If you're searching for the BA logo, we have just the place
Once a month we get a report showing how many people have visited our Web site, which properties they looked at, how they found us and much more besides. It comes in the form of a long series of figures and graphs on the screen, giving monthly and cumulative results in great detail.
As part of my job is to keep the members informed of what we are doing, these Web stats are extremely helpful, particularly when the numbers go on rising, as they have done since we appointed David Grant to write the new site a year ago.
Among the more curious findings from today's report are the phrases and search words - often misspelt - that have brought some people to the site: from "who was anne bolyn", "how can i find hotels with jacussis in the cotswolds" and "unusual weekend breaks" to the more worrying "adult contacts swindon wiltshire". As many as 120 people came to the site looking for "british airways logo" and there was one who wanted "wales (contry)". We've even had people searching for specific hotels that are not members of Pride of Britain but the component parts of their name feature somewhere in our text. Over the past year visitors have looked at the site for an average of three minutes and 20 seconds, about the time it takes me to explain the difference between a consortium and a chain at dinner parties.
In our case, we judge the success of the site principally by the number of click-throughs to member hotels' own sites, although this may change if we adopt an online reservations system, currently under discussion. There is quite a bit of work to do at our end collating special offers and responding to brochure requests received as e-mail. In fact, the more we attempt through this medium, the more dependent we become on our main computer. It is a love-hate relationship between man and machine.
Never has this been more starkly obvious than a couple of days ago when it broke down and had to go back to the manufacturer. Mild panic ensued. Plan B was put into action - use the older, weaker computer for everything and hope for the best. My predecessor was a keen exponent of the fax machine, and I suddenly saw the wisdom of his ways, wishing that I had learnt about speed-dialling instead of useless attachments.
When we got the hardware back everything was fine, and the quiet clicking of the keyboard restored to our small office in rural Wiltshire a reassuring calm.
Peter Hancock is chief executive of Pride of Britain Hotels
Next diary from Peter Hancock: 16 May
