008/09 accounts - the Sage listings of the suppliers with whom we had spent money, and saying "is this good value / what are we getting / do we need this service". We don't make huge use of paper directories these days - a list of local taxi firms (for sure), but not much else; we tend to search on line. Are we the norm? Perhaps not, but we're becoming part of a more significant section of the population, and that's the section of the population that's best targeted to our courses and hotel rooms here in Melksham. In other words, the paper directories are selling towards a different market to we're really looking at. And furthermore, we're primarily looking at hotel rooms which are booked ahead (so why would a directory circulated to local homes be right for us?), and to fill rooms between courses in a small hotel, rather than it being the main business at a much larger establishment. Hmmm - starts to look like a poor deal for us. Let's say we spend 100 pounds on an advert in each of the five printed directories that I know about. That means we need to take (say) 20 extra room nights of bookings in the year as a direct result to break even - you can't just look at the income; you have do deduct supplies, staffing, servicing, washing, cost of sales and count the extra income only after expenses. And then we're likely to find that extra requests come in for the summer weekends that we're already full, for people who (from a short entry) don't know enough about us to make a good choice, and go away disappointed at "no bar" or another of our distinctive niche features that make us a business hotel. So - a standard answer to people asking us to pay for an entry in their local directory: "It is not well suited marketing for us, and we have made a decision not to advertise in local directories. We appreciate truly comprehensive directories which provide a listing of all local businesses in a category, and we would like to be line-item listed - but if you are merely providing a selective list of people who will "play ball" with you, please count us us. We're too busy to play ball with everyone who wants a game - sorry!" The pushy saleswoman who wanted an appointment for her rep and kept telling me what a bargain price they were offering missed my point. The rep from the company with whom we HAVE advertised for three years, but who told me we weren't in the current edition, managed to loose the credibility that Robin Stanbrook - our previous contact (who I greatly respect, and for whom I might have made an exception) had built up. (written 2009-08-12) Associated topics are indexed under M149 - Well House Manor - FAQ[3848] Where do I find .... (Our hotel FAQ) - (2012-08-25) [3600] Visa, MasterCard and American Express - changing payment profiles - (2012-02-01) [3359] Cash and Cheque policy - UK Hotel - (2011-07-16) [3263] Come as a customer, leave as a friend - Well House Manor, Hotel, Wiltshire - (2011-04-24) [3071] Well House Price list, January to March 2011 - (2010-11-25) [2838] Respecting our customers anonimity - (2010-06-29) [2014] First Class - (2009-01-29) [1809] Coming home tonight - (2008-09-25) [1683] Plenty of car parking at Well House Manor, Hotel, Melksham - (2008-06-20) [1263] 0800 043 8225 - a new phone number for Well House - (2007-07-10) [820] Robert and William Whitworth - (2006-08-01) [617] Easy, Free, Reliable internet access - (2006-02-22) G209 - Well House Consultants - Keeping up to date [3755] Cruising on the Mersey Ferry? - (2012-06-07) [3653] What is happening in 59 days time in Melksham? - (2012-03-14) [3469] Teaching dilemma - old tricks and techniques, or recent enhancements? - (2011-10-08) [3003] What will we be teaching in six years? - (2010-10-17) [2940] Training course locations - Melksham, UK; Buxton, UK; Lake Constance, Germany; Venice Italy, the USA and India - (2010-08-30) [2564] Microblogging services - Plurk, Twitter, Jaiku and more - (2010-01-05) [2078] A lot has changed - but the memory lingers on - (2009-03-12) [2032] Mobile Internet - an alternative to hotel WiFi - (2009-02-09) [1488] New trainee laptop fleet for our Open Source courses - (2007-12-30) [396] The next technologies - (2005-07-29) [250] We dont stand still - (2005-03-18) [160] Review of the Autumn - (2004-12-22) [143] Network Camera - (2004-12-07) [86] Talk review - Idiomatic Perl, David Cross - (2004-10-12) [83] Geek Cruising - (2004-10-11) [82] Keeping up to date - (2004-10-10) G301 - Well House Consultants - Booking a Public Courses [3180] Age limits for Well House Consultants Open Source courses? - (2011-02-22) [2743] Public Open Source Training Courses running this summer and autumn in Melksham - (2010-04-27) [2278] First courses for 2010 - (2009-07-10) [1932] Training Passports - booking a training program - (2008-12-09) [1693] July to December 2008 - Open Source training schedule - (2008-07-01) [1634] Kiss and Book - (2008-05-07) [1555] Advanced Python, Perl, PHP and Tcl training courses / classes - (2008-02-25) [1193] Dangerous Dogs and Hotel Marketing - (2007-05-19) [664] Ruby course - oops - it's not happening - (2006-04-01) [487] On line course booking - credit card protection - (2005-11-06) 3fdf
Some other Articles
Passing multiple results back from a function - Lua, Python, etcSee this page in French Training, Open Source computer languages All change - Wiltshire Parliamentary Printed Directories - the start of the updating season Ternary operators alternatives - Perl and Lua lazy operators Ten years in Melksham - looking forward to ten more. Businesses effected by road works in Melksham Finding literals rather than patterns in Lua Dot, dot, dot in Lua - variable length parameter lists |
4088 posts, page by page
Link to page ... 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, 19, 20, 21, 22, 23, 24, 25, 26, 27, 28, 29, 30, 31, 32, 33, 34, 35, 36, 37, 38, 39, 40, 41, 42, 43, 44, 45, 46, 47, 48, 49, 50, 51, 52, 53, 54, 55, 56, 57, 58, 59, 60, 61, 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 67, 68, 69, 70, 71, 72, 73, 74, 75, 76, 77, 78, 79, 80, 81, 82 at 50 posts per pageThis is a page archived from The Horse's Mouth at http://www.wellho.net/horse/ - the diary and writings of Graham Ellis. Every attempt was made to provide current information at the time the page was written, but things do move forward in our business - new software releases, price changes, new techniques. Please check back via our main site for current courses, prices, versions, etc - any mention of a price in "The Horse's Mouth" cannot be taken as an offer to supply at that price.
Link to Ezine home page (for reading).
Link to Blogging home page (to add comments).
 | Hello. I'm Graham Ellis. If you have a question about the hotel, please ask me or |
then book here | |
PH: 01144 1225 708225 • FAX: 01144 1225 899360 • EMAIL: info@wellho.net • WEB: http://www.wellho.net • SKYPE: wellho
PAGE: http://www.wellho.net/mouth/2352_Pri ... eason.html • PAGE BUILT: Sat Feb 23 12:39:13 2013 • BUILD SYSTEM: wizard