Caterer and Hotelkeeper – 36479

THE Internet has come in for a battering by the mainstream press in recent months as technology shares hit rock bottom, taking most of the stock market with them. However, April saw the number of UK households connected to the Web pass the nine million mark (that's more than a third of all homes) and a BBC Online survey revealed that most firms in Britain adopt e-commerce strategies in order to be seen as cutting-edge.

Weaving a Web site

So are Web sites the way forward for the hospitality industry? The major players certainly think so. Two years ago the leisure services wing of Sodexho had no Internet or e-commerce strategy at all. Tony Barnard, marketing director of Sodexho UK, remembers the situation well. "In mid-1999 I saw a survey by IBM that said 75% of businesses in the UK didn't have an e-strategy," he says. "We were one of them."

Barnard and his team came up with a Web site service that could be used by clients and consumers alike. "We had tough, three-year targets set by the group, so any help in generating orders was a bonus," Barnard remembers.

Sodexho.co.uk gives consumers and the company's clients and contractors access to a number of sites under one roof. Businesses can place orders for day-to-day catering or banquets, or have access to information about catering equipment. Consumers can place orders for private parties, including wine and floral arrangements.

Two million people a day eat at Sodexho canteens and restaurants, but until now that is as far as the relationship has gone. "We've been reaching these people for an hour every day and letting them walk away for years," explains Barnard. "With the Net we want to build on that relationship."

The main thrust of Sodexho's group of Web sites, however, is in the business-to-business arena and is not cheap, although costs vary. Some Web sites can be produced for as little as £1,000, while others cost 20 times that amount. It depends on requirements.

"In total, Sodexho's new UK online presence cost a few hundred thousand pounds," reveals Barnard.

Corporate Hospitality Online was the first part of Sodexho's online offering and was launched in October last year. "Our numbers for online bookings aren't great, but the overall number of bookings is up 5%," concedes Barnard. "Part of the order-taking process is asking where a client has heard of the service and in many cases it was on the Web."

Barnard thinks there is still a barrier to people making the actual bookings online, but in terms of offering information, the Web has its benefits. "A lot of people who book have secretaries or PAs," he explains. "They are the people that download or review the information and then present their findings."

Online orders themselves may not be going through the roof yet, but the number of visitors to the site is impressive. For the month running from 23 January to 23 February, 2001, the number of visitors was 1,817.

Each looked at an average of nine pages and stayed on the site for approximately four minutes and 15 seconds.

Launched in February, Conferences Online is the newest addition to the Sodexho Web offer. "Users can download maps and use the 3D virtual tours to see exactly what a venue is like. There's also a dedicated e-mail service for each venue," says Barnard.

In less than a month the Conference Online site had 1,508 visitors, who looked at 30 pages on average and stayed just over nine minutes. From this, the site received eight bookings. "It was expensive, but worth it," says Barnard.

Booking ahead

At the other end of the online booking experience is another hospitality giant, Hilton International. The hotel group has been taking bookings online for four years.

"The Web site has become integral to our business," says Gareth Gaston, director of Internet development.

Hilton International's Web site pulls in one million users a month, making a staggering $500,000 (£353,000) a day when averaged over a week.

"We're breaking new records with visitors," says Gaston. "The majority of those who use the site book online. We do have customers who research online and then call, but not many."

As successful as Hilton International's site has been, Gaston and his team have been working on a new version, which launched at the beginning of May. The price tag for this new site (containing some 30,000 pages) was in millions of dollars, but the majority of that will be for the back-end software and hardware.

As well as straightforward HTML (the coding language of the Internet), there will be an XML interface. In English, this means that the site will run on a variety of hand-held devices from mobile phones to mini-computers. Gaston says this will be achieved in the next six months.

The site will also be featured in advertising, specifically to drive traffic online and increase bookings made on the Web.

"We save money when customers book using the site," says Gaston. "Because they don't make a telephone call, it saves them time and it saves us money."

So, despite its bad press, the Internet is fundamental to the hospitality industry's future. For Hilton International, that means translating the site into a variety of languages. "Our ultimate aim is to communicate to all our clients in their mother tongues," says Gaston.

For Sodexho, the diversity the Net allows is the principle attraction. It also supplements the company's other means of communication with clients and consumers, which still include phone, fax, e-mail, brochures and information at point of sale.

"A multi-channel strategy is the only way forward," says Barnard. "That's why single-channel dotcoms were doomed to failure… "

… And why, if used correctly and not exclusively, the hospitality industry's use of the Web is not. n