Fort William accommodation group celebrate £1,000,000 of online bookings
The Fort William Accommodation Marketing Group (FWAMG) announced that they reached £1million of online bookings in July 2019. FWAMG was created in 2011 by 8 local B&Bs recognising that working together was the only way forward for small independent businesses in this very competitive market. Run entirely by volunteers, the group then created a website www.fortwilliam-guesthouse.com to help make themselves more visible.
Chairperson (FWAMG), Carmen Beale, said “Working since May 2013 with Freetobook has allowed us to develop our ideas cost effectively and gave us the ability to compete effectively in the marketplace against the suffocating power of the Online Travel Agents (OTA’s). £1million of online bookings shows how local co-operation is being realised in the hospitality sector here in Lochaber. It allows us to manage our business on our terms, and maintain our profits.”
The B&Bs could see that sharing a website and using Freetobook’s booking engine to bring together member’s availability online made it much easier to cross-refer enquiries when they were full. This saves time, improves booking levels across the group and provides a streamlined booking service to guests.
Since adding the Freetobook ‘Together’ booking engine 6 years ago, the group has also grown to 43 members and commission free bookings have grown each year. The group is open to all B&B’s and guest houses in the Fort William, Glen Spean and Glencoe area. We would encourage all B&Bs and guest houses in those areas to look at our website and consider the benefits of joining.
About the future plans for the group, Carmen added: “We strongly believe that the future of micro businesses such as ours is about co-operation, not hostile competition. To that end, we would like to establish a national network of independent local groups like ourselves. By working together we could raise the profile of all of the groups (including FWAMG) and provide locally based, visible and effective alternatives to the corporate OTA model across the country.”
FWAMG has also recently acquired the website www.fortwilliam.co.uk and are in the process of refreshing the site and encouraging accommodation providers, businesses and activity providers to join at a minimal cost. The FWAMG committee members are very proactive and are certainly very busy for a small group of volunteers.
