PRESS RELEASE
Fast Tracking Available Accommodation
Regional Communities need to nurture their small businesses. These are the people who help create local jobs and bring in money to sustain local economies.
In this land of great distances, and extraordinary contrasts a lot of our small business is built around tourism. The sights, the museums and local landscapes are only half the story. Regional Australia relies on its family hotels and its bed and breakfasts, on holiday lets, and boutique hotels to give people the actual home away from home that can make a holiday so memorable.
Karen West, who lives in the Blue Mountains, NSW, is one of many who make her living as host to the thousands of visitors that choose to spend their leisure time seeing more of Australia.
“A few years ago I had two cancellations for my self – contained cottage, one after the other and no midweek bookings,” said Karen. “Yes, I re-listed my availability with the accommodation websites that my property was listed with, but my availability was never picked up.”
So in response, Karen created ‘cancellations.com.au’ – a very clever national promotional system that circumvents the limitations of a large booking agency, keeps costs to a minimum and uses online technology to provide far reaching publicity for regional businesses.
In order to appreciate the beauty of cancellations.com.au, first consider the alternative.
The majority of online booking agencies are large businesses who prefer to deal with large businesses. They earn their money by charging a percentage of the income you make through their agency, usually ten percent. Your accommodation is displayed as one of many in the area, and the details about your business are limited to the space allotted by the agency to each property.
Cancellations is not booking agency. It works more like a newspaper classifieds. You place your advertisement, and the advertisement has a fixed life span (long enough for you to fill your availability).The advertisement links directly to your webpage, so prospective customers get to see everything you want them to instead of just a thumbnail picture on someone else’s site. If someone likes what they see, it will be your site that gets bookmarked, not the booking agency. As Karen says, “It’s all very well to have a website. The important thing is getting people to look at it!”
Once your advertisement is posted, the link to your website and your vacancy is picked up by Google search that uses keywords like ‘last minute' or ‘cancellation’ combined with the area name. In practice this means that when anyone considering a last minute weekend away taps into Google in their lunch break, the link to your webpage will be right in front of them as an option.
Now, if accommodation providers have availability, a cancellation, a package or a special deal, it won’t be lost on a sea of websites.
“Our service is a winning formula for both the accommodation seeker and the provider,” said Karen. “Since our launch, accommodation seekers have viewed over 2.5 million pages on cancellations.com.au in search of a last minute bargain.”
A token yearly fee allows accommodation providers nationally a space to post as many last minute classified ads as they wish throughout the year, commission free.
For further information about Cancellations.com.au contact Karen West
Telephone: (02) 8214 8498
Facsimile: (02) 9012 0686
Email:
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Website: www.cancellations.com.au Copyright 2004 CANCELLATIONS.com.au
