Inside Hospitality

All Nightclubs Are Not Created Equal. Introducing @PalaceChicago

Posted on 30. Aug, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Daily Tip, Inside Hospitality

We’re pretty excited to be a part of the most exciting thing to happen to Chicago nightlife scene in a long time. More information on our involvement will be posted and make public soon.

Join the Palace Nightclub fan page by clicking here!

Follow up on Twitter @PalaceChicago

The 10 Best New Restaurants in America

Posted on 19. Aug, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Industry News

Once again, we ate our way across the country in search of the best new restaurants. These 10 fantastic spots–from casual places with communal tables to high-end, white-tablecloth affairs–prove that the American restaurant scene is alive and well, and more delicious than ever.

Check out the top 10 by clicking here!

Branding & Design That Doesn’t Suck. Meet Our New Partner- Crawler Promotions.

Posted on 18. Aug, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Inside Hospitality, Marketing

Inside Hospitality, LLC. is excited to officially announce a formal partnership with Chicago based Crawler Promotions. These guys do an incredible job and really understand the market, we look forward to partnering with them on many upcoming projects.

Crawler Promotions is an online and mobile strategist company that enhances a companies brand online while creating an expertise in your field. We handle all online marketing and mobile promotions for companies and organizations, especially in the bar, club and restaurant industry. We specialize in both design and development of social sites, mobile applications development and print promotional work.

We Handle:

Social Media Profile Design and Development
Mobile Application Design and Development
Website Development that includes strategic SEO and social profile integration
Promotional Design Work: Business Cards, Menus, Promo Cards, Event Flyers, & Posters

Visit Crawler Promotions by clicking here!

What is a Social Media expert ?

Posted on 15. Aug, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Social Media

What’s A Guest Worth? Really. – Daily Tip for Tuesday August 10th.

Posted on 10. Aug, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Daily Tip, Marketing

Today’s Tip: What’s A Guest Worth?

Let’s talk for a second about the value of a happy guest and to outline our discussion I have created the matrix below that shows the effects of positive word-of-mouth as well as how strong your marketing ROI can be when you “get it right”.

What the discussion boils down to is both the value of a happy guest and the value of an unhappy guest because both have equally important values.

Let’s assume you have a $20 per-person-average (PPA) and that for every happy guest they will tell five people within a month of their great experience. Those five people then visit your restaurant and have a great experience and each of them tell five m0re people and so on. It will look something like this:

Happy Guest #1 is worth $240 to you a year if he visits you just once per month at the $20 PPA level. Do you have happy guests who just visit you once a month? Perhaps but most visit you much more.

So by the end of the fifth month, the initial guest has told enough people about his great experience to garner you over $15,000 worth of business – not bad for just getting it right – and after a full year of positive word-of-mouth, the initial guest has helped create over $128,000 worth of business for you simply by communicating to the people in his close community about how great an experience he had at your restaurant.

Now contrast this with the understanding we all have that when you “get it wrong”, people have a tendency to tell more people about the bad experience than the positive one. Then assume the $20 PPA again and multiple these amounts by a factor of 2 or 3 or 4 (whichever you understand to be the case about the flow of conversations about bad experiences) and you can see how much money is potentially lost from the negative word-of-mouth generated by bad experiences.

Now consider the amplification of the bad experience and subsequent communication about it by people engaged with social media and you see a whole bunch of potential for lost sales as well as erosion of your brand reputation.

Finally, add in the lost opportunity cost of getting the marketing wrong or not listening to your guests and understanding their level of dissatisfaction with your experience.

So the lessons of situations like this are what I rant and rave about to restaurant and hospitality operators on a daily basis. Those being:

The reason most operators fail is not for lack of capitalization, it’s from bad marketing.
The reason most operators continue to fail, even when they see how bad things are is because they can’t admit they need help.
No marketing strategy is more effective or powerful than those which work to leverage positive word-of-mouth strategies and tactics.
Failing to implement a serious Voice-of-the-Guest program to measure guest expectations is suicidal.
The potential for success is too great to dilute by using any discounting strategy when what you should be doing is adding value to support and enhance each guest experience.
Social Media can serve to amplify a great experience or a negative one more so than any other and underscores why you have to be listening, engaging and facilitating with those conversations.

What do you think?

Read more: What’s A Guest Worth? | RestaurantWorx™ by Jeffrey Summers, Pres., RestaurantWorx Consulting

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

Restaurant Management Talk about Cutting Costs vs. Increasing Sales- Daily Tip for Monday Aug. 8th.

Posted on 09. Aug, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Daily Tip

Post by good friend to Inside Hospitality & guest blogger Michael Hartzell

“When all is said and done, more is usually said.” Many rely on a street sign for advertising and hope for the best. These comments came from restaurateurs during the last 25 years:

I can’t think of anything right now; let’s do what we have usually done.
What is the restaurant up the street advertising? We will copy them.
Our advertising isn’t working very well so we need to spend more.
I just got a call from Advertising salesman pete with a special that ends next week so we have to do it.
I just thought of a marketing idea while I was washing my hands in the bathroom.
The economy is down and people are spending less so we need to cut the advertising budget.
Since business is down, we need to cut labor and get the managers and staff to be more productive.
Let’s cut all the services that make the restaurant look great to every other month to save costs.
We can open later and close earlier since no one is coming in.
Oh? There are fewer transactions? Then we need to raise the prices.
Don’t worry; the slower sales trend is only temporary. We can dig in and wait it out.
The boss just cut our hours and is working more herself to save money while business is slow.
If we cut out ______, we can save 2 cents per transaction.

Tendency to play it safe:

There is a tendency to make decisions about what we know can be controlled. It is a sure thing to cut costs, work more hours, reduce portions, or raise prices. The impact is immediate and can be measured easily.

Where is the Bottom? When focusing on what I call “defense”, there is a bottom. Do you know where yours is? I hope you are first inclined to put on your to-do list those activities that impact sales.

The simple formula to conduct your breakeven analysis is to take your fixed costs, divided by your price, minus your variable costs. As an equation, this is defined as:

Breakeven Point = Fixed Costs/(Unit Selling Price – Variable Costs)

If you are surviving each month but in reality making no profit, the first action anyone is inclined to do is: Go on defense and focus on keeping the cash.

Feeling is NOT Reality:

Any good game plan also includes a more aggressive offense when behind. Defensive strategies give a FEELING of accomplishment but there is a good chance that the new focus is taking MORE energy and time. Therefore, there is not much time, energy nor resources left to invest into offense.

A year down the road a management team might say: “Look! Sales are flat! We are making progress!” In one respect this is true. After all, if costs are in line with goals (based on percentages) it might appear the managers and owner are “in control” of the business.

This is often a conflict between the less experienced, hard working leadership within the restaurant vs. the seasoned veteran leadership who know that defense is only half the game.

It’s been a year:

It has been more than a year since the “economy went bad”. You have cut every cost possible and continue to look at the P&L when the best thing you could do is to make more introductions and invitations.

In reality this is may not be exciting and the repetition of marketing may soon wear you to the point of monotone mundane script reciting over and over. When do the lines and judgment begin to blur? After the 1000^th handshake? After the one millionth advertising piece sent? You have cut costs, streamlined, sweated over your P&L statements and also have to be innovative and interesting. You may not feel so interesting and in fact may feel tired.

Reminder that it’s work:

People are searching for you because they want to have a great experience. Marketing is not quite as exciting as some make it out to be. It is hard work and takes personal discipline.

Mail
Telephone
Mobile Text Messaging
Facebook, Twitter, Foursquare.
Newspapers
TV
Radio
Magazines
Doorhangers
Walking Around Marketing
Many more

In fact I have a whole list here: Restaurant Marketing Planning Spreadsheet

This is a special link just for you at Inside Hospitality that bypasses the opt-in form. It is free.

“When it’s all said and done, make sure that more is done.” Michael Hartzell

About Michael

Michael Hartzell – Entrepreneur, writer, coach and Inbound Marketing Certified Professional. As a self proclaimed Professor of Magic Marketing, author of “10 Magic Marketing Tips” and over 30 years experience as a restaurateur, Michael helps business owners “Boost Sales & Build Teams” on the foundation of Knowledge Empowers so Learn & Teach ™. Read more from Michael at Restaurant Marketing Ideas Blog or contact him at ask@michaelhartzell.com. Member of the American Marketing Association and Guerrilla Marketing Association.

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Today’s tip is brought to you by Inside Hospitality™, a comprehensive and innovative guest experience management and measurement company whose integrated suite of hospitality business solutions from restaurant focused mystery shopping to online reputation management achieves tangible results in the marketplace and is the choice for restaurant and hotels worldwide.

Contact us today and learn how Inside Hospitality™ can create a custom solution for your organization. We can be reached anytime @ (888) 260- 0380.

Click the “RingMe” button and we’ll call you back within 1 minute.

More GuestPulse Social Media Monitoring Reviews

Posted on 22. Jul, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Inside Hospitality, Online Reputation Management (ORM)

“Guest Pulse’s service is simple: it helps you monitor your online reputation by emailing you the most recently posted reviews and mentions of your restaurant (at Citysearch, Google Maps, Tripadvisor, etc.).

The sign up procedure is quick, easy and user-friendly. No CC required. Just enter your business’s name and verify your contact info and a few details. Once this is complete, Guest Pulse begins sending you the emails.”

Read complete review at Guestengage by clicking here!

and get your own 30 day free trial of GuestPulse by clicking the image below.

Your Guests are mobile. Your engagement need to be as well. Introducing Mobilality™

Posted on 01. Jul, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Industry News, Inside Hospitality

We are thrilled to officially announce our latest Guest Experience marketing & measurement solution, Mobilality™

Hospitality Mobile Guest Engagement. Simplified.

Mobilality™ is a leading edge complete mobile marketing, guest survey program that is more effective than any other marketing program you could employ, in helping you measure and improve the level of real guest loyalty.

Sign up free by clicking here! or visiting http://www.mobilality.com

Does your mystery shopping company “mystery shop” itself ? We do.

Posted on 28. Jun, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Inside Hospitality, Mystery Shopping

A peek inside how we operate.

How can you tell other companies how to improve their operational procedures but not measuring your own? You can’t. Inside Hospitality conducts weekly “mystery shopping” audits on it’s own operation procedures for all it’s internal departments.

Our Internal Mystery Shopping Grades just came in for June: 98.7% -

A couple areas of improvement but overall great job by the IH team.

Want to help us build a better company, we are always looking for evaluators to help measure and improve our level of service. Apply here !

GuestPulse Feature Spotlight- Online Reputation Genius™

Posted on 26. Jun, 2010 by Gary Tripp in Online Reputation Management (ORM)

Your very own Reputation Genius™ with GuestPulse™

In the month of June we have helped Operators & Managers save, recover, engage, and attract guests over 1,750 times.

What’s better than asking someone who knows best when you have a question at 2pm or 2am? Nothing.

Not sure the best way to handle a certain mention or need some help tracking a guest down who posted something about your property so you can speak with them further? We have you covered.

With every GuestPulse account you get access to your very own Reputation Genius™ that is never more than a call, click or tweet away.

Watch the 40 second screen cast below.

Haven’t tried GuestPulse for yourself? What are you waiting for! Sign up today for our 30 day (no credit card) trial and start receiving your guests comments within minutes !

Click here to visit GuestPulse