$22,000 to build a dream home

My fascination for practical, cosy, modern and cost efficient properties is being revealed by this house build by the Morino's home. Here come some first pictures:


 See how the space is structured:









For more details and photos there is the reference link, down below. Would you be willing to live in such a property? I think is fascinating to have a simple place to stay that allows you to concentrate on the most important things, spend more quality time with your partner, travel and discover new places, flexible to move around instead of being bound to a place and having to pay a high cost to maintain, also time to keep it running. 


Source:
http://news.distractify.com/abby-s-marino/itty-bitty-house

winter solstice - why days are getting darker

Winter Solstice is a topic that concerns many people during 22nd of December, 2014. Articles appear in BBC News and other reliable sources. What is a winter solstice? Wikipedia will offer you a structured format to get yourself documented.

HotelMinder - marketing tool and online bookings

HotelMinder has its headquarters in Dublin, Ireland and provides applications, consulting and management services to Hotels, Hostels, B&Bs and Guesthouses in many countries all over the world, since 2010.
 
They assist property owners and their staff with everything they need to run their business efficiently - whatever its size and requirements!

What kind of products they offer? Check some of their services in other to gain a more detailed understanding on how they would be able to support your business and property:

 

More and more properties are looking forward into connecting they property online, to more than just one booking portal like Expedia or HRS.com. After they are live on different channels, they find it hard to keep the pace and update rates and availability so that they avoid over bookings. Here is where a Channel Manager solution would make sense. Here is a list of favorite partners to chose from:

Personal Brand - SlideShare

Slide Share has also an option of bringing to life your own Brand:

Personal Branding Passport-Gigoing

Companies are constructing their brand identity from day one and evolving by changing the logotype, vision, mission and culture as they grow and achieve more an established status quo. What about each one of us? We should seriously think about promoting ourselves and be able to market our values in a relevant manner.

This idea has been in the back of my mind for a time and was looking for the perfect tool to just do it. Gigoing is a Spanish company that lunch just the products I was looking for:

Moreover, it allows you to create projects and in the future have a viral effect by sharing it with your network

Booking Button and Engine Stromberg Resort Germany

Booking Button from Booking.com

Small and even bigger size properties face the problem of not having integrated a Booking Button or Engine into their own website. I have seen even 4 star hotels that do now have this function and they rely purely on the bookings that come from the online distribution Channels. 

A quick fix solution is having the booking button provided by the biggest player in the market: Booking.com The property is already paying commission when a booking is done directly on the Extranet and also pays the same commission when the booking comes from their website. Ups.... trouble. Yes, you heard it right. The property is investing money in marketing to drive traffic to their own website or just benefiting from positive reviews, that take the client directly to the personal website of the Hotel. 3rd scenario would be a client is looking in the Extranets and then goes to the webpage of the hotel. In the end, again a commission would be paid to Booking.com

Better way to do it is to have an own booking engine that can be linked directly to the Extranet when a booking comes from the personal page of the hotel. See the example of Resort Stromberg

Also, we can look inside once the booking button has been clicked:

What are your concerns when looking for a Booking Engine? Price, integration with Extranet, technical implementation. Hospitality industry has to keep up the pace with the new consumer than is active online, now more than ever