[eBrochureGuy]

Hi Rahul,
The resort sounds fabulous.

I have not seen your web site yet but I think plenty of images / photgraphs demonstarting the fun and excitement of each of the various activities available at the resort would be good.

The next thing you will need to do is get those action packed / fun images in front of your target audience. You could look at building a facebook presence, create high impact digital brochures for sharing, participate in forums where your target audience hang out.

For example why not participate in the Trip Advisor forum. Answer questions and discreetly introduce your resort and get some interest going.

Hope this helps

Gerard
Brochure4You.com

[Sahara]

Online booking engines, i.e. expedia, booking.com etc.

click on homepages and you will find a basic run through. Contact them and they will get in touch with you and assist. Neverthelessyou pretty much have to do everything yourself, including pics, texts, rates, seasons, promos etc.

Sounds difficult, but once you are into it you'll manage. Make sure you cross read all!!!!! Especially rates should be done with two or three people (RDM & Sales) together, one small mistake can make a big difference, especially when loading the rates, (there was a property in Milan who uploaded a rate of €1 per night by simply setting the "point" wrong - intending €100.

I always found it usefull to work it on a big screen with an LCD, depending on the section with the appropriate dept. head.

Good luck!

PS - my best producers were booking.com and HRS.com

This post has been edited by Sahara: 01 June 2011 - 08:24 AM

[AHMC]

Firstly do you have clear identified target markets, who is going to stay with you and once you know this how do these people book? It sounds like a resort that would do well to start on the domestic market and particularly on the meetings/training/teambuilding market, seems you are promoting this on your web site, if you dont have the team then perhaps look in Mumbai for some team building or training companies and pitch to them.
On line is key, make sure you have a great web site - in fairness while your web site clearly has lots of info it is not so clear to navigate around, had you thought of looking at this?, work on social media, facebook, tripadvisor etc
In terms of international visitors, I would have thought that you are more likely to attract people who are staying in India for an extended period, perhaps this means the back-packers, is this a market you would consider
Well done you seem to be on the right track!
Hope this helps for a start

[boostoccupancy]

A GDS (or global distribution system) is needed to get featured on major discount sites like Expedia. I actually don't recommend this for smaller hotels (I don't know how many rooms you have) because it can seriously eat away at your bottom line. It works much better for larger resorts who can afford to unload large chunks of available rooms at once.

Either way, a nice way to get great press for your property (whether it's a big hotel or a small one) is to register with one of the PR repositories that connect journalists with sources. My favorite (Help A Reporter Out or HARO) sends out hundreds of inquiries every day. Simply have your PR person respond and pitch your hotel: this is how we got featured in GQ, Conde Nast, Travel + Leisure and a bunch of others. It's all free and just takes some persistence and creative writing styles.

Matt is the creator of How To Increase Hotel Occupancy: free and inexpensive techniques for boosting sales and revenue with the resources you already have.