We've recently heard many stories of hotels that feel stuck with their current emarketing provider. Sometimes hoteliers are immobilized by ironclad contracts that give all website rights to the emarketing vendor. Other times a hotel is locked in a perpetual relationship with an emarketing provider due to proprietary technologies and accounts. Of course, these types of lock-ins are never a problem when the customer is happy, but when things go south that's when the swords come out and the legal dogs are let loose.
Nobody likes to be locked in a partnership, particularly with a business that has let them down. Maybe the product you purchased didn't live up to the marketing hype. It could be that the customer service just stinks. Or perhaps the quality of the service provided is the pits.
Regardless the reason, you're disappointed. You paid the big bucks and you've got nothing to show for it but frustration. In the best case scenario, you complain directly to the company via social media or navigate the dreaded automated phone maze in order to reach a live human being, only to get platitudes about "quality" and that company's commitment to "service." Most of the time though, you make a mental note of the offending brand and vow never to support their evil empire of shoddiness again! Unfortunately, in some instances you're met with a dead end: you've purchased a product or service that locks you into some sort of agreement that you are unable to break without some sort of severe psychological or financial cost.
How To Trap A Client
Here are just a few examples that we've seen of hotel clients who have been locked into unhealthy relationships with other vendors. The hotel names have been removed to protect the innocent.
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Trapped by a Contract:
Hotel 1 had signed a contract with a vendor that provides emarketing services but was interested in switching to a new emarketing vendor. The old vendor had built their independent website and provided some dubious ecommerce services. Understandably, the hotel was unimpressed with the performance and the company's overall attention to detail. Since the hotel entered a contract with the vendor, the General Manager was simply waiting for that agreement to expire before moving on to Blue Magnet. Unfortunately, upon further review of the vendor's contract, the hotel came to realize that the vendor actually owned the domain name and the design of the site! This meant that even if the hotel let their contract with the vendor expire they still would not be able to take their website with them. After all, according to the contract, it was property of the vendor! As a result, the hotel would basically forfeit their entire website and any search engine performance earned by the site thus far. Essentially the hotel would have to rebuild their site if they wanted to change vendors. They were trapped, just as the vendor had planned. They wanted out of their contract, but doing so would financially harm their hotel in the short term.
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Trapped by a Proprietary Product:
Hotel 2 had paid an emarketing vendor to create their website, but had since decided to go with a new emarketing vendor. Part of that transition from one emarketing vendor to the next involved the management of the hotel's independent website. Unbeknownst to the hotel, the site was developed on the vendor's proprietary content management system (CMS). This was fine while the hotel was working with the vendor because they managed all the content through the proprietary CMS. However, the hotel soon discovered that it would be unable to migrate the site away from the old vendor without breaking all the code that tied the site to that vendor's proprietary CMS. As a result, the hotel had to invest additional funds into rebuilding the broken site in an open, non-proprietary format with the new emarketing vendor. The open format would allow the hotel to freely move the site to whichever vendor they chose without the headache caused by the old vendor's system. Although the proprietary CMS may have offered slick features and options unique to that platform, it needlessly bound the customer to that provider.
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