Summer has been brilliant, particularly for our Irish hotels, with great staycation business, high occupancy rates and fabulous book direct levels. As Autumn approaches and the kids go back to school, those occupancy levels will inevitably drop and once again hotels will be competing to fill their rooms. In this podcast I consider five strategies which will help hotels maximise their chances of maintaining their occupancy through the autumn and into the shoulder season.

Core Web Vitals (CWV) is a new update from Google designed to improve user experience on the web. In this episode we explore CWV and why it is important for luxury, independent hotel websites. We consider it vital that our clients’ hotel websites pass the CWV tests – a key plank of having the best book direct strategy is that both a hotel’s organic and paid listings are optimised.

We're delighted to welcome Lisa Leahy from Brandlly Marketing for episode 4. She was the marketing director of the luxury Hayfield Family Collection and gives us the benefit of her considerable expertise on how marketing and branding can be used to drive direct bookings for independent hotels.

Abbeyglen is a 4 star castle hotel in Clifden, Ireland. Pre Covid, they filled their rooms for 7 months a year with overseas tour parties. When the pandemic struck they were staring into a bookings black hole. They turned to Aró to pivot to a direct booking strategy. What happened? Co-owner Ronan takes up the story...

In the first of our dynamic updates, we highlight the importance for independent hotels of managing their online reputation. We talk about why it is crucial that you do it, what benefits improving your review scores brings and some tips and tricks on how to do it.

In the first of our deep dives, we chat with Patrick O'Flaherty from Revenue Plus on the importance of independent hotels having a revenue management plan. It's action-oriented, with a 'how to do it' focus and what you can expect in return.

A taste of what's to come