This week, I have received three emails I did not have a clue as to what they were selling, if indeed they were selling something.
I tend to like my beer not adulterated with lime or trickery, prefer my whisky not adulterated by ice or cinnamon and my TV watching not complicated by adverts and too many channels. If I find nothing of attraction to watch or something potentially interruptible, I do not watch anything.
I celebrate restaurants if they have a menu of two starters, two mains and one or two deserts.
Do not offer the world, just your very small world prepared and presented to perfection.
The same goes for marketing. Like all of us, I receive almost countless emails, some of which I have no idea how I signed up for. Numerous times I wade through a treacle of words only to realize I have no idea what the message is. Then I find myself not bothered in the least to find out what the meaning is.
Then I delete.
I think this is common behavior.
Make something too complicated and people do switch off and are far less likely to return.
In a complicated world, simplicity is correctly regarded as a luxury, as is one’s time.
Hoteliers increasingly realize, I am sure, that such a sentiment put into practice can lead to higher average daily rates, spending and revenue per available room.
I think we would all benefit from more simplicity.
Over the past couple of years, I have enjoyed collecting URL addresses of websites — which are essentially marketing tools — that comprise only one page, the home page, and precious few others. There are almost no links and no press portals, gallery slideshows, white papers or testimonials one cannot really know the origins of.
Apart from the website from rock band Scritti Politti, a favorite of mine since the mid-1980s, I come across these websites as I am working on articles, and all are within the hotel and hospitality industry.
It was being impressed by the austerity of the website of this band — essentially one person, Green Gartside — that made me wonder if hotel industry-related websites might be able to do the same.
I have chosen a few to share.
On recently interviewing Olivier Granet, CEO of South Africa-based investor Kasada Capital Management about financing opportunities in Africa, I came across the website of Abidjan, Côte d’Ivoire-based investment vehicle Ayipling Morrison Capital.
What a website!
Someone browsing this website can change the language of the very simple homepage from French to English, and back, and fill in a contact-page sheet.
Spectacular!
On attending January’s Atlantic Ocean Hotel Investors’ Summit, I visited a wonderful sherry bar called La Venencia on Madrid street Calle de Echegaray, not that you would be able to gather where it was from its extremely minimal website.
The website does not have a single link, other than to a do-it-yourself webpage content management system where, I assume, this simplicity was created.
The homepage says almost only “... y no, ni nos gustan las fotos, ni se hacen reservas,” which means we do not like photos being taken of the bar, and we do not take reservations.
There are listed opening times for people who want more content.
Las Vegas might not be a simple place, but one website about it is.
Moon World Resorts wants to build lunar-themed hotel and entertainment megaresorts in such places as Las Vegas and Dubai, but you’d never know it from its website, which has only links to a contact address and requests to follow them on Facebook and Instagram, linking to the latter permitting you to see a page that says "sorry, this page is not available."
There are a few images on the other social media site mentioned.
I wish the firm every success and can only hope the website stays the same size as its operations grow ever larger.
The internet, of course, is a wonderful world of information, inspiration, data and color, but all these things are better if they are simpler to access, understand and employ, or that’s how I think.
I shy away from Jackson Pollock-like websites where every bell and whistle is used ad infinitum.
There must be other very simple, delightful websites along these lines.
Some of my commentary is facetious and tongue in cheek, I know, but the conversation is growing regarding the effect of social media and being constantly bombarded with information on our mental well-being.
Less is more.
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