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This question is obviously extremely awkwardly worded. Atheists of course do not believe God exists (no if), and as has already been pointed out by many of the answers, all of recorded history was written over the course of less than even half of a thousand generations. So instead, I will be answering the question which seems to be the intent of the poster: what do atheists think about when the Bible was written, and how accurate are its accounts of historical events? This is a topic that many scholars have dedicated their entire careers to studying, and I intend to cover most of the highlights of what I’ve read investigating this question myself.For starters, as others have noted, the only people that actually think the Bible is entirely, literally true are fundamentalist Christians and extremely conservative Jews. Fundamentalist Christians make up a minority of Christians, though they are a sizable minority. Most Christians and the vast majority of Jews do not take the entire Bible as historically accurate. The Catholic church, the largest Christian denomination, does not formally require literal belief in the entirety of the Bible (anymore). Even though most Christians and Jews don’t believe the Bible to be wholly accurate, they probably on average are notably more accepting of its account of history than atheists.While some atheists obviously outright dismiss the Bible entirely, a more reasonable approach taken by both atheists and theists who want to know whether to believe the Bible’s account of history is to apply modern historical methods and look at what the archaeological evidence shows, and it does overwhelming show that at least some of it is likely historical. Figuring out what happened in history is a major field of academic study, and people have put a lot of time and effort into studying the Bible using modern historical methods and subjecting it to critical analysis.Probably most atheists who have investigated this question have read various books by academic atheists who write books for the general public. A few notable such authors would be people like Bart Ehrman, Robert Price, and Richard Carrier. Additionally, many theists have written excellent books critically analyzing what in the Bible is historically accurate. I have read and would recommend any of the following on the topic:Who Wrote the Bible by Richard Elliott Freedman101 Myths of the Bible by Gary GreenbergThe Power of Parable by John Dominic CrossanGospel Fictions by Randel HelmsAnything recommended by Robert Price on his reading listForged: Writing in the Name of God by Bart EhrmanObviously the Bible is the work of many authors writing different books at many different times. Many of the books are the product of multiple, distinguishable individuals. Most of our oldest existing manuscripts of the books of the Bible, both the Old and New Testament, come from more than a hundred years after the time of Jesus, and it is obvious that there has been a lot of both major and minor editing of the original texts by different Christian and Jewish sects with their own theological and political agendas. The task of determining what the actual text of the Bible should be is by no means a trivial task given the diversity of the manuscripts, nor is it really reasonable to think we can actually determine the original text with a high degree of accuracy. In the New Testament alone, the number of manuscript variants is four times the total number of words in the entire New Testament.I will give a quick overview of some of the books that I know about. The articles on Wikipedia on each of the books are ok for a quick introduction and do usually mention the historical critical perspective, but they are obviously strongly biased in favor of the naive historical reliability perspective of the faithful.Old TestamentThe Old Testament historical books, which are the ones of primary concern to this question, i.e. Genesis through Chronicles excluding Ruth were probably written between approximately 1,000 BCE and the 500s BCE. Wellhausen’s Documentary Hypothesis in the 1800s revolutionized and laid the basis for modern understanding of the Pentateuch. While some of Wellhausen’s original work has been severely criticized, his basic idea is the foundation for how modern scholars view the origins of the Pentateuch. The Pentateuch was the product of at least four distinguishable sources, designated J (authors called God Jahweh), E (authors called God Elohim), P (concerned particularly with Priests), and D (author of Deuteronomy). These sources were written by competing fractions of priests in ancient Judah, ancient Israel, and the Babylonian exile, and at different times in history under the influence of different kings. They were combined, probably as part of a religious compromise when political powers forced reforms, and they underwent notable modifications by different redactors. Several of the distinguishable redactions probably occurred at the time of King Hezekiah, King Josiah, and finally after the Babylonian exile in the time of Ezra in the 500s.The author of Deuteronomy probably wrote at the time of the reign of King Josiah just before the Babylonian exile, and the author who wrote Deuteronomy probably also wrote most of Joshua through Chronicles. It is plausible that the prophet Jeremiah or someone associated with Jeremiah was the author of the Deuteronomist history, and there are traditions in the Jewish Talmud supporting this idea. After the Babylonian exile, Ezra, or the priests of his time were probably responsible for the final redactions that produced something relatively close to the versions of these books in modern Bibles.As far as historical reliability of these books goes, very little is historically reliable. Archaeological evidence has failed to confirm any of the stories in the Bible from Genesis up to and including the reign of Solomon. None of the stories that take place before the time of Saul, David, and Solomon have any historical plausibility. Saul, David, and Solomon, if they existed which is by no means certain, were probably petty kings whose kingdoms, power, and wealth were greatly over-exaggerated in the Bible. It is plausible that things like the Ark of the Covenant or the Tent of Meeting might have existed, and that later priests actually used the codes of laws mentioned in the Pentateuch, but the Ark of the Covenant and Tent of Meeting certainly weren’t built as a result of divine decree at Mt. Sinai by a bunch of Hebrew ex-slaves using their plunder from Egypt, nor were the laws written by Moses taking dictation from Yahweh. Moses, even if he existed, which is also far from certain, can only be relegated to the realm of myth since almost none of the stories about him are historically plausible and he is shrouded in legend. An interesting possibility related by Josephus was that Moses may have been a high priest of Akenatan named Osarseph, but the evidence for this is too weak to consider it likely even if it is plausible.Joshua’s conquest have Canaan has pretty much been thoroughly debunked by archaeology, and Joshua too must be relegated to the realm of myth. The stories of the judges perhaps vaguely reflect the political situation in ancient Israel before the time of the monarchy, but it is unlikely any of the stories are true, and almost certainly some of the stories of the judges are derived from the myths of the surrounding cultures. There are fairly compelling cases that the stories of Deborah and Sampson are derived from the myths of surrounding cultures. Sampson plausibly could be based in part on the Greek demigod Heracles.None of the stories of the patriarchs have any plausibility. The stories are loaded with anachronisms. Towns they allegedly visited didn’t exist at the time they would have lived around 1800 BCE. The names of many of the towns reflect later linguistic developments and could not have been the names used at the time of the patriarchs. Some of the patriarchs’ names are obviously chosen for their symbolism, like Abraham which means great father and Sarah which means princess. Also, there are many clear parallels between the stories of the patriarchs and ancient Egyptian myths like the Contendings of Horus and Seth. Furthermore, inventing stories about famous ancestors who founded your ethnic group was a common practice in the surrounding cultures. Also, archaeological evidence strongly suggests that the twelve tribes, if they existed, were definitely not descended from one family and more likely came together and united politically then invented these myths to help support their political unions.The myths of Genesis, in addition to being scientifically impossible, are too obviously similar to the myths of ancient Egypt which ruled Canaan for more than a thousand years before Israel ever came into existence. The Genesis myths are also remarkably similar to Babylonian myths that are known to predate Israel’s existence by more than a thousand years, and the Babylonians conquered and exiled the Jewish ruling class during the middle of the time when the Old Testament was being written. Also some of the ruling class to escape exile fled to Egypt according to 2 Kings. Additional influences from ancient Greece and Persia can also be found in some of the Old Testament myths as well. This is the topic of 101 Myths of the Bible that I recommend above. Some of the most famous Egyptian and Babylonian myths whose influence is the strongest are the creation myths of ancient Egypt which obviously influenced the story of the seven days of creation, Adam and Eve, and Noah’s flood, and the Epic of Gilgamesh which very obviously influenced the story of Noah’s flood. The story of the Tower of Babel probably is based off an ancient Babylonian myth as well.What is plausible in the historical books? Probably Samuel through Chronicles preserves a kernel of historical truth. The author mentions having access to records of the annals of the kings of Israel and Judah as well as a couple of other books of history which gives him a little bit of credibility, and some of what he writes is corroborated by records from neighboring kingdoms. Most likely most of the kings after Solomon existed and some of the battles they fought and wars they waged actually happened, but the account of history preserved in the Bible has been notably altered to generally portray the kings in an overly positive light or overly negative light if they didn’t support the group of priests doing the writing. The idea that any of the details of the specific stories of these kings’ reigns are actually accurate is unlikely, and some of their stories are obviously blatantly contradicted by other ancient records we have from the people who fought with and subjugated these kings.That concludes my discussion of the main history of the Old Testament, but I’ll say a little more about a few of the other books of the Old Testament.Ruth is fairly obviously a parable without much historical plausibility, and its main point is that the Israelites should be accepting of foreigners since after all, Ruth was the great grandmother of King David. It is generally thought to post date the Babylonian exile and to have been written to encourage acceptance of foreigners at a time when intermarriage became controversial.The book of Esther is almost certainly entirely fictional. The story is basically a rewrite of well known myths of the Babylonian gods Marduk and Ishtar and was written to give the Jews an excuse to continue to celebrate a Babylonian holiday that they picked up during the exile and adopted as Purim.The book of Job has no historical plausibility, even for believers. Apart from the obvious issue of the scientific implausibility of being swallowed and surviving for three days in the belly of a great fish, there are no known fish large enough to hold an entire man in its bellies that swim in the rivers of the region; there are no water ways connecting Nineveh with the sea into which Jonah was thrown, implying the only possible route for swimming was out the Mediterranean, around Africa, then up the Tigris; and furthermore the archaeological evidence from Nineveh, the capital of the ancient Assyrian empire, overwhelming suggests that there was never any mass conversion of the city to Judaism as claimed by the book.The book of Daniel is probably the book of the Bible that we can most accurately date, and it was written in the early to mid 160s BCE. It of course has no historical plausibility given the supernatural nature of the story. The reason we can date it so accurately is that the prophecies in the second half of the book can be shown to very accurately correspond to actual historical events from the time of Alexander the Great and the time when his general ruled his empire after his death. The prophecies continue to correspond with actual, verifiable historical events and continue to be accurate up until the final prophecy which did not come true at a battle in the mid 160s. It is completely fictional and was written 400 years after the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II.Notable sections of the book of Isaiah were probably the work of at least two or likely three distinct authors writing at different times. The earliest authors could have been writing was the 700s, and the latest authors were writing after the Babylonian exile. Further redactions much later after the Babylonian exile are plausible.Pretty much all of the other prophetic books of the Old Testament were written at various times during the first millennium BCE or possibly in the late second millenium BCE. Some of them plausibly predate the Pentateuch while others could have been written or redacted as late as the time of the Maccabean revolt. There is even some suspicion that passages in various books of the Old Testament might have been interpolated after the time of Jesus during the first millennium CE. This is well within the realm of possibility given that the main manuscripts used to determine what the text of the Old Testament should be are the Masoretic Text, and its oldest extant manuscripts date to the 9th century CE, ironically much later than the oldest texts for the New Testament.New TestamentThe earliest books of the New Testament were probably written in the late 40s CE. The latest books of the New Testament probably were written in Q2 or Q3 of the second century. The manuscript evidence shows that all of the books of the New Testament were being edited by Christians long after they were originally written, and they are riddled with many interpolations, just as are the books of the Old Testament. Our earliest nearly complete manuscripts of most of the New Testament date to the 3rd and 4th centuries and they show ironically that many of the passages that made it into the modern King James Bible were undoubtedly much later interpolations.It is extremely difficult to date anything with certainty in the New Testament. The authentic letters of Paul were probably written approximately between 47 and 63. The Gospel of Mark almost certainly post dates the Roman Jewish War that ended in 70 CE, though it could plausible have been written as much as a few decades later. Matthew and Luke were literally written with copies of Mark in front of them by copying from Mark into their gospels (see Synoptic Gospels) while making minor, deliberate changes and choosing to leave out some of it. Matthew probably date to no earlier than the 80s, depending on when Mark was written, but early second century would not be out of the question. Luke and Acts actually very likely were written in the early 2nd century by the same person. There are good reasons to think that the author of John knew of the synoptics, particularly Luke, which would suggest it was written in Q1 or Q2 of the second century as well. 2nd Peter and the epistles of John are generally thought to have been written in the second century as well.The only author of the New Testament whose identity is trusted is Paul, though some atheists at the extreme end of the spectrum even doubt whether Paul existed. The rest of the New Testament was written by anonymous authors (e.g. Hebrews) or authors claiming to be famous disciples or close associates of Jesus (or coincidentally having the same names as famous disciples) when they were not, e.g. Peter, Jude, James, John, etc. The main reason (though not the only) their identities are doubted is that if the historical accounts of Jesus are correct, his associates were probably illiterate peasants that spoke aramaic, not well trained scribes fluent in Greek.The only books of the New Testament that contain any significant history are the gospels and Acts. Basically, atheists and critical historians are in agreement that these books are nearly entirely fictional accounts of the life of Jesus and the founding of the early Christian Jerusalem church, though they may have some kernels of historical truth. Those kernels of historical truth are that Jesus perhaps said some of the sayings attributed to him in the gospels, though certainly not all of them, and he probably was indeed crucified and associated in some way with John the Baptist. Additionally there probably was a relatively early Jerusalem church, but everything about it in Acts is almost certainly fictional. The people who wrote the gospels were not in a position to know the facts, quite plausibly were not from the region Jesus was from, and all that oral tradition could plausibly have passed down to them across the Aramaic-Greek language barrier were the aforementioned general kernels of truth about Jesus’ life and teachings. Discerning which sayings and deeds of Jesus are historical and which are not is all but impossible, and there is wide disagreement over the historical plausibility of any particular saying or incident in the gospels.At the extreme end of the spectrum of atheist perspectives, there is doubt about whether Jesus even existed, and if you go past that extreme, there is even doubt about whether Paul existed or John the Baptist even existed. Richard Carrier and Robert Price are probably the foremost and most credible scholars arguing for Jesus ahistoricity, and I would strongly recommend their books on the topic, though they are dense reading. Additionally Earl Doherty’s book is a classic on the topic.The Jesus Puzzle by Earl DohertyOn the Historicity of Jesus by Richard CarrierThe Christ Myth Theory and Its Problems by Robert PriceThe Incredible Shrinking Son of Man by Robert PriceSupporting the extreme end of the spectrum, Renee Salm has recently completed a thorough study of all the verifiable archaeological evidence from Nazareth and has concluded that not a single piece of post Iron Age archaeological evidence from Nazareth dates with certainty to before the year 100, and most likely the town was founded after the first Roman Jewish War ended in 70 CE after 800 years of being uninhabited following the Assyrian conquest of Israel in 722 BCE which resulted in massive depopulation of the region of Galilee. There are highly plausible linguistic reasons to suspect that the town of Nazareth was later claimed to be Jesus’ home, some being that it sounds so much like Nazarene (type of person who was dedicated to God for a period of time as mentioned in the Torah), it was the name of a well known sect of Jews at the time, the Nazoreans, and it sounds like the word Nazir, meaning branch, which was associated with the branch of Jesse. When these words were transliterated into Greek, the original symbolic meaning was lost, and it was assumed that these words referred to a place. Also Mark’s gospel says that Jesus’ home was Capernaum (another plausibly fictional town based on its name and our inability to determine where it actually was), and there are plausible reasons to suspect that the surprisingly few verses in the gospels which claim Jesus’ home was Nazareth are part of later layers added to the gospels. Salm’s books also references archaeological evidence that Bethlehem was uninhabited at the time of Jesus as well, and many of the places in the gospels are likely fictional but were “found” by Christian Pilgrims looking for a place to venerate, particularly Constantine’s mother. There is actually a shocking lack of evidence for early veneration of any of the later sites of Christian pilgrimage. See Salm’s books and Frank Zindler’s article:The Myth of Nazareth: The Invented Town of Jesus by Renee SalmNazareth Gate by Renee SalmWhere Jesus Never Walked by Frank Zindler (American Atheist Press - will find a link to add later - you can download it on some website which I forget at the moment)Among the rest of the New Testament the epistles of Paul contain a tiny bit of history about Paul, and there isn’t any particularly good reason to doubt most of what Paul says about himself as it’s relatively mundane, though it isn’t verified by any external sources and as already mentioned a small extreme thinks Paul himself may be entirely made up.

Mark Twain was not the only Western visitor to the Holy Land during the Ottoman Empire.There were many others who visited and reported similar observations, though here and there, there were islands of agricultural cultivations by the sparse inhabitants.The Innocents Abroad by Mark TwainAmazon.com: The Innocents Abroad: Original Illustrations (9781948132084): Twain, Mark: BooksOn the land of Palestine"Of all the lands there are for dismal scenery, I think Palestine must be the prince. The hills are barren, they are dull of color, they are unpicturesque in shape. The valleys are unsightly deserts fringed with a feeble vegetation that has an expression about it of being sorrowful and despondent. The Dead Sea and the Sea of Galilee sleep in the midst of a vast stretch of hill and plain wherein the eye rests upon no pleasant tint, no striking object, no soft picture dreaming in a purple haze or mottled with the shadows of the clouds. Every outline is harsh, every feature is distinct, there is no perspective--distance works no enchantment here. It is a hopeless, dreary, heart-broken land.Small shreds and patches of it must be very beautiful in the full flush of spring, however, and all the more beautiful by contrast with the far-reaching desolation that surrounds them on every side. I would like much to see the fringes of the Jordan in spring-time, and Shechem, Esdraelon, Ajalon and the borders of Galilee--but even then these spots would seem mere toy gardens set at wide intervals in the waste of a limitless desolation.Palestine sits in sackcloth and ashes. Over it broods the spell of a curse that has withered its fields and fettered its energies. Where Sodom and Gomorrah reared their domes and towers, that solemn sea now floods the plain, in whose bitter waters no living thing exists--over whose waveless surface the blistering air hangs motionless and dead-- about whose borders nothing grows but weeds, and scattering tufts of cane, and that treacherous fruit that promises refreshment to parching lips, but turns to ashes at the touch. Nazareth is forlorn; about that ford of Jordan where the hosts of Israel entered the Promised Land with songs of rejoicing, one finds only a squalid camp of fantastic Bedouins of the desert; Jericho the accursed, lies a moldering ruin, to-day, even as Joshua's miracle left it more than three thousand years ago; Bethlehem and Bethany, in their poverty and their humiliation, have nothing about them now to remind one that they once knew the high honor of the Saviour's presence; the hallowed spot where the shepherds watched their flocks by night, and where the angels sang Peace on earth, good will to men, is untenanted by any living creature, and unblessed by any feature that is pleasant to the eye. .... The noted Sea of Galilee, where Roman fleets once rode at anchor and the disciples of the Saviour sailed in their ships, was long ago deserted by the devotees of war and commerce, and its borders are a silent wilderness; Capernaum is a shapeless ruin; Magdala is the home of beggared Arabs; Bethsaida and Chorazin have vanished from the earth, and the "desert places" round about them where thousands of men once listened to the Saviour's voice and ate the miraculous bread, sleep in the hush of a solitude that is inhabited only by birds of prey and skulking foxes.Palestine is desolate and unlovely. And why should it be otherwise? Can the curse of the Deity beautify a land?Palestine is no more of this work-day world. It is sacred to poetry and tradition--it is dream-land."Tim Benton's answer to Is it true that Palestine was mostly devoid of population during the time of Mark Twain's visit?Other past visitors wrote the same:https://www.quora.com/Why-do-some-Zionists-claim-that-there-were-no-people-living-in-Palestine-when-the-Balfour-Declaration-itself-mentions-an-indigenous-population/answer/Timothy-Benton-5?ch=10&share=542cc6b1&srid=B25FwMichael Davison's answer to Is it true that Palestine was mostly devoid of population during the time of Mark Twain's visit?"Al-Muqqadisi born in 946 writes of Jerusalem with its “filthy baths, dear provisions, unattended schools, a mosque without sufficient congregation or assembly of learned men... Jews and Christians have too much power."Description of Jerusalem in the book:UNITED STATES' EXPEDITIONTHE RIVER JORDAN DEAD SEA, BY W. F. LYNCH, U.S.N., 1850 p-284"No other spot in the world commands a view so desolate, and, at the same time, so interesting and impressive. The yawning ravine of Jehoshaphat, immediately beneath, was verdant with vegetation, which became less and less luxuriant, until, a few miles below, it cipitous rock, and its was lost in a huge torrent-bed, its sides bare prebed covered with boulders, whitened with saline deposit, and calcined by the heat of a Syrian sun. Beyond it, south, stretched the desert of Judea; and to the north, was the continuous chain of this almost barren mountain. These mountains were not always thus barren and unproductive. The remains of terraces yet upon their slopes, prove that this country, now almost depopulated, once maintained a numerous and industrious people."Herman Melville, Journal of a visit to Europe and the Levant, Oct. 11, 1856 - May 5, 1857 p. 137-138"Barrenness of Judea’"Whitish mildew pervading whole tracts of landscape, bleached leprosy, encrustation of curses, old cheese, bones of rocks, crunched, knawed & mumbled mere refuse & rubbish of creation. Like that laying outside of Jaffa Gate.All Judea seems to have been accumulations of the rubbish. You see the anatomy, compares with ordinary regions as skeleton with living & rosy man."So rubbishy that no chiffonier could find any thing all over it. No moss as in other ruins, no grace of decay, no ivy, "the unleavened nakedness of desolation", whitish (ashes) lime kilns, black goats."Journal Of A Visit To Europe And The Levant 1856 -1857 : Herman Melville : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet ArchiveEdward Said, After the Last Sky: Palestinian Lives. Pantheon, New York, 1986, p. 23In the Palestine Post within days of the outbreak of violence of 1936, in a letter posted from England, the eminent Egyptologist Flinders Petrie opined:The real problem is the incapacity of the Arab to make use of his land. It is increased by an ancestral preference of the desert leading to the destroying of trees on Arab land as well as on anyone else’s. The country 1300 years ago (before the Arab era) was closely inhabited. The inhabitants were killed or driven out to club together in towns for safety, and for 1300 years the land has been desolate. Is that a title to have the right to keep it so? Cooperation with the Jews and learning from them will serve the Arab more than any other policy.Jerusalem Post Magazine June 8, 1990Flinders Petrie also saw no “Palestinians.”Stan Brin's answer to If the Arab countries really wants to help Palestinians why don't they offer enough land for them to live and thrive on and be done with this stupid clash with Israel, a nation they will NEVER be able to beat in war or in politics?David Cardellini's answer to What percentage of arable, populated land in Mandatory Palestine was controlled by large, absentee landowners?Biblical Research in Palestine, Edward Robinson 1841 I p.46"As in the case of most of my countrymen, especially in New England, the scenes of the Bible had made a deep impression upon my mind from the earliest childhood; and afterwards in riper years this feeling had grown into a strong desire to visit in person the places so remarkable in the history of the human race. Indeed in no country of the world, perhaps, is such a feeling more widely diffused than in New England; in no country are the Scriptures better known, or more highly prized. From his earliest years the child is there accustomed not only to read the Bible for himself; but he also reads or listens to it in the morning and evening devotions of the family, in the daily village-school, in the Sunday-school and Bible-class, and in the weekly ministrations of the sanctuary. Hence, as he grows up, the names of Sinai, Jerusalem, Bethlehem, the Promised Land, become associated with his earliest recollections and holiest feelings."And below are his descriptions of the land he actually encountered:p.66"The bearings of these and other places, as seen from the upper Beit ’Ur, are given in the note below. The land around upper Beth-horon is exceedingly rocky, affording little opportunity for tillage. We left the place at 12 o’clock, and continued to ascend gradually among rocky and desolate hills, havingall the characteristics of a desert. The ground was in general so strewed with rocks, that it was sometimes difficult to find the way; once we missed the path, and lost ten minutes in finding it again. Add to this, the Way:-was winding, and our horses wearied ; so that from Beth-horon to el-Jib our rate of travel was not greater than with camels.p.96Mounts Gerizim and Ebal rise in steep rocky precipices immediately from the valley on each side, apparently some eight hundred feet in height” ‘The sides of both these mountains, as here seen, were to our eyes equally naked and sterile; although some travellers have chosen to describe Gerizim as fertile, and confine the sterility to Ebal. The only exception in favour of the former, so far as we could perceive, is a small ravine coming down opposite the west end of the town, which indeed is full of fountains and trees; in other respects both mountains, as here seen, ‘are desolate, except that a few olive-trees are scattered upon them.p.190S. E. Carmel is connected with the mountains of Samaria, by the broad range of low wooded hills, separating the great plain of the more southern coast from that of Esdraelon. Here large trees of the walnut are said to be prevalent. The middle point of this connecting range bore S. 64° W. The same appearance of bushes and trees is seen on many parts of Carmel ; which thus presents a less naked aspect, than the mountains of Judea.’ Seating myself in the shade of the Wely, I remained for some hours upon this spot, lost in the contemplation on this very spot. Here the Prince of peace looked down upon the great plain, where the din of battles so oft had rolled, and the garments of the warrior been died in blood; and he looked out too upon that sea, over which the swift ships were to bear the tidings of his salvation to nations and to continents then unknown. How has the moral aspect of things been. changed! Battles and bloodshed have indeed not ceased so desolate this unhappy country, and gross darkness now covers the people; but from this region a light went forth, which has enlightened the world and unveiled new climes; and now the rays of that light begin to be reflected back from distant isles and continents, to illuminate anew the darkened land, where it first sprung up.p.298The ruins at Tell Hum are certainly very remarkable; and it is no wonder, that in the absence of all historical or traditional account respecting them, they should have been regarded as marking the site of the ancient Capernaum. Here are the remains of a place of considerable extent; covering a tract of at least half a mile in length along the shore, and about half that breadth inland. ‘They consist chiefly of the foundations and fallen walls of dwellings and other buildings, all of unhewn stones, except two ruins.The whole place is desolate and mournful. ‘The bright waters of the lake still break upon its shore, and lave the ruins;"Palestine Before the Zionists - David S. Landes, Commentary MagazinePalestine a Land virtually laid waste with little population

No single 'expert' has an answer to this one that will work for everyone, and any answer I give you will be questioned (along with my 'expertise', and 'qualification' to answer the question), by someone, somewhere. So -- as with any question that calls for me to give you expert advice, I can tell you how I'd go about it, with most any hotel. Parts of it won't work for every hotel. Nor will I pretend to you that I have all the answers.(I'm assuming here that you have a marketable hotel that does not have a franchise -- or that, if you do have a franchise, you are smart enough to know that your franchise organization does not have all the answers either, which puts you ahead of 95% of the people in this business.)Here is how I'd go about it:Toss the prevailing pricing model -- if you do it the way everyone else does it, you're going to get the same results as everyone else; and if you do it the way it's always been done, you're going to get the same results you always, already had . . . at best.Hotels, and hotel chains, have so overused and worn out a single pricing model for so many years -- decades, literally -- that it is overripe for disruption: it needs to die, and be put out of its misery, and have its suffering ended, and given a decent burial. All that is needed is for someone to get creative.Get rid of any entitlement rates that you have that don't get you a return in terms of added customer capture or loyalty -- and as much as it may sound like heresy, AAA and AARP is the place to start. (If you operate a franchised hotel, good luck with that -- your franchise organization may not let you. But if it's not Choice or Best Western, each of which requires the ten percent discount, try to chip it down to something closer to six or seven percent if you must have it at all.)Your rooms have value, you want to preserve that value, and every discount you give compromises the perceived value of your rooms. They also reduce the effectiveness and all but negate the value of any discounts you might give that do benefit the hotel in some way.Never, never, never, never treat your rooms like a commodity, where offering discounts to the public supposedly equates to increased customer response. That only works for bottles of pop, or gallons of milk, or other commodities. When someone is traveling, or has a need for a hotel room, they have a need, then and there, and a discount is of little to no value -- there is not even a need on your part to assume they want a discount. If they didn't have the need, then and there, you couldn't rent it to them at any price, or even give it to them and have them show up to occupy it.The only customers to whom discounts are going to make that much of a difference, are people to whom a hotel room is strictly a discretionary purchase -- and you might want to consider carefully whether you even want those.All of your marketing is targeted marketing, not commodity marketing. The more success you can generate for yourself at drawing to your hotel people who can and will pay $200 per night for a hotel room, the better your chances of getting $200 per night for your rooms. You want to bring people to your hotel, but you want to bring the right people to your hotel.Reward extended stays -- whether yours is an all-suite, 'extended stay' property or not.Our hotel brands that we develop in-house advertise their rates, for a 'hundred-dollar-a-night' hotel, as $100/$88/$80. We offer a rack rate, a three- or four-day rate at twelve percent discount (you can have it for three nights if you check in on a Sunday, Monday or Tuesday so we can have you out of there by the weekend: a four-night minimum is what it takes for us to justify giving it to you if you check in on any other day of the week), and a seven-day rate at a twenty percent discount. Always. Without you having to ask.Since most business travelers stay two to four days, we become the go-to hotel for stays of that length.There's a catch. You have to have one of our loyalty cards. For a couple of reasons.The value of any hotel brand is directly proportionate to the number of people running around with that brand's loyalty card in their pocket.And it gets us around the 'rate parity' requirements of our agreements with Expedia and Hotels.com. If it's a 'publicly available rate', we have to offer it on online travel agency sites, and pay their exorbitant twenty to twenty-five percent commission on it. But if a loyalty card is required, it's not a publicly-available rate.(Since online travel agencies use us pretty hard, we use them right back. If you must book on Booking.com, we want to turn you from being their customer to being our customer, and calling us instead of them next time. Even on a one- or two-night stay, we'd rather split the difference with you than pay that 20-25% commission, and save you a few bucks on the room.)It benefits us as well as you. If the room doesn't have to be made up each day for a new guest, our housekeeping costs are reduced by half (or even eliminated completely, if you can agree to forego housekeeping services at all for the duration of your stay) on the days on which you plan to stay over, and we don't mind sharing. Having most of our guests stay several days also reduces the demands on our front desk, perhaps enabling us on a busy night to make do with one clerk instead of two.Support your local non-profits -- and more importantly, let them support you.Here, we'd partner with, for just one example of many possible, Habitat for Humanity. Donate ten bucks to Habitat, and we'll give you twenty bucks off the rack rate. So, on this special rate program, you get, effectively, ten dollars off your nightly room charge. During the night audit, the auditor will back out the ten dollar donation to Habitat, combine it into an account with all the others from other guests who asked for the 'Habitat rate', and at the end of the month, we send the local Habitat for Humanity chapter a check for several hundred dollars from all of the accumulated ten-dollar donations.Guess what Habitat is going to do, to keep that deal going, and the money that they get from it coming in? That's right -- any visitors to your city that Habitat, or any members of its board, or any of their more diligent supporters, get, are going to be directed to your hotel. Indeed, Habitat will probably make an urgent, if not insistent plea to their supporters that they choose your hotel. This option will probably be mentioned every month in their newsletter - both in your city and in other cities from which people who are connected in some way with Habitat come to visit your city.We never could get a deal like that out of AAA, or AARP.This can be done with any non-profit or community group, not just Habitat. I'd select a half dozen or so of them in each city (in Winston-Salem, Habitat, the Make-A-Wish Foundation, U. S. Marine Corps Reserve Toys for Tots, PAWWS [a local no-kill animal shelter], Sunnyside Ministries, and Modest Needs [Home - Modest Needs®] or GoFundMe). If you have a hotel in more than one town, you want to have the same set of groups - or at least as much overlap as possible - in each town. More can be done with a sufficiently advanced property management system. An unlimited number can be done if your loyalty cards can be linked to a database of them (conceivably, you can allow any cardmember to designate any non-profit or community group, anywhere).Bring back the reg card.I've lost count of the number of 'good' hotel marketing plans I've seen over the years that invariably contain two prominent features: 1) the list of the area's top 50 companies/employers downloaded from the local Chamber of Commerce website, and 2) not much of a plan in between for reaching decision makers from those companies and securing their referral business to the hotel other than "we're going to provide the most fantabulous service of any hotel in town!".Let's get real. You're probably not going to reach a decision maker at many of those companies without an inside connection (and I try to avoid relying on those, although if someone working at your hotel does know someone there, use it to your advantage).The most reliable way to expand your corporate and group business, and to identify potential new corporate and group business, is to scale up what you're already getting. That's why we still ask guests to fill out the registration card. It contains several fields for information that we need that most property management systems don't provide (the all-important What brings you to our town?), and it's hard to get hurried clerks to ask each customer (the even more important Company name:). They get checked against the data in the property management system, all of the fields in that are kept up to date, then they go right to the sales department - via the g.m.'s office - after the guest checks out, so the check-in process isn't slowed down.Every week, we have a meeting, and come up with a plan for following up on the information that we glean from them.Market your city as a destination -- even if you're not in Florida.You won't see that many pictures of a hotel, or a hotel room, on our website. Of course, you will, if you surf the site: we want you to know as much as you're willing to learn about the hotel and what a great place it is to stay.But on the all-important front page of the site, the focus is a bit different. You see a listing of upcoming area events. Those, not tourist attractions, are our focus.Everybody already knows that New York is the big city, that Hollywood is in L. A., that Washington is the nation's capital, that there are things to see in all three places, and those things will always be there.Everybody that knows Raleigh, N. C., already knows that Raleigh is the state capital and a business destination, everybody that knows Morehead City already knows that Morehead City is right across a bridge from a beach, everybody that knows Durham already knows about Duke University and its medical facilities, and everybody that knows Winston-Salem already knows that Old Salem is in Winston-Salem.What will actually prompt people to pack up and make the trip is that something's happening in that town at a particular time (even if that something is a personal or family event for them that no one else knows about), not that there are things for them to see and do there that are always there for them to see and do.Indeed, we'd kind of like for people to check our site from time to time just to see when a good time for a road trip to a particular town where we have a hotel is coming up, and we'll certainly pass the word about area events on our Facebook and Twitter pages.Because once you've given an answer to the question "Why should you travel to this town?" that will actually inspire the customer to take the trip, it doesn't take much more to persuade him or her, "Why should you stay at our hotel?"Especially if you can sell the tickets and the room as a package.Some towns - Detroit, Newark, Camden - have a reputation (deserved or not, at various levels) -- as rusted-out, voodoo hellhole ghetto towns. But if I own a hotel in Reading, Pennsylvania - which I'd very much like to do (there is actually opportunity for hotel developers in such places) - I want Reading to look like the most attractive vacation spot in the world. This will involve some very good, high-resolution (not to mention selective subject matter) photography, and lots of attractive shots - both of the hotel and the surrounding area - on the website.When I put my new property in Bethlehem, Pa., I want lots of Musikfest video (http://www.fest.org/ ). A property in Havelock, N. C. will likewise feature lots of video of Marine aircraft taking off. (Such a sight is taken for granted around Havelock, and the noise is a bit of a nuisance, but to a visitor to that city . . . it's a memory. http://www.cherrypoint.marines.mil/ )Get your occupancy, then get your ADR.I've seen several comments that you can get a higher occupancy percentage (total number of rooms you rented/total number of rooms in your hotel), or you can get a higher average daily rate (total room revenue/total number of rooms you rented), but you can't do both. Actually, you can. You just can't do both at once.Your first priority is always getting your occupancy up. That'll cover your bills. Once you're up to about sixty percent, then you can think about tapping up your rates a bit. That increases your profit.Here again, don’t mindlessly cut the rates to get the occupancy up, like too many people do.--------------------------------------------Like many of the others I take on, this is a bigger question than I can answer in an evening. I'll work on it more as I have time and can come back to it.Michael Forrest Jones's answer to What would be a good way to promote a small hotel?