Name of your website?Hikurangi Lodge Queenstown Bed and Breakfast
Your name?
Andre Meyer
Your Location (city, etc)
Queenstown
Please give us a short summary of your website?
Hikurangi Lodge is a bed and breakfast Lodge based in Queenstown New Zealand. Our position on Queenstown Hill offers our guests surreal views of the Southern Lakes and mountains that are world famous. You can confirm your bookings online and have immediate confirmation.
What inspired you to launch your own website?
Our web pages continues to be updated as the seasons change in Queenstown as well as more events come to the Southern Lakes.
When did you launch your first website, and what was it?
Our web site was launch in 2000 when we opened the bed and breakfast. We have relied on this for our marketing from day one. The Internet has been a great technology for small businesses.
How did you decide on a name for your website?
We thought it best to be the name of Lodge. Easy to remember.
What makes your website different from other, similar offerings?
We make sure we keep it current with instant booking confirmation and events going on in Queenstown.
What is your eventual goal? (To sell it, keep it for income, secure a book or other mainstream media deal?)
We have reached our goal. We simply wish to keep well enough to keep meeting and greeting people for the four corners of the world.
How does your investment of time and money balance against your success?
Some things and life cannot be measured like this however we accept if we could not profit from it would be a waste of our time. If you look at it by the hour however you may not start this business in the first place.
If you had an unlimited development budget for development, how would you change your site?
We are happy where we are just now. We have changed the web site 4-5 times in the last 9 years. Simple, clear and clean is what we believe works. People only have a few seconds to get a positive impression. A site does reflect on your product.
If your site got really big, really quickly, would you be able to keep up with the demand?
In our business this is not an issue. We simply put up the No Vacancy sign. It is easy to control.
What unexpected costs and headaches have you had to deal with?
Of course the normal house appliances are used more with cleaning. Larger washing machine and dryer are required. So where normal applications may last 10 years when you are running a business from home and are busy they will not last forever.
What has been your biggest challenge?
When to say no.
What method has been most successful for promoting your website?
Working hard on our keywords and keeping up with the technology as it evolves. We spent a lot on Google Adwords. We are moving away from this now as it cost alot.
How has running your website differed from your expectations?
You can never know it all. The environment continuous to evolve. We have tried to target the required demographics with Facebook and this has worked well and sent a lot of traffic to our web sites.
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?
We have been going almost 10 years and see no reason to stop in the near future.
The best technology.
Google has turned the world upside down. What is on offer at the click of a button is amazing. The trick now is to know your market and focus on those people who are now profiled and available via Twieter, facebook, myspace and other social networks and communities. This is the big change in the past few years.
What is your website address?
Hikurangi Lodge Queenstown Bed and Breakfast
