Using highly scientific methods of observation, I’ve discovered that 92% of hoteliers will ask “How much will it/does it cost?” within 56 seconds of a first time conversation. This is a valid concern these days. Understandably, in the current economic climate few business owners are looking to increase their bills but even fewer can afford to miss the opportunity to increase revenue and exposure. GuestCentric’s revolutionary platform includes a sophisticated, professionally designed website, a real time booking engine and a backend management system that will provide oodles of useful information in a format that rivals paint-by-numbers in the user friendly department with the even friendlier condition of NO start up or set up fee. After doing some more rogue research I found that, for most hotels, one to two room bookings per month pays for our sensibly-priced-no-contract service and then some.
This is, of course, after having taken it for a free test drive first. So, with a free trial to give you a head start on getting some commission free bookings followed by pricing that offers instant return on investment – how can you lose? In today’s economic climate and online environment we could all use more services that not only pay for themselves but generate more virtual attention and real business.

Deirdre Knowlton
Senior account manager
+1 203 883 9830
Contact me online

Hi, my name is Pedro Gomes and I am GuestCentric Product Manager. Part of my job is to make sure things run smoothly for our customers and what a better way to know when this is accomplished than to receive enthusiastic feedback about the service. Over a month ago Mr. Gallego an independent hotel owner signed up for GuestCentric’s free trial. He is not what one could call a tech savvy person.

Recently I received news from him; he finished setting up his website, he was extremely proud of the results and very satisfied with how easy the entire process was. Using GuestCentric’s InstantHotel Technology which was developed specifically for hotels, he was able to create a professional looking website, from scratch, by himself in less than a week. He was surprised on how easy it was to develop the right menus structure and to populate the pages with content.

InstantHotel Technology helped Mr. Gallego developing content easily as it uses all the information added to the system to populate the website pages. He was especially pleased on how good his amateur pictures looked on the flash banners. He finished the page by adding some of the available gadgets like Google maps and picture gallery. This was one of those special events for me because Mr. Gallego had zero hours of training on GuestCentric service. It is encouraging for me to hear that all the hours spend on usability tests based on creating easy to use and time saving services for independent hotels has paid off with satisfied customers and it is definitely a motive to continue generating ways to ease up your workload.

Once the website was published he applied a direct marketing strategy provided by GuestCentric on how to increase website visitors, the results were extraordinary but I will tell you more about that some other time.
Check out Vale do Gaio Hotel website at www.valedogaio.com What do you think?

We are happy to announce the release of the latest feature added to your GuestCentric service: the Website Builder.

After long hours of usability tests, we were able to create a simple and easy process to help you manage and create your website content from wherever you are in less than 15 minutes.

The website builder is a content management system tool integrated with the backend of our service. The feature was especially developed thinking on the needs of the Independent Hotels, just like you. This new feature among other things will help you to freely create and organize content for your website, update your website whenever you need and manage your website search engine optimization in a matter of a few clicks.

Learn more about the website builder in the backend of our service.

We are back from Austin! GuestCentric participated in the largest hospitality technology exposition and conference in the US; the Hospitality Industry Technology Exposition and Conference 2008 (HITEC). Attended by over 5,000 hospitality professionals from all over the world, the event took place in Austin, Texas from June 16-19, 2008. GuestCentric was among the +300 exhibiting companies.
Over the 3 days of the show we received many visitors in our booth. The visitors were not only hoteliers interested in learning more about GuestCentric’s offer but also industry analysts, professors and journalists. More importantly this event gave us the opportunity to look at the new technologies in the market and meet colleagues of the industry. After reviewing the services offer to the independent hotels we can reconfirm that GuestCentric is the best Software as a Service provider at affordable prices in the market.
The highlight of the event was on June 17th, 2008, when during a press conference GuestCentric revealed the results of a study conducted that show how the online presence gap between Independent hotels and chain hotels drifts further. The study revealed the big differences in the way hotels manage their online websites to book consumer and business travel online, the amazing part of all is how skeptic people were over the results. If you would like to read more on the results please go to news.

Overall it was a great show and we are pleased with the lessons learned throughout the event.

Our trip to London came to an end and we would like to share with you our last day in the Travel Distribution Summit. The highlight of the day was GuestCentric’s participation in the Hotel Technology Forum, Pedro Colaco spoke about how Web 2.0 technologies are creating the ultimate booking experience for hotel customers and how next-generation booking engine features like interactive deal shopping and one-click-checkout can improve conversion ratios and customer satisfaction.

Overall, it was a successful and fun trip!

We are now preparing our next adventure: HITEC 2008 Austin,Texas

This week was full of interesting events for GuestCentric not only did we organized a webinar with Forrester and launched our new website but we also participated as exhibitors and presenters at the Travel Distribution Summit Europe 2008 in London. This event gives the opportunity to visitors to learn more about online marketing distribution. Is a two day event that offers an exhibit area, seminars and conferences for the attendees.

For all of us the experience was great and we would like to share the highlights of our journey with you.

During the course of the last year we executed several surveys of hotel managers in the US, UK and Spain. As part of the feedback that you provided to us it became clear that different hotels are in different stages of adopting online as a marketing and distribution platform:

• You have a website and a booking engine
• You would like to improve your online presence
• You have a website but don’t believe in online booking
• You don’t have a website

Based on this knowledge, we have created a campaign that explains what the GuestCentric platform can do to address your specific concerns. The campaign is available onour page on YouTube or you can watch the videos here. As always, we would like to have your feedback.

I have a website and a booking engine

I would like to improve my online presence

I don’t believe in online booking

I don’t have a website

Thanks to our marketing department we are now on YouTube. We created a page where we will post relevant videos. The first one is the invite to the launch webinar we are doing with Henry Harteveldt, Vice President and Principal Analyst at Forrester Research and according to Travel Weekly magazine one of the 33 most influential people in travel in the World. Take a look at the video:

As President and CEO of GuestCentric I would like to officially welcome you to our new blog. The GuestCentric blog will be the place where you will meet our growing team, hear about what we are up to, get updates on our service available on www.guestcentric.com and discuss industry trends that may or may not impact your business.

If you are one of the twenty-odd independent hotels that have been working with us for the past year and have tested our platform for the past six months, we thank you. Your input has been the single most valuable contribution to the success we have had to date. You have embraced our vision to enable a truly guest-centric (hence, the name…) travel experience and to provide this through an easy-to-use and affordable tool.

Your input has allowed us to created an exciting Software as a Service platform that enables smaller independent properties to compete with larger properties and chains using tactics where size and spending matter less and creativity and innovation matter more. And we believe that by aggregating the buying power of lots of smaller hotels we can create a new level of service to guests.

As our first contribution we have organized a webinar with leading industry experts that dissects the state of the industry today and provides practical recommendations that you can start implementing in your hotel right away. Please register for our newsletter to have access to the webinar video and a library of other best practices that we will be developing over time. And if you want to try our service free for 30 days, don’t hesitate to sign-up.

Again, welcome to this blog and stay tuned for more posts about GuestCentric and the industry. Now the adventure starts!

Pedro

This week was full of interesting events for GuestCentric not only
did we organized a webinar with Forrester and launched our new website
but we also participated as exhibitors and presenters at the Travel
Distribution Summit Europe 2008 in London. This event gives the
opportunity to visitors to learn more about online marketing
distribution. Is a two day event that offers an exhibit area, seminars
and conferences for the attendees.

For all of us the experience was great and we would like to share the highlights of our journey with you.