A one page business plan? Yes it's possible....

Business Vision, Mission Statement, Objectives, Marketing Strategies..... There is nothing more overwhelming to a potential or new business owner than the thought of putting all that down on paper!

The One Page Business Plan is an enjoyable book that will assist you as you create a solid foundation for your business. Once you have completed "The One Page Business Plan" you have in your hand, the basis of your brochure or web page or networking and marketing plan, all on one page! What more can a New Business Owner ask for!



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Is Your Business on Google Maps?

How do people find your business?Control your listing and speak for yourself

Millions of people search for businesses on Google Maps and on Google.com (Google is the new Yellow Pages), so it's important to make sure your business listing can be easily found on Google.com and Google Maps. Using Google Local Business Center, creating a great listing takes just a few minutes and doesn’t cost a thing.

Your Google Business listing would also be available through Google Maps for Mobile, 1-800-GOOG-411 voice directory search, and Google Earth. On any of these services, if someone searches directly for your business name and city, your listing will most likely show up. Google will also show your listing for searches for your business category or other related terms.

Your business probably already shows up on Google Maps and Google.com, but do you have control over your listing and are you sure its details are accurate and thorough.

Do yourself a favor, go to Google, type in a term related to your business and your local city and state, i.e. if you are in the Pizza business type "pizza bristol pa". Take a look at the results. Is your business listed on the first page, if it's not potential customers will not find you. This is where Google's Business Listing come in.

Practical and easy to manage
Your Google listing is an easy way to maintain an online presence even if you don’t have a website. You can visit the Local Business Center anytime to edit your information or see how many people have seen and clicked on your listing.

Premium options, all for free
Make your listing really shine with photos and videos; custom categories like your service area, brands you sell and how to find parking; and coupons to encourage customers to make a first-time or repeat purchase.

Don't have time to create or claim your Google Local Business Listing?
The BITS Group can help you claim, create and fine tune your business listing.

Contact sales@thebitsgroupinc.com for more information. Read more ...

Spyware encounters of the worst kind

It's unfortunate that very talented people feel they have to create destructive programs like Spyware and Viruses, when they could put all that talent to much better use. Recently two of my neighbors were victims of these destructive programs and asked me to look at their computers. They were seeing messages that their PC's were infected and that they should enter their credit card numbers and purchase software that would get rid of the viruses. Luckily, they did not give up their credit card information.

The PC's were infected with PC Antispyware 2010 and PC Security 2009 two nasty viruses. If you catch these viruses early, you can remove both of these by booting into safe mode, installing Malwarebytes free version, running the scanner and rebooting your PC. But the longer they are on your PC, they harder they are to remove. My neighbors PC's had the viruses for well over a week. So I had to use a three step approach (sometimes only step 1 and 3 are required to repair, I would try that first).

Step 1, boot into safe mode.
Step 2 download and run Combofix (read the instructions and follow them to the letter)
Step 3 download and install Malwarebytes, run the scan and reboot

These procedures work in most cases (and I haven't had to reinstall an OS yet) but do take time and patience. Use these procedures with caution.

One last note, if you are interested in a good reference about Spyware and Viruses you can read more at BleepingComputer. Read more ...

What should hoteliers look for when selecting Hospitality Mobile Service, Marketing and SMS solutions?

With Mobile phones being a key and cost effective Guest Technology Touchpoint, what questions should hoteliers be asking vendors and what features should they look for when selecting a solution?

Below are my top 10, and these are just some of the questions hoteliers should ask and features to look for. For more about low/no cost entry level solutions and higher cost full featured solutions read "Mobile Service, Marketing and SMS Tools for Hospitality" at http://budurl.com/MobileServices

1.Does the solution integrate with your existing systems? If the solution has a Guest contact or information capture option, how does this information integrate into your existing PMS, Sales and Catering system, Guest History system? Ideally, you do not want to have to maintain a separate Guest Information database.


2.If the solution has mobile portal tools, can existing website content be used or will you need to budget for web development time?


3.Does the solution work globally? If many of your Guests are international then the solution should be to acommodate and International carriers and multiple languages. Also, make sure you understand costs and convey any cost impact to your customer.


4.Does the solution work for any phone. Least common denominator is SMS Messaging, then moves to various levels of browser as well as downloadable applications (i.e. IPhone).


5.Can the solution work for a single hotel or scale to an enterprise with hierarchical levels of management?


6.Is the solution client based or cloud based? Ideally, a cloud based service would be best, minimizes hotel application management and can be accessed from anywhere.


7.Where does Guest Information live, who in the service providers organization has access and what happens if the service shuts down (how can your data be accessed)?


8.Guest Loyalty, services such checking of points, checking reservations, confirmations, coupons, special targeted packages, use of the mobile phone to replace the membership card.


9.Check in/out, allows the customer to bypass the people touchpoint if they want to. But also allows the hotel to be notified when a Guest is on their way to the hotel when the Guest checks in remotely. When the Guest checks in remotely, a message can be sent back about hotel services and events.


10.Event and Emergency Information, can be sent to the Guest with a sponsored by message if the Guest is attending a citywide convention or a hotel group meeting. As well, in an emergency situation alerts can be sent to Guest mobile devices.
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Monetizing Free:The Future of a Radical Price

Perhaps we can get some traction on monetization of free services since Chris Anderson/Wired Magazine Editor has written a book about it.

What services are we speaking about? Free HSIA and Free to Guest TV to start, but can also extend to the Free Breakfast or Free Coffee and Croissants in the Lobby before the restaurant opens.

"Monetizing Free", is concept I have mentioned to some in Hospitality a few years ago with minimal interest and it still may concept that the industry will NOT take kindly to. But with revenues down and expenses up, monetizing free services or what I call "Cost Recovery" is an area that should be considered.

Can Free Services really be monetized? Absolutely!

Pick up a copy of the book, read it from cover to cover, then contact me (whether you pick up the book or not) and I can show you how to implement these concepts in your hotel, mdu, hospital, hotspot and from the smallest bed & breakfast to the largest hotel/brand with little or no startup/capital cost using existing infrastructure.

I look forward to hearing from you.


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Touchpoints: Leveraging your Guests mobile phone....

If you have a Guests Mobile phone number you are one step away from an always on brand conduit to that customer. But once you have the opt/in approval from the customer, what can you use it for and how do you keep the customer from opting out?


The keys to leveraging the Guest Mobile phone are:

1)Provide Guests with useful information about their reservation, and about your hotel and outlets and facilities

2)Provide Guests with useful information about area events, weather, and even flight information


Enter Skigee. Skigee is a new SMS tool from Knowcross that can help you "provide your Guests with useful information about their reservation and about your hotel, outlets and facilities". Skigee is simple to use, simple to implement and allows you to do very targeted SMS messaging and marketing to your customer.

What is unique about Skigee is that:

-There is no cost for software or licensing
-There are no server requirements (clients are installed on designated machines)
-There are no costs for interfaces to PMS solutions like Micros Opera 4.0/5.0
-The only costs for the messages you send to your Guests (Domestic or International)

Contact The BITS Group today to see how Skigee can help keep your hotel brand in front of your loyal customer.



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Mobile Self Service, Marketing and SMS Tools for Hospitality

When considering Mobile Service, Marketing and SMS tools for your business determining what your needs are is key to choosing the tool(s) you should select. There are basically three tiers of use (basic/standard/premium):


MSGNOW (basic) - Message Now uses tools simply to coordinate groups of people, provide updates, or send emergency notifications. With this option you would not maintain any Customer contact information.


PUBLISHPLUS (standard) - Has the same tools as Message Now but also has Mobile websites, contact capture pages, campaign management, and promotion tools.


SERVICENOW (premium) - This more advanced service has all the features of MSGNOW and PUBLISHPLUS, but also may have full services such as mobile self check-in/out, loyalty programs, campaign marketing, mobile bill payment, guest room access, hospitality system interface capability and hotel alerting (i.e. when a guest checks-in remotely hotel staff are notified that the Guest is on his/her way).

MSGNOW examples:

A restaurant that wants to advertise their specials daily/weekly/monthly/immediately and gives a keyword to the customer to text to. The customer subscribes and receives updates when the restaurant wants to update all customers. Customers can opt out whenever they want. Great loyalty builder and keeps the customer thinking about the brand.

A hotel could setup a keyword (groupname/qname) and issue it to the Meeting Planner/Coordinator who would then issue to all the attendees. The attendees would subscribe while at the meeting and would receive updates from the Meeting Planner. What an easy way to communicate a short message to all attendees rather than send an email or have to call all the attendees. The hotel could charge a fee for this service.

A hotel could use this as an emergency notification service in case of emergency, bad weather, etc. to notify all employees.

One of the best options for the above examples is TextMarks . A simple very cost effective solution. Works for only US carriers at this time though, but there is no cost for the free service but messages are limited to 120 characters
and you will have to put up with a Textmarks ad.

Send a textmsg to 41411 with the keyword "BITSONTECH" for a sample message (US only).


PUBLISHPLUS examples:

A convention exhibitor wants to send updates to attendees while they are on the floor with special offers or party location information (hello Hitec Exhibitors). Exhibitors could include the keyword in their pre-convention email and keep in contact with attendees before during and after the convention. A well done mobile site can keep attendees coming back for more information. Exhibitors now have a more significant database of information as they have the mobile phone contact!

A hotel could use this information as a lite version of Passkey (without the reservations option) where websites can be created for the Group so attendees can be updated with pertinent information. There could be a service fee associated for Groups.

One such PUBLISHPLUS type service is Everywhereigo. While it has a free module, the most effective use is the basic or pro editions.

Send a textmsg to 77950 with the keyword "mac08 schedule" for a sample message (US only).


SERVICENOW examples:

A hotel can offer mobile self check-in/out to alleviate lines in larger hotels and potentially reallocate staff.

A hotel can offer a branded mobile portal for their Guests that can be used before, during and after their stay. By adding portal tools that would consolidate their travel plans, flight status (that notifies them via SMS if anything changes on their flight, why place the big screens in lobbies when you can offer it on a mobile and get the key Guest touchpoint), reservation information, things to do in the hotel, things to do while visiting the city, service partners, etc. to drive incremental revenue.

A hotel can send notifications, promotions and coupons to Guests who are members of Spa's, Health Club, like particular wines, holiday dining notifications, etc.

Several such services are Fonekey and Skigee .


Another SMS based service of note is:

ReadyPing is an easy-to-use, cost-effective, text message notification service utilizing hardware that restaurants and consumers already have: computers with Internet access and mobile phones. The fact that people always have their phones with them is a key reason for businesses to capitalize on the mobile medium for a variety of consumer services. Furthermore, there is no reason for a restaurant or any other business to invest in a pager system when customers already have a paging device in their pocket.

The host simply enters their name, party size and mobile phone number. The system adds names to the Waiting List in the order they are entered and tracks how long they have been waiting. When a customers table is ready, the host clicks a button next to their name and a text message is instantly sent to their mobile phone letting them know the host is waiting to seat them. This allows customers to roam wherever they wish (inside or outside the restaurant) until their table is ready.

Contact The BITS Group to see how we can assist you with your Mobile Services strategy.
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Internet Video on the TV is now available to Hospitality

Consumption of Internet (Streaming) Video is growing exponentially.



Click here for more information about VuNow Read more ...

Using Twitter to grow your business....

Twitter, just another flash in the pan or can it be used for business?

After implementing Twitter last week and then reading Twitter Power: How to Dominate Your Market One Tweet at a Time this week, I already see results, even a question from Moscow! Gotta love the Internet....


Twitter Power shows you how to leverage the power of Twitter for instant business benefits-like reaching new markets and increasing sales. You can build a loyal customer following, expand your brand, and generate instant buzz when you integrate Twitter into your existing marketing strategies. The best businesses of today and tomorrow are using this high-tech, low cost and low-hassle technology to gain real advantages over their competitors.
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Guest Touchpoints: Maximizing the four screens

Guest Touchpoints, as hoteliers we typically focus on the people aspect, and rightly so, after all this is a people oriented business.

But as technology evolves, becomes easier to use and Guests are more comfortable with it in their everyday lives, where are additional opportunities for hoteliers to further use technology to touch the Guest. Enter the four screens:

-Guest Room Television
-Guest Laptop (connected to the hotels HSIA system)
-Guest Room Telephone (display phone, not as pervasive)
-Guest Mobile Phone (a very important touchpoint, Guests always have their mobile)

While, these are obvious touch points, as an industry, we have not really leveraged any of the four screens to their full potential.

How do you leverage the four screens technology to maximize every opportunity to communicate your brand, hotel services, and partner products/services to your Guest?


Looking at traditional Guest communication, people, print, radio, broadcast tv and more recently the Internet, brands have spent significant funding to bring Guests to our hotels (Commercials, TV/Print/Radio Ads, SEO/SEM/PPC/AM-affiliate marketing). But once a Guest has arrived, they are in your hotel guest room, hopefully using your hotels f&b, television, hsia service, telephone and their mobile phone. Guests are now in your abode, by choice. They are either loyal customers and prefer your brand and what it has to offer, are choosing because of convenience (location) or because of price. Regardless of why, the fact the Guest is, that Guest is in your hotel.

So shouldn't we take further advantage of the opportunity we have to touch that Guest, to further enhance their brand loyalty and generate incremental (untapped) revenue by leveraging our technology investments?

Let's take a look at some options for each of the four screens, some obvious, some not so obvious:

Guest Room Television
>National Advertising, broadcasters are already presenting your Guest with national, regional, and local ads while they are at your property as part of primetime shows, sporting events, etc. Why shouldn't your hotel participate in that revenue stream?

>Hotel Magazine Advertising, the hotel magazine is a thing of the past,and is not evnvironmentally friendly, however it is full of pre-qualified (by your brand)advertising. Why not digitize this advertising and present these partners on the television? According to the AHMA, 94% of travelers turn on the television when they arrive in their Guest Room.

>Hotel and Partner Services, hotel services (restaurant, room service, spa, meetings, etc), partner services (restaurant, shopping, tours) can all be digitized and offered on the television (eliminate the hotel information guide, channel guide, and local ad magazines).


Guest Laptop (connected to the hotels HSIA system)
Guests almost always use the hotels wi-fi, especially in a free to guest environment.
As with Television, similiar opportunities are available at different points of the Guests HSIA experience.

>Pre-login, upon connecting to the network before the Guest connects to the Internet an ad or video can be displayed (national ad/video, hotel ad/video promoting hotels services or partner ad/video). This can work very well in a free to guest environment and can also be used as the point to upsell bandwidth.

>Landing page, a customized page (not the regular old page we are used to seeing) that has tools that are perceived by the Guest to be useful can be presented. This page can be branded, and can present the hotel and its services, weather, breaking news, date/time, a Guest message, and the major links on the Internet to email services, entertainment, social media, travel sites, even digital video. A useful page can even be utilized by the Guest outside of the hotel.

>Post Login (in session), while this may seem intrusive, there are several ways to keep in contact with the Guest and monetize the session.

-An always on browser overlay, that shows hotel ads/messages as well and most importantly services the Guest would perceive as useful, (printing, weather, wake up call, flight status, etc).

-Affiliate Marketing, while the Guest is using the hotels HSIA, they are going to various websites to do business, purchase items, make travel arrangements, visiting social media sites, watching digital video and viewing home and local information. These are just natural uses of the Internet. Affiliate relationships can be created with almost every site a Guest goes to while in your hotel and hotels can earn Affiliate commissions without impacting the Guest experience.

-Timed ads, while on the Internet and ad can be shown that promotes a Guest service, i.e. "Join our poolside Happy Hour BBQ today at 5pm" or a partner service on a timed basis.


Guest Room Telephone
While Guest Room display phones are not yet pervasive (and may never be). Guest Rooms phones can be used to display a scaled down version of the same information as displayed for the television or laptop. Use of the Guest Room display phone to promote hotel services/hotel information guide and room control device is a more useful application.


Guest Mobile Phone
The mobile phone is the Grail of Guest Technology touchpoints, what more could you ask for than to be able to touch a Guest whether or not they are in your hotel, on a device that they always with them, on an opt in/out basis of course. Guests will allow themselves to be contacted on this most personal of the four screen options only if there is useful information/services made available to them. Services, such as:

>Guest Loyalty, services such checking of points, checking reservations, confirmations, special targeted packages, use of the mobile phone to replace the membership card.

>Check in/out, allows the customer to bypass the people touchpoint if they want to. But also allows the hotel to be notified when a Guest is on their way to the hotel when the Guest checks in remotely. When the Guest checks in remotely, a message can be sent back about hotel services and events.

>Event Information, can be sent to the Guest with a sponsored by message if the Guest is attending a citywide convention or a hotel group meeting.


While there are varying aspects of the four touchpoints and varying technologies to reach each device, it is critical to be able to measure how and how often these services are being used (metrics).

For instance, the Guest Room television, do you know how often each channel is being watched? If a channel is not being watched why would you continue to present and pay for the channel? HSIA, do you know in aggregate the most popular websites your Guests visit and how much bandwidth is consumed? These are all assets to be measured to see what's performing and what's not. Not to mentioned that marketing potential of having this information.


Each touchpoint gives you various opportunities to communicate with the guest, provide additional services and monetize your technology investments, how far you go is up to you.

The next article will list various products and services you can use to leverage the four screens and how your hotel can implement these technologies.
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Odiogo: the web read for you

Odiogo is a new free service that voices the contents of your blog posts for your readers. Kind of a reverse Dragon Dictate (speech recognition software) where your speech is translated to text by your computer. With Odiogo, you write and it reads your content, and best of all it converts posts to podcasts so your readers can take your content with them...

Read more about Odiogo... Read more ...

Netbook: taking the plunge.....

In December of 2008 the display on my trusty Gateway laptop broke. So I connected it to an external monitor and a TV for a while, but then I had scheduled roadtrips and presentations coming up. My Gateway would no longer fit the bill and I didn't particularly like lugging a laptop around anyway. I had tried working off my phone for several years (just not there yet), so I thought I would try a netbook. I choose the Acer Aspire (1.6 ghz Atom processor, 1 gb ram, 160 gb hard drive, svga external display, 3 usb slots, ethernet rj-45, wireless b/g, sd memory card slot, microphone/heaphone jacks, built in camera, and ms windows xp home edition). Right price, right functionality....

I initially thought the keyboard was a little small, but after a few days I was comfortable with it. I loaded up the Aspire with my favorite Opensource applications (AVG free anti-virus/anti-spyware, ZoneAlarm firewall, Scan2Pdf, PDF995, CamStudio, Audacity, VNC, Skype, Spybot S&D, ZipGenious and Secobackup) and I use Google's Gmail, Calendar, Docs that live in the cloud.

Am I using the netbook as my main computer, yes, and it is working very well.

I would recommend it for any business traveler (battery life is about 3 hours) and definitely for students. At a price of $329.99, the Acer Aspire netbook is a very good value. You can purchase a netbook from Amazon (your favorite electronics website) or your local computer store (if they are still in business)......

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Health Status Dashboards for Google Apps and Amazon Web Services

Both Google Apps and Amazon Web Services provide Health Dashboards for their services that allow you to see the status of services on a current and historical basis.

These Dashboards are valuable tools for businesses that use Google/Amazon. Use them to ensure SLA's or to investigate historical availability if you are considering Google/Amazon cloud based services.

You can find these dashboards at:

Google Status

Amazon Status Read more ...

Bandwidth: are you getting what you paid for?

You've signed a contract with an ISP for a 10 mb data service with an SLA at 99.999 uptime, but is it really a 10 mb service? Perhaps over time it seems to slow down, and you only hear about it when someone calls to complain. So how can you ensure SLA's and get what you are paying for?

To start, make sure that your ISP provides you with SLA reports on quarterly basis at minimum. However, as the old saying goes, "Trust but verify".

The following are several tools that can assist you with metrics and historical reports about bandwidth usage.

Free tools to historically report on bandwidth usage:
MRTG - Monitors SNMP network devices (in this case your router)and paints a picture of the traffic usage on the device.

PRTG - Monitors and Classifies bandwidth usage on SNMP network devices and paints several pictures of what is occuring.

ISP SLA Monitor - Uses Cisco's Netflow Data records to present usage information. (note: while this tool is standalone and free, it is used to upsell you to Solarwinds Network tools).

Free tools to measure bandwidth:
DSLReports - Test your bandwidth speed, perform a through line test with this free service.

MLAB - While this set of watchdog tools has been created to look out for number 1, once again Google has created a service that is certainly going to keep the ISP's on their toes. Measure bandwidth, troubleshoot a connection, check to see if BitTorrent is being blocked, etc....

As well, if you utilize a multi-homing device i.e. XRoads, Elfiq, Fatpipe, etc, check if they have any SLA tools built in to their products (I know XRoads does....).

Bottom line, there are several options to help you ensure that you get what you pay for..... Read more ...

Deliver Guest Room Wireless over existing in room ethernet cabling

Do you need to deliver wireless and already have an ethernet cable in your Guest Rooms?

Tired of having to deliver wireless access points for your customer Meetings at the last minute?

Using HDComm's HD24613 wired/wireless jack you can deliver "Wi-Fi" to any area you have an existing ethernet cable. The HD24613 requires an ethernet cable and power over ethernet. If you don't have POE enabled switches, no worries, each jack comes with a power injector.

Read more ...

Internet Phone Service for small business that saves you time and money....

Internet Phone Service for small business
The RingCentral virtual phone system with a Toll Free 800 or Local phone number delivers all the power of a “big company” system but with no hardware to buy and nothing to maintain. It’s an ideal telecommunications solution for mobile professionals, home offices and small companies.

Set up in minutes
When you sign up for RingCentral, you immediately get your own Toll Free 800 or a Local Area Code phone number that serves as your business’ “front door” – Or, you can transfer your existing phone number into RingCentral and enjoy the same features that help you effectively manage your business communications.

Now you can answer calls on your existing mobile, home and office phones, or even on your PC. You can also use RingCentral to send and receive faxes, automatically route calls to any member of your team regardless of their location and provide callers with an auto-attendant (e.g., “Push 1 for sales, 2 for shipping, 3 for billing,” etc.) and a dial-by-name directory.

The new way to manage business communications
Best of all, you can set up your virtual phone system online in minutes, all by yourself. You don’t need to have an engineering degree, and you don’t need any hardware. And your RingCentral virtual phone system can scale to meet the needs of your business as it grows.

You can put the power of RingCentral behind your business for as little as $9.99 a month. There are no long-term commitments and no cancellation penalties. RingCentral even offers a free trial so you can try out the service for yourself. RingCentral is the first virtual phone system developed specifically to meet the needs of small businesses and mobile professionals. Try it for free – it’s the powerful, cost-effective new way to manage business communications! Read more ...

Jott: Turn your words into actions

How do you keep track of tasks and items to follow up on?

Do you..... stop and write a note, send an email, capture a voice memo

Why not simply Jott.....

Jott is a service uses voicemail transcription, simply call the Jott 800 number to capture thoughts, create to-dos and set reminders with a simple phone call. You can even post to Twitter or Facebook.

Jott, easy to use communications for people on the go.....

Learn more about Jott Read more ...