Adapting in Hospitality: Why Now is the Time to Be Nimble, Visible, and Brave
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If you’re a freetobook customer, you’ve most likely met our Account Manager, Heather Scott.
A former B&B owner herself, Heather knows the highs and lows of hotelier life. From the day-to-day grind, to the glowing guest reviews that make it all worth it. It’s this past hospitality experience that makes her so understanding of our customers’ needs.
Heather leads our change of ownership process – making it simpler for independent hoteliers like you to make the best of our booking software. Recently, Heather met a major milestone, managing the change of ownership for 1000 properties! We sat down with Heather – on one of her brief breaks – to talk all things freetobook (ftb).
Congratulations on the 1000th change of ownership, Heather! How simple is ftb’s transferral process?
“Buying or selling a property can be stressful,” admits Heather. “At ftb, we’ve developed a seamless system for handling changes of hotel ownership. We also advise how to handle changing over other channels like booking.com, Google etc.
Once that’s done, new owners have all the support they need from me and our Glasgow-based Customer Service team as they learn to use the digital services required to run hotels these days.”
It’s a process that Heather’s completed literally a thousand times and obviously has a passion for. Every property has a story: “taking over a hospitality business is so exciting and is often a complete change of career for people!”
Post-COVID recovery, the cost-of-living crisis, and competition from chains have made hospitality a rather unforgiving landscape.
Having run an award-winning B&B in Scotland, Heather has first-hand experience of the challenges ftb customers face in this tumultuous industry. The advent of AI and automation in tech makes this human understanding even more important.
“You don’t know the challenges of running a B&B until you’ve had someone wake you up at 2am for the WIFI code!” laughs Heather. “Anything I can do to help ftb users avoid the mistakes I made, I’m glad to pass it on.
My advice for new hotel owners would be to deal with your booking engine first so that you’re open to forward bookings. All too often, people get preoccupied with painting and decorating, only to find they have no income when they reopen.
The great thing about this industry is that it survives because people always want to travel.”
Having the best tech and the right support helps hoteliers not just survive but thrive. Heather’s superpower is knowing how to navigate the latest tech, as well as everyday practicalities like making breakfast.
Ftb staff have over 200 years of combined experience in travel technology. If you’re new to hospitality, you can access our established knowledge base as soon as you sign up!
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