Putting Heads on Beds: The complete practical guide to marketing your independent hotel or guest accommodation

Very good book, with strong details on the hotel business!

Here's a question. You've bought a book that purports to offer advice on how you can maximise the potential of your hotel/guest house. The author offers various tips and ideas and at the end of the book, asks for your feedback or comments and provides his email address for you. So far so good - except he misspells the name of his own company. (Hotesalessuccess.co.uk instead of Hotelsalessuccess.co.uk).Faced with such astonishing carelessness, do you now:a) Still trust all the advice and tips you've been given ?orb) Start to wonder if you've wasted your money in buying the book and your time in reading it ?Michael Cockman might well be a hotel uber-guru, but he's not much of a writer. But that needn't be a problem. Neither are most of the authors on the best-seller lists. What they have and Mr Cockman clearly doesn't though is a good editor and a good proof-reader. The former to provide the discipline and structure that are totally absent and - let's be honest - some nod in the general direction of literary style; the latter to avoid embarrassing typos on the last page. (Supreme irony here is that Mr Cockman quite rightly emphasises the importance of 'first impressions' in the hotel industry. Maybe 'last impressions' in publishing were worth a thought too ?)All this could be forgiven though if the book actually told you anything. Here's an abbreviated para from the Preface:"I wrote this book as a practical guide for owners and managers of independent accommodation business...It doesn't matter whether you have a large or small hotel or call yourself a hotel, pub, bed and breakfast or guesthouse...the challenges are the same."And having set out his stall to be all things to all accommodation owners, Mr Cockman then spends most of the ensuing 300-odd pages advising big establishments how to attract corporate clients. That's fine if you run a big establishment, but not much help if you really do own a B&B or a guesthouse and don't boast a bar, or a restaurant, or room service, or minibars, or a spa (with which Mr C has a strange fixation), or any more of the multitude of bolt-on goodies that hoteliers seem compelled to provide in order to survive nowadays.I'd be churlish if I didn't admit there were a handful of decent suggestions. I highlighted twelve. In a book of 313 pages costing £8.99, that works out at one good idea at a cost of 75p every 26 pages. Which isn't that great really.You scream in frustration at the lack of case studies showing how Mr Cockman's ideas/suggestions have been implemented. What's gone right ? What's gone wrong ? Opinion is presented as fact and the arbitrary is presented as reasoned and thought-through. Sorry and all that, but this is a complete and utter crock of the first order.I started this review with an example of a crass carelessness and I'll end with one. On p304, Mr Cockman salutes the achievements of Howard Schultz, the founder of Starbucks - and calls him Howard Scultz. Please let me never, ever, ever stay in a hotel that follows the Cockman ethos.

I have found Michaels latest book very informative and very relevent to the hotel industry. The thought process he explains is also a process which I use as a hotelier in the hotel industry in Europe. I think the book is very clear in some very basic sales and yield techniques to improve business and fill up beds. The book is very practical and you can see that it is based on the authors experience gained over many years in the business. I will certainly use it as a tool for training in my hotel.

As a Manager of 50 bedroomed hotel i found Mr Cockmans book very informative indeed,We have been using his book as a training guide for various areas within our hotel and it has not only improved the service we provide it has also increased our turnover.Mr Cockman has a natural talent for problem solving within the hotel trade and i think after reading this book you feel that you can overcome any problems that may arise.The amount of good ideas that came out of the book were great,Far more than other reviews have noticed.I have no hesitation in recommending this book for anybody who wants to improve their hotel or guest house because it certainly put more heads on my beds.Thanks Mr Cockman

This is a marvellous book. I worked with Michael in New Zealand and he was a great mentor to me personally. Now in this book he has summed up all that you need to know if you are marketing an independent hotel. The layout is very logical and some of the sections, particularly on the structure of the business, are particularly helpful to new entrants to the hotel business.I can't recommend this book enough.John Farrell, Area Director of Sales & Marketing, Accor Hotels, New Zealand & South Pacific

Putting heads on beds is a straight forward, practical manual on how to maximise the most from your hotel. This book is packed with helpful, easy to follow tips to turnaround and improve businesses, suppported by longerterm stratergies to boost sales and marketing. Offering advice from the obvious to the more ambiguous ideas - I think this book useful for any independent hotel owner or indeed anyone with a small business in a relevant industry. Highly recommended.

This book encapsulates everything you need to know to generate business for your hotel. The major international hotel management companies do everything, albeit on a smaller scale, that is in this book - conveniently miniaturized so you can apply all of the same marketing principles to fill your property, however small. Michael Cockman is the accomplished expert, with years of experience and proven ideas. Do what he says and your business will likely prosper.

Michael Cockman's book is extremely useful for owners and managers of small independent hotels or guest accommodation with limited resources who want to learn more about marketing themselves.His writing style is easy to understand and jargon free with simple to follow bullet points. Chapters include leadership style, creating a committed team, direct marketing, advertising, planning marketing activity as well as implementing systems for an easier life.Having been a hotel and marketing specialist for 25 years, Michael Cockman's tips are practical and relevant. This is an invaluable handbook for everyone new to the hotel business.