Name of your website?Hotels Armenia Reservation Center
Your name?
Hovhannes Gevorgyan
Your Location (city, etc)
Yerevan
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Our site is facilitating on-line reservation for accomodations allover Armenia. We have a large and up-to-date database of luxury and budget accommodations that suites different taste of the visitors to Armenia. We take customer requests both on-line and off-line and carry them all through to successful booking completion. We also offer day-tours, restaurant and airticket booking, and car rental to accommodate individual travelers' request.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
I worked at the Armenia International Airport before. High level tourist arrivals growth in Armenia during the past few years led to increases in number of hotels and accommodations in Yerevan and in the regions. And I had thought that it would be a great idea to setup a website to facilitate booking process. It was also improtant to let customers know about hotels special events and discounts. So I created my site, understanding customer demands.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
In 2007; www.hotels.am is my first site.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
Hotels.am is a name that reflects my business primary objective. Anyone looking for hotels in Armenia might think to search for hotels.am.
What makes it different from other, similar offerings?
We are located in the heart of Armenia, Yerevan; we provide live support. We are not just a hotel listing site. We are human and being located in the area, we are able within minutes respond to changing customer requests, by making quick calls and finding required information from the hotels and other accommodations.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
Keep for income.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Within this year I am planning to reach break even. I am close to my goal.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
I would add more admin tools to be able to check and update my site more regularly myself, instead of using technical staff.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
Yes, I will be glad to increase my traffic 10x and more. It will increase my site credibility and I will be able to make more reservations, and also on-line advertisements.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
My site maintanance is an issue. Any broken links or problems in transactions are crucial. I don't want to stay in dark if my visitors are having problems using the booking feature and it is not working.
Recently I started to cooperate with a company to improve my site day-to-day technical maintanance.
What has been your biggest challenge?
Understanding what to improve to increase my site bookings.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
I have only started my on-line promotions one month ago. I found out that press releases, article submissions, directory links, also forums and blogs are effecient.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
I am just learning that I need to work hard on optimizing my site for search engines and promoting it heavily to my target market. I thought that only by having a website would help.
How long have you run the site already, and how long will you continue to keep it up if you don't enjoy big gains in traffic, income or popularity?
The site had started in February 2007. I am planning to keep and improve the site. Hotels and accommodations booking will stay my primary business. I also do other side business: rent a car, tours, airtickets. But my focus is and will be Armenia hotels booking services.
What is the aim of completing this interview?
I hope that a good review of my site will be published on your directory, and as a result we will have, valuable links and increase of visitors to our site.
What is your website address?
Hotels Armenia Reservation Center
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