Guest Reviews!!

I’m not going to explain why guest reviews are so important / critical in a world of always on mobile connectivity. That’s been covered in a gazillion places distributed all over the interwebs. There’s plenty of research out there and you can Google some of it here.

No one else gets reviews like Hospitality does!

I’ve regularly thought about this, and I can’t think of any other industry that get reviews as often and persistently as the Hospitality Industry does. For example, as a Hotel General Manager, you can know about a broken shower in one of your rooms before your Housekeeping department has even started their daily routine. As a restaurant manager you can be alerted to a happy or unhappy guest, before they’ve paid the bill. Reviews come thick and fast, and it’s the biggest gift, if you have the correct attitude and approach.

At their most basic, guest reviews are feedback, and feedback is critical if you want to know how well you’re meeting your guest’s / customer’s / client’s needs? Let’s be honest, if you’re not meeting those needs, you’re not going to be in business for much longer. Businesses that survive into the future will be those that are still relevant to their customer’s needs in the future.

We have and have had a lot of clients in the Hospitality Industry, and while they serve different markets, some definitely do better than others. And while it’s not good science to boil it down to just one element, there is definitely a correlation between success and those who take reviews seriously.

And it’s really quite simple….

Read / React / Reply / Repeat

That’s the magic formula that I tell all our clients. When a review comes in….

1. You read it,
2. you react (make the necessary changes, if any),
3. you reply to the guest, thanking them, and letting them know how you reacted (by replying, you’re letting that guest, and the next guest know that you’re invested enough to take their feedback seriously),
4. and you repeat, for every single piece of feedback you receive.

The majority of our clients agree, and as a business we spend much of my time replying to reviews, and in conversations with clients on how they’re reacting to reviews? When they fail to react properly, reviews in the future continue to highlight the issue, until it’s been handled properly. However when a repeating issue isn’t dealt with, they sometimes enter a downward spiral that has a negative end result.

Whether it’s a particular staff person, a team, paint that’s peeling in a bathroom, a pothole in the driveway, etc, when these are repeatedly highlighted and not dealt with, it spells eventual trouble. The last thing you want are reviews reinforcing that you’re not interested in fixing the things your guests are asking you to fix. As I said earlier, if you’re not relevant to what your guests want and need, you will soon have no business.

I’ve watched business after business, who take reviews seriously, slowly and consistently climb up whatever list they’re measuring themselves on. Whether it’s TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Lekkerslaap, Travel Ground, Google or Facebook. The formula is simple and it works for every single platform. Read / React / Reply / Repeat.

Sadly, I’ve watched other clients do the opposite because they didn’t think guest reviews were important.

#takeahorsetowater

The post Guest Reviews Are How You Get Ahead In Hospitality appeared first on Calidascope.

While Word of Mouth Marketing has been around since the beginning of time, don’t make the mistake of thinking it has nothing to do with digital.

• Facebook likes
• TripAdvisor Reviews
• Google My Business Comments
• Twitter Followers
• Instagram Likes
• Brand Mentions

These all form part of WOMM, and should be lovingly and carefully curated and looked after.

It’s Never Too Late To Build Your First Website

A few weeks ago I met a business owner who’d not had a website or much of a digital presence over their 45 years of existence. How was that even possible I had wondered to myself? I felt like I was talking to someone from another dimension, and couldn’t wait to hear more. I work for an Agency helping our clients communicate to their audience and market, and a digital presence is always a critical and important piece of any strategy.

Anthony Pools is a swimming pool contractor, who have been building and renovating swimming pools throughout South Africa and across Africa for 45 years. They’re a successful business and in 2020 they decided a digital presence was needed.

I asked their MD, Warren Peterkin, how they’d done it? Survived and thrived for 45 years without much of a digital presence.

Word of mouth has worked for us for over 45 years. We build great pools and finish within the agreed upon time frame, with a top class team of people. We’ve attracted customers through our customers talking about their great experience with us.

And why digital now? What changes where you seeing that brought on a change in strategy?

Increasingly people have been asking to see pictures of our work, and I got tired of sending photos via Whatsapp, and scrolling through images on my phone. Having a website means there’s a place to send people who’ve asked to learn more about us.

Two Things I Learned

I walked away with two things from my conversation with Warren.

Success isn’t determined primarily by your marketing (no matter how much money you throw at it). Success is determined by a great product, delivered when you say it will be, through an awesome team of people. When you’ve got that right, then you have something worth telling the world about.

When you’ve got a great product, delivered on time, through a great team of people, you don’t even have to tell the world. Your customers, guests or clients will tell the world for you!

Photo by Ben White on Unsplash

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Even if he is using enhancements, they’re all (professional cyclists) using them, so even if he is, it still makes him the best of the bunch

It’s a conversation I often have in my head in today’s digital environment where businesses, large and small, are fighting for space in an overcrowded world of messaging to try and win customers over their competitors. The world of messaging has changed dramatically. Go back 10-15 years and the predominant platforms to speak to consumers were TV, Newspapers, Magazines, and Billboards. Over the past decade or so, the likes of Google and Facebook (and others) have been levelling the playing fields, creating a playground where even the smallest voice (budget) has a shot at outperforming the biggest. Today the unusual suspects often pop up in our streams, and the world has changed, possibly forever?

Fast Movers Had A Digital Advantage

During the transition, those that leapt first (the fast movers) into digital advertising discovered they had a firm advantage over the slow movers. They were usually the big voices (big business with big budgets) who were now dominating the old and new media.

As we know that’s all changing. Online advertising has become easier (it’s still not simple) and cheaper, as everyone jumped, and is still jumping, into the game. Our feeds are now made up of large brands, and my next door neighbour (selling organic carrots and potatoes).

Great Copy and Eye-Catching Images Still Win The Game

Even though its all changing, writing great copy (the words you use) and eye-catching images haven’t caught up, or haven’t made the same leap. While it can take no longer than 30 minutes to set up a digital advert that will run for weeks and months, writing great copy and sourcing the perfect images can take hours.

And yet, that’s where it’s all won and lost. Going back to my Lance Armstrong example… you can take as many enhancements as you want, if you’re not fit, strong, skilled, with the right body, experienced, well resourced, and surrounded by a great team, you are never ever going to win a Tour de France.

You Need More Than Brute Force Paid Digital Advertising

If your business has invested in digital advertising, you’re only part of the way there. You have to put your messaging up against those who are doing it well and getting the clicks, likes, comments, engagement and conversions. Don’t be fooled into thinking money alone is enough. Whomever you have working on your digital communication:

• invest in their writing and image sourcing skills.
• meet regularly to discuss what they’re doing and what they plan to do?
• benchmark yourself against those that are doing it well.
• ensure they’re reading regularly to familiarise themselves with the latest trends (the internet is an incredible resource for learning from others).
• do the necessary work to check that your messaging is alined to your business goals, and can result in getting customers to engage with you, be that in conversation, signups, or purchases.

In todays world of digital communication doing better business is not as cheap as a minimum payment to Google or Facebook of R300 (plus VAT) per month. It takes focus, discipline and lots of time to make sure you stand out from an extremely crowded market place. The opportunity to stay ahead is incredibly large, simply because there aren’t many companies doing it really well.

Are you Looking to Improve your Digital Communication?

Calidascope works with small, medium and sometimes large businesses, no matter the size of their budget, to find ways to disrupt their communication playground. We’ve had some incredible successes and worked on some amazing projects. From consulting, to designing strategies, and executing on those strategies. If you’d like to explore how we can help your business, send an email to Catri Dixon – catri@calidascope.com

Photo by paolo candelo on Unsplash

The post In a Digital World there’s no Substitute for Great Writing and Beautiful Images appeared first on Calidascope.

When we first started Calidascope our goal was to do our best to find interesting clients, doing interesting things, who wanted to shake up the status quo and get the attention of their market (not matter the size of their budget). Over the last 6 years we’ve had incredible fun on these projects.

FOR EXAMPLE – THE LEGO MOVIE AND LANSER’S ON MAIN

We designed and delivered Lego Mini-figures to Fresh, Gareth Cliff, Banong Matheba, Lee-Roy Right and Caspar Lee for the launch of the Lego Movie on DVD.

We’ve worked with Lanser’s on Main (in Bryanston). We used TripAdvisor as the bench mark when Lanser’s first opened their doors. If you’ve not been, it’s guaranteed to be an experience you’ll remember. In 18 months Lanser’s on Main has gone from 48th on TripAdvisor, all the way to Number 1. Definitely Bryanston’s favourite Bistro

KWANU – WESTVILLE’s FIRST DEDICATED CLICK AND COLLECT SUPERMARKET

And most recently, we’ve been involved in the launch of Kwanu. A dedicated click and collect online supermarket located in Westville, Durban.

Kwanu is doing some interesting things in the world of online grocery shopping:

Located in Westville, as a Click and Collect service, they’re not focussing on national. In the words of Neville Dunn (ex MD of Masscash), “We’re not trying to solve for the National Market. We’re focussing on one community at a time. We think grocery online in South Africa will be most successful when it has a local focus and integration.”

They’re not a ‘buying business’, using local retailers. Says Andrew Mardon (ex National Buyer for Masscash), “Kwanu is focussed on delivering ‘everyday best prices’. We’ve built relationships with key suppliers, ensuring we can offer our customers the best possible prices everyday.”

By offering a click and collect service along with a focussed range, they’re solving the two biggest issues with shopping online for groceries… never substituting products for out of stock and South Africa’s unique challenges with delivery.

Kwanu’s results and customer feedback speak volumes.

Fast and friendly service! The quickest grocery run I have ever done. – Kerri Wolfaardt

WOW !!! Kwanu is just the most incredible way to shop and has the most user friendly website – they have thought of everything to make shopping easier and then to top it all they definitely have the best pricing in town!! Last night I had a total life transforming moment – sitting at my computer in my PJ’S – normally you see everyone you have ever known when you shoot into the shops in your old tracksuit !!! – Abigail de Robillard

Just had my first Kwanu experience. Will Def be back. Friendly guys and so easy. Thanks. – Leigh Bolam

At Kwanu Promotional pricing is great!! But what you have to look at is the pricing of the products that are not on promotion as they still make up a significant part of your shopping basket! Here is where Kwanu wins. Would love for Kwanu to be put up against Checkers, Spar, PnP, on a basket of products across the range. My guess is that Kwanu is significantly cheaper! – Grant Surmon

More than just Grocery Shopping

Kwanu is onto something. Grocery shopping is largely made up of the same basket of items, week in and week out. There isn’t any reason to have to walk the aisles of a store to do 90% of your shopping. Repeat purchases should be fast, easy and convenient. That’s what Kwanu is doing, and they’re doing it really well. We’re proud to be part of the adventure.

LOOKING TO DISRUPT YOUR MARKET?

If your business is looking to disrupt your market, Calidascope has an experienced team to help you execute your idea into the world. Contact Catri Dixon to set up some time to talk.

The post Westville’s First Dedicated Click and Collect Supermarket appeared first on Calidascope.

Why you can’t afford to ignore Online Customer Reviews!

A quick internet search around the importance of customer reviews returns a plethora of research indicating how important reviews have become in business today. Of course a large amount of the research is done in countries with a high online penetration, where increasingly people are shopping online. But even if you knock the stats down to a number you think best represents the South African Market, you’d be hard-pressed to deny the general trend.

Take a look through these stats from Invesp, and compare them to your own purchasing / review behaviour:

• 90% of customers read online reviews before visiting a business
• For nearly 9 in 10 consumers, an online review is as important as a personal recommendation
• Customers are likely to spend 31% more on a business with ‘excellent’ reviews
• 72% say that positive reviews make them trust a local business more
• 92% of users will use a local business if it has at least a 4-star rating
• 72% of consumers will take action only after reading a positive review
• Reliability (27%), expertise (21%) and professionalism (18%) are the most important reputation traits for a local business
• 86% of people will hesitate to purchase from a business that has negative online reviews

In light of data like that, I’m often bewildered at why so many businesses pay little to no attention to their customer reviews, and worse, do it so badly?

When It Works

Don’t make the mistake of thinking that Online Customer Reviews are only important for online stores. It doesn’t matter if you’re a family hotel in the Drakensberg, a restaurant in a busy Jozi Suburb, or an online supermarket in Durban, in our experience at Calidascope, customer reviews work well when they’re moved to the centre of your business.

Here are a few of the Signposts we’ve developed over time:

Make sure you have competent and experienced people engaging with customers

Experience matters when you’re dealing with people. Empathy is critical. Emotional tone is key. Being able to ‘really see’ what’s being said, and what your customer is looking for in the exchange is important in order to craft the best response. Keep in mind, rave reviews are really easy to respond to. It’s the critical reviews that will test your metal. I’ve had clients, who from time to time, would far rather tell a client or customer to never come back. That’s never a great response.

Respond Quickly

When a customer takes the time to write a review, there’s a lot of effort that goes into it, for many people. There’s risk attached when putting yourself out publicly. The very least you can do is to get back to them as quickly as possible. Sometimes it takes us a day or two to gather all the information, to ensure our response is accurate and we have as many of the facts as possible.

Create a direct line between the Responder and Senior Management

We won’t take on a client if we don’t have access to a senior person in the business. Sometimes action needs to take place to rectify a situation, and if we can’t ensure the necessary steps are taken, then our responses are impotent, and the customer ends up losing. In fact, if it’s something that’s going to impact future customers, then all customers are losing, and the entire exercise becomes a farce.

When necessary, pick up the phone

Just because the review came in via an online channel, there are times when the response requires a phone call, or even a face to face meeting. In our experience the more extreme a review, the more likely that a phone call is the best response.

You’re always responding to two people

Keep in mind that you’re always writing a response to two people. The customer who wrote it, and future customers who will stumble across it and read it. Each reply is an opportunity to describe a fuller context, or educate, or promote, or illustrate, etc. While you and the first customer understand the situation, your future customer may not. Take the time to make sure both audiences have the full picture.

Say Sorry! Even when you’re not wrong

When you’re in the wrong, apologise. Don’t make excuses, don’t try and rationalise or explain things away. Simply apologise. Apologies are magical things. They can dissipate the anger of a client instantly and turn them into fans. They allow you to move beyond the problem and focus on the solution, or the next visit, or shop, etc. Sometimes you may even need to apologise when you had nothing to do with it. I’ve apologised on a number of occasions to guests staying at a Hotel because it rained all weekend. I’ve apologised to customers who had to sit in peak hour traffic on their way to a restaurant 🙂

Customer at the Centre

Placing your customer at the centre of your business is critical. It’s why you have a business in the first place. Lose touch with your customer and you’ll ultimately lose your business. In today’s digital world, customers have an incredible range of options to speak directly to you. To tell you what they love, and what they hate. To suggest fixes and tweaks to make your product or service better. It’s unprecedented in human history to have so much access to feedback from your customer. When you do it well, and you respond effectively to your customer and make the necessary changes and tweaks to your business, there’s a far greater chance that you’ll move ahead in your market and your industry.

I know this because I’ve seen it over and over again.

Need Help with your Customer Review Process?

Calidascope has years of experience working with small and medium sized businesses in a range of industries to assist them with their customer feedback. From building strategies, to training teams, to executing with our own experienced team. If you’d like to chat further, please drop us a line.

The post The Importance Of Online Customer Reviews appeared first on Calidascope.

“Nothing”, I told him. His competitor had double the foot traffic going through his business, and we were never going to be able to compete if we were measuring the number of Google reviews. I then said to him, “Next time you see your competitor, tell him we’ve replied to more Google reviews than he has!”

While quantity is important in a digital world, quality wins hands down, every time. I’ll always prefer one visit to my website that results in one sale, than a million people visiting my website with zero sales.

ONLINE REPUTATION MANAGEMENT

And in the world of Online Reputation Management (ORM), quality is critical. Proactively engaging with customers, giving transparent and honest feedback, using the reviews to improve your business, helping to steer the conversation, all of these and more are no longer nice to haves. This is what success looks like going forward.

There was a time when people found you through the Yellow Pages, or adverts in the local paper, or over lunch with a neighbour or colleague. But that was a long time ago. The internet changed all of that. People find you through Google. They evaluate your products and services through reviews from people they’ve never met. They research you, compare your prices, get a sense of your product / service and what their experience might be, all before they’ve gotten within 50km of your front door.

YOU NEED MORE THAN A WEBSITE AND ADS

Having a sexy well designed website, with awesome video ads on Facebook, and a killer Google Ads strategy isn’t enough. Increasingly your reputation is moving out of your control and into the hands of your customers. You are no longer the sole decision maker with regards to what is put out there about who you are.

Think about your next holiday and all the websites that contain information about the hotel you’d like to stay at? You could go to the Hotel’s website and read about what they tell you, and look at the photos and videos that they’ve posted. But you probably won’t do that. You will look at their website and their media, but you’ll also read the reviews on Booking.com, TripAdvisor or Google Maps. You might even stumble across the blog of someone you’ve never met who goes into incredible detail about their 4 night stay. No longer are customer decisions being made largely on what your brand says about itself. Customers are seeking out and actively listening to what others are saying to make their buying decisions.

Here are some stats from a post on Forbes.com that helps to breakdown just how important those ‘other’ information sources are:

About 90% of global sales still happen in physical stores, but 97% of consumers use the internet to find local businesses and three in four people who use their smartphones to search for something nearby end up visiting a local business within a day. Foot traffic to retail businesses is down 57% in the past five years, but the value of every visit has tripled. 90% of customers say that what they decide to buy is influenced by positive online reviews, and 94% will use a business with at least four stars.

DAILY ENGAGEMENT

Online Reputation Management isn’t about manipulating and falsifying the information that’s out there. It’s about getting into the spaces where your customers are speaking about you, and authentically getting involved in the conversation. At Calidascope it’s a daily activity, helping our clients to proactively respond to reviews, crafting appropriate replies to emails, strategising around new campaigns based on guest feedback, designing training programmes for their employees to close gaps that begin to emerge. It’s definitely not about pushing a green button and then sitting back while it looks after itself.

Last month we posted about a Restaurant in Bryanston who’s had great success in this. It’s an intensive part of the overall marketing and communication plan. There are businesses that do ORM really well. There are many that don’t do it at all. And then there are a group somewhere in between that are attempting something, but it’s clearly half hearted as they copy and paste, illustrating that they haven’t worked out just how important this part of their activity is.

Where your brand goes, you must go. If your customers are going to engage with you on a review platform, you have to go there and get involved in the conversation. And you have to go there every single day.

The post Online Reputation Management – How proactive should you be? appeared first on Calidascope.

Last night (SA time) was the mostly annual Facebook F8. It’s intended for developers and entrepreneurs who build products and services around Facebook’s many products. It’s not, however, only for developers and entrepreneurs who build things off of one or many of their platforms. In my opinion, it’s also for every Business owner as well. For you, because it gives you a tiny glimpse of the near future.

Facebook alone has around 2.4 billion monthly active users. Drop another 2.5 billion for Messenger and Whatsapp, and you have a large chunk of the world being influenced by every move Facebook makes. Last night Mark Zuckerberg made lots of announcements about the direction Facebook is headed, and the changes that can be expected.

The Future has already Happened

One of my favourite quotes is from William Gibson:

The Future has already happened. It’s just unequally distributed

When something as large as Facebook takes a view of what people want and will want, and then begins to design for it, the spill over effect to the rest of us is enormous. Any business owner should consider what impact these changes may have on their customers, as well as how your business can take advantage of the new additions and direction?

F8 is a pronouncement of the future. All we’re waiting for now is the distribution.

At Calidascope the next few weeks will be made of of conversations around these changes and the possible impact on each of our clients. Not all industries will be impacted in the same way, but we’re certain all industries will be impacted in some way.

Watch Facebook F8

I’d recommend you watch the 40 minute address by Zuckerberg, for full impact and context (see video below). Or you can take the fast way and read a summary, like this one from BuzzFeed – Here Are All The New Facebook, Instagram, And WhatsApp Features Announced At F8.

These are BuzzFeed’s highlights.

• Instagram has a new Create Mode.
• Instagram is hiding like counts from followers in a test to see if you’ll feel less horrible.
• Facebook is making it easier for you to date your friends too.
• Facebook wants to help you meet new friends.
• WhatsApp will let businesses display entire product catalogs directly on their profiles.
• Some influencers can now add shopping tags to posts.
• Instagram’s new “donation stickers” allow people to raise money for charity through stories.
• Groups will be a more prominent part of Facebook.
• No more blue. Facebook’s new design rolls out today in the US.
• Facebook Messenger is getting a desktop app for Windows and Mac.
• And you will be able to watch a video with multiple people, in real time, over Messenger now.
• “The future is private.”

The post The Future Just Happened | Facebook F8 Update appeared first on Calidascope.

In a modern business environment, it’s no longer enough to simply be the best at what you do (or one of the best) to rise to the top. Competition is fierce and there are a large number of competitors, some of whom aren’t even in your industry. It isn’t just other restaurants that Lanser competes with. He’s also up against larger Shopping Centres who work relentlessly to attract people to ‘their’ restaurants. Home entertainment continues to improve its offering, with fibre and streaming making it easier than ever to simply ‘stay in’ and ‘order out’.

Don’t get me wrong, you have to have a great product if you want to be number one, and Lanser’s on Main certainly does. Tasty food, an always changing Specials Menu, a wonderful wine selection, a warm and intimate ambience, impeccable personal service, monthly Wine Pairing evenings, stunning views over Bryanston and Kyalami, all wrapped up in a quiet centre in the heart of Bryanston.

However, when their doors first opened, there was a large mountain to climb, and they knew it. They were a startup. Nobody knew who they were. While Lanser has impressive credentials as a Chef and Restraunteer, in South Africa and London, this was the fist time he was putting his name out there. Lanser’s on Main is located in a quiet centre in the heart of Bryanston (on Main Road, next to the DiData Campus, above Naturally Yours Weleda Pharmacy in the Culross Crossing Lifestyle Centre). Some of Bryanston’s Top Restaurants are right on his door step.

How does a startup attract the attention of patrons in that environment?

Lanser approached Calidascope to join the team. While we have experience in a diverse number of industry’s we’ve got a strong track record in Hospitality. Lanser and I have been good friends for many years and after some tough negotiations, a deal was struck. I remember Lanser approaching us with a promise that while he couldn’t pay us for a while, he’d do his best to make it up in great food and a drink or two. We were up for the challenge of helping Lanser’s on Main become Bryanston’s Favourite Bistro. The game was on.

Many markers and milestones were set, and one of the key measurables used was TripAdvisor. In hospitality TripAdvisor is a great way to measure how you’re doing? In what other industries or businesses do you have customers giving you feedback after every engagement? It’s not the only measure, but TripAdvisor is well understood, respected and trusted by the market.

In April 2018, Lanser’s on Main joined the back of the queue on TripAdvisor. They were Restaurant 55 out of 55 in Bryanston.

While Lanser took care of running the Restaurant, the hard work outside of the Kitchen began. It wasn’t all about digital. Website, Facebook, Instagram, Google My Business, Ads, etc are a given in today’s business environment. You pick the platforms that best suite your business, you ensure the basics are covered, and then you put the machine to work. There were also traditional mechanisms like handing out flyers at robots. The team spent many late afternoons and evenings standing on Sloane and Main Road, putting on a show to get people to open their window a smidgen and take a flyer. That’s the work of a startup. Sometimes you have to put yourself out there in ways you thought you might never have to, in order to do what needs to get done.

The items listed above aren’t proprietary. Any business can do what the larger team at Lanser’s on Main were doing.

How do I explain the move from position 52 to 2 in less than 18 months?

My colleague, Catri Dixon, has some thoughts on this,

“It’s never about the individual elements. If we use a cooking analogy, everyone starts with the same ingredients, but not everyone creates a meal to get excited about. It’s the combination of the elements. It’s a little less of that one and a little more of another. It’s appreciating that everything is connected to everything else, and then getting the best out of the combination. We’ve been working within the hospitality industry for 10 years. Over that time we’ve developed our own secret sauce. We’ve worked with a Hotel that got into the TripAdvisor Top 25 in South Africa, and we’ve worked with others that haven’t. While we sit with all of our clients up front and speak of the ‘secret sauce’ not all of them adopt it. At Calidascope we believe in it. Lanser believed in it, and he allowed us to really implement it. It’s been an intimate partnership between his business and ours.”

SimonSays Communications is the latest member of the team. Their addition to the recipe has been to work with their network to invite journalists, bloggers and influencers to visit Lanser’s on Main. PR is an often misunderstood element. It’s critical because it adds a layer of authenticity to the messages. The people invited aren’t paid in any way. They’re always given the freedom to write whatever they want. We don’t get to see what they write before it’s published, and we certainly don’t have any influence over it. When someone from the SimonSays network walks into Lanser’s on Main, it’s live and it’s real. It’s all in the team’s hands.

I asked Lanser for some of his thoughts for this post.

“I’m a Chef. I’ve opened restaurants before. I’m not a marketer. I knew when I started that I needed a strong partner who understood marketing and communication. We had a lot to do. I was lucky that Calidascope bought into the dream of Lanser’s on Main. During these past 12 months I’ve also appreciated, more than ever, that marketing and the rest of the business aren’t two different parts. They’re inter-connected, and the more intimate that connection the better the synergy between them. I’ve learned a lot about marketing this year, and I hope they’ve learned a lot about running a restaurant.”

That’s our answer to anyone who asks. Success doesn’t come easy. You start with a great product or service, you gather together the best possible team, and then you put in the hard work, focus, discipline, add a little secret sauce, and if you get it all right, it pays off. Eventually.

The post How this Restaurant moved to 2nd place on TripAdvisor in 18 months appeared first on Calidascope.

This past week, one of the modules I researched and wrote up was all about ‘Body Language‘. It often has me reading far more than I probably need to, and I often get distracted going down rabbit holes I shouldn’t.

My curiosity got me hooked on an article that came up about body language and how to know if a woman is interested in man or not? Of course a Google search was executed, and I got down to reading about things I didn’t need to for the Learning Story project. I did discover a world of information with regards to body language and dating.

When it comes to body language and determining if a man is interested in a woman, it’s incredibly simple. I know this from my own experience, having watched other men, and even watching male mammals. We’re all pretty basic and definitely similar. I don’t think much evolutionary progress has been made in this sphere of male survival skill. To know if a man is interested in a woman, here is the ‘more or less’ comprehensive list of things to look out for:

• Mouth drops open, and stays like that
• Tongue hangs out, and stays like that
• Struggle to string sentences together, and continues like that throughout the night

There are a few variations, but essentially that’s it.

Not so simple with woman (of course it isn’t). There’s a heck of a lot to look out for, and to pay attention to. Some lists online can stretch into the thirties of things. Here’s a short list:

• She looks at your lips
• She draws attention to her lips
• She cocks her brow
• Her arms stay by her side
• She leans into you
• She flips her hair
• She pushes her chest out
• Her pupils dilate
• She bats her eyelids
• Her palms are upturned

I ask you, what man, in the state I described above, can manage to take in all of those cues? Add in a beer or two, and stupidly a Tequila. We don’t stand a chance.

And you can’t just focus on one of them. Apparently it’s the entire picture that matters. EveryDayKnow suggests…

“It’s really important when looking at body language to look at the full picture. A woman giggling a lot can mean she likes you, but it can also mean she’s a giggly kind of person. If she touches herself seductively while looking at you, she’s trying to seduce you for one reason, or another, but if she doesn’t do that, it might simply mean she’s too shy to do so. She could still want to seduce you, or be seduced by you. And shy or not, we’re all distracted sometimes due to events in our lives, but it doesn’t mean we aren’t interested in the person in front of us. It just means we’re pre-occupied.”

And we think we can replace all of this through a digital platform? Not gonna happen. Not in my lifetime, anyway. I laugh at us human beings. Good luck to us all.

The post When it comes to Dating there’s no replacing Human Interaction appeared first on Calidascope.

We (Calidascope) started working with Champagne Castle Hotel around 14 months ago. Our brief was simple….

help to integrate their digital properties into the Hotel strategy in order to achieve the objectives that had been set for the hotel

We didn’t have digital goals, per se. We had to take everything that was digital and make sure it was delivering towards the goals of the hotel.

Our philosophy at Calidascope has, right from our beginning, been that digital is not an ‘add-on’ to the main activities of any organisation. Digital (in it’s broadest sense) is an integral delivery mechanism of the bigger strategy, and must be treated that way. This has been how we measure whether we’re going to work with an organisation. We’re either an integrated part of the larger team, working towards the larger goals, or we’re not the right people to do what you’re looking for. There are plenty of great companies who will run your digital properties, but we’re not one of those companies.

There are a couple of important ‘dials’ that must be watched in the Hotel Industry, and certainly one of the most important indicators on how you’re doing is TripAdvisor. From their ‘About Us‘ page…

TripAdvisor® is the world’s largest travel site*, enabling travellers to plan and book the perfect trip. TripAdvisor offers advice from millions of travellers and a wide variety of travel choices and planning features with seamless links to booking tools that check hundreds of websites to find great hotel prices. TripAdvisor branded sites make up the largest travel community in the world, reaching 350 million unique monthly visitors**, and more than 290 million reviews and opinions covering more than 5.3 million accommodations, restaurants and attractions. The sites operate in 47 countries worldwide.

There are a large number of people who read TripAdvisor reviews before they book or visit somewhere. And while TripAdvisor has it’s critics, whether you like it or not, TripAdvisor has become one of the largest feedback mechanisms in the Hotel Industry.

Champagne Castle Hotel have a permanent agenda item in their daily Management Team meetings for TripAdvisor. While we can’t attend the majority of those meetings (it’s a 4 hour drive) we’re constantly on the phone and email to talk through the feedback.

You can imagine the celebration then, when earlier last week, an email arrived from TripAdvisor to let Champagne Castle Hotel know that they were a 2016 Travellers’ Choice Winner. That’s no easy accomplishment. It puts them in the top 1% of TripAdvisor properties, and they’ve entered the Top 25 Hotels in South Africa list.

Synergy

Certainly we at Calidascope aren’t responsible for this fantastic achievement. It belongs to each of the staff member at the hotel who work tirelessly, each and every day, to deliver outstanding service. But we do know that over the last 14 months, the digital component of the hotel has come a long way towards now being a core component of the Champagne Castle Hotel business. What was once seen as a Facebook Page, a Twitter account, a website and a TripAdvisor page, are now central, non-negotiable pieces of the larger puzzle. They’re no longer digital items, that seem important to have, on the fringes of the hotel strategy. They’ve become a fully integrated part of the business.

Perhaps it’s more accurate to suggest, that while digital didn’t deliver this award, the hotel would probably never have arrived here without digital. That, I guess, is what any business wants. Synergy. The idea that the combined effect of the areas in your business is greater than the sum of their individual effects.

Well done to everyone at Champagne Castle Hotel, every person, and every piece. It’s a fantastic achievement.

Pulp Films in Greenside produced this 1 min video, capturing Champagne Castle Hotel’s A Sense of Place

The post You Leave Digital On The Outside At Your Own Folly appeared first on Calidascope.