Lay My Hat

Because we got many enquiries, last year about 730 (without the scam!) it´s a lot of work to organise this, respond and make follow up emails etc.
We put every enquiry in a main Excel sheet with all the specs like dates, stay, pax and source etc. We use colours to mention the status of the enquiry.

Last year we waited 2 -3 days after the quotation to send a remainder. We send good ¨looking¨ enquiries after 3 days a 2nd remainder. Without any further respond we close the enquiry.
Sometimes, when we replied (several times!) on a mail with questions, and they don´t come back we give a call (only in Europe).

Occasionally when they not coming back anymore, and we had a lot of work with the following up emails, I send a ¨Thanks for not reply anymore¨ email. I know, it´s not very commercial but it´s frustrating me that people could be so impolite.

Now we would like to bring back the first remainder email to 1 day.
Would that be a reasonable respond time for the enquiry maker?

How many remainder do you send after an enquiry?

None.

Fortunately we get relatively few enquiries and pretty much all of them go on to become bookings, but I've never followed up any odd non-responder. I take the view that if they choose not to respond that's up to them and they have good reason for it.

Personally I'd hate to be chased ....

also none....we considered it in the beginning but decided that we did not wish to be "pushy"......

It's very unlikely that you are the only accommodation enquiry they are making, you may well be competing with several. I know I am and they may need some time to decide and discuss with other halves etc

Sometimes I send a follow up but only after a few days and I state my reasons are to check they got the first email (it does happen that they haven't) and then send them good wishes if they have booked a holiday elsewhere.

I don't believe people find that offensive and sometimes get a lovely response telling me why they haven't booked etc. I don't now expect it to change to a booking, but it just plants a seed in their head for another time. I have had several bookings this year from guests who didn't book following a previous enquiry.

Firstly I wouldn't ever send a "thanks for not responding" type of email that you are. You need to swallow your frustration!

Secondly, why not invest in software to help you manage your bookings, provide email templates, give you reminders etc? It will free up so much time now spent keeping your books in order. PIMS is my recommendation as it will be from many members here. www.holidayrentalmanagement.com If it's of interest then pm me for a referral code as we both benefit. If you want more info there are lots of threads about it but most users on here are happy to answer questions about it.

Firstly I wouldn't ever send a "thanks for not responding" type of email that you are. You need to swallow your frustration!

You are 100% right about my reply, but sometimes ........

When Irene sees that, because she does the most of the enquiries ...
We using templates in 5 languishes for nearly all situations, that’s the only way to handle that amount of enquiries.

When in the enquiry is mentioned ¨your villa¨ or ¨your property¨ we know that they have send the enquiry to many others.
But most of the time they refer in their text to the boat, so we know that they select the boat.

Last month, more than 35% of the 72 enquiries came direct through our own website, so they selected us directly
Sometimes they come back by the 3rd email and then still make the booking, it´s all very unpredictable!
We will have a look into PIMS, a saw this several times in posting but had no idea what it was.
Thanks.

I send a reminder on the second day from a different email address just in case it has gone into spam. I still send one even though I can see they have read it (I use a tracker) as I like to think I am producing some sort of guilty conscience by not bothering to respond and sometimes that works! I think its polite to respond either way, especially when they have asked to book, I've sent the contract and am waiting for payment and they then don't bother to respond. I realise though I am probably losing the battle, I don't think many people these days have got any manners. I'll do it until I either don't have time or get fed up with it. I have got about 5 bookings though as sure enough my email was in their spam, or so they say!

If I am given a mobile number with the enquiry; after sending the quote/response, I will always send an sms text message confirming that I have responded in an email and what to do if they don't receive it. I often get a text back confirming the quote/response has been received safely and 3 out of 5 quotes turn into bookings when I do this. I always follow up a quote the next day (24-hours afterwards); most people who are use to the internet are in a rush so leaving it 2 or 3 days will already be too late.

That's true Essar regarding the internet and timescales I guess. I do find more and more customers are phoning or texting me. Whenever I take an email address over the phone I always send a follow up text when possible to ensure I have the address correct.

Whenever I get an enquiry, I always send them a booking form that states that they have 72 hours in which to make a booking, otherwise it will be released to other interested parties. This seems to work well and guests will always email me if they need to check with other members of their party first. I also ask them to let me know if they are intending to post back the form with a cheque, which might take longer than the 72 hours.

Essar wrote:If I am given a mobile number with the enquiry; after sending the quote/response, I will always send an sms text message confirming that I have responded in an email and what to do if they don't receive it.

This is a great idea! Think I'll give it a try too.

I'm amazed at the effort you're putting into documenting enquiries Cas & Irene. I simply auto file them in Outlook so at least I can count them for each advertising source. The work involved in tracking everything in Excel must be huge. I guess with a large number of enquiries, you'll have good statistics on how any change in tactics was effecting the success rate.

I used to always send a plain text message with no links as well as the main enquiry reply.

The plain text message was something like:

"I've sent a full response to your enquiry - the links sometimes cause this to be filtered as spam, so please do check your junk email, or let me know if you still haven't received it"

This actually resulted in two bookings over the six years so it does happen. I must admit I got bored of doing it in the end, though I'm sure it could be automated. It wouldn't be hard to make this email do double duty as a polite reminder, sent after two days.

I never assume that they have received our initial room offer as the "offer" email contains a link to pay deposit and sometimes over-zealous filters interpret this as spam; so we also send a short, plain text "backup" email from a separate email account to confirm that we've sent the "offer" email and ask them to check their spam if they haven't seen it.

As for reminders, if we haven't heard back in a reasonable time ("reasonable" depends how far off the arrival date is - for most, I give it 48 hours) we send a final email saying the enquiry has been closed but get in touch if you still want to book or haven't made up your mind.

That works for us, but everyone has their own way of handling these things.

I'm amazed at the effort you're putting into documenting enquiries Cas & Irene. I simply auto file them in Outlook so at least I can count them for each advertising source. The work involved in tracking everything in Excel must be huge. I guess with a large number of enquiries, you'll have good statistics on how any change in tactics was effecting the success rate.

It takes just a few minutes to put those info in a spreadsheet. OK making this spreadsheet cost me some of time. But now I use this sheet for the third your and make only some little changes.

We mentioned the date, a unique number (month and follow up number like 02-114) name, country, requested dates, no. of guests, no. of nights, no. of cabins or Self-Catering, email address, source with counting and 3 cells for result. Green fill with follow up no. is ¨Booking¨, Yellow enquiry still open, Brown closed with reason (full, price etc) and Red for no reply.

When a booking is made, we safe the sheet under the unique number and clean the sheet from the other enquiries and safe it again. There are several tabs behind the sheet and the data cells are connected with the main sheet.

Second tab in that sheet is the calendar, with colours I fill in B&B bookings and the SF Bookings.
This tab is a little bit double because the same data is also in FreeToBook, but this calendar is for me easier to handle and can put more info in this spreadsheet.

With one click we have a complete filled in check list (for our use), a check-in list, Booking confirmation, a check-out list, guest self-service F&B list for B&B and SF.
All in a template format so ready for print out and use.

From the original main sheet we can read in a few seconds how many enquiries we have received and from which source, outstanding enquiries, how many booking we have and the source.
Enquiry names in red are still open, black closed and red cursive means that we have send a remainder
We stored this (and many others docs) in Dropbox, so we can both work on the same updated document on different places.

Sounds all maybe a little bit complicated but as mentioned before , takes not more than 2 a 3 minutes to fill in the enquiry/guests info and the Excel formulas does the rest of the work.

For us is this so far, the best way to handle easy the huge amount of enquiries we receive, and have quick a view about the status about the enquiries.
With an easy search in 750 enquiries, I can see in a few seconds how many enquiries we had from Germany (and the source) or another country. Useful information to make our strategy were ( or were not anymore) to advertise in the future.

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