ips for Cheaper Hotel Stays from Budget Travel Magazine

Here are some tips and tricks for saving money at hotels that travel magazine recently published in a little flier they sent out. I thought most of the tips were really great, and I know that I’ve made good use of some of them already.

1. AAA Discount

Yes, always ask for one – but better yet, if you walk into a hotel without a reservation, or if you call one up, don’t tell them that you have AAA until AFTER they quote you a price. Sometimes, hotels try to be sneaky and quote you a AAA price when it’s actually the regular price.

2. Check out Convention and Visitor’s Bureaus

Make good use of city’s Convention and Visitor’s Bureaus! For example, orlando'office has what’s called a “Black Book” which has cut-rate offers phone in by local hotels which are desperate to book their hotel for the night.This will save you a lot of money – money you can then spend on places like Disney World!

3. Are phone calls really free?

Always ask if phone calls and breakfasts are included for *free*. Never assume it is. Mid-range hotels usually include stuff like that for free, but more expensive hotels will often charge you for it.

4. Web-only rate for the win!

Always, always check the hotel’s “web-only” rate. It’s usually cheaper than what you’ll get by simply calling the property directly. I also find that, nowadays, most hotel’s online website are very competitive, if not cheaper than, the sites like Hotels.com because those site tend to charge fees.

Happy hotel hunting!

E-Mails out of the Hotel Booking System

To send any kind of e-mail to your customers you won't have to leave the Hote reservation Software.

Send confirmation mails or cancellations or even birthday wishes to your customers.
The e-mail section of the software let's you also send normal e-mails, just like you are used to.

click on the image to see the original size

The Navigation Bar at the top of the e-mail page contains the E-MAIL SETTINGS where you can enter your personal account information. E.g. your mail provider. The MASS MAIL button will bring you to the NEWSLETTER TEMPLATES section of the software.

To write an e-mail to anyone else than the customers in your database, just fill in the information as you are used to. You can add up to three attachemets per e-mail.

To enter or past your e-mail text click on the "Mail Message bar. If you want to send the same mail to multiple receipents you might want to use the MASS MAIL function of the software where you can select html templates to make your e-mails look more stylish.

Sustainable Hotel Siting, Design and Construction

A rapidly growing travel industry, riding on the back of ever cheaper flights and increased spending power is producing a dilemma for hotel businesses - how to build more properties without causing damage to the environment? The publication of the world's first guiding principles for building tourist developments in a sustainable manner, co-sponsored by IBLF, will help to address this challenge.

Against a backdrop of predictions that the tourism industry will double in size over the next 15 years, Conservation International and the IBLF have published Sustainable Hotel Siting, Design and Construction - which will dramatically help hotel companies to build more sustainable and more environmentally friendly tourist developments.

Nine of the world's largest hotel companies - including Marriott, Hilton and Starwood - actively supported the development of the book and are now determining how best to implement the principles outlined in the publication.

'Sustainable tourism is about preserving popular destinations, the environment and its resources,' said Ed Fuller, president and managing director, International Lodging for Marriott International and chair of the International Tourism Partnership, the tourism programme of IBLF. 'We have got to get it right for this generation and beyond.'

There is an overwhelming case for hotels to be designed according to sustainable principles. As well as the need to preserve the environment and avoid wastage of resources, businesses are increasingly realising that a more sustainable approach means a longer-term business proposition.

Sustainable Hotel Siting, Design and Construction will be used at all levels of hotel development, from inception through to commissioning. It will be of use to local government planning authorities, investors, hotel companies, architects and construction companies to ensure that in the future, hotels can be built that fit in with the local environments and communities.

Sustainable development is a concept that for many is easily understood but difficult to put in practice. This publication will help the hotel industry do just that.

Environmental Management for Hotels

Environmental Management for Hotels, the industry-acclaimed guide to quality environmental management and sustainable operations, is now available in its third edition.

This manual provides hotels and other related businesses with the knowledge and means to develop practical solutions to 'green' their operations. The manual focuses on key areas such as energy management, water conservation, waste management, purchasing and supply chains, food safety and environmental health, as well as case studies to guide companies as they implement these practices. This is an invaluable working tool with its wealth of reference material designed to promote successful resource management.

This latest edition includes 350 pages of fully revised and updated technical advice, handy charts, tables and supporting materials and a wealth of further sources of information. Case studies showcasing best practice in the management of each issue have been grouped at the end of the publication for easy reference. The new format also makes the manual more user-friendly with dividers that clearly separate the sections for quick reference and a ring-binder design that is eco-friendly and allows you to add your own material overtime.

Robert Kennedy, Vice President Technical Services Europe, Hilton International commented: "Hilton issued the first edition to all of its hotels when it was initially published. I used it as a property engineer and found it to be very useful. Since then I have ensured that all of our new acquisitions have been issued a copy. This is one of the most practical and certainly the most thumbed informational publication in any Engineer's office."

5 Most Profitable Hotel Marketing Tasks to Outsource

5 Most Profitable Hotel Marketing Tasks to Outsource

Some hotel marketing functions are best kept in-house. For others, it’s more profitable to outsource them to an outside partner. Here are ten of the most profitable hotel internet marketing tasks to outsource and why.

1. Web Design

Why: Designing an effective hotel website requires time to create pages that are attractive, informative and visitor friendly. This requires a knowledge of the hotel industry in addition to technical knowledge and an understanding of usability guidelines.

2. Website Maintenance

Why: Building and managing a website are two different tasks. Website design gets a lot of attention, but upkeep is equally important. It’s important to constantly update your sites with the latest information. Unless you have the technical expertise and time to do this in-house, it’s common to outsource this function.

3. Pay-Per-Click Advertising

Why: Sure, anyone can throw together a PPC campaign in a few hours, but it requires a lot of research and testing over the long term to do this well. A good agency will take time to understand your business needs, and build a campaign around them.

4. SEO Optimization

Why: Effective SEO can include website re-design, optimization and a strategic linking strategy – so it can be nice to have someone else manage this whole process for you.

5. Online Reputation Management

Why: Again, this is a task that just takes a lot of time to do thoroughly. Hiring someone to monitor the web and reply as needed can be a worthwhile investment.

BookHotels.com Domain Sells for 50,000 EUR

Sedo cooled down a bit this week after a few weeks of blockbuster sales. But its sales are nothing to sneeze at. The top sale this week was BookHotels.com. The buyer, who paid 50,000 EUR for the domain, is using privacy protection to block whois for now.

Coming in second place at $25,000 is GermProof.com, a domain that should come in handy as cold and flu season rolls in. The domain was bought by Amazon Thunder, which sells Acai berry products. The domain forwards to its AmazonThunder.com web site.

In another interesting sale, Alaska.tel sold for $1,050.

Here’s a look at other notable sales at Sedo this past week:

.COM
discountlaptops.com 2009-08-13 23,760 USD
trekking.com 2009-08-12 19,500 EUR
officelife.com 2009-08-14 15,000 USD
mypizza.com 2009-08-17 15,000 USD
filesearch.com 2009-08-14 10,000 USD
ofb.com 2009-08-12 9,500 USD
geruest.com 2009-08-17 8,950 EUR
caby.com 2009-08-14 7,200 USD
ipooltables.com 2009-08-14 7,000 USD
vcig.com 2009-08-14 6,250 USD
bizcards.com 2009-08-13 6,100 USD
byv.com 2009-08-16 5,700 USD
comprale.com 2009-08-13 5,500 USD
troogle.com 2009-08-17 5,000 USD
mplife.com 2009-08-13 5,000 USD
egiving.com 2009-08-11 5,000 USD
shoesshop.com 2009-08-14 5,000 EUR
windlab.com 2009-08-13 5,000 USD
exch.com 2009-08-17 5,000 GBP

ccTLDs
cam.be 2009-08-12 15,000 USD
trucchi.it 2009-08-11 14,400 EUR Tricks in Italian
wellnesshotels.de 2009-08-13 14,280 EUR
topnews.de 2009-08-14 8,330 EUR
secure.it 2009-08-14 6,000 EUR

Other
tipps.net 2009-08-13 7,140 EUR
insurancequotes.info 2009-08-12 5,600 USD
hypotheken.org 2009-08-17 4,567 EUR Mortgage in German

SALE DOMAIN

sell domains

A domain name is an identification label that defines a realm of administrative autonomy, authority, or control in the Internet, based on the Domain Name System (DNS).

Domain names are used in various networking contexts and application-specific naming and addressing purposes. They are organized in subordinate levels (subdomains) of the DNS root domain, which is nameless. The first-level set of domain names are the top-level domains (TLDs), including the generic top-level domains (gTLDs), such as the prominent domains com, net and org, and the country code top-level domains (ccTLDs). Below these top-level domains in the DNS hierarchy are the second-level and third-level domain names that are typically open for reservation by end-users that wish to connect local area networks to the Internet, run web sites, or create other publicly accessible Internet resources. The registration of these domain names is usually administered by domain name registrars who sell their services to the public.

Individual Internet host computers use domain names as host identifiers, or hostnames. Hostnames are the leaf labels in the domain name system usually without further subordinate domain name space. Hostnames appear as a component in Uniform Resource Locators (URLs) for Internet resources such as web sites (e.g., en.wikipedia.org).

Domain names are also used as simple identification labels to indicate ownership or control of a resource. Such examples are the realm identifiers used in the Session Initiation Protocol (SIP), the DomainKeys used to verify DNS domains in e-mail systems, and in many other Uniform Resource Identifiers (URIs).

An important purpose of domain names is to provide easily recognizable and memorizable names to numerically addressed Internet resources. This abstraction allows any resource (e.g., website) to be moved to a different physical location in the address topology of the network, globally or locally in an intranet. Such a move usually requires changing the IP address of a resource and the corresponding translation of this IP address to and from its domain name.

This article primarily discusses the group of domain names that are offered by domain name registrars for registration by the public. The Domain Name System article discusses the technical facilities and infrastructure of the domain name space and the hostname article deals with specific information about the use of domain names as identifiers of network hosts.