If you are not from The Philippines
Thank you for visiting this page. If you are Filipino and have five minutes time please read on on this page as we could use your feedback. Valuable feedback we can even reward with the contact details of the Mallberry Suites Hotel you are probably looking for.
Of course we have that available, but in life in general things are not for free, so we would prefer something in return.
Main reason for this page is to get some feedback about doing business in The Philippines, so I would appreciate if you fill in the contact form with some feedback for me. You may want to read the rest of the page before doing so. Your feedback (any feedback) is very much appreciated.
If you are not Filipino
If you are not Filipino you might even want to read on a little bit more than if you would be a Filipino as there may be some useful information below. Of course I would very much also appreciate your feedback>. If you are also living in The Philippines you may recognize some things and have useful information for me.
Please put your feedback. We need it to improve the economy of The Philippines and our business.
My story
Basically I would just like to tell my story about this site and maybe my story about being a foreigner trying to run a business in The Philippines. The last I find not easy and it's the main reason to address you this way right now. This site has quite a lot of visitors, so maybe I can reach my goal by just writing here.
I don't really mind anymore revealing who I am related to this site. However, I won't put my name here. I guess you can find out easily enough who I am if you want to and I still have a (company) name to protect in the Filipino way as I understand it.
Complaining?
Often I hear people say "you're complaining" which I don't really understand as I still believe my intentions are good and as I still feel like I'm trying to do something positive. If you feel I'm complaining, please bear with it. Seems just to be part of me.
This site
Looking back to the idea I had when starting this site was, well uh, quite stupid. Sometimes I have 'weird' thinking that's difficult to follow for other people and I guess the start of this site was something like that. A positive way to my 'weird thinking' of course would be creative thinking.
We're kind of related to tourism and did some hotel sites. We're also focused on high quality websites. As I consider Mallberry Suites a high quality hotel in Cagayan de Oro, of course they were a 'target' as a potential client to have their website made.
Ah, one thing more, I noticed on one of our hotel sites that many people were ending up there looking for "Mallberry Suites", that's why I started my commercial research. During this research there were two things that I found out:
- There is no website at the domain mallberrysuites.com, just a login form.
- I made a typing mistake when searching: I typed 'malberry suites' instead of 'mallberry suites'.
As I presumed many people would make the same typing mistake (or thinking mistake :)), as Mallberry Suites was a target client and as the domain malberrysuites.com was still available, I decided to buy the malberrysuites.com domain. Here comes my 'weird thinking' as I thought I might have an edge towards Mallberry Suites owning the 'typing mistake domain'. Basically I just wanted to turn it over to them the moment they would have their website made by us (and I still would like to do that).
How wrong I was. Of course my thinking would not work anywhere in the world, as who would understand my reasoning about domains and 'being found' on the Internet and 'trying to force a customer with offering something weird'. However, that's just my 'weird thinking'. But there is more: understanding Filipino business culture being a (western) foreigner.
Filipinio business culture
Please don't misunderstand me, my story is not about issues I see with Mallberry Suites, its managers or its owner(s) as I see similar things in many Filipino businesses. Mallberry Suites is just an easy 'target' for me as I ended up making, managing and following this site, so better call it sample.
And also, when you feel like I'm 'complaining', please accept that I'm just trying to learn, trying to understand, trying to improve. From my culture 'learning from mistakes' is a very common thing to do. What I see in The Philippines 'learning from mistakes' is very hard, as people for cultural reasons (embarrassment) don't speak out, which to me is very hard, as it's a lost opportunity to learn.
Going back to Mallberry Suites it's very hard to understand why they don't have a website, especially looking at the number of requests we got through this site (and still get). To me those requests I could not do anything with, were just lost opportunities for the Mallberry Suites Hotel to get bookings. Of course I presume many people who really want to stay in Mallberry Suites would find a way to contact them. However, people who were 'just trying to make a booking' would just book with another hotel, meaning to me 'lost business'.
So why did I not contact Mallberry Suites. Well, for a 'cultural reason' as I'm often warned not to connect to people straight away trying to sell our services. And as I don't have a connection to the owner of Mallberry Suites, everything seems to stop here. Which means, as I see it, not only Mallberry Suites loses business, but I'm also losing business. The last is very hard to deal with as I still did not figure out how to deal with this kind of issues I see.
And this may be a very nice place to stop writing and asking for your feedback how in Filipino culture I would connect to the owner of Mallberry Suites to explain that having a website (my service) might benefit Mallberry Suites.
Am looking forward to your comments!
Some link
Well, did not know where to put this: Terrastar is a moving company in Baltimore.
And also this: Fireplace Repairs Houston.