As a small, remote, seasonal resort, the upscale 79-room Rancho de Los Caballeros in Wickenburg, AZ faces any number of challenges in attracting both guests and staff. But General Manager Cathy Weiss Pereira has been using the Internet to do both better every year.

"We now hire about 70% of our new staff each year over the Internet," she reports. "We advertise on CoolWorks (www.coolworks.com); clicking on the ad takes you to our Web site, where we lay out all the positions, terms and conditions, and include an on-line application form. Since many of our staff come from other seasonal resorts whose open and closed periods fit nicely with ours, we do much of this hiring sight unseen."

"This sounds like a major gamble - and without even a photo or their handwriting you do miss out on being able to get a feel for a person's character - but we find that our Internet hires are consistently more intelligent, have better skills and stay with us longer than others. And when we close for the summer, we can use the 'Net to help our staff find jobs at ranches in Colorado, Montana or Wyoming, which definitely helps to build loyalty so they'll return to us for the following season."

How about advertising and reservations? "We initially put up a Web site almost as an afterthought, but have been amazed at the steady increase in reservations it's pulled in. Potential visitors find our site through any number of search engines; once there, they can request brochures, e-mail us directly for more information, or call our 800 number, but we don't have a direct booking link to the front office system. Very often they have a lot of questions about our facilities - we offer a very wide range of activities! - what to bring to wear, and so on, and we spend quite a bit of time selling them over the phone. But the site really does bring in a whole section of business we weren't reaching before."

Any purchasing? "We do some general purchasing over the Internet, and find we get better values and a wider choice of goods and vendors. F&B is still bought directly from the vendors' reps, but we are looking at ways to use the 'Net here, too."

"Certainly, for guest reservations and for employee hiring, the Internet is the biggest thing we've got going for us as a niche property."

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