You need to seek out the best online job posting sites to ensure you can find the best employee for the hotel job you’ve got open. There are a number of hospitality industry job posting boards out there, but which one is right for you? 

When you’re trying to hire full-time or part-time hotel team members, you want your job postings to be on the sites where job seekers are looking. There are numerous online job boards for the hospitality industry, but the following 15 jobs boards are among the top sites for posting hotel jobs. 

1. HospitalityJobs.com

This is a Clearwater, Florida company that was founded in 1996. Since that time, Hospitalityjobs.com has become one of the best job boards for posting job openings in the hospitality industry. 

Job seekers can easily search the various hotel jobs posted on the site and they can readily apply for them. Moreover, they can create and upload their resume so you can search for candidates with experience in guest services, as a hotel manager, a room attendant, in food preparation, or as a front desk agent. Once you’ve found someone you like, you can then contact them directly. 

Hospitalityjobs.com has more than 100,000 live jobs on the site, so job seekers regularly frequent the site. Additionally, accessing the site’s full resume database is easy and inexpensive, and it will allow you to shortlist candidates based on their job category and location.

2. HCareers

HCareers is one of the most popular job posting sites online, particularly if you’re looking to hire qualified candidates in the hospitality industry. The site was founded in 1998 and provides a wide range of job-related services. Among these are job openings, employer profiles, and for job seekers, a career advice section. 

To create an account, you can choose from several pricing plans based on your requirements. After you create an account, you can easily access the job board to place your job description. You can also take advantage of features like employer branding and AI-powered candidate matching. 

3. HospitalityOnline

This job posting site focuses specifically on hotel jobs in the United States, and it’s one of the most data-driven jobs boards available. It offers a wide range of tools to recruit employees for your hotel, including behavioral assessments and an applicant tracking system. 

Job seekers are easily able to search the board for job openings, and they can also view your hotel’s company profile. This site is used by many popular hotels like Marriott and Hyatt Place to find workers with the right experience and temperament for working with hotel guests. 

The site boasts more than 26,000 jobs and it also distributes the job postings across other job networks to increase their reach. If you’re looking for someone to work at your hotel front desk, in the front office, in the hotel restaurant’s dining room, or as a general manager, this site has everything you need to find the right candidate. 

4. iHireHospitality

This is another job board dedicated exclusively to the hospitality industry. It’s based in Maryland and provides job openings from more than 30,000 sources. 

Potential employees are also able to upload their resumes so that your hotel’s human resources department can search for qualified candidates. 

5. Hosco

Hosco has become one of the leading job posting boards in the hospitality industry since its founding in 2011. If offers job seekers listings, training courses, and advice and support. For employers, it offers a platform for branding, boards for posting your hotel jobs, and a boost to your hotel’s online reputation by attracting both active and passive candidates. 

When you want to create an account, contact the company for their different job posting pricing plans. They will also provide a demo to help with job promotions. It’s a great job posting site for hiring the best talent in the hospitality industry. 

6. HospitalityCrossing

This job posting site is really better described as a hospitality job aggregation platform. It functions as a hospitality job metasearch engine for job seekers, but it allows employers to post sponsored job openings. 

The results of a search are compiled from over 4 million websites which makes it a great site for finding a wide range of hotel jobs in the Americas, Europe, and the Asia Pacific. When you post a hotel job opening on this site, it will be shared with a network of over 600 job boards. That significantly increases your odds of finding a qualified candidate for the position in less time than it would take with other job posting boards. 

7. Caterer.com

This is a hospitality job board that’s based in the United Kingdom, and while the main site focuses on the UK market, Catererglobal.com highlights job openings from around the world. The job board has more than 22,000 job openings posted, and over 3,000 companies use the site. 

There are two pricing plans available for job postings, and you’ll have to choose which best suits your needs. Job seekers can search for jobs by specialty area such as hotel jobs, by location, or by company name, which helps ensure a better fit once you hire. Employers can post hotel jobs and start receiving applications within minutes. 

We understand the importance of finding the right hospitality people for your business.
From job ads and candidate profiles, to video and gamified interviewing, plus search and match tools like no other, https://t.co/6E5pCOKJe2 helps you reach them – https://t.co/GoGC1lEzVe pic.twitter.com/bRJRqcsBPV

— Caterer.com (@Catererdotcom) July 5, 2021

Additionally, the platform has a range of tools to help you manage your job posting from multiple devices. You can also use an applicant tracking system and choose to receive applicant materials via email as soon as they’re completed. 

8. Dice.com

This site was launched in 1996, and it focuses on linking job seekers to technology jobs. In the hospitality industry, however, there are a number of front office hotel job titles that involve technology management including IT, project manager, and accounting. 

Many recruiters and hiring managers understand that diversifying their talent pipeline is nothing but crucial. This notion is based on a variety of benefits. https://t.co/HWRk3LoKZ2 #DiversityInTech #DiversityHiring #Recruitment #HR pic.twitter.com/vogzRjN06S

— Dice.com (@Dicedotcom) October 13, 2021

The platform also has a wide reach, offering hotel jobs in different regions including North America, Europe, the Middle East, and the Asia Pacific. If the job title includes data analytics or management, this is the site where you want to post your hotel job openings. 

9. GoAbroad.com

This is a unique job board that functions as a metasearch engine where travelers can find ways to work while traveling around the world. It has a hospitality jobs section that allows travelers to look for hotel jobs available throughout the world or by specific location. It’s particularly useful for English speakers looking for hotel job openings. 

Employers can partner with the website to advertise their job openings and find qualified candidates. You can also talk to the company about offering internship and educational opportunities to travelers with an interest in learning more about the hospitality industry.

10. LinkedIn Hotel Jobs Worldwide

Through LinkedIn, employers can post hotel jobs for a worldwide applicant pool. It has an enormous reach with almost 700,000 followers. It also includes some of the best hotels in the world like the Marriott and Hilton brands. 

Jobs are organized by job title, such as hotel manager, food service, and so on. The site also has links to other job posting sites like hotel job vacancy. That increases the reach of the LinkedIn site enormously making it easier for job seekers and job posters alike. 

11. HotelCareer

HotelCareer is one of the better job posting sites online. They help employers recruit hospitality industry professionals and it has more than 1.86 million listing views each month. That’s an impressive statistic. Employers can opt for a pricing package that lets them target specific job titles and has tools for designing job advertisements with well-written job descriptions. Hotels can also choose to create a premium company profile to get better visibility on the site and more reach for their job searches. 

12. Ziprecruiter

Ziprecruiter connects job seekers with employers using AI-matching technology to find the most qualified candidates for your job opening. Whether you’re looking for a sous chef in your hotel restaurant or a room attendant, Ziprecruiter is a great place to find the candidate that’s right for you. 

Ziprecruiter works for businesses of all sizes, and they reach millions of job seekers. They also have an app that job seekers can use, and their techniques have demonstrated reductions in hiring times. 

For Enterprise Businesses, Ziprecruiter also offers the expertise of data analysts to help you develop a successful hiring strategy. 

13. Snagajob

Snagajob boasts some very impressive statistics for hotel job seekers in the United States. They help some two-thirds of all US hourly workers find the right job for them each year, and for employers, they say it will take 50% fewer applicants to make the right hire using their site. 

The site also provides workers for filling a shift when needed, and they say they can do that within 10 minutes or less 70% of the time. That’s helpful if someone calls in sick at the last minute. 

14. Simplyhired.com

This is a website for all kinds of jobs including hotel jobs and other kinds of hospitality industry jobs. You can post jobs and review resumes without paying a dime. You only pay when you’re ready to move forward with an applicant. 

Candidate reveals, as they’re called, start at $9.99 per candidate. This means you don’t have to pay to see unqualified candidates’ resumes and contact information. You only pay for those candidates who best match your job description. 

The site calculates how much you pay to reveal a particular candidate’s contact information based on several factors. These include the level of experience, the number of employers looking for similar talent, and the number of available applicants.

You’re able to see the candidate’s resume, cover letter, and answers to any of your screening questions. The only thing you pay for is their contact information if you’re ready to move forward. Additionally, your job description gets posted to hundreds of job sites including Indeed.com. 

You can also elect for premium visibility which means your job openings stay visible even as newer jobs are posted. 

15. Monster.com

This job board has some great features for employers. They provide you with job description templates you can use and recruiting strategies to help you fill your positions. They also offer a number of resources including blogs and information specific to small businesses looking to hire. 

Additionally, they use AI technology to rank a candidate with regard to how well they match your job description. They offer three pricing plans depending on your typical hiring needs. Their job postings are distributed to hundreds of local news sites and delivered to the inbox of candidates. 

They also offer flexible job postings so you can start and stop them at any time, and they provide technology to filter your results so they are as narrow or wide as you like. The job views are optimized for mobile devices, and you get an alert when a new resume is submitted that matches your criteria. 

Final Thoughts

In the hospitality industry, it’s all about pleasing your hotel guests. They need to feel as though their comfort and satisfaction are all you think about. It takes a lot of effort on the part of many hotel team members to ensure that every hotel guest has a pleasant stay. 

That’s why hiring the right employees is critical to the success of your hotel business. To find those employees in our modern world, you must turn to an online job board for posting your job

The post 15 Best Websites to Post Hotel Jobs appeared first on Gourmet Marketing.

Restaurant Marketing Ideas

The restaurant business is an extremely competitive industry. No matter where your restaurant is located, there are likely dozens of competitors nearby that are all fighting for the same audience. As such, it’s important to use unique marketing ideas in order to truly stand out from other restaurants.

So to get you started, here are 30 suggestions to help your restaurant get noticed.

In-restaurant ideas

1. Establish a loyalty program to offer your customers rewards

A loyalty program is a fantastic way to get your customers to come back again and again. It gives them more incentive to return because it feels like they’re being appreciated, and it could also offer them special rewards and unique promotions that would otherwise not be available. There are a number of ways to approach a loyalty program and how it works will ultimately depend on your personal preferences.

For example, the most simple loyalty program could be a card system that is stamped every time your customers make a purchase. After five purchases, they could get a free meal or drink with their food. This is great if you don’t have many items on your menu or if you do similar dishes that are around the same price. Alternatively, you could make a more elaborate loyalty program that offers recurring rewards or one that allows your customers to save up points that can be redeemed for free gifts or meals.

You can also do a giveaway for anyone who does 20 purchases, a t-shirt or you can offer discounts for a year. If you do something bigger, make sure you also have a unique hashtag for the giveaway and ask your customers to share a post on social networks with your unique hashtag each time they do purchase.

The key here is to make the program feel rewarding whenever your customers use it. They should feel like they’ve joined an exclusive club when they sign up for it, and it should encourage them to visit again and again. It should also be interesting or unique enough to advertise about it on social media, yelp or with large posters inside of your restaurant.

2. Design large posters to use in your restaurant

Your restaurant can be adorned with large and unique posters in order to draw the attention of people passing by. They can also be used indoors to show off some of your latest menu items, combos, discounts, and rewards. It’s a fantastic way to attract more attention but can also be informative as well. Here are some simple poster design ideas and tips that you should follow:

• Make sure the poster uses similar colors and designs as your business.
• Ensure that your restaurant logo design is on the poster somewhere to make it more recognizable.
• If you’re going to use food photos, make sure they’re high-quality images.
• Make the information as clear as possible in large font so that people can see what it says from afar.
• Add a QR code at the bottom so that people can scan it for more information.
• Save the digital image of your poster so that you can use it for online marketing as well.
• Don’t add too much text; keep it as simple as possible and shorten things when you can.
• Printing single posters can be expensive compared to bulk purchases, so do a bit of research to see where you can get the best deals.
• Protect your posters so that they’re not at risk of being damaged.

These are just a few basic ideas and tips to help you create great posters and make the most use of them.

3. Let your staff shine and stand out

Humanizing your staff is always a good idea. It shows that you care about your staff, it gives them a chance to stand out and be themselves, and it also attracts people to your business. There are a couple of ways that you can let your staff shine and stand out, but each method really depends on how you want to approach things. If you rotate between many different staff members, then you need to figure out a cost and time-efficient way to help them get noticed.

For starters, make sure your staff members all have name tags so that it’s easier to call them by their name. Secondly, ensure that you don’t have rigid rules and standards that you absolutely must meet. Let your staff be expressive in how they do their work and give them the option to do things differently as long as it doesn’t hinder the customer’s experience. You should also make sure that you address any concerns that your staff have. For example, if they’re worried about something within the business then it helps to speak with them and be transparent so that they don’t have any worries or concerns on their mind. This allows your staff to work without having an issue looming over their head.

This kind of approach shows that your restaurant cares about its staff. This can be a fantastic way to stand out because there are many eateries that don’t treat their staff properly which can cause reputation problems. The better you treat your staff, the more likely your customers will notice your business.

4. Work with food delivery services

Food delivery services are a fantastic option for your marketing efforts and getting the word out there. There are many different delivery services that you can use. Some of them work on a national level while others are specific to a region or city. Make sure you sign up for the ones that make the most sense for your restaurant business and are within your budget. Keep in mind that you may need to increase the cost of your menu items if you’re using an expensive delivery service.

Many people use delivery services these days. If your restaurant doesn’t offer home deliveries in some capacity, then you’re going to get a lot less business and you won’t reach your maximum potential. Some restaurant owners try to set up their own delivery option using their own drivers and eCommerce software, but this isn’t the same as working with a delivery service since many of your loyal customers might be using one of the popular delivery apps.

This is because one of the major advantages of using a delivery service is discoverability. When people in your local area open up a delivery service app, they’re browsing all of the restaurants near them and they can filter by cuisine type, location, price, and so on. This makes it much easier for them to discover your restaurant so that they can order from you online, or they might consider visiting you in person in the future if you set a good first impression.

5. Keep track of your restaurant stats and create events around them

Restaurants can generate a lot of statistics. For instance, you can see just how busy you are on certain days of the week, you can see which season is the most popular, and you can even see what menu items people love. These statistics are a fantastic way to build up information that can be used in the future to help create events, highlight menu items, or even draw in more people on certain days.

Here are a couple of suggestions on how to use all of this data that you’re generating:

• Look at your least popular menu items and figure out why they’re not selling well. Consider running promotions to highlight them or include them in meals and offers.
• Identify the quietest time periods and days of the week, then set up discounts and happy hours to draw more people in during those times.
• Look at your most popular menu items and use them on social media, website and on posters to show off the meals that people love.
• Highlight popular food items on the website

There are plenty of other creative ways to make use of your restaurant stats, but this should give you a rough idea of where to start. You may need to establish some kind of analytics system to keep track of this, but any modern restaurant management software should help you with this.

6. Set up a food truck in another potential location

Another fantastic way to show off your business and get noticed is to actually set up a food truck with the same restaurant branding or name. A food truck is a brilliant option to get your food to other locations and it can help you establish a name for yourself in a different area. For example, if there are food truck opportunities near industrial or commercial locations with many office buildings, then you could bring a lot of attention to your food and show it off to more people. Those people will then recognize your brand when they go into the city and see your restaurant. It’s all about creating a consistent brand and offering your food to more people.

However, setting up a food truck does require a lot of investment. You need to think about where it’s located, you should think about what menu items you want to have, and you also need staff to run it. You need to think about how long the contract lasts and how much time you can really dedicate to managing multiple locations. Thankfully, food trucks don’t usually open for the entire day, so it can be a great option for you to personally manage so you can converse with potential customers and tell them about your main location.

7. Work with local suppliers to source fresh ingredients

These days, more and more people are concerned about where their food comes from and are willing to go the extra mile to ensure that all of the food they eat is from local suppliers that can be traced. In fact, around 46% of American consumers believe that buying local is a top priority. This behavior has started to trickle into the restaurant industry as well. Restaurant businesses that show off their local produce make it easy for customers to trace exactly where your ingredients come from. This makes them more likely to choose you over a competitor and shows that you’re also conscious about where your food comes from.

The act of sourcing fresh ingredients isn’t just a marketing stunt that you can leverage. The quality of your food will also improve and you’ll be surprised at just how much better fresh local produce and ingredients can taste. This can also help you establish strong relationships with suppliers who may be willing to put in extra work for you when there are supply issues. For instance, you could get first priority when there is a shortage, or you may be able to request same-day deliveries for certain ingredients that you’re running out of.

In short, there are a number of fantastic advantages that come with working with local suppliers. Whether it’s to align your interests with your food-conscious consumers or to take advantage of fresh local produce and build strong supplier relationships, this idea offers many different benefits and is highly recommended for small and large restaurants alike.

8. Offer services for special occasions and seasons

People want to have great restaurant experiences but those demands often go beyond just the food. We’re talking about services for special occasions to help create a more unique experience that makes your restaurant far more memorable and a better choice for special events and occasions. You need to define them and make sure to include them in your restaurant marketing plan.

There are a couple of ways to go about this. Many restaurants these days offer services for parties such as birthdays and work functions. If available, the restaurant will likely offer some kind of function room that is separate from the regular tables, offering a more private dining experience for your guests. However, if this isn’t available for your restaurant, then creating a larger dining space to accommodate more guests is a good alternative. You can achieve this by putting together several tables, or allowing guests to book an entire section of your restaurant.

You may also want to tweak your menu to suit these occasions. Some groups may appreciate a taster menu of sorts where they can get a sample of every type of dish, while others may enjoy super-sized party portions of your most popular sides. These options will heavily depend on the type of cuisine you offer and it’s important to fit the needs and preferences of your consumers.

There are a number of other special occasions that you can accommodate as well. Many of these will give you a chance to be creative with your dishes as well. For instance, you could create Christmas-themed specials during the holiday season, or you could make use of fresh local produce when it’s in season and create something based on those high-quality ingredients. There’s a lot you can do when you make your menu and options more flexible.

Like many Restaurants, you need more UGC (User Generated Content) to showcase your restaurant on social media and use Instagram to highlight your restaurant. UGC plays a big part in your restaurant’s marketing strategy and special occasions and seasons will help you to leverage more from social media.

9. Create “Instagrammable” dishes

A great way to get noticed is by using social media to post pictures of your dishes and get people salivating. However, before you decide to take quality photographs and post your creations, it’s a good idea to actually make dishes that are “Instagrammable”. This essentially means having a heavier focus on presentation as opposed to just tasty food. You’ll need to get fairly creative if you want to make something utterly unique, but it also can’t be too gaudy and ridiculous. It has to draw people in and look amazing, but you have to try and make it stand out from your other dishes.

Here are a couple of common ideas to make your menu items a bit more Instagrammable:

• Create outrageous “giant” versions of your dishes. You can market this even more by offering food challenges to people.
• Make full use of color schemes to create something visually appealing. Don’t hesitate to use a bit of food coloring to get your desired results.
• Combine different cuisines to create fresh ideas that you can call your own.
• Interpret existing dishes in a different way.
• Take something loved and create your own version of it–just make sure to respect the original dish and highlight the things that make it so well-loved.

There’s no secret formula to making an Instagram hit. As long as you focus a bit more on making something more presentable and interesting to the eyes, you’ll have a good chance of drawing in a wider audience with your unique dishes.

10. Change your menu to suit dietary needs and allergies

People are far more conscious about what they eat now than they were a few decades ago. Some restaurants may consider their patrons to be picky about their food, but you should think of it as appealing to different dietary needs in order to gain a wider customer base. Whether people want to avoid dairy, gluten or are trying to stick to a low-carb diet, there are many different things to consider and it can drastically change your menu unless you plan for this ahead of time and design your menu around a growing number of dietary choices.

Having a diverse menu with food that suits different dietary needs comes with a number of benefits. For instance, you’ll be a much better option for groups that have different kinds of dietary needs. If a group of friends has one or two people who are vegan but you don’t provide interesting vegan options, then they’ll look elsewhere and you could miss out on a large group of customers. In addition, having vegan options means that you’ll be featured on different websites and blogs that specifically talk about vegan options in their local area.

When accommodating different dietary needs, it’s important to clearly show that information on your menu and on your website. This makes it much easier for people to see exactly what ingredients to expect in your food and gives them plenty of warning should they have food allergies or intolerances. For some dishes, you may want to offer alternatives such as a vegan-based broth or a dairy-free option. As long as it doesn’t change the taste too much and the price is similar, this can be a great way to appeal to a larger audience.

11. Focus on customer service as a priority

Customer service is extremely important in the restaurant industry. It’s one of the top priorities for you and your staff and great service can help you stand out from the competition. But how exactly does it help with digital marketing?

Fantastic customer service gets noticed in many different ways. One of the biggest examples of this is through good reviews. When people go to your restaurant and experience fantastic customer service, they’re more likely to leave a positive review which will convince others to also visit your restaurant. This also helps you avoid negative reviews which can be a huge detriment to your restaurant’s reputation. Word of mouth can also be a surprisingly effective method of getting noticed. While it’s not direct marketing of your restaurant, it can improve your reputation among locals and will convince more people to come and eat at your establishment.

We highly recommend that you train your staff to offer an outstanding level of customer service. This can be extremely stressful for your staff, so it’s important to offer them competitive salaries and benefits to help motivate them. We also highly recommend siding with your staff whenever there’s a dispute or issue with a customer unless they are clearly in the wrong. Maintaining a positive atmosphere among your staff can be challenging, but don’t forget just how much you rely on them to help your restaurant build a great reputation.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/mr4JG4SYOF8 (CC0)

Social media ideas

12. Get on social media

Social media marketing is one of the best ways to get your brand noticed on the internet, but it really helps if you’re active on different platforms so that your customers are more likely to see your restaurant. Here are some of the most popular platforms today:

• TikTok is fantastic for appealing to younger audiences. There are many restaurants that have become popular thanks to TikTok. It mainly focuses on short-form videos and the videos are often humorous.

• Twitter is a general-purpose social media platform that is perfect for short messages. You can talk about your products, you can post about new deals, and it’s easy to engage with others on the platform. If you’re not sure which platform to use, then this is usually the default choice thanks to its huge audience, advertising options, and versatility.

• Facebook is another general-purpose social media platform that is great for text, video, and photos. It also has robust advertising tools and it’s easy to offer support on Facebook. This platform has a huge audience that is slightly more mature than others, making it perfect for targeting adults.

• Instagram is more focused on photographs and videos. It’s a brilliant option if you’re looking to show off your food and want to give people something interesting to look at. Engagement on Instagram is a little different from other platforms, but it’s perfect if you’re mainly looking to show things off.

• Pinterest is a unique option that is mainly focused on sharing visual content such as photographs. It’s mainly used by people that are looking for inspiration, but it can be a surprisingly good way to show off your food and your restaurant.

These are the most popular social media platforms that you should consider using. YouTube is also another option, but due to the lack of social features, we aren’t including it. However, combining these platforms with YouTube videos is a brilliant idea and we highly recommend it.

13. Start taking high-quality pictures

If you want to establish a strong digital presence then it helps to take high-quality pictures. Hire a photographer or get yourself a quality camera and start snapping up shots of your restaurant and your food. If you want your food pictures to stand out, then it helps to have a food photographer on board. They’ll help you take flattering pictures of your meals which will make your audience salivate.

These pictures can then be used in pretty much any kind of advertising or digital marketing imagery. You could put them on posters, on your menus, on your Google business listing, or on social media to accompany some text. They’ll help improve your reputation since you’re being a little more serious about the quality of the content you’re posting, and it also entices people to come and visit your restaurant.

If you’re able to invest in a food photographer then we highly recommend it as the go-to option for taking high-quality pictures. They’ll offer suggestions on how to present your food to create mouth-watering photographs, and the images they produce can be reused again and again for menus, marketing materials, websites, and so on. In short, it’s a fantastic long-term investment and can help you build a strong relationship with the photographer, making it easier to work with them in the future should you want to update your content.

14. Encourage interaction

To use social media effectively, you have to encourage interaction. This means talking with your customers and even engaging with other brands. There are many different approaches to this, but in general, you’ll want to be active on social media and look for opportunities to communicate with your audience.

Thankfully, you can pick and choose what you react to and you’re free to ask questions, request feedback, and generally just start conversations. As long as you’re not trying to engage in too much banter, this should help improve your reputation as a restaurant and give you more opportunities to get noticed.

Interaction can help improve your overall discoverability, but it also does wonders for your reputation because you’re more likely to get noticed on social media. Just make sure you’re careful with what you say and what you share on social media.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/CAhjZmVk5H4 (CC0)

15. Run online promotions

Online promotions are a fantastic way to get your restaurant noticed, especially if you’re relatively active on social media and want to get noticed. Promotions are generally very straightforward; you pick some kind of discount, you make an image or design something to coincide with it, then you release it and you let people know on social media. What you decide to promote should be based on any statistics that your restaurant generates. For instance, you could run promotions on your most popular items to get them noticed, or you could try introducing your customers to lesser-known menu items.

Online promotions should be targeted at people that already visit your restaurant, but some of these discounts can also be aimed at people who have yet to visit your establishment. Since the online audience is so large, you can aim to appeal to a wider range of people to have the best chances of converting people into customers.

16. Hire a community manager

A community manager is a brilliant option to help you manage all of your social media activities. As your brand gets bigger, you’ll need to think longer and harder about what kind of posts to make, what hashtags to use, what content to put online, and you’ll also have to dedicate some time to answering questions and engaging with your audience. This isn’t easy and it’s extremely time-consuming, hence why you’ll want to hire a community manager to help you manage the majority of these tasks. With enough experience, your community manager could even help with your marketing needs, such as creating campaigns that will draw in larger audiences or designing posters and graphics to help grow your brand.

Community managers are extremely helpful for growing your online presence, but you need to consider hiring them early on so that you can create an online brand persona that matches your business’s image. It’s vital that you keep this as consistent as possible so that you can maintain your reputation.

17. Create contests on social media

It’s also possible to create contests on social media to encourage interaction, spread the word about your business, and also generate a lot of user content.

A great example of this would be requesting your audience to take pictures of their food or meal and showing it on social media. Then you can randomly pick one to receive a discount for their next meal. Similarly, you could do a retweet campaign on Twitter. Simply request your audience to retweet a message and then they’ll be entered into a raffle for a chance to win a meal, some merchandise, or even something bigger. There are loads of options to consider when creating a social media contest, so don’t be afraid to try out new things now and then.

Keep in mind that different kinds of contests are more suitable for different platforms. For example, Instagram is more focused on visual content, meaning it’s more suitable when you want to generate user content such as photographs and videos. On the other hand, Twitter is much easier to use if you simply want people to retweet a post so you get more exposure on the platform.

Make sure to define your target audience and understand which social media platforms they prefer to use. Don’t waste your time or money in the wrong channel.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/i_xVfNtQjwI

18. Work with food influencers and marketing services

One of the most effective ways to use social media is to find and work with food influencers. These are figureheads in the food community that often have large followings and a big voice. A single short endorsement of your restaurant could mean hundreds, if not thousands, of extra customers throughout the month. However, it’s important that you work closely with influencers if you want to nurture a strong relationship that can be beneficial to both of you.

When working with food influencers, it’s important to understand the mutual relationship that you’ll both have. For influencers, working with restaurants means they’re able to create new content that entertains their followers. Influencers are constantly on the lookout for opportunities to make videos, blog posts, and even tweets that will garner more followers and grow their brand. So if you plan to work with influencers, make sure you present your restaurant in a way that helps them discover content creation opportunities. You could work with them to create a unique dish that is new to your restaurant, or you could even let them work at your restaurant for a day so they can learn about how your food is made and share it with their audience.

For the restaurant, your end of the deal means getting noticed by thousands of new customers, thus growing your potential audience. As such, you’ll want to try and target influencers that have audiences that are geographically close to your restaurant or are likely to travel and visit your establishment. This means doing some research in order to find the most suitable influencer to work with to maximize the time and money spent on the partnership.

19. Get your restaurant on coupon websites

Coupon websites are a surprisingly good way to get more people to notice your restaurant. You can run timed promotions by offering discounts on your most popular dishes and providing coupons to various websites. Coupons will need to be created by your own point-of-sales or restaurant management system and the codes themselves will be generated by you and provided to coupon websites. This is the most typical method of doing this, but there are other options as well if you’re willing to do a bit of research and collaborate with coupon and discount websites that have their own system.

Getting on coupon websites and offering deals is a fantastic way to get the ball rolling. In some cases, it may even be worth losing a bit of profit or just breaking even in order to grow your audience during the first few weeks or months of your restaurant’s grand opening. Strategically timing your coupons can also be important because you don’t want to end up in a situation where customers only visit your restaurant when it’s discounted.

These coupons can then be shared on social media or in newsletters, giving you more content to write about and show off to your followers.

20. Build a brand persona

A brand persona is extremely important if you want to get noticed on social media. Some of the top food and restaurant brands on the internet have unique personalities that are managed by talented community managers who are able to connect with their audiences and create organic engagement that is shared among thousands of social media users. A brand persona is something that is generated naturally based on the way you want to be perceived, but it’s important to have a social media manager who can naturally fit that personality and role so that it feels more natural and less forced.

Confidence is important if you want to create a unique brand persona and it needs to be something that you establish for the long term. If you create an interesting brand person but then replace the community manager behind it, people are going to notice the changes in their personality and will likely call you out or start to ignore your social media presence because it’s not the same.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/npxXWgQ33ZQ (CC0)

Website-related ideas

If you are working on your restaurant’s website design, check out this awesome guide: A Complete Guide for Your Restaurant Website Design Project

21. Set up a recurring email newsletter

Email newsletters are great for a number of reasons. You simply ask your audience to give you their email address, and then you’ll send them regular updates about your restaurant. The newsletter can be sent every week, every two weeks, or even every month if you prefer. The information it contains is usually about your menu items, seasonal changes to your meals, or it could even contain discount coupons that they can bring to your restaurant.

Another goal with a newsletter is to build up a large email list. This can be used for advertising purposes and you can use email marketing to remind your customers of your restaurant. As long as you’re not being too pushy with this, it’s a fantastic way to grow your business and get noticed. While restaurant newsletters are a powerful marketing tool, you have to approach them carefully so that they’re not discarded and considered spam by your customers and email services such as Google.

22. Have an online menu

People these days do plenty of research before they decide to go to a restaurant. They’ll look at reviews, they’ll check out pictures, but most importantly, they’ll look at your menu. You don’t need to offer online ordering either–just having a visible menu is fine.

It’s vital that you have an up-to-date version of your menu on your website so that people can see what you offer and also what your prices are like. It can sometimes help to separate your menu as you do in the restaurant. This means offering a seasonal menu, a regular menu, and also a drinks menu. This makes it a lot easier for people to look at what you offer so they know what they’re going to order.

Since it’s online, you can also create a more interactive and detailed menu. For instance, you could have pictures to accompany the items on your menu so that people know what they’re buying. This is a great way to market your restaurant and will get more people interested in coming to your establishment.

23. Include a blog in your restaurant website design

A blog is fantastic for search engine optimization. This means that when people search for a restaurant, your restaurant has a higher chance of appearing. If you offer Italian food and your audience searches for local Italian food, then your website will show up if you have good SEO. If you don’t, then you’ll be much harder to discover.

The best way to use a blog would be to talk about your restaurant, offer cooking tips, discuss recipes, and even show off the latest changes to your establishment. The goal of your blog will depend on what you want to achieve, but one of the most unique ways of using a restaurant blog is to actually humanize everything you do. Blog posts can be written by staff members, they can be used to highlight some of the processes that you have, and they can even be used to get insights into how you design your recipes.

This not only makes your restaurant more approachable, but it greatly improves your search engine optimization, making it a fantastic way to grow your business and get noticed. We suggest using a service such as WordPress and its templates to make it easier to add content to your website’s blog, but there are other content management systems that work just as well.

Source: https://unsplash.com/photos/tKN1WXrzQ3s (CC0)

24. Have an online reservation tool

An online reservation tool is extremely useful for letting your customers book in advance. It should be linked up to any restaurant management system that you have and it should be a clear option on your website. While this is more of a restaurant website feature, it can also be used in conjunction with your marketing.

For example, you could link to your online reservation tool via a QR code on your physical marketing elements such as flyers and posters. You could also link to it via social media if you want to help people quickly book their tables to coincide with an event or discount that’s going on. You can get really creative with where you place your online reservation tool.

There are many tools available that make it easy to offer online reservations, including OpenTable, Resy, Tablein, Yelp, and TableAgent. We see online reservations as a necessity than a luxury tool.

25. Or reach out to bloggers and influencers

Even if you have your own blog, it’s a good idea to reach out to other bloggers to help improve your backlinking score. This essentially means that the more websites that link to your website, the higher your domain authority will be. This means that you’ll be recognized by Google as a legitimate and informative website, and this will help push you up the search engine results so that it’s easier to get noticed.

Reaching out to bloggers often means writing and receiving guest posts. However, you can also sponsor certain bloggers by inviting them to come to eat at your place and review it for free. You can create some fantastic relationships by working with bloggers, and this also works with influencers as well.

If you reach out to influencers on platforms like Tiktok or Instagram and invite them to visit your restaurant, then it has the potential to make your location extremely popular within the next few months. If you’re visited by an influencer with hundreds and thousands of followers and they like your food, then there are going to be loads of people that are suddenly interested in your restaurant.

26. Focus on your website’s SEO

Your website’s SEO is one of the most important components of maintaining a strong online presence. We’ve already briefly talked about some SEO elements such as blogs and backlinking, but there are a number of other elements that can help make it a more user-friendly experience while also improving discoverability.

A great example of this would be optimizing your website for mobile users. A responsive website improves the user experience and ensures that all of your web pages are easily visible and can be found without navigating lots of links. The purpose of this is to make it so your website is a lot easier to browse on mobile devices. This means changing the layout of your website so it’s easier to navigate with touch controls, and it can also mean changing images and videos so that they’re smaller and load faster. These small optimizations are often referred to as technical SEO.

Local SEO is one of the most important tool for restaurants today. You need to claim your google my business, and make sure that all your business information like your phone number is correct and consistent within your website, and other 3rd party websites. If you want to show up in specific keywords fast, your best bet would be local search results. Don’t forget, you will always find local listings are on top of Google Searches results, that’s why, Local SEO is more important than ever.

By combining these different SEO concepts, you can greatly improve your discoverability and improve your domain authority with a professional website that is founded on responsive design.

27. Try video marketing

Video marketing is a fantastic option these days thanks to the ease and accessibility of creating video content. You can shoot videos on a phone, edit them on a tablet or computer, then upload them to social media, host them on YouTube, and share them on your website. This is a fantastic option for restaurants that are looking to create shorts that show off the restaurant, but they can also be used in the kitchen to show your audience what food you make, how it’s made, and also create very satisfying cooking videos.

You can also invite food bloggers to review the restaurant and use their video on your channels. That way, you don’t have to worry about the details, and leverage food bloggers’ network at the same time.

Video marketing isn’t new, but using it correctly as a restaurant can be tricky if you’re new to the concept. Video marketing can be done on a very amateur level with just a phone and a laptop, but we’d suggest hiring a video marketing specialist if you’re interested in going the extra mile to create really high-quality videos that will appeal to your audience.

28. Ensure your details are correct on Google

Don’t forget to check that your restaurant’s details are correct on Google’s business listings. This is absolutely vital because it ensures that your restaurant can be found on Google Maps and it also shows up when people search for specific terms such as your local area. You can contact Google to claim your restaurant on their business listing, and you can also add your restaurant if you don’t see it on Google Maps. Once you’ve set up a listing, make sure all of the information is correct.

This is also a good time to check for things such as reviews that have been left on Google. You can reply to these or even flag them if you think they’re inappropriate or spam. You can also get an idea of how well you’re performing based on reviews. Whether you’re a small business or a chain restaurant, correcting your details is an absolute must.

29. Share testimonials and reviews

If you’ve got a few positive reviews on Google or testimonials written by influencers, then it’s a good idea to post them on your website or have them on your front page so that people can see them when they visit your website. For reviews, these can be easily linked to your website without much trouble. You can add Google Reviews to your website with ease and keep them updated automatically so that you’re not just taking a picture of a review or copy and pasting the content itself. This makes the review more dynamic and lets your potential customers click on the reviews to open up your business listing on Google.

For testimonials, you’ll have to get permission from the person that said it. Influencers don’t want their words taken out of context, so you need to establish a good relationship with people that speak positively about your restaurant and ask for permission to use what they said on your new website. You’ll likely need to confirm with them that what you’re posting on the internet is acceptable and an accurate representation of how they feel about your restaurant.

Testimonials and reviews are best served on the front page so that people can instantly see them. However, you might also find success posting star ratings and comments from industry reviews of your restaurant on media such as posters. This will draw more attention to your marketing strategies and materials and helps to create a more consistent and reputable brand.

30. Offer cooking lessons and recipes

You should also consider offering cooking lessons and recipes on your website if you’re not afraid to share some of your secrets. While you should never give away the exact recipe of your most popular foods, you shouldn’t be afraid to share some of your dishes and educate your audience on how to make them at home. This transparent approach to creating engaging website content is appreciated by your audience and shows that you’re not afraid of providing value to your customers.

If you have a large enough audience and the drive to do it, you could even offer formal cooking lessons and create an official recipe book that you can sell in your restaurant or in stores such as Amazon. Creating a recipe book is a lot of hard work, but it’s a fantastic option to help grow your brand and get people to recognize your restaurant’s name and the food you serve. Just remember not to reveal every secret and keep your menu fresh so that people are encouraged to visit your restaurant and not just replicate their favorites at home with your recipes.

A summary of how to market a restaurant in 2021

Creating compelling marketing campaigns for your restaurant certainly isn’t easy, but we hope that these tips have given you a good idea of where you can start. Whether you decide to work with website design services for a full-service package or if you just want to work with a design agency to help create promotional images, there is a lot that you can do to market your restaurant in 2021.

Here’s a quick summary of all the ideas that we’ve shared with you today.

In-restaurant ideas

These are some of the top in-restaurant ideas we have. These generally focus on creating a more pleasant experience for customers that already visit your restaurant, but they can also be used to draw in audiences from the street that are just passing by.

1. Establish a loyalty program to offer your customers rewards

2. Design large posters to use in your restaurant

3. Let your staff shine and stand out

4. Work with food delivery services

5. Keep track of your restaurant stats and create events around them

6. Set up a food truck in another potential location

7. Work with local suppliers to source fresh ingredients

8. Offer services for special occasions

9. Create “Instagrammable” dishes

10. Change your menu to suit dietary needs

11. Focus on customer service as a priority

Social media ideas

Social media is one of the most effective ways to grow any kind of brand and restaurants are no exception. By utilizing everything that social media has to offer, you’ll discover an incredible amount of marketing potential on every single platform.

12. Get on social media

13. Start taking high-quality pictures

14. Encourage interaction

15. Run online promotions

16. Hire a community manager

17. Create contests on social media

18. Work with food influencers

19. Get your restaurant on coupon websites

20. Build a brand persona

Website Design ideas

Your website is another important component that can’t be overlooked. Make sure to update your website regularly and provide helpful features and content for your audience.

21. Set up a recurring newsletter

22. Have an online menu

23. Start a blog on your website

24. Have an online reservation tool

25. Or reach out to bloggers and influencers

26. Focus on your website’s SEO

27. Try video marketing

28. Ensure your details are correct on Google

29. Share testimonials and reviews

30. Offer cooking lessons and recipes

This concludes our 30 restaurant marketing ideas for 2021. We hope that these tips have given you some fresh and creative ideas to grow your restaurant.

The post 30 Creative Restaurant Marketing Ideas: How to Successfully Market a Restaurant in 2021 appeared first on Gourmet Marketing.

Hotel Guest Services

You know that your guests are the lifeblood of your business. You’re not thinking about how to cut corners or reduce costs. You’re so committed to excellence that you want to offer a higher level of service to your customers.

Or, you might be excited about the fact that extra services can also help you generate more revenue, and that might be your true aim.

In either case, how do you create a value-added experience? What could you be doing that you aren’t doing already?

Here are seven extra services you can offer your hotel guests.

All-Day Breakfasts

Many hotels offer simple complimentary continental breakfasts to their guests. Some have even started extending the timeframe to make it available for longer.

You could even take this a step further by making breakfast available throughout the entire day.

Per WTM London, The Kayumanis Resort in Jimbaran, Bali not only has all-day breakfast but also delivers it to villas at no extra cost.

Pick-Up/Drop-Off Service

Some hotels, especially those outside city centers, offer a complimentary pick-up and drop-off service for their guests. Occasionally, there are also centrally located hotels that provide this amenity.

Creating a regular schedule for your guests can help them make plans to catch your shuttle when they need it.

Offer Something For Free

“Free” is a powerful psychological trigger. Offering a gift to your guests, however small, will be appreciated by them. It could be a bottle of water, a small pack of mints, or a puzzle.

Condé Nast Travel indicates that the InterContinental Park Lane in London offers their guests butter shortbread, made in Scotland, along with a cup of Wellington Tea.

Personalization

More and more customers are coming to expect personalization from the businesses they engage with. From contest giveaways to customized candy wrappers, there are many ways to let your guest know that you appreciate them.

You can also call them by name, spend time getting to know them, and offer some personalized suggestions to surprise and delight them – and this doesn’t need to cost anything extra.

Luggage Forwarding

One of the main things that can make travel inconvenient is luggage. If you offer a luggage forwarding service, your guests can travel worry-free, and go on their way without having to carry their non-essential belongings with them everywhere they go.

Rental Clothing

At times, guests may require clothing for an occasion they didn’t plan for. Some luxury hotels offer a temporary closet to such guests so they can attend their social events or business meetings without worrying about their appearance.

Per Fodor’s Travel, the Hotel de Rome offers their guests Schumacher designer dresses at no extra charge, whether they’re in need of a cocktail dress or evening gown.

You may not be able to offer luxury clothing rentals, but you could scale this service to match your property, particularly if there’s a demand for it.

State-Of-The-Art TV

The days of a flat screen TV being novel in a hotel room are over. Today, there’s so much more that a TV can do, which can afford more conveniences for your guests.

Co.Design indicates that TVs within Virgin’s new hotel can be used to order room service and control the thermostat. Plus, it can be controlled with one’s smartphone.

Used wisely, these conveniences can generate more revenue for your business.

Final Thoughts About Hotel Guest Services

The extras you provide your guests don’t need to cost a lot of money or involve a lot of effort. Little tweaks can make a big difference.

But extras can also be leveraged as additional revenue sources. If you’re offering a service your guests want and need, many are willing to pay the extra for the convenience.

Tailor your approach to your property, as not all strategies will be right for you. Take your target guests, the size of your hotel, your capacity, your location, and other pertinent factors into consideration.

The post 7 Hotel Guest Services You Can Offer appeared first on Gourmet Marketing.

Your staff makes or breaks your restaurant, keeps things running when you’re not around and represents your brand concept in front of each customer. You don’t usually want to entrust such responsibilities to anybody, but most restaurants can’t afford to pay huge salaries and hourly wages to get the best people.

You have to hire qualified candidates while keeping the lid on salaries in an economy where minimum wages are rising, people need benefits, and the turnover rate for restaurant employees is at an all-time high. That’s why many restaurateurs are turning to online restaurant job boards to relieve some of the pressure of finding, vetting, and hiring qualified workers. You can run an ad on Craigslist and get fast results, but are these the best results?

Hiring new workers involves investing time in training new people and getting them competent. Each time you choose an applicant who doesn’t work out, you lose a lot of money because you have to advertise, interview, hire and train a replacement. Restaurant job boards can eliminate many administrative work and variables by providing work histories, background checks, and databases of workers that you can search or screen by education, training, profile, photos, and other criteria.

Hiring Options

You have two options for using hiring resources to fill positions. The first is to review candidates who have posted their desire for a restaurant position or resume on the Web.

The second is to advertise the position that you want to fill on a restaurant job board. Restaurants post restaurant jobs on the most common job boards could pay a high price while getting hundreds of unqualified or unsuitable candidates. In general, the more specialized the site, the better the results.

Differences Among Top Job Hiring Sites

The top restaurant job boards include every type of job board, posting, and software for managing the process.

Although restaurateurs might balk at using generic software tools, these resources can be pretty valuable for finding and filling positions quickly. Let’s look at several of the best sites where you can post restaurant jobs.

Top 13 Websites To Post Restaurant Jobs:

• Craigslist
• Culintro
• Jobs On The Menu
• Poached
• The Restaurant Zone
• Shiftgig
• SnagAJob
• Qwick
• Sirvo
• Indeed
• ZipRecruiter
• Hospitality Online
• Hcareers

Craigslist

www.craigslist.org

By far the most popular site to post restaurant jobs for hiring servers, basic kitchen help, and entry-level workers, Craigslist has reasonable rates for posting positions and delivers astonishingly fast results in medium-to-large cities. Craigslist will be specific to the area that you’re in, making the pool of applicants localized.

You can sort by neighborhood, keywords, and other criteria for screening applicants, and you can determine how people respond by directing them to a hiring portal, email message, website, or physical address for an in-person application process.

Culinary Agents

www.ulinaryagents.com

Culinary Agents is a great job board for kitchen, beverage, and service workers of all levels. The company specializes in matching workers with the appropriate employers including restaurants, hotels, resorts, catering, food service, schools, and other organizations.

They have over 1 million job seekers and they also have more than 500 partners where they post your job. They have flexible pricing plans that begin at $49 per job post.

Jobs On The Menu

www.jobsonthemenu.com

This site advertises restaurant jobs for thousands of locations throughout the United States. The site specializes in upscale restaurant jobs for servers, hosts, chefs, and managers. Business owners post restaurant jobs daily, and corporate food service jobs are often advertised as well.

Poached

poachedjobs.com

Poached enables restaurant and hospitality managers to hire professionals quickly in major U.S. cities. Employers pay $25 for each job posting, and job seekers can post their resumes for free. BackOffice’s proprietary software provides searching, organizing, and managing tools for the hiring process.

The Restaurant Zone

therestaurantzone.com

RestaurantZone (RZ) helps restaurants hire quality talent in less time. They work exclusively in this space and staff multiple locations nationwide. The software focuses on volume hiring on the hourly and management front. This is a well-rounded solution if you need to fill baristas, bartenders, cooks, chefs, prep cooks, bussers, and culinary agents.

The company offers products such as the resume database (ResuBox), Targeted EmailBlasts, and Resume Requests which curates talent based on your criteria. Finally, RZ has a network of millions of job-seekers and many job board partnerships to help with your hiring efforts.

Shiftgig

www.shiftgig.com

Shiftgig saves employers time by streamlining the hiring process. Managers can get more detailed profiles on high-quality candidates that include references, social influence, and referrals. The company has a proprietary app called WorkNow that enables candidates to claim jobs in real-time.

Restaurants can post from one to a hundred positions, and relevant posts automatically transfer to several other job boards for better coverage. Restaurants can use the company’s efficient dashboard and messaging system for communications and organizing applicants.

SnagAJob

www.snagajob.com

Although this site isn’t precisely one of the restaurant job boards, it adds nearly 500,00 jobs per month and has a high Alexa rank. It’s an excellent resource for hiring hourly restaurant workers.

However, the site does get lots of complaints from users who have to supply too much personal information, which generates lots of phone calls, emails, and other annoyances. Some restaurants find that the postings are out-of-date, but others have claimed to get excellent pools of qualified candidates from posting job openings. Restaurants can post openings or review job candidate postings and resumes.

Qwick

www.qwick.com

This is a great restaurant job board for hiring on-demand staff. They screen each candidate and choose only the cream of the crop so you won’t have to worry about whether they know what they’re doing or not.

You can post restaurant jobs weeks in advance or within two hours of when you need them. Labor costs are kept low because these are trained independent contractors so you won’t have to dole out benefits like paid time off like you would with your regular employees.

Another advantage is that the Qwick team manages the taxes for their contractors, and that makes life easier for you! Plus, it’s free to post restaurant jobs to Qwick though you do pay 40% on top of the worker’s hourly fee which you set. It’s a fast and reliable place to post restaurant jobs you need to fill quickly.

Good Food Jobs (GFJ)

www.goodfoodjobs.com

GFJ is a place to post restaurant jobs if you’re looking for passionate candidates to fill your position. The company’s inspiring mission is exclusive to the restaurant industry and can help you find full-time, part-time, or contract workers as well as internships and several other options.

The company’s motto is “satisfying the hunger for meaningful work,” and that is what influences how they manage the platform. You can be certain you will find quality workers to fill any open positions you have with this site.

On this restaurant jobs board, you can choose between buying a single job post for $60 or a bulk package for more savings. The post is active for 60 days.

Sirvo

sirvo.com

Sirvo is one of the most highly rated restaurant job boards out there. There are collaborative features that let you work with your team to hire the best candidates, and the applicant tracking system helps keep the entire process organized.

There’s also a messaging board hub that allows you to communicate efficiently with other team members of your hiring team. What’s more, their easy-to-navigate mobile interface makes your candidate search much more convenient.

Sirvo also integrates with Indeed.com so you’ll have a large pool of candidates which will increase your chances of finding the right person for the job. There are various price plans, but a monthly subscription starts at $110 per month.

Indeed

www.indeed.com

This platform serves other industries as well as the hospitality industry, but it’s widely used to post restaurant jobs, and it provides employers with convenient tools for tracking and managing their postings.

You can use their bulk posting feature for posting a large group of jobs which is great for those times you have to fill numerous, similar positions. After you narrow your search to a few candidates, the platform allows you to schedule interviews and make offers.

There is a free job posting option, but that is more limited in features. Otherwise, the price to post a job starts at $5 per day. This is a widely used job site; however, and it receives literally hundreds of millions of unique visitors each month. That increases your chances of finding the right person for the job you’ve posted.

ZipRecruiter

www.ziprecruiter.com

This is another restaurant jobs board that caters to other industries as well; however, it has candidates for large and small chains alike. It has a large job distribution network and it is top-rated among employers.

While many restaurant job boards only allow posts in one location, ZipRecruiter will send out your job post to more than 100 job sites. The platform then uses smart matching technology to make use of artificial intelligence for finding the best candidate for your job.

Because of their extensive network and targeted approach, they can get your good results in a timely manner. Moreover, there are plans for restaurants of all sizes and there are free trial options. It is, however, a more expensive job board than other sites with plans starting at $249 per month. You can take advantage of free trial options before committing, though.

Hospitality Online

www.hospitalityonline.com

This is among the largest restaurant job boards online. It’s more generally hospitality-focused, but features over 20,000 businesses. Applicants can easily search jobs by popularity, category, or location.

For potential employers, the platform offers a host of features. There’s a full-page employer profile, dual branding for your property and company, a property-specific photo gallery, an applicant tracking system, social media integration, immediate job-specific alerts sent to job seekers, a one-year resume archiving system, and much more.

It’s one of the pricier options with prices starting at $295 for a 30-day ad. There are, however, bulk packages where employers who need to fill numerous positions on a regular basis might save money.

Hcareers

www.hcareers.com

This is a global hospitality career resource that is also one of the better restaurant job boards. They provide a number of features that help guide candidates to the job they’re looking for, and for employers, their advanced artificial intelligence technology helps you find the perfect choice for your job.

Hcareers has been helping find workers in the hospitality industry since 2001, and they have successfully placed over one million candidates. Currently they have more than 25,000 active job posts and over 4,000 registered employers.

They offer AI-powered candidate matching as well as enhanced employer branding that includes a number of useful features. Among these are a detailed job description of your restaurant, a photo and video gallery, and they promote the company’s culture by highlighting your values and any perks you offer.

They have a range of pricing options starting with a resume search for $42 that includes 5 downloads. Their standard 30-day job search runs $249, and if you’re looking for someone to fill a management job, it will run you $489 for a 30-day post.

Final Thoughts

Restaurant job boards are just one of the tools that restaurateurs can use to meet their hiring challenges. Of course, maintaining social media links — especially with LinkedIn — and a strong Internet presence is a good way to get qualified people to find your restaurant regularly, but when you need to fill a position fast, restaurant job boards offer many advantages.

Many of these sites offer applicant tracking as well as interview and onboarding tools that can make the search for the right candidate much easier. Additionally, in our modern, technology-driven world, and particularly in a post-COVID-19 environment, restaurant job boards are being used much more frequently than at any time in the past.

These job sites really do represent the best place to post new restaurant jobs and find your ideal candidate quickly. If you want to find the best candidates to fill your restaurant jobs, it’s vital that you use all of the modern technology available. It’s also critical to use the sites that restaurant employees are searching when they look for jobs, and these sites are the best out there!

The post 13 Websites To Post Restaurant Jobs appeared first on Gourmet Marketing.

If restaurant businesses have learned one thing from the COVID-19 pandemic, it’s that having an effective online presence is critical to surviving in a world dominated by e-commerce. But web design is a complex discipline that takes time to learn.

What’s more, the technology related to web design advances almost constantly. That’s why it’s critical to understand at least the basics of restaurant website design so that you can keep your restaurant website up-to-date and stay competitive.

Even if you are able to hire a professional to help you with web design, it’s still important that you know enough to hire someone to help you do it right. It’s also vital to understand the basics so that you can design a website that’s right for your restaurant.

That’s why we’ve created this restaurant website design guide to help you learn the basics of composition, web design aesthetics, and functionality. You’ll also discover how to maintain an effective social media presence and create a landing page that will make a fantastic first impression on potential customers!

Before You Launch Your Restaurant Website

The key to creating a great restaurant website is effective preparation. Here is a list of several things you need to do as you prepare to launch your homepage.

1. Design Inspiration

Web design doesn’t begin with code, it begins with design inspiration. It’s old school, but get a pencil, an eraser, and a piece of paper and start sketching out a rough design for your restaurant website.

Begin by thinking about the elements you want to include on your landing page. What will your customers see first? To decide what to include, start by empathizing with your customers.

What problem are you solving for them? Well, they’re hungry, so if you’re looking for a restaurant where you can get a bite, what do you want to see on their homepage? Here are a few ideas that are important to include:

• A few images of mouth-watering dishes your restaurant offers and perhaps the dining atmosphere;
• A link to the food menu;
• An online ordering tab;
• A link for making online reservations;
• A link to Google maps for directions and contact information including a phone number.

You want to include information that helps your customers make a decision easily and rapidly. You want to avoid anything that will cause them to look for a different restaurant.

Toward that end, there are a few mistakes you want to avoid when designing a new website. You don’t want it to be too cluttered. You should only include those elements that add or improve the customer’s overall experience. If it is better to put something on another page, do that so your homepage won’t be too cluttered.

It’s also a good idea to limit those pull-out or drop-down menus to no more than seven items. That can help keep the homepage less cluttered. You also don’t want to use sidebars since most new customers are unlikely to use them. If something doesn’t fit on the main navigation menu, then put it somewhere else.

Finally, don’t use those sliders – the slideshows that run along the top. The motion they create and new images only serve as distractions for your customers. Instead, showcase your best images all of the time on your homepage.

2. Mobile Takes Priority

More than 50% of all web traffic comes through mobile phones, so when it comes to web design, mobile traffic is key. You need to ensure that every element of your restaurant website design is mobile-ready.

Toward that end, you want a web design platform that will optimize your images and text for mobile devices. This is particularly important for restaurant website design since most people are using their phones to find a place to eat.

The reality in our modern world is that you need to really be thinking about mobile devices first. This is important when considering your design aesthetic. You want your web design to be sophisticated and your website to be very responsive. That enhances the user experience and leaves a much better first impression in the minds of potential customers.

Here are a few tips for optimizing your webpage for mobile devices:

There’s an App for Checking That

Okay, maybe it’s not an app, but there is a Google mobile-friendly test tool where you can input your website URL and test its look on mobile devices. Of course, you can also just test your website on different mobile devices once you have it set up, but there is one reason you might want to use the tool.

This tool will not only let you know whether your website is mobile-friendly, but it will also let you know the problems that it finds if it’s not. Maybe the text is too small or the clickable elements are too close together. Whatever the problem, this site will let you know.

Accelerated Mobile Pages

Given the primacy of mobile device traffic, it’s not surprising that Google has been doing everything it can to improve mobile surfing. In 2015, Google launched the Accelerated Mobile Pages (AMP) project.

In short, AMP is a method that creates mobile-friendly versions of web pages by stripping down the content and removing any unnecessary media files as well as advanced layouts. Enabling the AMP for WordPress plugin can help you easily create your own AMP pages without needing to know how to create special HTML and Javascript files.

Improved Loading Times

Another key feature of mobile-friendly websites is fast loading times. This is an important consideration for any device, but it’s particularly critical for mobile devices.

One consideration for limiting your loading times is choosing the right host for your page. WordPress is a commonly used Content Management System, and WordPress Hosting is a hosting platform that is specifically optimized and fine-tuned for WordPress websites.

There are, however, other web hosts that meet the WordPress minimum requirements, so you can choose other hosts that are configured for general use. A good host will configure your content to minimize loading times.

You can also minimize your loading times by limiting the large items in your web design. Saving images in a compressed format and limiting videos are examples of how you can help keep your website working at faster speeds. That will help you engage more customers and keep them coming back for more!

3. Use Headers that Really Work

You should never underestimate the power of an eye-catching header. These will grab your readers’ attention even without any graphics or videos. A poorly worded header is a missed opportunity.

Your headers should be descriptive and tell the user what you’re selling and how they can get it. Good headers can also improve your SEO score. SEO stands for search engine optimization, and the higher your score, the higher your website will rank in customer searches.

There’s also a psychological trick you can use to get your website visitors to make a decision to order or make reservations more quickly. It’s called Hick’s Law, and it states that the more options an individual has, the longer it will take them to make a decision.

Your restaurant might offer 50 different meals for customers to choose from, but you can help them decide more quickly by grouping the options into fewer choices on your webpage. For example, on the first page of your food menu, you might group your entrees into pasta, seafood, chicken, and beef dishes.

Once the customer clicks on one of those options, they can see the various meals in that category. If you’ve got them to go that far, it’s more likely they’ll make a choice from among those options rather than going to a different restaurant’s webpage. Getting them hooked is key to getting them to act, and catchy headers are part of a great restaurant website design.

4. Make the Fold Count

The fold is the first glimpse customers have of your website before they have to begin scrolling. It’s really the single most important part of your entire web design strategy. This is where you can really generate clicks, and subsequently, traffic to your restaurant.

It’s in the fold where you want to have catchy headers and relevant calls to action. A call to action is some text that inspires the viewer to do something like click on your food menu, for example. The fold is where you have the first chance to turn a potential customer into an actual customer.

5. Create a Visual Hierarchy

A visual hierarchy is a critical element of your web design. It allows you to display your content in a way that is clear and effective. The key is to lead your potential customer’s attention to certain elements.

You want to start with the most significant piece of information your customers need to know. Your restaurant business name and logo will be at the top of the list, but then you might let customers know what kind of food you serve.

As an example, you might have your restaurant name written in large, prominent text followed by something like, “Your Favorite Mexican Restaurant,” or “The Best Steakhouse in the West.” From there, you would lead the reader’s eye to important links like for the food menu, online ordering, or reservations.

The main considerations for your website’s visual hierarchy are:

• Size and Weight of Each Element: Your restaurant’s top assets should be highlighted with large and prominent text or other elements. Readers will usually scan the website and notice those large, bold titles first. Then, they’ll move on to the smaller text.
• Invest in Typography: Typography is the visual elements of type; that is, the way the type appears. For example, you might want a handwritten script or a cursive style that can connote elegance in, for example, fine dining. If you have lengthy texts, you’ll probably want to use a sans serif font since those are typically easier to read.
• Placement of the Elements: The idea behind the placement of website elements is to guide the reader’s eye to where you want them to go. You start with your logo, which might be positioned at the same location as your first header, and it should be on the left because that’s how people read. Important call-to-action buttons might be placed in the center of the screen, and you really want to highlight them. The call-to-action, after all, is what you want your client to do, so give them some well-deserved extra attention.
• Use Color, Contrast, and Spacing to Accentuate Elements: You can use these stylistic elements to intentionally accentuate certain elements. Readers tend to notice bold text and bold colors, for example.
• Use a Navigation Bar to Help Customers Navigate Your Website: You want your restaurant website to be easy to navigate. A clearly labeled navigation bar or anchor menu can help customers jump quickly to the area of the webpage they want to visit.

By carefully placing highlighted elements appropriately and accentuating them with certain colors, you’re creating a trail for the readers to follow; it’s something they will do unconsciously. It’s a powerful web design tip to help boost your bottom line.

6. Keep Content Simple

Another great tip for creating the best restaurant website is to keep your content simple. You want your customers to love your content, but they won’t if you drown them in information or have an incredibly complex website. That’s why it’s a good idea to invest in copywriting; pay an expert to write simple, clear, and engaging copy for your website.

You want to give your readers easy-to-read information organized in a simple and easy-to-follow format, and a professional copywriter can do that for you. You can have them focus on high-quality information, and then, let your customers explore the website on their own. That will keep them more engaged in the material.

7. Don’t Skimp on the Photographs

While you want to save your photographs in an optimized format, you want them to be high-quality and inviting. Your images of food should show mouth-watering dishes that will entice your potential customers to order online or make a reservation.

If possible, you also want to use videos. These are more interactive and you can show clips of people enjoying the food, for example, or utilizing a larger area for special events like birthdays or even simply enjoying the fine-dining atmosphere.

High-quality images or videos of smiling, satisfied customers help make for a great restaurant website. Also, make sure the photographs are of real customers in your restaurant. The goal is to humanize your restaurant.

Don’t use stock photos of people at some restaurant. You want your images to accurately reflect customer experience at your restaurant.

8. Create a Blog

A blog is a great way to communicate with your customers. You can write about a number of relevant topics, and you can integrate your blog with your social media pages. You can use the blog to highlight special events, new mouth-watering dishes, and even gift card offers.

All the best restaurant website designs include a blog — it’s really a must-have in the modern world. You can also showcase user-generated content here. Ask customers if you can link to their social media page where they have pictures of their recent birthday party at your restaurant. Alternatively, you can ask customers for permission to use their pictures so you can highlight their event on your blog!

Your blog is also a place where you can highlight those great reviews. If someone praises your establishment on Yelp or TripAdvisor or any other review site, you can link to that review or even thank your customers for their review and invite them back for more as part of your blog content.

9. Restaurant Website Design Element Tips

A few other tips for creating your best restaurant website include elements that will personalize your establishment, rank higher in SEO searches, and engage your customers so they’ll keep coming back.

The following items are elements that will help with that:

• Menus should be in HTML: This will allow search engines to match your website with searches for individual food items. A SCHEMA markup is also good for that. SCHEMA markup refers to structured data that is in the language of search engines. It allows search engines to understand your content better. Creating a template for the menus will help to speed the process.
• Make use of a hamburger menu: The hamburger menu or burger menu is that three-line icon you see at the top left or right of a webpage. It hides the traditional file menu and makes viewing easier on mobile devices. It gets its name because it’s three lines which are visually similar to a meat patty in two parts of the bun.
• Tell a story in an ‘about us’ page: Having an ‘about us’ page really helps to humanize your restaurant. You can tell the story of how you decided to open a restaurant and how you were able to realize that dream. It gives your customers a personal connection to the restaurant owners.
• Have an FAQ page: FAQ stands for frequently asked questions, and it’s a great way to help direct potential customers to the information they might need. You can also have a form for guests whose questions you didn’t address in the FAQs. It’s part of a responsive web design, and it helps customers have a good user experience on your restaurant website. That will lead to them having a good dining experience in your restaurant!
• Newsletter sign-up: Another part of responsive web design is to have customers sign up to receive a newsletter and/or promotional offers. Who wouldn’t like to receive a coupon for two free drinks on Valentine’s Day?
• Careers Page: This will allow you to make your restaurant website more corporate and garner more attention.

10. On-page Optimization

On-page or search engine optimization (SEO) refers to the measures you take directly on your website to help improve your rank in searches. This might be something like improving your meta description and tags. Off-page SEO is a reference to links you might include or other signals that direct the reader to another page.

To be successful at SEO, you’ll need to monitor and analyze your restaurant website design’s performance. That means checking with the goal of improving on any underlying issues that are causing it to perform less than optimally. Using analytics, such as those available through Google Analytics or Hubspot or WordPress backend, will allow you to create a solid, evidence-based plan for improving your web design to optimize your webpage’s performance.

There are a number of things you can do to improve your SEO:

• Technical optimization: You want to make sure your server speed and loading times are fast. Search engines consider this as part of their evaluation for ranking your site. You also want to have an efficient source code, which makes it easier for Googlebot to index your site, and a unique IP address tells the search engine your website is unique.
• Content: Content is another area where you can improve your SEO. This includes not only text but images and even elements like alt-tags or meta-information that are initially invisible to readers. Your text should have sufficient keyword density, but that’s not the only important element. There are also associated keywords that are important to include. There should also be plenty of structural elements like headers and bold or italicized words. Additionally, graphics — images and videos — contain elements you can optimize to increase the attractiveness of your website, and therefore, the time users spend on your site. A big part of the optimization of graphics involves choosing appropriate file names.
• Use of meta-tags: Meta-tags include elements such as meta descriptions that affect what is called your click-through rate in the search engine results pages. This is an important part of on-page optimization. Your meta description should contain a mix of keywords and topics covered in the content.

For example, a good meta description for a New York eatery might read something like, “If you’re visiting the New York area, you’ll want to know where you can get the best ice cream in town. Read on to learn more about this iconic New York eatery and why you won’t want to miss it!” This description fits well with the keywords “New York eatery” and “ice cream.” These are search phrases that someone visiting New York might use when looking for a place to get good food or ice cream.

• Internal Links: These help to guide the Googlebot to your domain, and they also optimize the navigation of your website for your customers. With internal linking, you can create a good sitemap, one of the biggest factors for on-page SEO.
• Web Design Functionality: You want to take steps to increase the functionality of your webpage. This includes those techniques to make your restaurant website mobile-friendly discussed above as well as making sure that your graphics are appropriately sized so your page has good loading times, and also that you have well-spaced, highlighted, and stimulating call-to-actions. This is all part of having a responsive design that engages your potential customers so you can convert them into actual customers.

11. Set Up Retargeting Marketing

Retargeting is also known as remarketing, and there are some very good reasons that it’s a good restaurant website design tactic. Retargeting is basically targeting potential customers who have already shown some interest in your website.

Maybe you have a potential customer who has visited your events page to look at your private dining room. They viewed the photographs but didn’t complete the online ordering form to request the prices and other information.

With retargeting marketing, you can actually target an advertisement to them that highlights that private event space and also contains a link to the online form. It’s a great way to increase your conversion rate.

Another great reason to use retargeting marketing is that you can detail your targeted ads. You can target your core audience based on social media profiles and behaviors they share online. You likely have an existing email list of current customers, and you can use that to create a custom audience. Moreover, you can create a custom audience from all users who visited your website in a specific period of time, like the last 30 or 60 days.

Additionally, you can also target what are known as lookalike audiences. These are created when social media platforms like Facebook use modeling algorithms to identify people who share similar interests and characteristics with your current customers. For example, a lookalike audience might be an audience with similar likes and interests as the users who made a reservation on your website in the past 90 days.

Research has shown that retargeting increases your chance for a sale by 50% and reduces so-called cart abandonment (customers who start to make a purchase but never follow through). It also increases online sales by 20%. Those are strong arguments in favor of retargeting.

Maintaining Your Restaurant Website After Launching

After you’ve launched your restaurant website, the work is not over. In many ways, it’s just beginning. You still have to maintain and update your restaurant website design over time. It’s important if you’re going to stay competitive in a very competitive market. Here are several tips for how to maintain the website following its launch:

12. Be Active in the Blog

A blog is a powerful form of communication with your customers, and you want to show them how committed you are to excellence. The blog is a great way to do that. Make sure your blog posts are easy templates to edit.

Top food bloggers post 2 – 3 times each week. That might sound like a lot, but there are actually several things you can blog about. You can post articles about new recipes, events hosted by your restaurant, and trends in cooking.

You can have a “From the Chef” post where the chef offers cooking tips. You can also highlight guest’s special events they celebrated at your restaurant and use the blog to post about questions you received from guests that aren’t covered on the FAQs page. The truth is there will always be something to talk about.

13. Answer Customer Questions

Aside from offering the FAQs section as part of your web design, you also want to answer questions from your guests. In the FAQs area, as discussed above, you want to have a form for guests whose question wasn’t covered in that section. When you receive their questions, be sure to answer them. You might even turn their question and the answer into a blog so that everyone can learn more.

14. Keep Optimizing Those Images

Optimization of images involves saving them in the smallest possible file size without sacrificing quality. It’s easy to do in WordPress and other content management systems, and it will keep your restaurant website loading times lightning fast! Remember that’s one of the ways that SEOs rank your site in search results, so it’s important to maintain.

What is Optimization Exactly?

Optimization means reducing the image file size for fast loading times without sacrificing the quality of the image. The three things that are most important for optimization are:

• Image file format: This means is it saved as a JPEG versus a PNG or a GIF. These are really the three best file types for optimization. For simplicity, use JPEGs for colorful images, PNGs for simple or transparent images, and GIFs only for animated images.
• Compression: This is the next important concept for image optimization. There are different types and levels of compression available, and the settings for each vary with the image compression tool you’re using. Many image programs like Adobe Photoshop have built-in image compression tools. There are also web tools like JPEG Mini that you can use for compression. WordPress also has several plugins such as Optimole or EWWW Image Optimizer that automatically compress images when you upload them.
• Image Dimensions: The last concept related to optimization is image dimensions. This refers to the file dimensions of your image. such as height and width. You typically don’t want to compromise on image resolution and most images have a resolution of at least 300 DPI and dimensions that begin at 2000 pixels. That’s great for printed images, but not so much for websites. By compressing the image and changing the dimension, you can significantly reduce the file size without changing the resolution.

15. Keep WordPress and Plugins Up-to-Date

You might hate those update reminders and the time it takes, but keeping your content management system and all plugins up-to-date is critical for keeping your restaurant website design up-to-date as well. Check regularly to see if there are updates and pay attention to notifications so you can stay on top of it and on top of your competition.

16. Set Up Google My Business

This is an easy one to do. Google My Business is free to set up, and for restaurants, it allows them to highlight what’s special about your restaurant, share essential information, show off your best menus and dishes, and accept online orders.

It also has a feature that allows your customers to make online reservations and share your success stories and outstanding reviews. Moreover, they’ve got a specially designed marketing kit that includes customized posters and social media posts from your business’s profile page.

Finally, through Google Maps, your customers will easily be able to find your restaurant. Google Maps also displays important information like opening/closing times, contact details, and a link to your restaurant website.

17. Set Up Google Search Console

Finally, one of the best things you can do to analyze your website traffic is to set up Google Search Console. This handy feature lets you measure your website’s traffic and performance, it helps fix issues and optimize your content, and it helps you see which search queries bring users to your site.

It also allows you to analyze your website’s impressions so you can always make a great first impression. It lets you review your index coverage to ensure Google has the newest view of your website, and it alerts you when there’s an issue. It also tells you when that issue has been fixed. This is one of the best tools for your e-commerce analytics and for creating an optimized restaurant website design.

Final Thoughts

If you’ve got a restaurant, you know how competitive the market is for diners. Having an online presence with an effective restaurant website design is key to staying in the game. Using the 17 strategies outlined above, you can create a truly great restaurant website design. Here’s a quick summary of what we’ve discussed.

These are the things you should do before launching your website:

1. Design Inspiration – plan it out before you lay it out.

2. Mobile Takes Priority – make sure your website is mobile-friendly because that’s how your customers find out most frequently.

3. User Headers that Really Work – They should be appropriately placed and worded for the greatest impact in SEO.

4. Make the Fold Count – The fold is your first impression; it needs to be strategically designed.

5. Create a Visual Hierarchy – Your restaurant website design needs to be clear and effective.

6. Keep Content Simple – Don’t overwhelm your customers with unnecessary text or elements.

7. Don’t Skimp on the Photographs – Images are a great way to capture the interest of potential customers; make them high-quality and relevant.

8. Create a Blog – This is a great way to communicate with your customer base; it’s a marketing tool you can use to your greatest advantage.

9. Restaurant Website Design Element Tips – Write your menus in HTML to optimize searches, use a hamburger menu, create an ‘about us’ page, have an FAQ page, have a newsletter sign-up, and create a careers page to make your website more corporate.

10. On-Page Optimization – These are the things you can do for SEO.

11. Set Up Retargeting Marketing – this helps you catch the fish that almost got away.

These are the things you should do after launching your website:

12. Stay Active in the Blog – Posting 2 – 3 times per week will keep your customers thinking about your restaurant.

13. Answer Customer Questions – Having a responsive website is key to keeping your customers happy; answer their questions in a timely manner.

14. Keep Optimizing the Images – this maintains both your website loading times and your SEO rankings.

15. Keep WordPress and Plugins Up-to-Date – This will keep your restaurant website competitive.

16. Set Up Google My Business – It’s an easy way to highlight what your restaurant offers and help customers find you.

17. Set Up Google Search Console – It’s got all the marketing tools you need in one place.

The post 17 Restaurant Website Design Ideas & Tips To Succeed in 2021 appeared first on Gourmet Marketing.

The travel industry has shifted and reshaped forever following the COVID-19 pandemic. There have been innovations that have risen because of necessity but are likely to stay around forever. Surveys from industry leaders like Tripadvisor indicate an enthusiasm among travelers to get back to traveling and visiting loved ones, both domestically and internationally. However, vaccinations and health protocols will play a big role in the future of the industry. Here are five trends to watch out for in the travel industry in 2021.

Sustainable Tourism

The COVID-19 pandemic has sped up the conversation about how the impact of human activity on the environment and on communities around them. People are likely to look for alternative travel options to avoid overcrowding in popular destinations. In addition, people will look to travel during off-peak seasons.

Further, there will be less carrying of plastics as time goes by. People will recommend destinations that support green initiatives to other people who are conscious of human impact on the environment. Hotels and other tourism businesses should position themselves appropriately by reducing waste and recycling where possible. Tourists in future will be curious about the CSR efforts of hotels. They will want to know how their money impacts communities. It’s all part of a bigger conversation around regenerative travel.

Working While on Vacation

An increased acceptance of work-from-home models means that people can travel during any time of the year. Hotels will have to make their establishments attractive for these travelers. If they do so, they will see people booking longer stays as they will not be in a hurry to go back to their offices.

To attract business travelers, hotels will need good Wi-Fi. They could also set aside workspaces for people seeking uninterrupted work sessions in the middle of their holiday. These travelers also demand a high level of privacy and cleanliness. To make the stays more attractive, hotels must ensure they have additional facilities. These include gyms, spas, and outdoor activities like hiking.

The Search for Simple Pleasures

The pandemic has made people more appreciative of the beauty of nature. As a result, we are likely to see travelers who are seeking simpler stays where nature is a key selling point. People spent a lot of time indoors in 2020, and therefore, are looking for hiking opportunities, clean air, and relaxing experiences surrounded by nature. Loved ones did not meet as often as they would have liked in 2020. They will look to do so this year. These travelers will look for private villas to spend with family this year. Hotels should prepare packages to attract such bookers.

Domestic Travel

Domestic travel will play a great role in helping the tourism industry get back on its feet. Vaccination passports for a part of other restrictions in international travel. This means that local destinations are high on people’s options lists for traveling.

People targeting local travelers should seek ways to improve their offerings. Most travelers are willing to visit places they have visited before for familiarity. However, they can improve their experiences by taking tours of historical sites in an area and sampling local culture. Other ways of improving domestic travel include inviting guest chefs and offering new drinks menus.

Safety Measures

Travelers will be interested in the measures that establishments are taking to protect employees and guests. People will avoid locations marked as disease red zones. Responsible authorities and hospitality establishments will have to work together to produce and communicate standard safety measures to instill confidence in travelers. The clearer the communication from a particular establishment, the more likely that it will receive visitors.

Travelers will also be taking safety measures of their own. For instance, there is likely to be a preference for people driving themselves around during holidays as opposed to public transport. People will rent out cars when they get to a particular destination. In airports and other points of entry into a country, travelers will have to submit to checks and protocols in that jurisdiction.

Search for Value

Whenever there is an economic downturn, people tend to become very conscious about the value they are getting for services. Over the next few months, travelers are very much likely to spend a lot of time making comparisons between different destinations before booking. Travelers will look for clarity in cancellation policies, refund processes, room sizes, and exact locations of establishments. Hotels must ensure they share this information not only on their websites but those of booking agencies as well. In the eyes of travelers, vagueness in information given on booking websites is dishonest. Hotels must offer genuine value for prices, more choices, and greater flexibility to customers.

Greater Reliance and Application of Technology

This year is likely to see an increased use of technology to improve user experiences in the travel industry. Many travelers want the choice to make last-minute bookings through apps. Digitization has eliminated human-to-human interactions in many areas of our lives. The same will happen in the tourism and travel sector. Self-check-ins became quite popular at the height of the pandemic, and this will continue in the sector. In large establishments, augmented reality can be used to help people locate their rooms, pools, and gyms. This further reduces reliance on human capital to make guests comfortable.

Hotel applications will offer a lot of functionalities. Guests will be able to book tables, order in from their rooms, and finally make contactless payments during the check-out process.

The Future of the Industry in 2021 and Beyond

The travel industry is slowly recovering after the economic downturn of 2020. Vaccination is playing a key role in building confidence. The changes in health protocols, and greater use of technology in the sector are likely to be permanent in the sector. People will want to know the health measures being taken to protect them. Contactless booking, checking, and payment will be around forever. It’s all for the better development of the industry.

The post Top Travel Industry Trends for 2021 appeared first on Gourmet Marketing.

In the food service industry, it’s important to utilize every tool at your disposal to stand out from the competition. OpenTable is a reservation management system that has many great features to help you easily manage your food service business, including shift planning, guest profiling, reporting and analytics, and online reservations. While OpenTable is the #1 tool for generating online reservations, it’s not the only restaurant management system out there. Here are 5 OpenTable alternatives that can help you grow your business: 

1. Resy

Resy has many of the same features that you expect from a full feature table management system. These include reservation management, waitlist management, table management, and POS integration. 

The system is powered by a customizable floor plan which you can use with your online booking widget to provide the availability to your guests. This will allow your guests to confirm or cancel their reservation, and they can also make modifications to, for example, let you know they’re running late. Customers can also enter personal details like food allergies, birthdays, and anniversaries. 

There are three ties to Resy’s pricing. The Platform will run you $189 per month and provides you with access to unlimited devices and users as well as unlimited covers. The next tier, the Platform 360, gives you more features like branding, analytics, and customizable messaging. The final tier, the Full Stack gives you everything in the other two tiers, plus it’s designed for restaurant brands with multiple locations. 

2. Yelp Reservation

Yelp Reservation offers you reservation and table management as you would expect, but it also has a huge consumer network that helps bring customers to your restaurant. The table management features include waitlist management as well as reservation management and server management. 

To access the reservation system by itself, it will cost you $249 per month, but that includes cover and set up fees, so you won’t pay extra for that. You also get a free iPad to use in your restaurant for that price. 

It will, however, cost you an additional $199 per month to list your restaurant in the Yelp Connect network. When you list your restaurant on Yelp Connect, this system is a great way to convert listing views into revenue driving reservations. 

3. Eat App

This guest data platform also ties into a full-featured table and reservation management system to power your restaurant operations, customer feedback, marketing, and analytics. It helps you use everything you’ve got to grow your business. This app will help you generate demand, increase customer loyalty, and optimize your operations. 

The app features include reservation and waitlist management, automated messaging, analytics, advanced tagging, guest CRM, and shift management. The features are all accessible on iOS, Android, and iPad apps, or you can also access them directly on the web. Some of the additional features they offer include payments, POS, and phone integrations.

Eat App offers two pricing tiers. The lowest cost tier is only $129 per month. The company then offers custom pricing based on your specific needs. They also build the system around your specific restaurant. That means your floor plan, guests, and reservations are the first thing you see, but you can also choose to manage your operations through a calendar, timeline, or grid view.

4. Allset

Allset is another great OpenTable alternatives that can help you grow your bottom line. It offers easy integration with your POS as well as contactless pickup and in-restaurant dining options. The system also offers marketing and promotions that help you convert your online traffic into reservations. 

The features include free online ordering as well as onsite touch-free ordering and payment. What’s more, you get all of that for no monthly fee. Instead, you pay an 8 – 12 percent commission (depending on your area) for orders placed through the app and a transactional fee of 2.9 percent. You also get a 30-day free trial to make sure this is the right option for you. 

5. The Fork

The Fork is a great system to help you increase your business’s revenue. It is available in 22 countries and provides you with a customized page that is visible on all devices. You can easily showcase your promotions, and you can also participate in The Fork’s loyalty program called YUMS. There are also festivals they organize to help increase off-peak bookings. 

The booking management system includes an electronic reservation diary that centralizes your bookings, a digitalized floor plan with a timeline view, multi-user configuration, access to your operation on any device, analytics to monitor your activities, and booking widgets for your website and social media channels. You also get an automatic confirmation email and SMS text services to help you decrease no-shows. 

Pricing depends on your country, but the company offers three tiers. The Free tier has all the basics, with the Pro and Pro+ tiers offering additional features. 

As you know, the restaurant business is a dog-eat-dog world where you have to stay on top of your game to stand out from the competition. No matter what size restaurant you have, these 5 OpenTable alternatives can help you to better manage your business and give your clientele the best experience to ensure they will keep coming back for more!

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Just What Is a Hotel Chatbots Anyway? 

You’ve probably already been using chatbots in some area of your life. A chatbot is simply a type of digital technology that can respond to human queries in an intelligent manner. If you’ve ever asked Siri or Alexa to help you find the nearest Sushi restaurant, you’ve had a meaningful interaction with a chatbot. 

For most hotels, chatbots will likely be used for different kinds of digital customer service, such as answering questions about the local area or even helping them extend a reservation. Typically, hotels use rule-based chatbots that give the customer an option–such as answer yes or no–and then, depending on how the guest responds; the bot presents a specific set of options. 

However, there are also AI (artificial intelligence) chatbots that are more sophisticated and can create a very realistic conversation with the guest. Either way, a chatbot can really improve your customer’s experience.

How Chatbots Can Improve Your Guests’ Experience

There are numerous reasons why chatbots are becoming more popular in the hospitality industry. Here are a few of the reasons they are growing in popularity as a key part of hotel management. 

1. More Direct Bookings

If you’re running a hotel, it’s all about the bookings, and with direct bookings, there’s no need to pay anyone a commission. Hotel chatbots can be used to answer customer questions quickly right on the website. When a customer doesn’t have to call someone to answer their question, they’re more likely to make that booking. 

Chatbots can also be used on social media platforms where they can provide your customers with the option to book directly through that platform. Moreover, because chatbots can provide personalized support during the booking process, the customer is less likely to halt the booking halfway through.

2. Communication in Different Languages

Regardless of the type of chatbot you’re using, it can talk to the customer in their own language so there’s less chance of misunderstandings or frustration on the part of the customer. This is an invaluable service for your international customers and one that might make the difference between choosing your hotel or going elsewhere. 

3. Customer Service 24/7

Perhaps one of the best reasons chatbots are becoming more popular in the hotel industry is that they allow you to provide 24/7 customer service. Chatbots help you provide your customers with a rapid response to their needs, and that’s something that keeps them coming back to you. 

What’s more, these virtual assistants make the customer experience more efficient. They can assist with checking in and out so that the customer doesn’t even have to visit the reception desk. They can do it all from their smartphone. That saves them time and earns you more money! 

To sum it all up, chatbots are a great way to improve the hotel customer’s experience by making it easier to make that booking, improving their experience during their stay, and saving them time. When you save them time and give them a smooth, positive experience, they’ll keep coming back for more! 

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Making your website accessible to people with different disabilities impacts traffic flow and can prevent high bounce rates. According to the CDC, one in every four Americans lives with at least one form of disability. This is a big proportion of the country, and their inability to use a website properly locks out potential revenue for any company.

Accessibe aims to help websites become ADA and WCAG compliant using AI technology. Their solution, when installed, scans the different forms of content on the website and then makes adjustments based on different profiles. These profiles represent the various forms of disability that users may live with, including visual impairment, epilepsy, and motor inhibitions.

Signing up for Accessibe is rather easy. Potential clients can request a demo, whereby the sales team will get in touch to answer any questions regarding the product. Clients will be requested to give a link to their website for analysis and determination of an appropriate price point for them.

AccessiBe Pricing Model

Pricing on Accessibe depends on the number of unique pages a client’s website has. For instance, a standard website with less than 1000 unique pages will be billed $49 a month. Larger websites with less than 10,000 unique pages will pay $150 a month. Clients can save 20% if they decide to pick an annual subscription.

By signing up, a client receives an accessibility statement and certification, a monthly audit report on accessibility compliance, and automated daily monitoring and scans. Users who visit their website will have the chance to turn on the accessibility UI.

There are additional services that can be requested separately through the sales team. These include video captions for people with hearing problems. In addition, clients can request audio descriptions and PDF remediation. A consultative meeting with the sales team is encouraged in order to develop a suitable package depending on the website’s function and traffic numbers.

Once you have your account set up with Accessibe, you are eligible for a 7-day trial where you will not be required to even give a credit card. You can always skip the free trial and instead just choose to pay immediately after signing up.

AccessiBe Installation Process

In your ‘Account’ page on Accessibe, there is an Installation tab, which, when clicked on, allows you to pick between a quick and basic installation or a customized one. Both options are pretty simple, and they present you with a script to paste on your website builder. Accessibe’s website has guidelines on how to go about adding the script to your website. There are specific guidelines with images for websites built on WordPress, Squarespace, Shopify, OpenCart, Wix, Joomla, Magento, and more.

Accessibe has a partnership program for web and digital agencies. Signing up is free, and you can earn a 20% commission on purchases made by clients you bring on board. The program allows web agencies to ensure compliance with their clients’ websites. The program has already attracted thousands of partners.

Setting up an account with Accessibe takes minutes. Once you sign up for a free trial, you can try out all the features that come with a paid package with no commitments required. The installation process is quite intuitive, and anyone can go through it as long as they are familiar with their CMS. If you are looking for an ADA and WCAG compliance solution, Accessibe is the solution for you.

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On June 27, 2021, Fiesta Group announced they had entered into a stock purchase agreement to sell the Taco Cabana restaurant brand for $85 million to YTC Enterprises, LLC. The deal will allow The Fiesta Group to focus on the growth of their Pollo Tropical brand. 

YTC Enterprises is an affiliate of Yadav Enterprises, Inc, which operates close to 400 restaurants in 18 states, including the Jack in the Box, El Pollo Loco, TGI Friday’s, and Denny’s restaurant chains. The parties will close on the deal in the third quarter of 2021 once the closing conditions have been satisfied. 

Use of Proceeds from the Sale

The Fiesta Restaurant Group will use the proceeds from the sale to fully repay approximately $74.6 million in outstanding term loan borrowings. They will also pay divestiture transaction fees as well as a loan prepayment premium, all of which totals approximately $4.6 million. 

They will then use a portion of their $67.6 million cash balance for investments that will accelerate the growth of the Pollo Tropical brand. Additionally, the Board of Directors for the company will evaluate other strategies for increasing shareholder value which includes repurchasing stock in the future. 

Richard Stockinger, the Fiesta Group President, and Chief Executive Officer stated,  “We made the strategic decision to sell the Taco Cabana business to allow our leadership team to focus completely on accelerating Pollo growth, and we are very excited about the tremendous growth opportunities we have for the Pollo Tropical business.” 

He added that the CEO of Yadav Enterprises, Anil Yadav, is highly respected as a restaurant operator with an impressive entrepreneurial background and a proven track record. Stockinger asserted the Fiesta Group is confident, “he will be an effective steward of the Taco Cabana brand for the long-term.” 

The Future of Pollo Tropical

Stockinger stated that the sale of Taco Cabana will allow the Fiesta Group to apply appropriate resources for accelerating the growth of the Pollo Tropical brand. 

He noted the company will be able to create a more effective, efficient, organization that will focus on upgrading customer experience across all their service channels. 

They will also be able to continue their investment in the expansion of their digital growth platform and finalize their new unit expansion plans for 2022. 

More About the Fiesta Group

Fiesta Restaurant Group, Inc., is the owner and operator of both the Pollo Tropical and Taco Cabana restaurant brands. They also franchise those brands. You can find more information about the company at their corporate website at www.frgi.com.

The Pollo Tropical and Taco Cabana brands are fast-casual, quick-service restaurants that specialize in offering distinct, unique flavors with a broad customer appeal at a compelling value. Each of the brands offers fresh-made cooking, drive-thru service, and catering. 

For the year ending on January 3, 2021, Taco Cabana had generated $239.4 million in revenues and an adjusted EBITDA (earnings before interest, taxes, depreciation, and amortization) of $8.5 million. As of July 1, 2021, the Taco Cabana brand boasted 142 owned and operated restaurants in Texas and six franchised restaurants in New Mexico.  

More About Yadav Enterprises, Inc. 

This restaurant company operates nearly 400 restaurants located in Northern California, Texas, and 16 other states. They are the largest Jack in the Box franchisee as well as one of the largest franchisees of Denny’s and TGI Friday’s. 

They are also a franchisee of El Pollo Loco and the Corner Bakery Cafe restaurant brands. Additionally, they are a major investor in TGI Friday’s ownership group and global parent company.

The Fiesta Restaurant Group’s Pollo Tropical brand finished the first quarter of 2021 with an increase of same-store sales of 4.3 percent. That’s a marked improvement from their 2020 fourth-quarter performance of negative 8.2 percent. This indicates the brand has momentum as it becomes the Fiesta Group’s sole focus.

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