We saw this concern from a team traveling in to a rather competitive tournament coming up in the next several months. We removed the names from the message.

Just an FYI. When I first communicated with the HOTEL REMOVED two weeks ago about reserving 18 rooms for the tournament in late April, the front desk told me I must speak with the Sales Manager (NAME REMOVED). I’ve been leaving messages for NAME REMOVED for two weeks, and she has never returned my calls. When I called again this AM, she finally answered and said she’s now out of rooms with double beds.

It’s disappointing to incur long distance charges and someone will not return a possible customer’s call, especially when you’re trying to schedule an almost 900 mile (round trip) road trip. I’m not sure if she had enough rooms when I initially called, but lack of communication resulted in wasting two weeks. I will try another hotel at this stage, but this is not a good representation for your tournament.

The hotels in your area are part of your soccer tournament brand. The quality of the tournament will be judged by whether or not the teams have a great hotel stay.

Our Advice: Work with your hotels closely. Call them weekly, perhaps even daily as your deadline approaches. Yes, they will probably be sick of hearing from you and your calls will go to voicemail, but since they are an integral part of your event, they should know that their performance with your guest teams are a top priority.

As team applications come in, mark the ones that are local and follow up with all others as soon as possible. Make sure that two weeks do not go by as the team is trying to book rooms.

Follow up note: The tournament director replied back almost immediately, volunteered to find rooms personally and the team found rooms nearby. One special mention is the team rep sent a note to the tournament director, closing the loop on the issue.

I received an email from one of our soccer tournaments yesterday, asking if we would put one of those soccer news feeds every other soccer Web site has in the sidebar or on the front page. The logic, he said, was that visitors would stay on the page longer reading the news and that is a good thing for sponsors.

Despite the conventional wisdom of these news feeds making pages sticky, they only really serve to “fill up space” for web sites that have a hard time coming up with fresh material. TourneyCentral soccer tournament sites don’t have that problem as there is always something going on.

Keep this in mind; Teams at a soccer tournament care about their games and their scores. The best way to serve your advertisers is to put them in the DEALS area and plug them. Even then, you’re only going to get major traffic at your deadline, when you accept teams, publish the schedule, directly before the tournament and during for scores. (and to the rules page when teams start losing on tiebreakers but that is a whole other article 😉 )

You are a DESTINATION site. Visitors go to your site for one reason only, to participate in your soccer tournament, i.e., apply, get scores, standings, deals, etc.

All this other stuff is just a distraction, clutter and more stuff to maintain that adds absolutely no value whatsoever. It is the same with online games, “engagement tools” like a spirit center, even photo uploads. If it did add value and it would help you monetize, we would already be doing it. It is in our best interest to generate page views as well.

Our Advice: You are better off writing news about YOUR tournament. Publish that on the front page and publish often. Engage with your teams by email when a significant event happens. (significant to them, not you.) And always be thinking when writing your news items, “What’s in it for my guests?” If you can’t come up with an answer that you would believe yourself, pass.

Soccer teams are out there foraging for soccer tournament deals. They are using the down economy to leverage acceptance of their lessor teams into more elite tournaments. Some of using the promise of attendance to get hotel comp deals for their coaches, special scheduling considerations and lots of other perks. Do you do it?

Whether or not you cave in depends on how strong your brand is and why you are holding your soccer tournament. If you have consistently provided an elite experience for teams, delivering on your promise of great competitions and college coach exposure, you are probably not hurting for teams. In fact, you may be doing better than most years as teams are trimming tournaments in favor the higher quality ones. For the teams looking to leverage a “deal” with you, that is more or less a delusion on their part.

If you are holding a tournament to raise money, you will probably take the teams with the hope of filling your bracket and not falling apart before the economy gets better.

Our advice: Always plan for down years. That means holding back some cash for years where you may not attract as many teams due to the economy. Caving in to team demands when they have the upper hand in a recession is almost never a good idea because:

• you then set the true value of your soccer tournament and
• there will be no reciprocal loyalty. Teams that are always looking for a good deal on price almost never care about your brand and will not do anything for you long-term to help build your event.

While it may be painful in the short term to decline team enticements for them to come to your event, learn from this and begin applying some solid brand-building principles for the next time a recession comes around. Only then will you ensure your place on their list of “must attend” soccer tournaments.

And, if you feel you must work with teams, make sure there is a win-win arrangement coming in or you will find yourself on the losing end of any deal you cut.