The Pit - IMI Trust

Marriott International Hotels has annouced that its website Marriott.com will shatter its revenue record in 2006 by generating nearly $4 billion in sales.

The have a world-class brand and world-class facilities but thousands of other companies don’t have the online penetration they do.  How did they achieve these online sales?

Simply put, they have made the website compelling for the user to make a purchase.  Marriott have conditioned the user to make their purchasing choices through the website.  They have done this by having these features:

• Easy browsing of the website so users can pick dates, locations, iteneraries very easily
• Good photography of the locations so people can visualise each place
• Favourable rates from offline purchases
• A variety of different rates with different inclusions so there is no need to call an operator for ‘non-vanilla’ requests
• Immediate reservation / ticketing so there is immediate purchase satisfaction

All this and there is a great email marketing campaign where discounts are offered to hotels within your specified region and there is continual cross-selling and upselling of products that would interest you.  City and Destination Guides provide ample information for the location of travel and there are options to book events at your destination too.

Easy Decisions To Make

The consumer is armed with all they need to make the right buying decision.  There is no reason to phone to make an enquiry or go to a travel agent.  All the necessary information is at a click.  So people are comfortable with this system. 

The hotel booking service by Marriott has conditioned the user to believing their website is their main, and most useful, shopfront.  This is where the travel industry has go it so right with online airline ticketing is also massively popular.

Don’t be fooled into thinking that because you have a finance business or a florist or a funeral director that you can’t condition your users to think the same way.  Give them options and information to make their buying decision and they will. 

This is why online stock trading has become so popular.  Many investors conduct their own research and are comfortable making the trading decisions themselves.  They can do this because the end-to-end process is all covered online.  Technical tools, research, immediate pricing, comparison pricing and so on, is all immediately available to the user so they can make a buying decision. 

With the internet and your website the principles are that simple.