nightsbridge: A South African product to make us proud.Therese Emerick, co-founder of NightsBridge – South Africa’s dynamic real-time on line booking engine – believes that most tourism businesses are started by people who have great people skills, who love entertaining, or who love a specific outdoor activity.

“But what they often don’t like is the nitty-gritty-management side of running a business – the setting-up-systems-and-counting-numbers side,” she said.

“Bill Gates is famously quoted as saying: ‘‘Know your numbers’ is a fundamental precept of business.’ And yet many tourism businesspeople don’t. They often seem to use a gut feel approach to what works, rather than relying on real, hard data.

“This is often especially true of the information needed to make strategic marketing decisions.

“I was quite surprised to recently find that many guesthouse owners don’t track the source of each of their bookings.

“If you don’t know which marketing channels are producing results, how do you decide where to spend your marketing budget and what return to expect?,” said Theresa.

She said that many tourism business owners fall into the old trap of working ‘in’ their businesses rather than ‘on’ them.

“Whether you’re guiding tours or running a B&B, the strategic work of planning by checking results and reading reports is as important as making sure the beer is cold or the breakfast table is beautifully laid out.”

The information you might need for successful marketing could include knowing the source of each booking comes that you can decide which channels work for you; keeping lists of the names and email addresses of everyone who enquires and books with you so that you can send regular and effective newsletters, and communicate special offers; separating your clients into categories or geographic areas, so that you can make your marketing messages as specific as possible (B&Bs and guest houses, for example, might want to know whether a guest is a corporate or leisure client, or has been booked by a travel agent or tour operator); and keeping tabs on current and past occupancies so that you can forecast and budget – and set your pricing correctly.

And this, said Theresa, is another way in which NightsBridge is designed to help its clients.

“Although it’s best known as a real time booking system, NightsBridge also offers a full front-office system with a lot of built-in features to help you in your marketing and administration,” she said.

“The system can be used to generate marketing source reports; to manage client databases; to produce quotes, confirmation and registration letters; and to generate invoices and keeping track of payments.”

This is what makes NightsBridge the ideal system for B&Bs and guest houses. It isn’t just a real time booking engine – it also offers the power of on-line distribution (i.e. it automatically makes your information available to hundreds of booking engines), while at the same time providing the administrative and management tools every business needs if it wants to thrive in the digital world.

For more, *like* NightsBridge on Facebook, visit NightsBridge on line, call +27(0)21 790 9910 or email info [at] nightsbridge.com.