Last week, The Economist published an article called “The click and the dead” that concludes that ecommerce favors large companies. While that may be true in some instances, we think that there are plenty of exceptions. In fact, one of the reasons we founded LetMeGo was to allow small lodgings to compete with large ones. What do you think? Has ecommerce helped your lodging, or hurt it? Let us know by commenting on this post.
Photo By Arria Belli
Alexander is LetMeGo's co-founder and jefe. Here is his LetMeGo 
I agree with content of the article: notwithstanding my wast of money in advertising (google and others) i have no hosts..
My opinion is that there are too many structures the large and the little and people doesn’t have money, must we move towards
low Cost ?
Ecommerce helps irrespective of large or small companies. Being our smalll and budget hotel, ecommerce helped us to reach our customers all over the world.
Think the internet, the opportunity to put your own offering up there in amongst those with huge budgets, and ultimately the ability to communicate to people all over the world certainly has made our business (countryside based self catering accommodation in Loire Valley) able to attract travellers from all over the world, all through the year.
10 years ago we realistically would have been restricted to paid for listing in huge tomes of other similar properties or tiny ads of a few words and no photo’s in classifieds….
So many more ways to reach so many more people looking for just what we are offering in a format we can control and a price we can both control and vary according to demand. Can’t ask for more than that ;D
I have recently built a business of rooms-in-a-castle to help the renovation of a 12century castle.
Whithout Internet and Hotel special websites 15 yearsago I would have not reach my sales of the first month whithout paying a fortune in printing publicity !!!
Long live Internet !!
I sincerely believe that without internet advertising I would have no business at all, how else would I put myself in front of potential customers?
ecommerce is the only way forward. However, I find that some sites are now charging more and more for upgrades which is pushing us smaller businesses to the bottom of the list.
The internet allows a more even playing field for small accommodation providers. The biggest cost in internet exposure is your time. Our two roomed B&B now comes out top when our town is googled for accommodation even though the others have been around a lot longer as well as being bigger. And 75% of the hits on our website have come from google searches. There is no way, we could advertise to potential customers on the other side of the world without the internet. Also there is scope for being very targetted in where you do advertise. Not the scattergun approach of the old newspaper or radio adverts. The world is so much smaller now – only seconds away.