Portfolio Category: Hospitality

What Progressive Leaders Can Do to Align Their Brand & Products to the Current Digital Nomads

 

The impact of COVID has been disruptive and forced the hospitality industry to be incredibly innovative. Through the use of technology and today’s connectivity, we now have the ability to operate remotely with a stable internet connection and to “work from home”  anywhere in the world. Whether that be from the comfort of your own physical home or from a hotel across the globe, we have the opportunity to balance our work and life in a way that we historically never could. COVID was definitely a catalyst for enabling and empowering people to work wherever they want to live and to enjoy the attractions around that destination. The impacts of this are staggering in that currently within this COVID environment there are 4.8 million people working remotely and that have done so for over 180 days. There’s another 90 million that are planning on remote working in the next year or so and another 45 million aspirational remote workers that want to take this leap. Many of these aspiring remote workers are just lacking the resources, information, the community and connection to live the same comfort of lifestyle abroad. 

 

Since COVID, the beginning of q2 of last year, searches around the digital nomad have increased by over 50% and brands should care because this demand is evergrowing. We’re seeing companies like Airbnb in the first quarter of 2021 report that just over a quarter of their bookings were for a minimum of 28 days or four weeks. This trend isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. The industry is ripe and there’s a lot of demand yet not a lot of great solutions to be able to provide the accessibility, accommodations, and amenities that these remote workers need to truly live this lifestyle.

Why Brands Should Care

Over the last decade or so we’re seeing that customers’ buying habits and behaviors are aligning with companies who have a cause that they support and that have a deeper, more meaningful purpose behind their brand. Whether that’s a philanthropic contribution, or its supporting a cause that has similar values. The related products that enable and enhance their experience have an opportunity to really position themselves in that light and as a lifestyle behavior for those that are looking to do this for extended periods of time. For brands to be able to increase brand perception and to align with remote workers for things that they care about, such as, giving back locally or supporting philanthropic efforts, will not only garner more social clout in the customer’s eyes but will also build an affinity and loyalty to a new emerging segment. Brands that recognize the remote working trend of enabling people to more easily go and actively live these lifestyles and aligning with this lifestyle choice will garner the reputation and notoriety of being a preferred and trusted product.

 

By working with these consumers by getting feedback through various marketing tactics and creating a more inclusive and dynamic relationship with their customer base, they’re able to use that feedback loop of customer sentiment through surveys and buying habits. This allows them to really be able to leverage and extend their brand offerings by having a true pulse on what their customer’s needs and demands are in using their product or service. Brands can ultimately create more impact and influence in their customer bases by engaging and interacting with their more avid users, which in this case are remote workers. Through campaigns and brand engagement, brands can develop marketing campaigns and really leverage user-generated content which will further brand loyalty and advocacy for the brand. Utilizing user-generated content is more authentic and trusted because it’s typically handheld or not as professionally edited like commercial footage. It also reduces your marketing expense by leveraging your user base for ideas for footage for campaigns for production, and you can create champions of the business to capture content on your behalf that further represents the lifestyle. 

 

Ultimately, what this does is increase the company and product’s exposure, as well as their return on investment of their marketing dollars. From the short-term benefits to the long-term brand equity, brands should seriously consider the following strategies and tactics to attract and engage remote workers as an additional segment to their marketing strategy.

How Brands Can Market to Remote Workers

Aligning Influencers & Leaders:

User-generated content, peer-to-peer content, and even sponsored influencers known for product promotion carry a lot more clout and relatability than models hired in a corporate capacity. Identifying leaders in niche categories that have complimentary followings and audiences are a way to be able to facilitate unique campaigns and engagements. It can be truly beneficial to enroll them in promoting your product by showcasing its features, the lifestyle usage of the product, and how it enhances their quality of life. By collaborating and partnering with these influencers in select industries, you create a win-win scenario, in that they’ll get additional visibility to your following and in turn, they’ll grow their influence and followership. Align your brand with them and get that authentic lifestyle type of shot to associate your brand with.

 

User-Generated Content:

User-generated content is another strategy and tactic that through various campaigns and in enrolling your following in creating content for you, the brand can get a wide variety of authentic assets to be able to leverage and repurpose in the future across your omnichannel approach. Brands should set expectations and parameters of what that reciprocal and mutually beneficial engagement between the brand and the user looks like. Guidelines should be provided about what type of content is acceptable and what is most likely to be able to be reused. We see companies like REI do this very effectively in the outdoor space where they curate the content created by their users and post it to the community of other outdoor advocates and enthusiasts. Using strategy and intent when recruiting their followers, brands should be able to use them and their influence amongst their community of similar people to increase exposure and visibility.

 

Social Media Campaigns & Competitions:

Here, you can see where brands want to reward their customers and followers for engaging in a certain type of content, whether it’s a product giveaway, a trip, or an opportunity to meet an influencer. Social media campaigns, competitions, and giveaways to enroll and engage your current audience are influential ways to be able to get deeper engagement from your following. Many brands create and post shareable campaign promotions that their followers repost in order for them to enter the giveaway and in turn, brings attention to your brand. These competitions draw more awareness to the company and they engage current followers.

Education – Tips & How To’s:

Through videos, photos, blogs, and even by using QR codes, companies can guide people using their products with resources regarding the product, tips, tricks and hacks about how to effectively use the product, and with educational step by step procedures on developing and using the product for its intended purpose. Companies are going to align and show the type of footage to their customers that can enhance their quality of life and create an affinity for your product because of how it enables their lifestyle. These can be also collaborated on with influencers or even just users of the product to continue that organic feel in a professional manner.

 

Community – Lifestyle Tips:

Brands can promote to remote workers by facilitating a community where they can educate and show what the lifestyle looks like. It’s important to create a space for people to connect online as well as offline to learn from each other, ask questions, educate, and provide resources to better themselves around that certain topic. For instance, providing the stand up paddleboard community with online environments where people can ask questions, where they can buy and sell used paddleboards to one another, and where they get information that they otherwise couldn’t from the brand by having a community of other users who can share in that knowledge. It’s incredibly valuable to create a community that can come together to support your brand or product that benefits their lifestyle.

Events – Community & Sponsored:

This could be by sponsoring and facilitating community events around getting your user base and others in the industry to attend these events. It can also be by sponsoring more formal events, conferences, activities and things that are happening around these communities that attract these types of customers. This can reinforce an existing client or position them as that trusted product and resource for a new prospective customer. It also can be very beneficial for brands to engage in markets with remote workers because they create a facilitation for consumers to have an interface and to actually engage with someone from the brand.

 

Complimentary Partnerships:

Looking at where other brands in the industry share experiences with your customers and don’t overlap in a way that there’s competition can allow for collaboration. Supporting one another can be a great way to curate partnerships that collectively provide a more integrated experience for customers. For instance, in the hospitality world, hotels are starting to partner with transportation and even sometimes restaurants or activities like mountain biking, or skiing, to create holistic packages that have a 10% or 15% discount. They still continue to have the same profit margins and the perception of that discount when it’s merely bridging all three of those to create an easier customer experience for the end-user. Identifying where you have adjacent and complementary brands that can support and enhance that quality of life for your users is a great way to elevate your social capital and perception with your users and to your partners. 

 

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This trend of the current digital nomad is very different from that of a historic digital nomad who stayed in hostels and found the cheapest way to live. With modern accessibility and connectivity via a global internet infrastructure, remote workers today have the ability to live a more active luxurious lifestyle. The brands and products that sell this lifestyle also have an opportunity to gain market share in this ever-growing segmentation of international remote workers. Similar to how the transportation industry was disrupted by car sharing with Lyft and Uber through the advancements of technology and connectivity, the hospitality industry is at that same juncture with technology and an abundance of options for customers to break through the clutter and gain market share to this growing audience. It’s important for brand leaders to take a very strategic approach to what this brand alignment and market positioning look like so as not to ostracize or put off prospective customers that have an opportunity to be lifelong advocates. If this is something your brand isn’t feeling comfortable with, Social Capital Agency is here to support you in how to craft and position your organization and products for this disruptive market.

A Hospitality Content Strategy for Influential Consumer Information to Add to your Hotels Digital Marketing Plan & Website

 

Hotels have endless opportunities to craft unique content that will add value to their customer journey while further creating brand equity with their voice and influence to prospective guests. Yet more often than not, we see hotels and resorts lack an effective content strategy to really add depth and horsepower to their online presence. Search engines will reward your brand and website for providing a continuous effort to provide a better user experience. This means looking at having an evergreen evolving online presence. A great way to add value, perspective, and voice to your brand is through video and in blogs but many hoteliers get lost in exactly what type of content they should be creating. Oftentimes guesswork or lack of strategy leads to creating content that may not be valuable or informative to guests. It’s a futile waste of time, energy, and resources for hotels to ideate, write, refine and then distribute this content if it’s not going to support the brand in any of their marketing strategies and efforts. This article outlines some general content topics, case studies and structure for the hospitality industry, in particular boutique hotels and resorts, to use as a guide to develop more in-depth regional content-specific information that will add value and engage their guests. Doing so will provide educational hotel information while also building brand loyalty and trust throughout their research and discovery process.

 

Local Information

Developing local information for consumers in the research process is a great way to not only support the local community and drive visibility to your destination, but a way to inform and educate prospective travelers about what type of community, culture, and experiences they’re going to be getting themselves into. Providing this in depth local information will also differentiate the hotel by adding value and voice that distinguishes you from others in the region. Many local hotels, and especially beach front properties, find themselves with similar experiences to provide but it’s the quality, voice, and perspective of the information that will allow the hotel to stand apart from others. Supplying potential guests with in depth information will also enable them to align their values and the experience that they’re seeking. This will filter out any potential guests that aren’t a good fit for the hotel and will attract like-minded and loyal guests.

Cultural Info – what to wear, language idioms, etc.: 

As guests are in the research and discovery process, they’re going to want to know what to pack, what the local cultural intricacies are, and the customs of the area in general. For example, Mexico has very different cultural trends throughout the north, south, east, and west parts of the country. Providing guides and education around these types of cultural phenomenons, like what to wear, what to say (or not say), what local foods might be available, and other relevant information can certainly set people’s expectations and ease their concerns about the unknown factors of traveling to a new environment.

 

Events & Holidays: 

Blogging about events and holidays is a great way to be able to gain more regional authority, especially for search engines. Discussing the city’s events, regional holidays, and upcoming local conferences creates a strong regional association for your website and brand. It is also a great way to inform travelers and last-minute guests who may want to experience a cultural event or holiday themselves. It creates a demand for future seasons and unique ways to add value to campaigns, promotions, blogs, and social media posts thereafter.

 

Seasonal Information & Trends: 

Providing information for guests about the different seasons of the region, whether wet or dry, is beneficial for guests to know when to book their stays. Revealing the peak travel times for the hotel and destination will allow people to anticipate what their experience is gonna look like as far as accessibility, wait lines, and tours. It’s valuable for remote workers to know if they will be living in an extremely wet or dry season in order to have a grasp of what they’re everyday work life will look like. This will also help guests stay informed about what types of businesses and activities will be available in accordance to the weather. These are all important trends and seasonal systemic considerations to educate your prospective visitors about in order to add some value and substance on what they can anticipate and expect at different times throughout the year. 

 

New Developments:

If your city is growing and there’s going to be another attraction or set of activities offered, it’s important to talk about it to attract new guests. For example, if there’s a new dock being built that will allow for boating, it may attract a new segment of guests that want to experience that. The city developing new installments and growing new attractions makes for great content subjects to blog about the hotel’s perspective. Sharing photos with your followers of the new developments are a great way to attract new guests, as well as past guests, who want to revisit for the new attraction.

 

Cuisine & Local Food Influence:

Oftentimes hotels and restaurants want to be able to offer farm to fork options where they can showcase and highlight the local and regional food. Over the course of the year there can also be seasonal changes to the menu. Blogging about those transitional times with new summer menus or a shift in ingredients is great for attracting foodies and those who appreciate the culinary depth of a region and heritage. This allows guests to become more educated and feel fully immersed in the culture of the destination. Interviewing the chef, talking to the food and beverage manager about menu changes, exhibiting the seasonal offerings, and showcasing any partnerships for local brands makes for great content to engage your audiences. Sustainable food sourcing and the local impact is also an extremely important topic for foodies. 

 

Top Bars, Restaurants, Nightlife:

Highlighting the top bars, restaurants, and nightlife in the area, whether it’s a top-five list or categories, is a fun and informative way to engage guests. Encouraging guests to explore the local area and recommending the best businesses will provide them the ultimate experience and will excite them to revisit. Pushing them to try the top establishments in town will have the guests speaking highly about the hotel and will encourage loyalty marketing. Blogging about other top establishments in the area is also a great way to build partnerships where you can collaborate and then in turn, drive business to the hotel as well.

 

Activities & Tours:

Blogging about activities and tours in the area is another great way to build local partnerships. Whether you’re directly providing that supply and inventory through your own staff or through local partners, blogging about the different local activities (sporting, adventure, history, or tours) will have the hotel seen as the thought leader by categorizing those within your region. As people are researching activities such as zip lining in that area, or whatever a service may be, creating content specific blogs about those activities will drive people to your hotel based on those desired experiences. Spotlighting the key phrases in the blogs will push your blog to the top of the search list when googling the specific activities in the region. 

 

Business Spotlight:

Beyond the more tourism-related spotlights, if there are other great partners the hotel collaborates or individuals that deserve to be highlighted should be shared. Whether it’s local philanthropies or telecom service providers that are better enabling remote working. This will create reciprocity and engagement locally while providing updates to previous customers and prospective travelers that are looking for you as well. 

 

Case Studies

For resorts and hotels whose substantial part of their business is derived off of MICE, (meetings, incentives, conferences, and events) isolating and breaking down some relevant case studies for each of the various types of events people have facilitated at your property is a great way to elaborate and share the type of experience you have personalized and curated in the past. It highlights the hotel’s attention to detail, hospitality, and the ability to craft their demands and events. It adds color and transparency for these high ticket buy outs and events, which can be a stabilizer to many hospitality sales and marketing plans. Having sustainable and profitable ways to continuously attract more of those for your hotel can be very influential and impactful to both the top and bottom line. 

 

Conferences, MICE Events:

Typically, more resorts are domestically its own kind of category for corporations and the like. With that, doing an article or a blog about the different types of events and conferences that you facilitated is a great way to add some anecdotal evidence of your approach and to showcase all the amenities and accommodations the hotel is capable of.  Sharing why people came to you for that event, what their need was,, and what the hotel’s approach was to solving their problem is highly informative. Knowing that every event is different, from AV support to food and beverage, is important for showing how the hotel has facilitated these experiences in the past for other clients. Add in testimonials, media photos and videos, and PDF summaries for prospective corporate accounts in the future to see the depth and different types of things you’ve done in the past more clearly. They may even gain inspiration for what else they might want to do in their event that they didn’t see as possible. This gives the hotel an opportunity to upsell and even drive more revenue by serving these clients.

 

Weddings & Honeymoons:

It’s very attractive to be a hotel or resort that can host weddings and honeymoons for couples. While many hotel wedding pages are great at informing prospective guests about these services, a blog or case study around past events is a highly effective way to add some more depth to the narrative and really show what was done to facilitate the experience. Again, photos and videos can create inspiration and ideas for things that guests didn’t even know were possible. Writing about weddings that the hotel has hosted and including photos, videos, and testimonials allows for these people to picture their wedding or honeymoon at the venue. 

 

Bachelor or Bachelorette Parties: 

Echoing weddings and honeymoons, bachelor and bachelorette parties are highly desired for hotels because the guests want to do numerous activities, are willing to spend a lot, and there are usually multiple people that can be accommodated and that will then share their experiences with others. Blogging about different bachelor/bachelorette party activities and creative ideas that the hotel has previously used is a great way to attract these groups. It’s more about the showing than the telling. Again, be sure to include photos, videos, and testimonials. 

 

Local Community Influence:

If the hotel takes part in some sort of giveback program or philanthropy, document it on the website and through blogs to show how you support the local community. Whether it’s food donations, beach cleanups, teaching english, or hosting community events, be sure to showcase it with photos and videos. Guests want to support establishments that give back to their community and that contribute to a positive impact. Show physically what your community involvement is beyond just the boundaries and perimeter of the hotel itself, but your sphere of influence that is carried. Highlight those individuals and organizations at large. Cause marketing strengthens the hotel’s values and shows guests that you care.

 

Employee & Career Development:

Guests want to see that the hotel is investing in their employees. The goal is to build loyal relationships with employees that will last for years and even decades. Documenting and showing how the organization takes care of its staff is a great way to personalize and humanize your brand to prospective visitors, employees and shareholders in a way that is invaluable. Not only do the employees greatly benefit from receiving this leadership and career development themselves, but in reciprocity they will be more invested in the brand and exert more discretionary energy at work. That motivation will go a long way for employee morale and retention from them and others. Blogging about and sharing stories of loyal employees will greatly attract like-minded and loyal employees. 

 

Structure For Case Studies:

Summary: 

Include a brief overview so that people can really digest and see what case studies they want to dig more into based on the information they’re seeking.

Problem:

Identify and show the issue that the client brought to you and what they wanted solved.

Solution: 

Bring some color to how your brand solved the client’s problem and how you were able to meet and exceed their needs. Show the problem-solving and the ideation behind it.

Testimonials:

Gain social reputation through testimonials and reviews that reinforce the client’s appreciation for you and build or edify you to prospective customers.  

Media:

Add Media that is going to visualize the event itself and potentially even the transformation before and after of what this looked like for potential clients to clearly see and envision what could be done for them.

ROI or Impact:

Show the output and what it looked like for the organization. If they are able to track the success or engagement of it, explain how it was an investment and what the impact was on their organization and community.

 

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There are endless opportunities to create content that prospective travelers would engage with and glean value out of whether it be from a corporate event side or an individual traveler. Utilize these inherent opportunities all around the hotel and be conscious of how to leverage them for consumer education and engagement. This will result in ultimately building brand equity and will dramatically influence your digital marketing presence. It will boost the hotel’s reputation for both travelers and online search engines.

 

 

Why Hospitality Marketing Strategies Should be Cognizant about How to Engage Young Travelers as well as Other Customer Personas

 

Undoubtedly the younger populace has been the first to return back to travel since the pandemic. Millennials and Gen Z in particular because of their youth and perspective they have regarding their freedom, autonomy, and excitement to travel both domestically and internationally. While many hoteliers may see this as indicative of a larger trend and an audience they should pivot future marketing dollars towards, our recommendation is to not solely pigeonhole and focus all marketing efforts at this younger demographic for many reasons.

There’s no doubt Gen Z (born 1997-2012) and Millenials (born 1981-1996) have much value to add with their huge influence on social media and for hotels and destinations in general. Although in the coming years we will see these groups become an increasingly important demographic to focus marketing towards, there are some considerations regarding this traveler that hotels should be cognizant of before allocating their marketing budget, time and energy. It’s critical to look at the other ideal customer personas that have an opportunity to be even more profitable and also reflective of the audience that the hotel is looking to curate to. In this article, we look at some important considerations and insights to better educate hoteliers for marketing to Gen X and Millennials from the positive, negative and neutral perspectives. 

 

Gen Z aka. “Millennials” – 

The Positive:

Starting on a positive note, Gen Z is a group of individuals that is undoubtedly the most social media conscious and savvy. Having grown up with content at their fingertips from a young age, whether it be on their parent’s cell phones or their own tablets, they are incredibly intuitive with technology in general and with the use of social media across platforms. Due to their innate technological abilities, they have been able to easily create content without the fear and trepidation that Gen X and baby boomers have about personal image and ego. Their adoption of social media makes exposure and broad awareness of their content more impactful than their predecessors. Thus, the influence that they can create, positive or negative, is unrivaled when considering the vast connections and reach that is accessible across platforms. Gen Z uses up to five different social channels each day and 44 percent of the generation says they check social media at least every hour. Part of this can be seen as an advantage as these individuals enter the workforce, in that they’re able to be advocates and a conduit to share a brand’s message. However, because of this ability to have social media at their fingertips for the last decade or more, they also have been accustomed to being far more exposed to the world, information and media than any other generation. Surveys have found that 43 percent of Gen Z most frequently get their news from social media. Because they’ve been so acute and accustomed to seeing the world through photos and videos, they have a strong desire to travel the globe and to personally experience all it has to offer.

 

Entering the workforce, Gen Z has higher expectations and are demanding a more flexible work environment. Even in a hybrid environment where they are able to work from home or the destination of their choice far more easily, they still want to experience the culture, to feel valued, and to be seen as a contributing member of the workforce and their community. Whether at a company or at a hotel, consider what can be done to curate that sense of value and community for them. By encouraging them to share on social media through hashtags, art, or promotions, you can reward and play into this mechanism for them. While there is a sense that they want to travel, it’s not nearly as accessible for those just entering the workforce as they don’t have the resources or the bandwidth to be able to do so. While they want to see themselves making a difference in the world, and proportionally in comparison to their parents, they’re making less money. 

Millennials are also giving back more philanthropically, not only in time but in resources as well. As they begin to travel the world they’re going to be seeking places that reinforce their value system. Gen Z is more likely to trust brands or companies that demonstrate social responsibility. They’re looking for certified eco-tourism spaces that are sustainably designed, LEED-certified and that support local impacts and charities. All of these are things that will help Gen Z feel better about making smart choices with their travels and will help reduce their carbon footprint while making a personal impact in the communities that they intentionally surround themselves in. Through this travel, they’ll receive some clarity on what type of impact they’re looking to create. Gen Z has a passion for giving back philanthropically and is more inclined to make career sacrifices in order to live the life they desire while continuing to decide what long-term impact they wish to create- and travel is a wonderful opportunity to do so. Providing some education locally around the hotel destination to continue to help facilitate that process is a great way to be that catalyst and influence for these individuals’ lives. This will help provide the experience they need to settle on their own values and contributions they’re seeking to create. 

 

Neutral but Important to Consider:

 Gen Z and millennials are openly pursuing this lifestyle over their career but with new technology, they have the ability to play the balancing act and work more effectively, remotely. In 2015 over 70,000 people applied for remote working, before video conferencing and WFH was easily accessible. The flexibility to work from anywhere is highly desired and has really sparked the creation of remote working. Balancing work and life is a top priority for Gen Z and they’re finding very innovative ways to be able to live this lifestyle. Because Gen X and Baby Boomer generations are staying in the workforce longer as a result of longer life expectancies, economic downturns, and now Covid, it has become much more difficult for today’s youth entering the workforce to be able to step into those entry-level jobs. The room for promotion and getting into director and C suite positions has been elongated and newer generations are struggling to advance in their careers as quickly, causing them to earn less than they would have in previous decades. 

As these younger generations are making less, they don’t have the expendable income to travel extensively or to enjoy the luxurious lifestyles that they desire. While there is certainly still career mobility, it’s important to recognize when marketing to this younger generation that those in their 20s typically are having fewer kids, are spending less money, and are instead waiting for these opportunities as their careers progress. It’s important to reflect on your hotel and the most profitable customer persona available. If you’re a luxury resort with a price point of $300 or beyond, it’s more practical to aim for an audience that is a bit further ahead in their careers like older millennials and Gen X. Those in their early 20s have to be more frugal and will often seek out promotions and deals for their trips. Looking at where the hotel can provide all-inclusive experiences or packages will attract this younger generation as they’re trying to conserve money and will create brand advocacy for repeat guests and referrals. These guests can become lifelong customers depending on the experience you curate for them.

 

If marketing to Gen Z, it’s going to be crucial to ensure that you have an extremely genuine and authentic approach to your messaging and your call-to-actions. Because this generation has grown up with so much information/media and they’ve been so immersed in it, they have an innate gift of sensing fear-based selling. They instead desire brands that align with their values and that have the philanthropic giveback that they’re seeking. Using any sort of negative or fear-based marketing is not going to land or resonate well with them as they will be able to see right through it. Instead, show this audience what this quality of life looks like by creating transparency and visibility through photos, videos, and social media. Putting it all out on the table is far better received than trying to manipulate and contrive a marketing message that plays into the fear and negative emotions.

 

Perceived as Negative:

Because this group doesn’t have an immense amount of buying power yet, it’s important to not just completely cut them out of your marketing strategy but to amend and adjust your tactics to this demographic appropriately. Create different customer personas and marketing messages to Gen Z, Millennials, baby boomers, empty nesters, and now even the remote workforce, particularly females. While you might not exclusively be marketing and wanting your entire hotel to be filled with baby boomers, you also probably don’t want it filled with all Gen Z. If catering to both demographics, it’s important to recognize there might be some contention and to ensure the hotel is prepared to accommodate both audiences. 

Because of their age and life experience, Gen Z and younger Millennials don’t have as much understanding of other cultures and history despite visibility through YouTube and social media. They simply lack the life experience and knowledge to understand how to navigate certain cultural trends, responses and engagements with other individuals on property or in and around the destination itself. These generations may fail to recognize the kind of local habits that might offend others (being too loud, using offensive language, etc.) It’s important to consider how you can educate this younger demographic to help them be more emotionally sensitive and savvy about their experience, enabling the best reflection of your property and of the locals at large as well. Look at what can be included in the trip resources and emails to inform guests of what they should be wearing, what currency they should be using, tips on local slang, and anything else that could be easily misconstrued. This could be done through Youtube videos before arrival or that can be easily watched on transportation to and from the resort.

 

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Despite the emerging growth of Gen Z as one of the next largest groups entering the workforce behind millennials, our encouragement to hoteliers developing their marketing strategy is to not look at Gen Z or even Millennials in a silo, but as a segment within their larger customer persona. Engaging the customer persona that is most profitable to your hotel will ensure each audience will resonate with the hotel’s message. It’s important to engage and attract them to the property while still not ostracizing others from the rest of the target profile that you’re looking to create. Consider how various customer personas interact once they’re on property together and build a strategy that appropriately reflects it. With emerging personas such as the remote worker, the empty nester, and the feminine within the hospitality industry, SoCap is here to help you navigate your marketing strategy with additional articles and resources. Gen Z is undoubtedly a growing demographic that is important to be able to speak to; however, focusing on them alone will limit your ability to market to the most profitable customers. 

The NOT So Obvious Insights & Lessons from an International Hospitality Marketing Agency

 

While there historically has been a largely standardized framework for developing a hospitality marketing strategy, a “Sales and Marketing Plan” at the end of each year for the following, we have seen the need for businesses to be more flexible in their approach and to not follow these outlines or guides verbatim. We have worked across a variety of geographies, hotel sizes, prices points, and variations which has provided us a breadth of visibility and insight to what factors work for hotels and how to reposition the strategy. The following are guidelines to take into consideration while creating a hotel marketing strategy with some additional insights and lessons that aren’t as obvious for the brand’s consideration. 

 

Define Your Authentic Brand Persona

Defining an authentic brand persona means honing in on the mission vision and the brand identity of the hotel. Whether an already established hotel or a developing one, property aesthetics and design are very influential and will complement the brand identity. Having a congruent brand identity that reflects the hotel’s values is critical for consistency and the brand image in the eyes of the guest. This can be done throughout the online experience and the in-person collateral that is shared with guests. This brand persona shouldn’t be static but should be derived over time as the brand or hotel evolves and becomes a dynamic entity. It should grow and mold in response to the customers and the hospitality industry trends at large.

 

Understand Your Competitors Locally & Globally

Knowing the hotel’s competitors on a local and global level is important to be able to see what others in the area or industry are doing. Hotel owners may look at what other successful hotels are doing from a marketing standpoint and revenue standpoint, as well as in their meetings, events, and promotions. Being able to connect the dots and see which competitors attract a similar type of guests will allow for opportunities to differentiate the hotel from others. A comprehensive SWOT analysis can provide a good sense of what is successful for others and what is not. From there, some of the successful approaches can be translated and applied to a new hotel marketing strategy that both works and stands out from competitors.

 

Know Your Audience(s) & Most Profitable Customer

It is important to know that the brand’s audience is composed of multiple segments, buyer personas, and types of guests that are going to visit the hotel or resort. Knowing this information and breaking down the most profitable customer will be critical to the strategy for attracting these guests and for marketing to them consistently. If it was not for segmentation, the hotel would be marketed to everyone. This will result in a gamut of people that don’t all want the same experience and in turn, will dilute the brand value. Knowing the right audience and how to attract the guests will create a filtering mechanism for the people that are or are not the right fit for the property. When the marketing strategy is crafted to inform these people, there will be more satisfied guests and staff.

 

Review The Numbers

Ensure that the numbers in the marketing strategy are reviewed and substantiating what audience the brand should actually be marketing to. Looking at the numbers and these different customer personas, consider how much is being spent on the marketing mix, versus government costs, versus event production, etc. One might find that the hotel historically got a lot of business from a certain audience but that recently the profit margins are weak. There may also be another subset of the audience that is more successful for targeting. Help validate and align the numbers with the revenue and marketing strategies so that they parallel and work in tandem to drive the right types of guests and reputation. 

 

Meet Each of Them Where they are At

The whole idea of marketing is to reach the customers where they are at. Once the different types of customer personas are identified, the hotel owners will be able to start to see where these different individuals spend their time- whether it’s social media, certain news publications, specific TV channels or radio stations, or in-person experiences like concerts or sports events. Knowing where they’re at and what they like to do then allows for crafting unique and personalized messages depending on the medium. Each message should differ significantly depending on if it is marketing to the feminine, a family, or marketing to a remote worker. 

 

Have a Vision & Clearly Communicate to Everyone

It is important for the brand to have a differentiator, a direction, and a vision of what it’s looking to do. Brand identity is key to ensuring that the hotel is marketing to a specific audience and not attempting to sell blankety to everyone. When there’s a clear understanding of what groups of people the brand identity is geared towards, then the brand can own that segment of the market and does not have to try to be all things to all people. Clearly articulating this vision through visual brand aesthetics, as well as through messaging and positioning, will resonate with and attract a certain type of person, demographic and/or psychographic. Owning the space and playing in the right lane for your brand is the key to a successful marketing strategy. 

 

Develop a Congruent Strategy to Get you There

Once the hotel is owning its space, it is time to develop a congruent strategy to get you there. Ensure that there is a pivot point for everything that the marketing revolves around and then slightly change the messaging and positioning per that outlet to the target audience. Know the boundaries that the hotel is confined within and what kind of minimum threshold the brand needs to be able to abide by and play within. From there, the visuals can support and supplement this aesthetically so that there’s brand consistency for the guests to differentiate the hotel.

 

Map Your Guests Customer Journey

 

As the strategy starts to develop, an important thing to do is to map the customer’s journey and see where customers are coming from. Look at what multitude of touchpoints that people are experiencing whether it’s word of mouth, social media, OTAs, or search engines. Understand what the path of least resistance is to be able to build the rapport and trust needed to convey the message and value proposition. This will then guide people towards committing and booking their stays. Beyond just booking rooms, look at other ways to build loyalty and trust. In what ways can their experience be personalized before and after they step foot on the property. The key is to understand how to add value to the dozens, if not hundreds, of micro-moments that guests will experience and engage in throughout their customer journey.

 

Understand How to Leverage Each Micro-Moment

Expanding and elaborating on mapping the guests’ customer journey, it’s important that if at any point one of these micro-moments becomes negative, that you know how to turn it around and make it positive. This may mean verifying that loyal guests’ data is properly linked to their profiles so that staff is able to provide a better and more personalized experience. Turning what could be a negative guest situation into a positive one can help build brand advocacy that would have otherwise been discrediting. 

 

Be Flexible & Agile in HOW You Get There

More often than not these sales and marketing outlines don’t show the strategy and how to actually get there. When there are approaches for things such as soliciting more government, leisure, local, or international travel it’s important to remember that the journey won’t pan out exactly like it’s planned and to remain flexible through it all. Roadblocks happen whether it’s the weather, a problem with supply chain, or a global pandemic, so flexibility will keep the hotel going in the right direction.

 

Get Everyone on the Same Page – A Vital Commercial Strategy

When looking at the Vital Commercial Strategy it’s important for everyone to be on the same page and to know the direction in which the brand is going. Once everyone has the same vision, ensure that the sales, marketing, and revenue management are all aligned in how to get there. It might take a slightly different shape, or the brand might need to pivot the strategy; however, everyone knows where they’re going and can adapt their tactics and tools to be able to get there. The hotel might have to take a detour but it will still end up at the final destination.

 

Leverage Social Proof to Drive Social Capital & Financial Gains

For hotels, social proof comes in many shapes and forms. Historically, the first and most natural way to build social proof is from people walking by the crowded venue and seeing that it’s a popular place. People are way more likely to eat at a restaurant or make a purchase if they know the item or place is in demand. Ecommerce sites also do this when showing the customer how many other people are viewing a product or how many people have also bought it today. The best way to build this proof offline is to create a false sense of demand. For online rapport, reviews across OTAs and other directories like Google, Yelp, Expedia, and Facebook are able to reinforce the validity of what customers like. It’s important that these online reviews are diversified and consistently distributed across platforms. Ensure every platform has a substantial amount of reviews and that they’re not all on one platform. There are also tools that allow the ability to pick and showcase good reviews from Google or Expedia on the hotel’s website to help reinforce and drive that notoriety for future visitors.

 

Be Consistent & Congruent Across Outlets

From the messaging to the visual, having the same brand approach and aesthetic across outlets is going to be key for prospective and current customers to be able to understand and see consistently who the brand is. Adding cohesive stylistic components on property, on social media, in videos, on menus, etc. is imperative to ensuring the guests are ingraining the hotel brand image throughout their journey. This will also build trust, rapport, and equity for the guests over time.  

 

Use email Intentionally 

Email is now like what traditional mail was back in the 20th century. It’s overused and not effective unless the brand is really clear on developing a strategy that engages and adds value to the customers. This means deeply thinking through what the customer would want to see. Consider the length of the email, the value within the messaging, the frequency, and the conversion to a video or website depending on the desired action. Email is an extension of the hotel’s brand and is part of having every micro-moment add value to the guests. Once a guest books their stay at the hotel, email can also be a very useful way to connect with them, keep them updated, and to collect customer data (e.g. allergies, preferences, requests) about them for their guest profiles. These emails can engage and add value to the customer journey by asking guests about activities they want to do and getting them signed up before even arriving on the property. Email can be very advantageous but needs to be approached the right way as to not overwhelm or annoy guests. 

 

Personalize the Experience Online & Off

Hotels that are delivering the exact same message regardless of who they’re talking to are doing themselves a great disservice. We now have the technology and data to be able to personalize experiences and to craft meaningful messages to our guests. Presenting a blanket statement to everyone will only end up hitting a small percentage of people within the target audience. Once we fully understand our customer personas, we can then craft and personalize unique experiences for each of them. It’s critical to take the time and to be intentional about creating a customer journey both virtually and on property. Guests will recognize the details and will see the quality of their experience across touchpoints. This can be a complicated process but understanding just 6 to 8 customer personas and which are most profitable will make good use of marketing time and resources, as well as will create a successful strategy. 

 

Rally Your Employees & Your Guests

An underutilized and often overlooked marketing strategy tactic is looking at the employees as brand assets. We’re starting to see private equity firms evaluate brand values by looking at the human capital component side of the equation. Without the employees, the brand doesn’t go anywhere, hence the importance of employer branding. The key is for the employees to be an extension of the brand and for them to be advocates for the hotel even when clocked off from their shift.  The best hotel marketing strategies look at their prospective and current employees to better see how to market to them. Having employees that effectively represent the brand and its values will build a community that both the staff and guests will recognize and appreciate. 

 

Referral & Word of Mouth Marketing Is NOT Dead

We all know the power of a friend recommending a certain restaurant or movie. These suggestions go a long way because of our relationships and the trust we put into other’s opinions. Clearly articulating and creating exceptional experiences for the guests will build that trust, loyalty and advocacy with them over time. The ROI (return on investment) is very high for word-of-mouth marketing because it doesn’t cost anything for guests to share their experiences with friends and it builds a strong reputation. This will even build more brand equity and rapport as these friends of guests book their stay and experience the same great customer journey. Even better, the cost per acquisition for this referral is next to nothing.

 

Not So Obvious Marketing Strategies Most CMO’s Won’t Tell You:

Simpler is ALWAYS Better

One of the hardest things to do is to summarize and synthesize thoughts, but authenticity and simplicity is going to win every time. It takes a lot of effort but it’s critical to distill the brand’s messaging, positioning, and value statements to be as clear and concise as possible. This enables guests to easily share the brand story on the hotel’s behalf. There won’t be any need for a video, a complicated press release, or a big billboard for guests to share about the brand. 

 

We are All Human, Leverage this – emotional

At the end of the day, we are emotional creatures and people are more willing to pull out their wallets if the brand triggers a human emotion and creates meaning. While we at SoCap never use a fear-based approach to get customers to buy, there are many positive ways to convey and prompt emotion and the feeling of freedom, liberty, quality of life, and happiness that a guest will experience at the hotel. Using a fear-based approach will cause guests to associate the brand and experience negative sentiments. That negative connotation and feeling is hard to disassociate from, even if it’s an uplifting, fun hotel. This can be complicated and if the hotel finds itself needing help navigating it, SoCap is here to help facilitate these conversations and strategies. 

 

Identify 2-3 Brand Aesthetics that Are YOU & RUN with Them

Brands either do one of two things that are ineffective – they don’t have any identity or differentiator and they blend into the sea of mediocrity, or they try to be too fancy and take on too many brand aesthetics so that it is overwhelming to the guest. It’s comparable to walking into a really cluttered store that has too many options and variety. The most effective brands will take a few thematic or stylistic elements and imbed them across all marketing assets and touchpoints. It’s important to consider not just colors, but also patterns, images, and design components. This should be applied to the menus, PDF documents, flyers, throughout social media, and across every step of the customer journey. Visual association for guests is key both online and off. 

 

The Bigger the Vision the Easier it is to Rally Others

No matter the size or type of hotel, creating a vision and a larger impact will give the employees something to rally behind. This may just be on a regional level as the hotel services the guests and community, but showing the employees how they’re contributing and making a difference will bring them more motivation and enthusiasm. This may mean providing yoga and peace of mind to guests or even could be creating a sustainable eco-friendly tourism experience for them. Whatever it is, take the time to discover the brand identity and how it can be used to make an impact. Owning the vision is essential for employees to feel that they’re contributing to something bigger than just themselves. You’ll find that the brand will become magnetic and will attract like-minded individuals that have the same values as the hotel. This vision will result in brand equity, differentiation, and a rally from guests and employees because everyone is sharing the same energy and goal.

 

 

Here at Social Capital Agency our passion is and always will be to support small and emerging independent hotels, whether they are boutique or luxury resorts. We’re here to enable and empower the hotelier that has an unbelievable vision and that provides a great experience on property, but who might be having trouble translating that through marketing. We know and recognize that these brands oftentimes have limitations in their time and resources and may need to focus on a different priority. Thus, this guide is here to provide comprehensive and effective hotel marketing strategies for hoteliers and owners. This outline may be used as a roadmap, but don’t be afraid to take a detour along the way. We want to help make a difference for your brand and we’re here to help, whether it’s as a full-time agency of record, or as a part-time Fractional CMO as an extension of your brand. 

270 of the Best Hospitality Conversion Rate Tricks to Beat the 2.27% Industry Average – PDF Included

 

Online our customer’s and guest’s expectations have grown exceedingly through the Covid-19 pandemic, especially with waiting transparency around cleanliness and sanitization standards. Digital savviness advanced for every generation, as Gen Z, Gen X, Millennials, and Boomers were all forced to turn to online outlets like Amazon, Walmart and even adopt online grocery delivery throughout the quarantine. These websites and apps are also continuously refining in their customer experience and influencing customer expectations and behaviors. It’s important as a resort hotelier or owner that you understand the need to now satisfy this elevated customer demand regarding their digital experience to effectively increase hotel bookings and occupancy rates. 

 

We find that it is often difficult to fully understand the guest experience that you’re providing through your website when you’re looking at your own hotel or resort. Far too often we see hoteliers provide incredible guest experiences at their hotel, have immaculate designs, and delectable dishes but all of that never really translates to their online presence to attract and allure guests – at least not in a way that does them justice. This is a guide for hoteliers and owners that are wanting to look at the new trends and various ways that are most prone to providing the best online customer experience. The principles that are needed are an engaging design, having powerful messaging and positioning, creating social proof for validation, and incorporating conversion-oriented functionality at a high level.

 

Engaging Design

Minimal Clicks to & Through Booking Engine: To create an online guest experience that converts, your design should be oriented around how to create an experience that simply reduces the amount of clicks it takes someone to select a room and book a stay. If, right now, you’re at eight clicks through the experience for someone to book a room, how can you reduce that to five or six for a stay to be booked.  It’s important to look at where the experience may be too bulky and where you are losing customers. If you can make the process as seamless and as beneficial for them as possible, you’re going to reap the rewards of selling more products because you were intentional about facilitating a guest experience that was of value to them. You’re going to win.

 

High-Quality Photos & Video:  Leave it to their imagination to see them in there 80% of the time. Let the images and videos do the storytelling for you. It’s important to show room features and amenities for them to see at a glance, rather than having to scroll through a description. Choose really great pictures with good lighting and angles to fully capture details like the size of the rooms. Photos and videos of the resort’s property, the destination, and the local area’s activities should also be included to ensure your guests have a good sense of what their hotel experience would look like. 

Show Variations: The design should also include showing all the different room variations and views. Display all room orientation options (garden, partial oceanview, oceanfront, 1BR vs Studio). Showing variations allows for guests to compare rooms and potentially make the decision to upgrade to something nicer than they were originally intending. Also, show any packages that are available for purchase and the value of each. Local partners and activities (diving, local tours or airport transportation) will enhance your packages and detailed descriptions and images of what’s included will encourage guests to book.

 

Proper Category / Inventory Display: Because your hotel or resort is selling multiple variations and types of rooms, it’s important to decide how to organize and display your inventory. Include a category with any featured packages, deals, or promotions. You should consider the most intuitive and best user experience to showcase your rooms and amenities to your guests. Classifying your rooms by size, views, amenities, or duration of stay will enable your guests to easily find what they’re looking for.

‘On Brand’ & Engaging Call to Actions: The design components on your website should reflect the stylistic elements of your hotel property for consistency and an enhanced experience for guests. Call to Actions should also be included throughout the experience with unique icons or style elements that are different, memorable, and authentic.

 

Powerful Messaging & Positioning

Clear Benefits to Value, Experiences, and Activities on Property and Surrounding Area: Clearly articulating the benefits of your rooms and hotel to overcome a consumer’s pain is going to be the fastest way for them to book. Communicating the advantages of your hotel or resort through your website allows potential guests to understand the experience that will be provided to them. Humans won’t buy anything or take any action without first knowing how that purchase is going to benefit them. Be sure to describe the variety of programs, activities, and restaurants that are available both on property as well as the surrounding area.

 

Amenities, Features Add Value: There’s a difference between a hotel’s amenities and the benefits that help alleviate pain. Amenities and benefits are often coupled together, but the amenities are more about the hotel’s functionality and/or components that enhance it and differentiate it from other hotels and resorts in the industry. These features will encourage guests to choose your hotel over competitors.

 

Combined with Lifestyle & Product Photos & Video: These benefits and amenities should be combined into your lifestyle product and photography. Having motion graphics or visuals on top of your photography and videography can help in conveying your hotel and its benefits for people to quickly understand. This is especially important for hotels that are tailoring to the extended-stay guest who needs to know if the resort will work for them for multiple weeks or months.

 

Cause Marketing & Aligned Values with Donations: If your hotel donates to philanthropic causes or gives back in some way, how is that articulated? Clearly indicate if a certain percentage of funds go towards an organization and show guests how their stay will be making a difference. This is a great way to convey to your guests that we’re all able to come together and make a larger impact for the community. 

 

Social Proof for Validation

Reviews & Testimonials: There are lots of ways through your website to create more influence and social validation for your resort and brand at large, two of them being reviews and testimonials. Although coupled together, a review would be about a room or service while a testimonial is more about the brand and the experience. These help potential customers get a better feel for the hotel and experience, and more trust is formed because the previous guest created social proof for the brand.

 

“As Seen On” Carousel: Various media outlets picking up your hotel or article creates immediate validation. Whether they’re hospitality, tourism outlets, or large notable ones that we all recognize like the New York Times or the Washington Post, it will build some of that trust and validity right off the bat.

 

Badges & Certifications: If your hotel has badges and certifications, include them on your website. This could be if your resort is LEED-certified, has sustainable practices, is committed to zero waste, partners with the local community, or anything similar that your company has spent their time and money on to be recognized for. This helps build social proof and shows that you’ve hit certain criteria that give you credibility. Your hotel and experiences uphold the values that society is demanding.

‘Know Before You Go’ or Map PDFs for Guests: “Know Before You Go” documents help guests prepare for their stays. It’s important that your guests have information on local resources like transportation, currency, SIM cards, banking, health care, grocery stores, etc. Map PDFs for guests will also be beneficial for helping them locate the hotel destination and for navigating around the property. 

 

Show when others Book with Pop-Ups: Popups that indicate when another user is booking the same room creates a sense of urgency for potential guests. These can be on desktop or mobile, as well as notifications on the website for people actively searching. It’s human nature to feel pressure or jealousy when seeing others purchasing a product that you were considering for yourself.  Humans have a fear of missing out and that can be used to boost hotel bookings. 

 

Videos of other Events, Groups and Organizations booking MICE: Including videos of previous or other events on your property will enable guests to see if it would work for theirs. Include a variety of types of these that fit their meetings – conference, award ceremony, association event, wedding, family reunion, etc. 

 

Conversion-oriented Functionality

Create a Sense of Urgency – Countdown Timers & Limited-Time Offers: Countdown timers and limited inventory banners are also great ways to create a sense of urgency. Even though we know that we can go back tomorrow, that countdown timer still adds pressure. It works, we are human. If your hotel or resort truly is providing more value than your competitors, then it isn’t a bad thing to encourage users to commit.

 

Add Value: There are a lot of various ways to add value to your hotel or brand online like with guest profiles, discount programs, memberships, a feeling community, etc. Adding value to your hotel will give it meaning to your customer and will encourage purchases.

 

Purposeful Popups & Email Capture: Create value for people that are interested in your hotel or resort with pop-ups and email capture. Feeling a sense of urgency will encourage potential guests to book the stay that they were considering.

Show Discounts or Savings Clearly: Be sure to clearly indicate if a room or package is on sale and be specific about the exact amount your guest will be saving. Clearly showing that a certain room is 20% off or $40 helps people understand what kind of MSRP versus your cost is and knowing what they’re saving makes them more prone to book.

 

Upsell Offers – Spa, Activities, Tours, Cars or Transport, etc: Conversion-oriented functionality upsells such as spa or activity packages, or providing transportation add value to what the guest is ultimately going to need anyways. 

 

Powerful & Authentic Call to Actions: There needs to be an emphasis on authenticity and on not being too salesy. There are many fun and creative ways of employing engaging ways to invite people to book a stay at your hotel while staying authentic. These Call-to-Actions need to be strategically placed throughout the site and will then increase your desired outcome of conversions.

 

All of these are great tactics that will assist you in boosting conversions and increasing bookings. Focusing on an engaging design, powerful messaging & positioning, social proof, and conversion-oriented functionality will refine and highlight the user experience for your guests. As digital savviness continues to grow, it’s more important than ever for your hotel or resort to consider the user experience and to implement it into your site. It’s critical that hoteliers and owners understand the need to now satisfy this elevated customer demand as far as their digital experience. If you need help along the way, SoCap is here to help.

 

Download our Ultimate Hospitality Website Conversion Checklist PDF Here to beat the 2.27% Industry Average

 

Predictions of How the Travel & Tourism Industry will Change as a Result of COVID-19

 

With travel opening back up as the pandemic starts to slow and with new technology rapidly being created and adopted, it’s time we look at the current and future hospitality marketing trends and how they impact your hotel marketing strategy. Some of these trends are already starting to be adopted by bigger or more progressive brands, and some are certainly going to take place within the next few years. Given the rise of new technologies, there are many ways to segment your market and to create a seamless personalized customer experience for your guests. Let’s explore these trends and look at how they could possibly be implemented into your future guest experience.

 

Hyper-Targeted Advertising

Most brands are likely familiar with social media retargeting and how companies are personalizing and automating marketing, whether it’s through Instagram ads or Google banners and display ads. It’s important, though, to envision how this relates and could be valuable to your hotel. Beyond just behavioral attributes and psychological attributes, how do you actually interact and engage with brands? Larger brands will have the capability to actually spend the time and energy to flesh out multiple campaigns to create advertisements for segmentations and specific target audiences. We’ll be able to create a campaign for two 35-year-old females and personalize each ad for each of them depending on their online behavior, location, and previous experience with the brand. One ad may target a guest that wants to stay for a short period of time while the second ad might target someone that wants to stay for a few months and work remotely. Based on the data connected to one’s unique IP address, we’ll be able to create various segmentations and personalized journeys where the same website experience for one guest will be completely different from another. The personalization of these online experiences will continue to become deeper and more intelligent too. We currently have the technology to change offers, dynamic promotions, and even the layout of the webpage based on the user.

 

Seamless Online Experience

We also see the integration of these online travel experiences being far more seamless. In the customer journey right now, there are multiple touchpoints and various means of research that are needed before reaching the point of booking. Thereafter, there are multitudes of platforms and services like Airbnb or Expedia that now enable and empower guests to be able to book activities around the destination at very reasonable and affordable rates. It will be interesting to see the proliferation of these types of activity and experiential-based services that extend to the hotel and influence how brands provide options for their guests, personalizing the activities they book based on previous experiences or trips even before they step foot on property. Beyond a hotel’s CRM tracking a guest’s activities, tours, and spa packages, hoteliers in the future will be able to decipher the type of person and desired activities they want to engage in based on their online profiles and former experiences they have shared via social media. Hotels will have an intimate knowledge of their guests before they arrive and the guest experience will be enhanced before, during, and after their stay. The objective is not to be intrusive but rather more seamlessly add value to tailoring an experience that is desired by the guest.

 

Loyalty Programs & Memberships

The advancement of technology and rise of robust guest profiles will also encourage the evolution of loyalty programs and memberships for hotels and resorts. These programs will be expanded across platforms and will link information to guest hotel room numbers, further engaging guests with the hotel services and activities. Guests will be able to track purchases of meals, amenities, wellness packages, etc. and will be rewarded for those transactions and behaviors. Our hope is that these advancements will allow the hotel staff more interface and time to enhance truly unique experiences for the guests. 

 

Local Art,  Installations and Live Event Broadcasting

Further, as it relates to guest experiences, another current trend that is here to stay are immaculate designs, installations, and other visually appealing attractions that make for Instagram-worthy content and draw in guests to take pictures. Tourists travel far and wide to visit many of these installations in search of a quality photo-op.

The rise of virtual reality will also bring forth unique marketing opportunities providing potential guests the chance to take full 360 tours of the property, drone flyovers, and have a full immersive interaction to better see what each destination and hotel experience would look like. Augmented reality will then also provide guests the opportunity to interact with destinations in real-time or virtually from the comfort of their own home without ever having to get on a plane. This technology and expansion of experiences on property will allow guests to feasibly request services and amenities, pick out and order meals, book activities, access entertainment, and more.

Looking into the future of hospitality beyond just marketing, telecommunication will continue to ascend and platforms like Facebook Live and YouTube Stream will be able to broadcast live events. The ability for anybody to experience these events in some capacity will create a desire for more luxury experiences and will drive boutique hotel and resort market shares in the coming years. It is also a way brands can currently show the weather and how busy it is at the property via LiveCams on their website or social media to build further validity to prospective guests.

 

The “Digital Nomad” or Remote Worker & Traveler

Why will these enhanced property tours and amenities be so desired? Because of the increasing ability to work remotely and live a digital nomad lifestyle. The Covid-19 pandemic has moved much of corporate America online, to Zoom, and many companies are seeing greater productivity from their employees working from home. Employees now have more flexibility to utilize this remote working global marketplace and hotels will need to retrofit and tailor their amenities to guests who want to stay for multiple weeks or months. This may require the modification of infrastructure to provide extended-stay guests with wifi throughout the resort property, communal kitchens to cook meals, and office spaces for remote work and business calls. Another critical element for extended-stay guests is the fostering of community and connectedness. This can be done before guests step foot on the property through the use of social media groups and platforms like ClubHouse. These community-building platforms can provide resources, the chance of questions and answers, and the opportunity to meet other guests and travelers. These guests also want to feel fully immersed in their destination’s culture and lifestyle. This will mean an increase in hotel partnerships with influencers or local companies, for example, providing locally sourced shampoo, conditioner, lotions, and sunscreens to your guests and offering a variety of different local activities or philanthropic opportunities for them to feel involved. 

 

Cause Marketing & Supporting Local

This leads to another current trend on the rise, cause marketing and supporting local. Guests want to feel involved and like they’re contributing to a greater impact. Hotels need to reposition and show their engagement in local community programs and philanthropies in order to better connect with the community. Doing so will also reinvest into your guest experience and will create visibility and transparency. It will be very important to show your guests that by booking directly, they’re supporting local, and by supporting local we’re going to give $5 per booking or $5 per night back to support community development. Many hotels and resorts are also implementing sustainability programs in order to help aid guests in living environmentally friendly lifestyles by using new technologies to demonstrate their impact. The ability to segment specific groups will allow hotels and resorts to develop projects and programs for their guests to participate in which will then further foster a sense of community. 

 

Unique Experiences 

With enhancements in the Internet of Things (IoT) connecting everyday household items to technology it will be interesting to see how hyper-targeted ads and their personalization will be able to provide even more unique experiences from data collected from these devices. An example of this is the development that we’re an agency of record for called VidaLuz which is working on some very sustainable projects like agricultural programs, vertical grow gardens and training residents and visitors on practices around sustainable agriculture. There are even sensors inside compost trash cans that will weigh how much waste you’re discarding and then algorithms will compute the amount of carbon emission that will be regenerated back into the environment. There are also individual profiles that tell how much water and plastic you saved and how you’re reducing your carbon footprint. It will be really interesting to see how gamification is able to reward and build community in that capacity and how that drives behavior to be environmentally conscious. 

 

Vital Commercial Strategy to Drive OCC & Profits

Another trend we’re seeing is the integration of sales marketing revenue management or a hospitality Vital Commercial Strategy. Due to the are different personality types that exist, from the financial minds, to the charismatic sales minds, to the more integrated marketing minds and there’s often disruption as to how you actually get these three mindsets to work cohesively. It’s important for hotels to have seamless and convenient messaging communication across these departments so that they all share the same aligned goal. These departments are expected to be further integrated in the future but it will be a longer road to navigate. As this continues, hotels will begin integrating these with their food and beverage as well as with their wellness and spas.

 

Infrastructure Modifications & Sustainable Practices

It will be critical to look at how the resort infrastructure could be modified to fit a variety of events or guests’ needs. Along with the rise in these modifications and tailoring of infrastructure, we’re seeing the creation of sustainable flex spaces. These are hybrid spaces that allow for extended-stay guests or remote workers not to feel limited to their hotel room. With the rise of this “third office” concept outside of our own homes we’ll see more guests using hotels and other spaces to work anywhere in the world so long as they have quality internet connectivity.

The industry has seen that they can only impact the top-line in so many different ways so it’s important to consider how to integrate more sustainable practices. We have been seeing the advancement of sustainable technologies and programs that will continue to be implemented throughout hotels and resorts. Going forward, hotels should look at utilizing these practices whether it’s through solar energy, agricultural programs, a commitment to zero waste, local food donation programs and more. Review the various ways you could reuse/repurpose more extensively and give thought to which practices would best fit your hotel and guests. 

 

The Covid-19 pandemic at large has been a huge disrupter in the hospitality industry in a positive way. In a few years, we’re going to look back and see that this was a catalyst for the industry that in many regards, might have been a few years behind. It has and will encourage leapfrogs in available technology and will continue to create enhancements for the guest experience and satisfaction both online and across all customer touchpoints as they arrive at the property. As this technology advances through the future and the world becomes even more connected, it’s imperative you consider how it can be translated through hospitality and how it could be used to create and elevate unique experiences for your guests. Keeping up with these trends will allow your guests to feel more connected, involved, and valued. You will then be able to build a community and guest loyalty that will keep them returning.

(Minor) Strategic Differences that Make a Huge Difference for Your ROI

 

Not all hospitality marketing strategies are made equal. While certainly many of the services, tactics and tools are used for resorts and boutique and independent hotels alike, the strategies and nuances for each can vary significantly. Building a custom hotel sales and marketing strategy for these two different types of luxury hotel styles can be as different as the experience a guest would receive at each of them. Recognizing that our strategies need to be reflective and congruent with associated budgets, Marketing Directors and Owners can better understand how to leverage their resources and time to create the best impression and most impact to their target audience in order to effectively convert prospects into guests.

While we are not able to dive into the granule detail and intricacies that might arise as they are too complex and circumstantial, we are able to provide broad strokes of how each different luxury hotel should consider refining their online marketing strategy. Note that we recognize these strategies can be applied in broad strokes and certain boutique hotels can be the size and have the capacity of some smaller resorts. Based on the destination, location, size, design, local experiences and the other invoice list of considerations our recommendations here have equally broad application but need to be personalized for each property and even each season.

 

Selling the Property & Experience 

Positioning and selling a hotel is as much about the actual property, location and local access, amenities, and food and beverage now as it is about the experience guests are able to get in the surrounding destination. In general, luxury boutique and independent hotels provide a smaller and more intimate experience; not only on property but in their surrounding destinations. More personalized aesthetics and designs are integrated throughout the property and the guest’s room that often reflects the local culture, art and history. While this can be a wonderful attraction and selling point for boutique hotels, luxury resorts that need to outfit several hundred rooms typically aren’t able to justify this time or resources. 

Alternatively, luxury resorts have far more access to a wide variety of amenities like multiple pools, kids’ daycare, tennis courts, several conference rooms for different purposes, elaborate spas and much more that independent boutiques aren’t able to justify either by budget or size constraints. For resorts, this can be a competitive advantage depending on the target audience . In targeting larger groups, families and corporations, resorts are able to tailor these experiences more appropriately to their needs, than a boutique hotel with more limited resources. Positioning these through video and social media to derive transparency about what guests can anticipate and expect is critical to further stand out from local competitors in the region with similar amenities. 

Equally, highlighting your staff and personalizing videos that bridge and accelerate a connection with your sales and marketing, or even event and catering managers, are investments that quickly build trust, rapport and engage prospective guests that resorts have the resources and human capital to execute far beyond what boutiques can do.

 

Reviews & Reputation Management

A distinct advantage that resorts have is the sheer number of guests that stay at the property. Each guest is a chance to build or decorate your social reputation and brand equity. Larger resorts have a distinct edge to be able to solicit hundreds, if not thousands, of reviews over time in comparison to smaller boutique hotels. Establishing a clear procedure during check-out in combination with an automated review and reputation management tool can be a very effective mechanism for both properties to be able to garner important feedback and quality reviews for the hotel. This technology is able to often curtail negative reviews before they are published and give ownership a chance to rectify this negative experience and turn it into a more positive one. We know that an individual with a negative experience is 21% more likely to share this online and via word-of-mouth to their network than those who had a more positive or even average experience.

Harnessing the power of guest testimonials is far easier to create for a resort as well. With multiple people and larger budgets, resorts are able to more effectively document and capture the variety of experiences that happen on property. Resorts are able to show how different MICE events either corporate or social can be personalized to suit their needs. From conventions, awards ceremonies, leadership summits, trainings, weddings, family reunions and other group trips hotels are able to be personalized and tailored to what each different type of group needs. Getting footage of setup, the actual event and individual’s experience and testimonials on camera are very effective ways to show future prospects what the resort has the capability to do in a more transparent manner. This sets expectations and enables them to see what their own event can look like.

Associated loyalty programs that luxury resorts have the ability to stand up and reward loyalty, as well as volume, are effective tools at further differentiating and providing value to prospective guests. Because many boutique hotels are often independent and could therefore only reward coming back to the same property, resorts often are able to have more power in that they can be tied in affiliation to a brand or larger flag that a prospect or group is able to frequently visit because of the experience that they formally had there. Incentivizing guests that had a positive experience to come back and redeem savings at future stays can be as complex and detailed as these other strategies. Carefully crafting a rewards program that adds value but doesn’t break into profit margins too much is a delicate balance that should be looked at by your commercial strategy team between your marketing and revenue management team.

 

Differentiating your Resort in your Destination and Region

When there are multiple resorts in a destination, the design and experience on property isn’t the only way to differentiate a hotel. From leveraging certifications and establishing procedures to local partnerships and demos to unique packages and offers, resorts have a multitude of opportunities to create value and meaningfully position the property in a way that’s different than anything in the area. Especially with a proliferation of certifications and certified procedures that have arisen (in particular around marketing the sanitization of a hotel) these programs can be harnessed to tell a story that builds trust and confidence in prospective guests. Other certifications like the LEED Certification for sustainability and environmentally conscious building and energy practices can further inform a customer about your values and operations. Crafting that story in a meaningful and concise way that hits the emotional heartstrings of guests is an art and science that mirrors the same philanthropic efforts you can tell about getting involved in and marketing your efforts in your community or supporting employees.

Resorts also have the resources and time to build larger, more elaborate, strategic partnerships with their Destinations Marketing Organization, local tourism board, and other businesses and activities in the area. With more budget for human capital, luxury resorts and hotels are able to deploy these employees to stand up unique ways to partner with each one of these entities and provide mutual and reciprocated value. For example, a beachfront resort can develop partnerships beyond their local scuba dive shops, Jet Ski operators, captains for chartering boats,  local bars, restaurants and nightlife. This makes the process more seamless and easy to schedule and pay for in one transaction rather than via multiple parties. Equally, at a larger scale resorts can leverage their destinations marketing organizations for further reach by sharing their video and assets to be featured in the promotion of the region itself, garnering eyes and interest to that particular resort to a broader audience.

 

Traditional & Digital Marketing Services

With the exception of independent boutique hotels with a large number of rooms and an incredibly high ADR, luxury resorts with more rooms and equally high room revenue, proportionally will have significantly larger marketing budgets. This means these properties have the ability to deploy these resources in a multitude of other marketing categories as well as dedicate more spend in areas like paid ads, content creation (including social media), public relations and promotions. As they are able to Market to and fulfill their inventory to more guests, they are also able to collect a lot more data about guests ancillary revenue spend and prospective visitors demographics, psychographics, location and many other behavior role characteristics that programmatic advertising is able to collect about and online visitors behavior and history. 

This data is only as good as it is interpreted and developed into effective strategies that tailor customized marketing messages and campaigns to these individuals. Larger luxury resorts have the advantage that they can segment and develop a multitude of marketing messages to different ages, incomes, locations and many other characteristics then so we developing one or two campaigns that have a generic application to their target market. For example, a Caribbean resort could create a campaign towards older and wealthier tech-based corporations in the Northeast, California, Seattle and Boulder while concurrently developing and marketing an extended stay remote working campaign towards the younger entrepreneur audience in Denver, Austin, Santa Monica, and Raleigh. With A/B testing different promotions, landing pages and retargeting display ads across a variety of social and online media outlets, a marketing manager can easily decipher what campaign and segmentation is working best and where to allocate further resources or adjust as needed.

With these dedicated resources, resorts are equally able to develop more content to create visibility and transparency of the multitude of experiences on property that guests can engage with. Developing videos, tracking the retaining employees via employment branding and/or highlighting community involvement are all hyper-effective mechanisms to further build consumer confidence and eagerness to visit your property over others in the region. Hiring Instagram Influencers or graphic designers to develop Instagram-worthy backdrops can be fun and engaging ways to further differentiate a property, but there are also many other ways to do so. 

One powerful tactic is to create transparency about the advantages of booking directly to your resort rather than through an OTA. Showing the cost savings, or even where you’re supporting employees, or the community such as local water sanitization programs, beach cleanups, or agricultural training programs with a dedication of a small percentage or a few dollars of this direct booking can be very effective strategies to further engage and convert a prospective guest. All of these initiatives can be documented and strategically presented in a way that adds value and differentiates your resort without boasting about yourself.

 

Group Sales, Conferences & Conventions

A significant revenue generator and stabilizer for large amounts of dedicated rooms and food for resorts is derived from group sales in having a percentage of rooms dedicated to group demand vs transient bookings. Luxury resorts are able to market and sell to large groups for events, conferences, conventions and wedding ceremonies with much more ease and leverage than large boutique hotels. Due to dedicated resources, human capital, pricing, the on-property amenities and dedicated space to serve these larger groups, resorts are the obvious choice of hotels. But differentiating your property and your destinations can mean the difference between occasional groups your team has to really work to secure and consistently reliable leads of groups that come to you and pay for the value that they see has been created. 

The obvious and low-hanging fruit to market Resort conference space for groups is by showcasing the actual venue space, breakout or team conference rooms, supporting group amenities, AV (audiovisual), catering menu selection and special pricing. However, today consumer’s demands have shifted, especially in response to the social distancing and sanitation practices as a result of Covid-19. Resorts desiring to secure larger groups are needing to adapt with audio-visual support that is able to live stream the event to the group’s employees or tight attendees that aren’t able, or choose not to, make it on property for the event and yet, still want to virtually attend the event via live streaming. Prepackaged meals need to be made in lieu of buffet-style menu options to limit high contact areas and exposure to other’s germs. Currently, at the beginning of 2021 guests are not only receiving prepackaged meals but also servers are having to actually serve food behind plexiglass, requiring more hotel staff to monitor all while adhering to social distancing.  Conference rooms are set up with ample spacing so the overcrowded meeting room will no longer exists.  Guests are required to enter function space in one direction and leave out another door per a predetermined flow for traffic. Documenting these above and beyond practices in a PDF of or an amended sales pitch for the team by having transparency through videos and photos is needed to reassure weary travelers.

More established luxury resorts are able to have the human resources and financial capital to implement these taxes, sanitization procedures, collateral and asset creation as well as distribution with much more ease and far more quickly than boutique hotels. When a prospective group or event planner is seeking to work with a resort, they are often in touch with many different parties from the convention services manager to catering manager as well as the chef and even the food and beverage manager for meeting their accommodations and personalizing menu options. As a result, the groups are able to have one point of contact to manage and oversee all of this, as well as one source of billing, instead of multiple different entities and groups that otherwise an independent property might outsource to other local companies for the support they need. While this doesn’t directly need to be explained, it undoubtedly is an advantage that can be conveyed and positioned towards perspective groups and processes established to differentiate your hotels approach to streamline and automate this process with the use of other SaaS and online solutions such as an event paltform manager such as Destin, ultimately, removing the bottlenecks or pain points of ‘what’s next’ and ‘what about’ through every step of the process and continuously optimizing that feedback loop as you work with more groups to create FAQs or other assets to ease their concerns will help convert more groups, more easily and at a higher dollar once the value is transparently conveyed.

 

Undoubtedly, this is a massive undertaking for just one Director of Marketing and even their team to strategize, execute and continuously integrate. Our invitation is to explore where your strengths are here and whether it would be more advantageous to enhance those or to spend the time and resources in these other weaker categories to attract and convert more guests to your resort. Prioritize these initiatives and internally or with a trusted partner start tackling these one at a time as they will continue to have a compounding effect to build resiliency and brand equity.

The team at Social Capital Agency is here to guide and create these engaging campaigns for your hotel and future guests. To explore what is possible and how to best leverage your online presence to work for you as best as it can, we encourage you to explore a conversation about our approach to conversion-oriented integrated marketing to drive leads and conversions for your luxury resort. Let’s talk today.

How Hotel Brands make Marketing Budget’s GO Further – Coupling Strategy with Execution by Outsourcing

Hotel owners and investors are moving into 2021 with tighter budgets and more operating expenses than ever and are exploring how to make their hospitality marketing budget stretch as far as possible. Everyone across the industry is cutting unnecessary costs and seeking transparency for where they can get the highest ROI for their dollars. Where brands cut and furloughed employees through 2020, they are now preparing to ramp back up for 2021with high hopes of tourism bouncing back alongside consumer confidence as the vaccine is distributed.

However, for those seasoned marketers that were let go, coming back to an unstable industry is less than appealing. Reluctant or having moved on to utilize their strengths and apply their marketing strategies to other sectors, the hospitality industry is now thin when it comes to knowledgable talent that can satisfy hoteliers and investor’s high demands with limited resources.

Reverting back to the old strategies, Sales & Marketing Plan, and customer experiences that were SOPs for hotels pre-COVID are no longer an option in the new landscape where consumer’s digital savviness and expectations have advanced and are evergrowing.  As we support international brands, hotels and resorts, we are seeing a recurrence in what these brands’ currently support v. what their new and expanding expectations are of this role and we have some insights that you might relate to.

 

With a Director of Marketing (or seeking one) Our Clients are Experiencing:

Issues Finding Competent Talent (& Innovation)

     +  The Talent Pool is Slim & Scarce. Brands with enough properties kept their excellent marketing directors and many of those that didn’t have moved outside of the industry.
     +  A Limited, Specialized, Localized Focus. Their tiime is spent with On-Property initiatives, membership programs and closing sales with a short-term emphasis. instead of building brand value, equity and reputation effectively for more long-term gains.
     +  Creating & Overseeing the Sales & Marketing Plan. These are the hotel marketing strategies they then manage with an Agency of Record to design, create, manage and get reporting of the agency’s efforts.

 

Limited Marketing Budgets  

     +  Low Occupancies Leaves Little Profit for Marketing. Brands with the Marketing Budget are having to divide resources to pay internal employees, their marketing agency and execution spend atop their SaaS solutions & tech stack.
     +  Need the ROI to Go as Far as Possible. While some reports provide direction for what marketing efforts are most lucrative, the transparency and insights to drive the marketing strategy is not there or competitive enough. Unclear on where to spend resources they are stopping spending altogether.
     +  Unaware How Best to Leverage Current Assets & Network. Strategically handicapped with how to use the existing assets, list, partnerships and network through these times, these resources are untapped revenue centers.

 

Traditional (& more so Ineffective) Marketing Tactics 

     +  A Flat, Outdated User-Experience. Unengaging content, unintuitive website design and non-dynamic or flexible campaigns create experiences that don’t convert. People are seeking a digital experience and information before ever getting on-property and they gravitate to those that offer this seamlessly.
     +  No Dynamic or Flexible Roadmap. Driven off the old Sales & Marketing Plan that is more a paperweight than a dynamic strategy, many are using antiquated techniques and modern software solutions that are handicapping their effectiveness and results.
     +  Working in Silos with Minimal Holistic Integration. Marketing and Sales aren’t aligning strategies and tactics to achieve property goals. The result is less RevPAR and repeatable results to drive profits.

 

Losing to Established Regional Competition  

     +  Branded Properties & Portfolios Outperform Them. While they have regional knowledge this doesn’t benefit the companies growth and equity as much as effective hospitality marketing strategies across a niche of an industry. Companies in the area have an edge and gain market share and RevPAR.
     +  Push Deals & Offers instead of Building Brand Value. Set with the intention to fulfill monthly goals and sales targets, their priority and efforts go to these sales initiatives, instead of competing by building a valuable and attractive brand.
     +  Don’t Position or Price Them Fairly in the Market. Focused on group or event sales and marketing and on property initiatives, some brands don’t price or position themselves as competitively as they could in the destination losing guests and profits.

 

A Lack of Transparency & Repeatable Results  

     +  Access to Limited Data & Resources. Hotels are not getting the data they need from partners or subscription services dedicated to agencies to help influence the decisions they make.
     +  No Data Background or Broad Industry Experience for Insights. Even when they do have the right data many do not have the experience of working across a dynamic set of hotels, geographies and multiple campaigns worth of experience to leverage the insights and learnings for effective strategies from the data.
     +  A Narrow, Hyper-focused Perspective. With limited insight into one property, demographic or area in comparison to global industry trends, many internal Marketing Directors have specialized knowledge about a marketing category that keeps the company static without much room for innovation, new strategies and tools.

If brands continue to leverage and pursue this internal marketing support and specialty, they are surely going to be behind the curve of the rebound and lag in their adoption of travelers as the tourism market rebounds. For those that seek more progressive strategies, engagement with travelers and marketing strategies that attract and engage consumers they will be the first to garner the market that is seeking to travel and maintain high rates for doing so. Those that implement some of these techniques but not to the extent or quality their local competitors do will have to be satisfied with lower occupancy rates, room rates, durations of stay and lean on OTAs to fill inventory.

 

At SoCap, we have proposed a unique marketing strategy for independent and boutique hotels as well as emerging luxury brands to leverage themselves; hiring a Fractional CMO in lieu of hiring a Director of Marketing and Sales for their business or property. While this progressive approach might be too innovative and forward-thinking for some, others are viewing it as an opportunity to have their overall marketing budget be performing better with an experienced hotel marketing agency that is also able to execute and oversee the strategy, and otherwise, internal marketing director would devise at a fraction of the cost. For those hoteliers with emerging luxury brands that seek alternative marketing strategies that prioritize performance, we invite you to explore the benefits of outsourcing your marketing needs versus hiring internally to oversee and report on your marketing initiatives. 

 

With a Fractional CMO Brands can Expect to Benefit by:

Specialty Industry Knowledge & Experience 

     +  Diverse Learnings & Insights Translate to Better Results. A broad range of industry learnings are able to better drive performance across more effective messaging and positioning, online user experiences and call to actions, multi-channel integration, campaign development and more technical skills like A/B split testing.
     +  Integration Across Departments Drives Profitability. Aligning marketing’s goals and strategies alongside Sales to adapt rates & Revenue Management relations drive more profitable results.
     +  Innovation & Partnerships Boost Performance. Agencies have additional dedicated resources and partnerships to explore, evaluate and test the emerging technologies on the market. Bringing the best to their clients, empowers their clients to save that energy for other initiatives while they still benefit from the new tech. 

 

Beyond Leadership, Direction & Vision.
Get Experience, EXECUTION & Results 

     +  Divide and Conquer to Put Everyone’s Efforts to the Highest and Best Use. Allow your on-property team to utilize their time and resources where they are best harnessed with things like local photos, case studies, sales and partnerships. Meanwhile, your agency of record or fractional CMO can strategize and execute campaigns at their optimal performance for the best results.
     +  Design Strategies & Seamlessly Execute Them. Aligned with your internal vision, they can develop a hotel or resort marketing strategy and tactics that fulfills short-term demands seamlessly with your team.
     +  Constant Focus & Agility Toward Goals. Daily the team and various departments are overseeing the campaign’s performance and adjusting with the team, instead of having limited time and purview from solely one person. 

 

Progressive & Performance-based Marketing Stretch Scarce Budgets

     +  Increase Spend on Execution of the Strategy. The performance of a campaign goes up when the same marketing budget goes to more execution from people to ads. Limiting the redundancy of multiple strategists, the salary and benefits internally now go to drive bookings.
     +  ROI Effectiveness Enhanced with Reporting & Insights that Drive Strategy. As an Agency of Record, a Fractional CMO is able to have more agility with the subscriptions and tools coupled with a team that can derive more insights from multiple brands to influence the changes for a more successful strategy.
     +  Seamless Integration Across Marketing Outlets, Tactics and Techniques. Collaborating internally with one Project Manager to oversee the execution of the strategy, there are more people and less effort to quickly stand up integrated campaigns for your hotel or brand.

 

Enhanced Transparency, Reporting & Insights.

     +  Agency Tools & Subscriptions Provide More Detailed Reporting. Commercial subscriptions to multiple SaaS solutions are more accessible and provide more sophisticated learnings, functionality and insights than a hotel or emerging brand can afford & leverage as an agency team can.
     +  Broad Experience Translates Better Insights & Campaign Adjustments. Data insights across multiple brands and international properties that can be layered for deeper learnings from agency tools optimize performance & conversions.
     +  Alignment & Integration Across Brand & Departments. Align and better leverage Marketing, Sales & Revenue Management Reports for sustainable tactics. This Hospitality Commercial Strategy  is able to achieve more repeatable results, be more agile, more integrated for the brands profitability, growth and sustainability. 

 

Being Long-term Focused.

Long-term goals and aligned efforts to drive revenues and profits with the foresight to drive reputation, brand equity, and pricing for long-term dividends
     +  Strategic Growth to Build Brand Equity through Tactics over Time. Having developed the strategic roadmap for growth across multiple brands and locations, Fractional CMOs and their Agency of Records are able to leverage experience to ensure short-term and long-term growth goals are met.
     +  Gain Leverage in Expansion & Acquire Cash Cheaper. Crafting the story of a model for sustainable success, brands can finance loans cheaper with the leverage of a profitable growth strategy.
     +  Exit & Sell at a Higher Multiplier. In creating more value for the brand, we can position the acquisition to be more profitable for both buyer and seller, creating a transaction that is significantly above market value.

 

Each brand must be able to access and weigh which of these approaches, benefits and resources are more valuable to them. Our invitation is merely that as consumers and the industry progresses, does it make sense to reevaluate how your team works towards goals,  better performance and collaboration in new ways?

A Hotel Marketing Strategy Post COVID to Attract & Convert Prospective Guests

 

Many international hospitality brands and hotels that have started opening up again are refining their hospitality marketing strategy to engage and book guests during this time. For hotels and hospitality brands, small and large, the general tactics and tools to re-engage prospective guests and instill confidence and trust in your new safety protocols is generally the same. While larger brands with bigger marketing budgets will be able to have the dynamic ability for additional A/B split testing on campaigns, AI-driven pricing, more dynamic programmatic ads and incentive offerings than their smaller counterparts, understanding and implementing the following hotel reopening strategies will provide your brand with the competitive edge it needs to gain a solid market share in your region.

As a hotel marketing agency, we have had to continuously adapt and refine our strategies for performance, making the ROAS for our clients go farther. Thus, we have created the following video and recommendations for those in this industry to better understand and create a strategic marketing plan that they can start to implement themselves. The objective across these strategies is to instill trust with travelers, leverage existing assets and increase revenue without sacrificing value in exchange. Recognizing this is an industry effort to build consumer confidence until the end of the pandemic and when there is a joint effort, we all win. SoCap feels it is our responsibility to share these strategies to give our audience the ability to have their marketing budget be more effective. 

 

+      Emphasize Sanitization Practices & be sure to “Walk the Talk” –

Creating videos and SOP’s of your new and enhanced cleaning protocols will not be sufficient in reassuring consumers of your cleanliness. Actually having hand sanitizing stations, your staff cleaning common areas thoroughly and routinely, available masks and sprayers is now the bare minimum. Not following through on these practices puts your hotel and/or brand at risk for consumers, not only complaining but potentially impeding your reputation and sharing via social medias your lack or nonchalant attitude towards these initiatives. It’s worth the time and energy to continue to reaffirm that trust!

+      Fully Leverage Existing Assets & Network (email databases, social media, partnerships) –

Do more with what you currently have! Max-out without exhausting your existing social media and email database. It costs less to re-engage an existing client base than it does to convert or try to create a new one. Without sacrificing value, explore ways to enhance experiences, duration of stay and flexible booking times for an audience you already have established trust and experience with.

+      Explore Integrating Remote Working Spaces & Amenities –

The global workforce is now just that. With the Internet connecting us across the world we now have the flexibility to work wherever we would like. Consider adjusting common areas and other meeting rooms to serve your guests that look for the new remote working and even co-living lifestyle. Additionally, recognize the demand for high-speed Internet and extenders out to the pool and beach area, going beyond your immediate property to enable guests to work anywhere.

+      Increase the Number of Guests Traveling & their Duration of Stay –

While this concept of the remote worker is certainly getting traction, many aren’t familiar with how to achieve this. Educate, enable and incentivize longer durations of stay and how to best live out the new life-work lifestyle. Beyond the visa programs,, explore how else you can boost the duration of stays and number of guests. Make booking multiple rooms easy for larger groups and inform on price discounts for two weeks, a month and beyond to open a conversation with your sales office to do the negotiating on your behalf. Recognize that food and beverage, as well as wellness activities, are just the start here. Social media will create a lot of curiosity for these individuals and is likely to instill trust in their network to come out and visit for longer durations like a week or two and beyond as well.

+      Provide Important “Know Before You Go” Info about your Hotel & Destination’s Procedures & Travel Policies –

Invest in converting the intellectual property and knowledge you have of your hotel and destination into digestible collateral your prospects can view easily. Whether it be how to get there from the airport, local trends, medical, activities, food, etc.,take the time to translate these often overlooked but very valuable insights to guests that have never been there before. Clearly presenting these in digestible PDFs that they can share will continue to build trust and transparency while extending your guest services beyond the front gate.

+      Add Value for Guests instead of Providing Limited Offers & Discounts –

Airlines were one of the first to recognize they didn’t need to slash prices and consumer demand will return. Many hotels are standing their ground and recognizing the value they have to prospective travelers and the encouragement is to continue to explore where you can add value and make their trip even more seamless. Review our article and recommendations on how to do this here.

+      Market to Your Most Profitable Customer to Drive Bookings & Loyalty –

Undoubtedly, we have a bell curve of customers that come to any property. Taking the time to understand WHO your most profitable guests are and WHERE to engage and convert them will be extremely beneficial for smaller brands with meeker margins. However, all brands understanding the power of their niche and reputation to this audience will drive longer-term sustainable marketing practices and build a reputation amongst this network.

+      Collaborate with your Destination to Showcase the Activities & Area –

Consumers are now seeking experiences beyond adjusting the hotel itself. Tomorrow’s travelers will be seeking out destinations based on the activities like golf, scuba diving, sightseeing, cultural excursions, etc. more than before. Leverage the insights and reputation of your destination for further marketing purposes to intersect these guests and position your brand as a viable option for a ‘home base’ for their activities.

 

At Social Capital Agency, we are driven by conversion-oriented marketing and recognize the value of enabling your marketing budget to go farther and the implications that these have on your guests, staff and investors, alike. For assistance in navigating fees, tactics and strategies through the rebound and reopening, reach out to SoCap for an initial discovery Conversation to explore how and where we can support and serve you.

WHAT COMPONENTS TO DESIGN & ADD TO YOUR BOUTIQUE HOTELS WEBSITE TO INCREASE CONVERSIONS & BOOKINGS

As technology permeates our society and is more widely adopted, the interaction between a brand and consumer is increasingly important. Hotels today need to seamlessly translate the experience they are cultivating on property to build trust, excitement and value to their guests from across the world. An essential part of any hotel or resort marketing strategy should be developing an intuitive user experience to their branded hotel website. The more quickly a brand is able to build and instill trust with prospective guests, the easier it is to enhance value and justify higher rates for that online customer experience.

 

Whether we are seeking to provide a facelift and increase the conversion ratio of direct bookings for our clients or are building a completely new website, we have created a comprehensive list of website functionality and elements that can be integrated to further enhance the online experience guests get when interacting with and booking their boutique hotel.

 

While not all of these considerations are necessary to have an optimal website that consistently converts prospects into guests, the more intentional you are in your pre-production and design, the better the outcome and results your brand will receive. Recognizing the nuances and intricacies of your hotel, expectations of your guests, relation and perceived value against your competitors and overall trends in consumer behavior will provide the foundation for which of these elements are in each of the ‘NEED’, ‘WANT’ and ‘NICE TO HAVE’ buckets. We encourage our clients to prioritize what is mission-critical for them, what would be nice to have and what they want to incorporate into the site to effectively strategize where the best use of resources and time are in designing and building out their website. While you may really want to have the price for your hotel rooms adjust to your visitor’s respective currency, understanding your audience and how important or influential this is to them is a cost-benefit analysis that is justified for summer resorts with sufficient room rates and inventory, while for others it might not pay dividends based off the number of rooms they have and ADR. Working with our team can help provide clarity and justification around which of these components add value and provide an ROI in more effectively converting prospects to guests.

 

If you are exploring enhancing your existing website with call-to-actions, subliminal pages or functionality in a facelift without a complete redesign, prioritizing these initiatives is equally as important. It’s unnecessary to completely re-design and develop your website when minimal adjustments can and then enhance the user experience and achieve the same effect. Intentional changes to call-to-actions does user experience in previewing and booking rooms, exploring the hotel and destinations and other pertinent information can equally enable hotel years to increase room rates and justify a higher perceived value and reputation. For further considerations on best practices to enhance your direct and extended stay bookings, visit our SMARTicles on increasing your website’s conversion of guests  and targeting remote workers for extended stays here.

 

If you are looking to expand your website in any of these ways you can contact us and we can discuss how our team can help you with our website design.

 

View & Download the Full Hospitality Website Functionality Checklist here as a critical part of your hotel marketing plan.

 

Why the Hospitality Industry should be Catering towards the Female Traveler First

 

Having worked in the employer branding space across industries we commonly see that employers unintentionally overlook how they frame and position their brand externally and career opportunities internally to a female audience. We know that historically, women are the decision-makers either in the household or more currently in the emerging Gen Z and Millennial population, as independents. However, where she spends ‘her’ money and attention, males often will follow suit.

Predominantly, this oversight is something that leadership recognizes in hindsight. In acknowledging this, they create multiple marketing messages to various personas that interact and engage with the brand in the multitude of customers and employer journeys that exist. As we look at why this is, it is probably because management and leadership are fulfilled by male leaders that try their best to speak to the voice and perspective of their female counterparts rather than just including them in the process and letting the feminine speak to the feminine.

So, knowing that the feminine in our culture drives many behaviors and decisions in hospitality, either for herself or her family, why do we continue to have males lead the marketing messaging and consumer journey for ‘her’?

In this article, we will invite several suggestions and the perspective we have gleaned over years of speaking with thousands of women in their personal and professional lives and what we have synthesized from their experiences. We hope that this perspective illuminates the power of integrating and even prioritizing the female perspective in the strategy, process and creative for hospitality marketing strategies and subsequent messaging to prospective guests and employees alike.

Note – This is not an attack on how the industry or your business has historically operated. Rather, it is an observation we have secured anecdotal evidence and support from and the intent is to arm you with information and a perspective that may change how you make future decisions that impact your guests, staff, and investment alike.

 

Why hasn’t the industry spoken more to females?

While the statistics reinforce that females are the primary decision-makers as well as researchers for their next vacation, marketing messages created by male marketing leaders don’t always reflect the same sentiments that the feminine align with. Historically, the majority of the industry has been built by, run, managed and accelerated by male leadership. As such, when it comes to developing forward-facing consumer messages and a hotel marketing strategy and communication that reflects out of their guests, these leaders are guessing at what their audience wants to see and hear v.s.explicitly being influenced by their female counterparts. Thus, we get a slightly diluted version of telephone v.s. the real message from the source itself. While we are seeking to convey the safety and security of the feminine needs, how that is portrayed and translated will have slight deviance than how it would be directed and created by a woman.

The landscape of our societal composition has evolved as well. As of 2014, adult singles outnumbered their married counterparts, thus the millennial independence generation arose. The audience that would travel for vacations through the early 2000s and even into the teens was a familial unit. As such, we would present marketing messaging, packages and promotions either to families or to the mother of the household. Today, we see a rise of solo travelers, remote workers, digital nomads that stay for extended periods of time, and young professionals that are saturating the traveling landscape. The same messages that would land with mom and her kids no longer resonate with these individuals. Today’s marketers need to develop a strategy that can reflect and speak to each of these different personas and meet them where they are at. 

Consumer behavior and expectations are also influencing this messaging to the feminine. Today’s casts expect a different experience and prioritize that seamlessness and orchestration of logistics over solely price. Whereas price and promotions drove behaviors for families to save and have more resources for activities and toys, solo and younger travelers have different demands. Our point here is not to continue to apply these traditional marketing tactics to familial units, but to adapt and recognize the array of various personas your travelers fit into now and refine your customer journey appropriately to each.

 

What is the impact of not marketing to ‘Her’?

In speaking with a dear friend of mine Aubree, who traveled for months throughout Bali, Thailand, and East Asia before finally settling in Australia, she spoke firsthand on how it was intimidating getting off the plane and not knowing where her first hotel was or what was around it. In the research phase, she just wasn’t able to gather enough information to know where to stay without getting there first, asking locals and getting a lay of the land before settling in and traveling around the region. No matter how many TripAdvisor reports or blogs, she read they seemed incomplete and sometimes had opposing views. Nonetheless, even without 100% safety and security, she took the leap of faith to travel by herself. In many of the travel support groups, women would reach out to her for guidance, suggestions and local recommendations that they weren’t able to glean from the plethora of other online outlets and blogs that existed. While Aubree might be the exception, the majority of independent women today while they own their own business or excel in their jobs often outperforming their male counterparts at their same age, can be reluctant to take the same risks in a foreign country with too many unknown circumstances. 

For those in hospitality, this means they are trending towards services like Inspirada and others that curate the details and logistics on their behalf. This reassurance and clarity for them is something they are willing to pay for above and beyond for that piece of mind. Thus, mirroring those processes to provide important know before you go information, timely crucial pre-trip information about transportation, currency exchange, safety, medical care options in the area, etc. is more and more important to provide today’s eager travelers who yearn to travel, but also desire this information and reassurance. To further reiterate this point, in speaking with Kelsey she shared that she even went to a travel agency having done her research to identify the hotel and experiences she wanted, but was willing to pay the extra for their support and assistance to seamlessly connect the dots for her. This ungodly pains many of you to hear paying additional commissions, instead of having the opportunity to profit from a direct booking solely because of a lack of translating local information your team is familiar with to motivated travelers.

For our male readers, this next point might not hit as strongly as the former ones, but I imagine you’ve seen this in your life traveling or not. Women will anticipate every situation, dinner, and outing they need attire for and pack accordingly. As it relates to traveling, this is why so often bags are packed to the brim going there leaving no room for local merchandise or trinkets. As a Hotelier, how often are clothes or other guest belongings left behind or new suitcases bought just so they could bring home new local merchandise and souvenirs that reflects the culture that they just didn’t have room for in their original bags? Savvy marketers recognize this and will help prepare there to be guests with what local customs and dress look like so she can more appropriately prepare and pack accordingly. From simple Pinterest boards to a gallery on the website, giving direction about the local style will show your attention to detail and reassure her about the level of customer service you will provide throughout the rest of her experience.

The data supports that women are far more likely to buy services at the spa, merchandise, and drive the activities that they and/or their group participate in. An additional benefit to having ‘Her’ speak a marketing feminine language to your future female guests reflects the value and experience that she is expecting and solicits that excitement. Bridging the communication and micro-moments of the experience that leads to and following these activities will further create a seamless experience that is remarkable. As such she is far more prone to share this amongst her friends as well as on social media. By positioning extended upsells to the female in a way that resonates and emotionally excites her, you can increase the likelihood of conversions as well as the price and profitability of these services when you fulfill an exception and see more experience between them and your hotel.

 

Why ‘She’ is the future audience of any hospitality marketing strategy

 

While we have alluded throughout this article to the many benefits of building a clear Marketing Strategy for women, women let us more clearly share these explicitly. Equally, these women are saving in allocating their resources more diligently. With more discretionary income to spend in multiple capacities their desire to spend it on travel is also increasing for many reasons. Today, they can spend more time, money, and desire to do so that fulfills them intrinsically and holistically.

It’s not just the young that have this desire to travel, equally their empty Nester counterparts yearn for this opportunity to complete their bucket list. Having seen their kids off to college, they too have an inkling to fulfill experiences they’ve seen on TV and now social media for themselves. Increasingly, divorced women have additional resources to travel and see the world for prolonged periods of time. The average traveler is now a 47-year-old female. Like it or not, this is a way for them to emotionally heal and mentally detach and we have heard this from dozens of eager women that want to travel solo.

Across age demographics, women want to be immersed in culture, locally or globally. The trend for sustainable food, energy and culture is on the rise and women are leaning into this hard. By promoting these efforts within your organization and the community that emotional strain will resonate with ‘Her’ so long as it is authentic and purposeful.

Luxury travel memberships are on the rise and especially during Covid at higher occupancy levels than they’ve seen in years because women are willing to pay for seamless curated travel experiences. The number one thing that Millennials say they are struggling with is constant stress, according to a Mintel Report from 2019. Having the details thought through, agenda planned, food prepared and at the ready for them is worth paying a premium. Reducing details and thoughts about the logistics is something men are more prone to do themselves then pay for, but for women, this is a luxury that’s worth every penny. Thinking through the customer journey and micro-moments throughout the research and discovery process, through booking, pre-trip emails, arrival, the state itself, associated activities, and post leaving and mind mapping those to provide details and timely information will meaningfully differentiate your brand throughout the entire experience. If there’s one thing to remember from this article it’s this; Convenience is King.

Women also are more likely to influence those in their social network positively or negatively about the experience they had with your brand. Mintel reports that Millennials dominate the social media audience right now and their tendency to document their life experiences, including travel, is the equivalent of WOM advertising for you and your hotel. WOM is the most trustworthy form of advertising amongst Millenials and a strong percentage of women in general. Women will no doubt check your property’s social media and online presence, read through online reviews and ask for friends’ opinions who have been to the hotel or area. It is crucial to guide her through this. Some ideas could be having a unique hotel hashtag, geolocation Snapchat filters, more than 100 posts with the geotag location of your hotel on Instagram, a steady Facebook page and frequent responses to online reviews, whether they be good or bad. 

 

What you should be doing to make sure you’re serving ‘Her’ needs & desires?

Recognizing the importance of marketing to the feminine and the multitude of consumer personas that currently exist, what can your hotel do to enhance its marketing strategy to more appropriately reflect and resonate with ‘Her’? Undoubtedly, this is a loaded and ever-evolving question to which the answers will vary by location, destination, experience and caliber/quality of that relative to the area. While each of these concepts could be its own article we will summarize them to bring some color to the expertise we have garnered over the last decade.

    +   Bring ‘Her’ into a Leadership and Management Role –

It is shown that moving towards diversity and not just thoughts, ideas, race but also gender brings better results for organizations. Promoting and giving a voice to ‘Her’ internally through the marketing department to influence the messaging and micro-moments throughout the customer experience will improve the positioning and articulation of the hotel at large.

 

    +   Updating the Online Experience to be Seamless & Valuable for ‘Her’ – 

Take another internal review of the entire buying journey from every outlet that exists for her. On the website, explore the discovery and buying process navigating through the inventory and booking process for individuals, as well as groups. From simple calls to action to appropriate ‘Know Before You Go’ documents, where can you enhance the experience while not giving everything away and leaving some mystery for the experience.

 

    +   Create a Bilateral Feedback Loop with Guests –

Create more opportunities for your guests to give feedback beyond their check out. Where else, even in the discovery and research phase or meeting up to a trip, are guests able to provide feedback? How can your internal team recognize trends and equally have a platform to share those insights with the marketing and sales teams to work off of?

 

    +   Ask Powerful Questions & Listen Powerfully to Guests & Employees alike –

The biggest slippery slope we see is marketers taking things for granted or assumption versus directly asking. Even when they ask, making sure they ask the most powerful question to get the most powerful answers will enhance the effectiveness of the time spent with guests and employees to enhance their experience. Only act on what your feedback shows, not what you personally feel is best.

 

    +   Align & Leverage Event Planners & Travel Agents for their Perspective –

Women predominantly more prone to be an event planner and explore the logistics and details for a seamless experience. Harness their experience to build a reputation for a more sustainable lead generation and seamless experiences across your customer mix.

 

    +   Go Green & Sustainable Where Possible –

There are many benefits to going green beyond your bottom line. Women and younger travelers, in general, are seeking eco-friendly hotels that are sustainable and support their local communities. The ripple of fact from employee retention and engagement to customer satisfaction will far outweigh the benefits of your financial impact in going green.

 

Beyond the data, trends, statistics, financial and emotional reasons to market towards women are the ethical and social ones. Creating a community and culture in your brand, internally and externally, that empowers and supports the feminine will have an impact for all the women in your personal and professional life. I employ and invite you to sit down with your leadership team and take a deep dive into each of these categories and make small or large changes to how you present your brand to tomorrow’s consumer,’ Her’.

Bringing to life the old Sales & Marketing Plan into a plan, not a Presentation

 

It is that time of the year again! Approaching the fourth quarter and if you’re in marketing in the Hospitality industry, you know what that means; New budgets and projections. Now, how often do you and your team actually go back and visit that and ensure you’re on target and have stuck to your targets? Do you have quarterly milestones to track progress and dates set for when to start implementing new seasonal campaigns and promotions?

From our experience, many have the best of intentions to create a plan and stick to it, but it can be one of the hardest things to project, implement and track. That’s why many of the hoteliers we work with often shy away from sharing these plans that have so much time and energy put into them to become the biggest paperweights only to never get revisited. So, we stepped back and looked at this issue; Is there a better way to approach this antiquated sales and marketing plan? How can new hoteliers and managers have a more flexible framework for warmer seasons, variations in guest behavior, destination highs and lows, or extreme circumstances (like pandemics) going forward?

As we started researching, we found one common denominator. The Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Management teams were working on their own individual rather than a collective and collaborative fashion. What would the result be if these three departments worked in unison rather than in silos? Universally, everyone agreed that the results would be transformative and outstanding. 

So, why haven’t any brands or hotels explored how to break the silos and work towards a collective hotel marketing strategy?

 

The Familiar Hotel Sales & Marketing Plan – Why the Historic Silo Model Worked so Long

One of the first considerations that we looked at were the different functions and personality types of each department. We recognized that part of the problem between the three (Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Management) is that they have very different personalities. Salesmen are typically the go-getters and charismatic personalities that are relentless. When it comes to marketing personas, they are the creatives and the strategic personalities that are able to bridge human desires, needs and behaviors. Revenue managers are traditionally very financially end logic-oriented. So, it’s natural and understandable that these three personality types wouldn’t organically get along and work cohesively around goals and tactics to achieve them. Over time, there would be a conflict that drives a wedge and results in these silos.

But, the old system and approach worked, didn’t it? Depending on who you ask, you’ll get different answers. Each department would claim yes. However, most owners and investors would agree that it used to work, but there is undoubtedly a better way they can be integrated. Kathryn Baker, Partner at TCRM a Revenue Management company for independent hoteliers, reinforces that “Not so long ago, there was often tension between the Sales department and the Revenue Management leader.” Depending on the review or bonus structure of the Sales team, Revenue Management might have to push for higher group rates, less LRA (last room available) accounts, better group patterns, etc. “As the role of Revenue Management grew , and compensation structures revisited, Sales was no longer the enemy! The bigger picture of the entire property became the focus, and what was best for that, instead of internal fighting over market segments.” Baker shared as she reflected on the old-school approach the industry took.

Since the creation of Revenue Management, there has been a proliferation of other online outlets that drive traffic and revenues. Online travel agencies, travel agents, group bookings, and government and commercial opportunities have arisen that have kept the industry afloat. Due to the high demand, we were able to see that even with the rise of many new properties they were able to stay relatively booked across the multitude of channels and market mixes that were available. That is of course until there were blips in the economy, such as 2001 and 9-11, 2008 economic crisis, and most notably, COVID-19.

 

Adapting with the Business Landscape & Consumer Demands – Why it’s time for a Shift in Hospitality Marketing

Without group sales, events or other large buyouts to support hoteliers, they will need to market and target the leisure and business traveler for the time being. That being said, they will need a larger number of this audience staying for increased periods of time with larger groups to help drive revenue. The pandemic should not be the only reason that the industry needs to adapt. 

In almost every other industry, businesses look at efficiencies and how to increase the effectiveness of its efforts without compromising the end product for consumers. While this is done throughout the supply chain and in particular around food and beverage, it is overlooked within the hospitality industry. Additionally, as guests become more tech-savvy and familiar with their online buying behaviors they will naturally gravitate towards those that are superior in their online presence. To stay competitive and meaningful to consumers, hoteliers at large need to elevate their online experience. Mirroring the best practices and strategies today’s consumers are familiar with that work in e-commerce, automotive and real estate is needed to not just stand out, but to be up to par with their audience. A deep dive into the guest’s booking journey also shows where guests are leaving the booking process and opportunities to enhance their experience with relevant and timely information. Things like “Know Before You Go” documents, weather information, “local style and apparel” guides, safety, transportation, currency exchange and other pertinent information can instill comfort and confidence in visitors that seek such information and detail before booking. 

Translating other best practices, such as other “recommended rooms” within the property that guests might be interested in as they are looking at the property details page, can increase profits. Consumers are familiar with Amazon and other e-commerce sites and how these sites recommend other products or even warranties  associated with them. Providing easy access forecasts to a few other rooms that have perhaps a better view or larger square footage within a similar price range is an easy way to compel guests to look at the experience above and beyond what they originally might expect from booking. 

What business does Revenue Management have regarding website content and guest messaging? Not only can Revenue Management often provide invaluable data to support strategy direction in this area, i.e. which room type is the most popular or ‘How far ahead are guests booking for summer weekends?’, but Revenue Management also has that “big picture” focus at all times. What policies are on our website? What kind of packaging and amenities are guests requesting and prefer? Baker said,“To date, it’s often been a division of duties between the website (marketing) and the booking engine (Revenue Management) – but the two are so completely intertwined that it’s shortsighted to work separately and keep the other department at bay.” Managing this together ensures consistency, accuracy and best meets the guest needs.

Recommending other activities and personalizing their experience with spas, dining experiences or other local adventures is a wonderful way to deepen the experience for guests before they even step foot on property. 

Finally, for independent hotels, this integrated commercial hospitality marketing strategy is one that will differentiate your boutique property from other flagged and branded properties within your destination. Because research is so accessible to consumers today, every detail and micro-moment you can create for them that provides value and makes their research process more seamless the more valuable your brand becomes. Seeing as guests are researching a multitude of properties within a destination, continuing to innovate and provide customer service online at the same quality and caliber as you do off-line will further differentiate your property to prospective guests. Millennials, remote business workers and empty nesters alike are seeking new and more immersive experiences when they travel. Catering to consumer’s demands now means being intentional with your marketing and strategic with your messages to each audience and demographic. In doing so, you’ll be sure to attract your most profitable customer and refine a sustainable strategy for your hotel through the good times as well as the bad.

 

The New Full Occupancy Framework – Integrating & Aligning Department Goals for the Property 

Given that nearly all hoteliers have had to let go of nonessential staff and downsize to keep their doors open during this time, how can hotel leadership align and integrate this new Commercial Hotel Marketing Strategy? Like any team or business, redefining the collective mission and vision or adapting the existing one to fit, is important to ensure continuity and cohesiveness. Whether this is internal or external, taking the time to define these and the respective goals on a shorter 90-day or even monthly time frame is central to make sure everyone is on the same direction.

The new Full Occupancy Framework that SoCap is creating for the hospitality industry is designed to create accountability and collaboration across departments for larger and more universal goals. For leadership teams, this is going to increase transparency and return on investment of the various efforts and tactics that these departments individually and collectively are executing. During leadership meetings, it will be easy to view the successes and progress towards the various department and property goals and empower leaders to be more flexible in their approach as they can clearly see which initiatives are gaining momentum and where the dollars are going the furthest.

This ultimately enables the hotel brand to create repeatable and sustainable marketing strategies and implement them at scale. By refining the interplay between Sales and Marketing and how Revenue Management can appropriately manage the demand to drive possibility for the organization, leaders are able to understand and duplicate marketing and sales initiatives that were successful with more insights about what worked to achieve success. Having goals is a well-established part of hotel management. Often, these goals are person or department-specific (sales goals), or broad and long-term (meet budget, beat comp set in RGI) What if we worked with – and measured – smaller goals that become the stepping stones to building a measurable strategy? Goals related to marketing for a specific campaign can be created and measured, RM goals can be more tangible (direct channel at 50% for weekends in February; increase length of stay for Saturdays to beat comp set next month, etc). “When we start measuring these, we find out what we CAN do, what works, what doesn’t. Then we can revise for the future – both the goals and the strategies to meet them.” shares Kathryn, optimistic about the road ahead for this cohesiveness. In the future, the team can unite during a slow season or unexpected cancellations to repeat this process and mitigate the losses by leveraging former successful campaigns and their tactics.

 

The long-term implications of integrating these three disciplines is not solely driving the profit wedge with more bookings and RevPAR, but building brand equity for a future sale or acquisition. With repeatable and sustainable results, owners can leverage their Commercial Hotel and Marketing Strategy as an asset to a future buyer. Having transparent and repeatable results will give owners the ability to scale with cash for less interest or to liquidate at a higher multiplier. Coupled with a strong employer branding strategy that reduces training, recruitment and poor productivity in the future owners are able to have a compelling narrative to provide to banks and future investors about the strength and resilience of their organization thus justifying selling at a higher multiplier and getting cash cheaper.

 

 

The benefits of Sales, Marketing, and Revenue Management working proactively together are endless. Creating goals together, planning and pivoting together, and always keeping the big picture in mind – are things that will push a hotel over and above competitors. Regardless of where your hotel or brand is within its lifecycle, leadership teams should be revisiting how they are able to align cohesively in the new business landscape to achieve superior results. The businesses that will thrive and be attractive to future consumers and investors innovative approaches to achieve their business results. Our invitation is that if you see the possibility of superior results by aligning these three departments more intimately, we would be interested in exploring what the possibilities and results for your organization can look like.

 

 

 

Translating the Speed of Trust Concepts to Today’s Tourism Landscape Post COVID

 

It was Fall of 2019 when I listened to Stephen Covey’s book, Speed of Trust, while driving through Costa Rica from beach town to beach town. The concept that he laid out in the book has made its way into my life, not just professionally, but personally as well.

 

So, it’s no surprise that as the recovery and rebound phase from COVID-19 continued to prolong itself, that everyone in our professional network behind the International Tourism Resource Network was wondering “What can we collectively do to accelerate the industries return?” The whole idea in the first place was to unite professionals across the hospitality network and to share resources and information that would enhance onsite and regional policies, best practices and methods that would curb the learning curve for everyone with these shared resources. However, given that no one had a true sense of how long this pandemic was truly going to last or the implications of the stay at home orders, we weren’t able to prepare for the longevity of these closed doors.

 

One morning, while speaking with Trevor Stuart-Hill of Revenue Matters, it struck me that we could collaborate around this notion of consumer confidence and how it affects the recovery of tourism at large. Just as trust can be accelerated between two parties in business or relationships, equally consumer confidence had a correlation to how fast and when people were going to travel again. Trevor and I entertained several conversations about how in a normal economy things like consumer confidence, transparency and motivation were all factors that influence the likelihood of a prospective traveler going to a hotel or destinations. 

 

We recognized that there was a strong correlation between all of these factors, regardless of the economic state that plays into the strength of tourism. Transparency and consistency are now just as important key factors in a consumer decision-making process as motivation and desire to travel. Lack of transparency, consistency and unity can have long term consequences for locally owned hotels and resorts. For example, if local media claims COVID-19 cases are ~500 in the area but the hotel claims there are only 200, potential consumers will lose trust and confidence. Policies such as new cleaning practices within hotels need to be commonly adopted across-the-board, similarly to how we are seeing in restaurants now. Visibility and transparency in these processes reinforces consumer confidence and increases the likelihood that they are going to stay with you. 

 

While we took some liberty from Stephen Covey‘s, Speed of Trust, and modified a few of the components in this equation, we’ve tested the model before. Exploring regional issues like a hurricane or hot season, we’ve been able to see that this equation still holds true. As such, we take a deeper dive in this article to explore the change this new pandemic era and what we as influencers and experts in this industry can do to accelerate the recovery of the tourism industry as a whole. in this pandemic era what we as influencers and experts in the industry can do to accelerate the recovery for 

 

Read the full-length article on HospitalityNet here.

 

Boost your Properties Reputation and Increase your Bookings with 6 Ways to Get More Guest Reviews Now!!

 

Ask any hotelier what the top five most important assets are and across-the-board, reviews and reputation would be on every one of their lists. Undoubtedly, the lifetime value of a customer and their internal human capital are imperative to ongoing success. But when seeking to attract new guests, having quality reviews will bring your hotel to life and are as valuable as gold. 

Beyond photos and videos of your property, reviews are able to bring an unbiased, third-party perspective that is able to carry a lot of weight, instill more confidence and provide reassurance to potential future guests.  

Emails, text messages, social outreach, Wi-Fi capture and many other initiatives have been put in place to seek to secure reviews and feedback from consumers. To simplify the multitude of practices and strategies to solicit more reviews from guests, we have laid out the six main categories, strategies and efforts that your marketing and sales team or agency should consider to enhance those micro-moments leading up to a positive review for any hoteliers, independent or branded, property.

 

+  “WIFT” Messaging – Positioning Review for Future Guests

One of the simplest, yet most effective, ways to get more reviews from your guests is by reframing who the review truly serves. Instead of positioning reviews to be beneficial for the hotel, guests are far more likely to leave a review for another guest or peer that could be able to benefit from their experience and insight. In your messaging and positioning be sure that you frame the review as beneficial and advantageous for future guests to see what the hotel experience was like for others that got the branded experience.

Like all marketing, considering what is in it for them and positioning the review to benefit their peers or themselves, not the brand, will receive the best output.  This will result in more information from your consumers that you can use to enhance the experiences you provide. If anything, this one simple change across your outlets in which you solicit reviews will increase the number of reviews you get from guests that currently stay with you.

 

  +  Leverage Tech – Automate & Schedule the Process

Today’s hotel owners and marketers can harness a multitude of technology and software that can automate outreach and streamline the processes to engage and solicit customer reviews. Some of the review and reputation management platforms we use even have the ability to integrate your former clients from a spreadsheet to solicit reviews, as well as the ability to SMS text messages to guests. We can implement a review process that within 90-minutes of the checkout process, an automated, personalized text can be sent to guests inquiring about their experience, as well as diversifying their reviews across multiple outlets.  

Some of my favorite technology is also looking at internal as well as guest communication and how you can set up these and refine your communication systems as well. We empower hotels to send pre-determined messages like the Wi-Fi password, updates about happy hours, events, or even pre-trip information. Systems can be utilized to send a message via text, WhatsApp, or even Facebook Messenger following their stay in a matter of hours to be timely and relevant, and increasing the effectiveness of securing a valuable review for your boutique hotel or resort.

 

  +  Diversify Reviews – Ensure You’re Hitting Multiple Directories

Google is the most common profile to seek reviews on, aside from industry-related outlets like TripAdvisor, Booking.com, Hotels.com, etc. Diversifying your reviews by ensuring you’re providing access for your guests to review your hotel on multiple directories is key to increasing reviews across multiple boards. Google wants to see that you have reviews on TripAdvisor, Yelp, OpenTable, Foursquare, Apple Maps, and a multitude of others as well. By doing this, you become relevant to a multitude of people and are not tricking or hacking their system to just be relevant to one.

At SoCap, our reputation tool allows owners to change the primary outlet to solicit reviews so they are able to encourage customers to leave them across various outlets. Additionally, if a guest has a negative experience and that leaves three-star reviews or less, it won’t post the review to the outlet. Rather, it emails and notifies the general manager so they have a chance to rectify the experience and turn a bad review into a positive one.

 

+  Give a Little. Benefit a Lot. – Incentives that are Reciprocal 

One successful way we have found for receiving reviews is incentivizing little behaviors at the end of customers’ stay, like “Grab-n-Go” food, a credit towards their transportation, etc. upon showing the front desk that they shared their review. Offering to give a $15 dollar credit towards transportation to their next destination provides value and timely incentives upon checkout that will leave a positive final lasting impression. Alternatively, a “Grab-n-Go” meal and coffee is another offer that can be extended to guests through notifications and push-messages that are of mutual value at the time of check out.

 

  +  Encourage Social Media Sharing – Share the Love, Reap the Rewards 

While most reviews are only seen on your property profile, encouraging guests to share that amongst their own social network to increase awareness and impressions can be very valuable. Encouraging guests to share that positive experience can be a really effective way to increase brand awareness and build customer advocacy. 

 

  +  Engage. Connect. Repeat. – Keep in Touch & Keep it Personal

We find that most independent and boutique hotel owners forget to engage and respond to the reviews they get from guests. This is truly one of the easiest and fastest ways to extend your customer service and engagement with a client. Responding within 24 hours, or ideally even the same day, to a guest review as part of a routine for your marketing team is likely to increase the effectiveness of the reviews at large. Future guests are able to see that you have responded appropriately, acknowledging or even thanking guests for their stay.  That attention to detail and customer service is a reflection of your overall brand.

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Instilling consumer confidence through reviews can be an extremely effective and influential way to drive future bookings and brand loyalty. By understanding and implementing the techniques here, we have found that our clients are able to dramatically increase customer engagement, solicit reviews and get feedback from customers about where to enhance their on-property experience through some simple, yet hyper-effective, tactics. 

If you or your marketing team feels that you don’t have the appropriate resources to implement these tactics yourselves and would prefer to lean on our team’s expertise, don’t hesitate to reach out and inquire about our review and reputation management services or how we more effectively convert guests to direct bookings through our integrated marketing approach.

 

Changing Consumer Perception to Support International Local Hotel Businesses

 

As a hotelier in the industry, regardless of whether you are an independent owner, part of an emerging portfolio of regional brands, or a larger flagged property, increasing direct bookings through your website is a huge initiative to keep more profits and not pay large commissions to the industry OTA’s. Many of the industries seasoned managers and marketing directors look to SoCap to be able to provide direction on how to increase the conversion of traffic to your site to book direct as well as the effectiveness of the myriad of marketing channels they have exposure and distribution on. 

Regardless of the outlet, driving more direct bookings saves many owners 12-20% of commissions they would pay out to OTA’s and puts those profits back in the organization to utilize internally. As such, being able to convert more prospective guests to book directly for your property and keep the profits is a priority and critical for many marketing departments.

Since the online travel agencies have grown so quickly and rapidly to serve the tourism industry, they have become the default for many consumers. Unknowingly, consumers are not aware of how much commission the OTA’s keep for themselves. With the following five high-level concepts and strategies for your hotel to explore standing up to reframe how by booking direct guests are able to support their local business ecosystem and community.

 

   + Educate – Bring Awareness to Supporting Local

First, the general public is generally unaware of the fact that OTAs take such a large percentage of bookings. As such, it is the independent hotel’s responsibility to assist in educating how booking direct helps local businesses. Informing potential consumers about how the additional profits made from direct bookings are reinvested into the hotel experience and the surrounding local community is also a good idea. Our research shows that hotels that provide additional funding for local community efforts, environmental health and betterment of the guest experience resonates with many consumers. There’s nothing wrong with remaining  a profitable business, but in hospitality, showing how a portion of those funds is used to better the consumer’s experience is more likely to convert guests by building transparency and trust.

 

   + Transparency – Show as well as Tell

The more clear and transparent your hotel or brand is able to be, the more quickly you will build trust with consumers. In the booking process, showing directly on your website how much booking direct saves and supporting local is able to save the guest is certainly one attractive offer. Pricing another 3-5% below the OTA’s to ensure you’re still in parody is crucial. 

Alternatively, creating transparency around where those resources are able to be reinvested into enhancing their guest experience is another method to engage and change customer behavior. If guests are able to see that they are able to get better amenities, upgrades, more inclusive/exclusive content, activities, or experiences if they book directly through the website, the incentive to book directly will likely increase.

Bring those experiences to life and illustrate exactly how you are investing back into their experience and your property for life through video, storytelling of other guests, staff, and on-property signage that illustrates how these dollars are put into these initiatives. Small ways in which some of those funds can enhance the experience, but otherwise would’ve gone to commissions, is a compelling reason for guests to change their fine behaviors and support your entire business and community ecosystem, instead of the larger OTA’s.

 

   + Incentivize – Reward & Reinforce Consumer Behavior

Create a program that aligns with your organization’s values, mission, vision or other local impacts that your staff likes to get involved in. Amongst your ownership or leadership group decide what resources you could dedicate per night to these efforts if people decided to book directly, instead of through OTA’s. Something as small as $5 – $10 per night per room can add up fast and show where those additional resources are able to be dedicated to multiple initiatives.This will help you emotionally engage the audience and is an even more powerful way to captivate them to book directly through your website. 

Show a running total of how much has been reinvested in saving the turtles, supporting local agriculture, the meals you’ve been able to create or the stories of staff that have been able to advance and take care of their families and communities in short stories or even infographics is a powerful way to translate this story in a meaningful way to guests. Reinforce these initiatives on property as well asthat behavior. Create talking points with your staff and encourage guests to share these anecdotes with their friends on social media.

 

 + Collaborate – Unify to Create Lasting Impact

While increasing your hotel’s direct bookings will certainly support your top line, profitability and satisfy both your guests and investors alike, it doesn’t stop there. Gaining a critical mass of consumers to understand the implications of supporting local businesses and communities through booking direct, versus the easy and convenient known path of using OTA’s is going to take achieving a critical consumer mass. This is done through education and numbers. As such, it is important that you share these principles with other hotels in your area. 

The more international independent hotel owners, brands and resorts are able to implement these strategies to bring awareness to consumers, the more likely we are to change guest behavior at scale. Conversely, unifying together to obtain group buying power as the larger flag properties have done will be another approach to achieve the economies of scale needed. Bring this initiative up with your DMO or association and feel free to get SoCap involved as part of this larger initiative as well.

 

   +  Increased Customer Data –  Leverage & Personalize Guests Experiences 

The silent and often unspoken assets about direct bookings is the marketer’s ability to assist a boutique hotel or resort in leveraging customer data for future revenues. Beyond the obvious, there are smaller and often more profitable ways to use customer data and emails without compromising their personal privacy or information. Upselling on property experiences, such as spas, wellness experiences, private tastings, or other amenities, that your property might offer, is one way to keep in the customer experience and get personalized data.

Reaching out following a booking to secure information that will enhance their experience and is another way to build a more robust customer profile. With that data, everyone from your front desk and Valet to your staff and housekeepers are able to greet, personalize, and enrich the interaction and engagement that they have with your valuable patrons in a way that makes it clear you are detail and customer service oriented. These micro-moments go a long way and help to create a remarkable experience that guests are able to remember for a lifetime and share with friends and colleagues for years to come.

 

Our goal at SoCap is to empower and enable hospitality to be more accessible to guests. Empowering guests and educating them about the implications of booking direct and how that has a larger ripple effect to support your business and local community is an important value of ours. If your marketing team would like the expertise of SoCap’s team to effectively these strategies within your site and larger online experience, reach out to us for a conversation about how we can support you. 

 

 

How to Grow Exposure & Revenues through Hotel Branded Products

 

While branding the touchpoints guests encounter throughout a property is no new concept, ever-changing policies and regulations can sometimes narrow the possibilities. Hoteliers should regularly explore onsite branding opportunities to market their property throughout the entire customer experience appropriately.

Consumers are now coming to expect, if not demand, limited contact during the hotel’s check-in process and throughout their stay. If done well, boutique and international hotels can enhance the guest experience through commercial products that elevate the brand’s identity.

Many boutique and international hotel marketing managers tend to see only one side of brand exposure and awareness. We will seek to illuminate a few additional perspectives and advantages of extending the brand identity across multiple customer touchpoints. We will also discuss opportunities to sell some of these products for added profit and exposure outside of the destination.

 

Exposure & Brand Awareness –

The most obvious opportunity for supplemental exposure is branding products like toiletries, coasters, and water bottles. However, consumers interact with many other items that can serve as tools to increase brand awareness. Spa products, lotions, candles, and robes are great examples because guests not only use them during their stay but often bring them home where friends and family members are exposed to them as well. Alternatively, branded merchandise like tote bags, sunglasses, and photos of the hotel or destination are great conversation starters. When a friend or family member sees one of these items, it creates an occasion for your guest to talk about the trip, your hotel, and the experience you provided them.

 

Education & Signage –

With COVID, we have to regularly evaluate how to direct guests throughout the property in new and unique ways. Placards, iPads, digital directories, and other innovative approaches are needed to guide guests. To inform customers and provide peace of mind, signage that educates and reassures them on current safety precautions and cleanliness protocols is essential. Physical and digital signage, along with hand sanitization stations, are opportunities to further expand your brand identity by including any badges or seals that validate your practices and quality of service.

 

Brand Affiliation –

Beyond another impression of your brand, ensuring your logo is on products like hairdryers, robes, sandals, notepads, and other items guests use is a great way to affiliate your name with other quality brands. Associating your logo with quality, recognized brands that consumers hold in high regard is an easy way to enhance the customer journey and upgrade the perception of their experience at your property. While it certainly might take more time to build these relationships with the brands, it can be worth it when you leave an impression on guests who influence like-minded individuals in their personal and professional spheres.

 

Sell for Profits –

Many boutique and international hotels don’t explore how to monetize their brand equity and reputation to the extent that they could, or should. While promotional products are often seen as low-value trinkets, the industry has come a long way with a variety of first-rate services and products to offer hotel networks and their guests. Additionally, by ordering high-quality products for your guests while they’re on property, they may highly enjoy the experience and desire to take the robe, slippers, sunglasses, bathing suit, or other products back home or to their next destination.

 

Based on our experience with boutique hotel and international property marketing, we have put together an initial list of products, while not comprehensive, to consider when looking to expand onsite branding. If you have recommendations or other items you feel should be added to this list, please comment or email us at .

 

Property Products to Brand 

• Entryway stands for guest check-in — consider going digital (e.g., GuestFriend)
• Hand sanitizing stations
• Signage — property or specific
• “Do Not Disturb” signs
• TV screens in lobbies and common areas
• Soaps
• Water bottles
• Spa products
• Embroidered pillowcases
• Candles
• Lotions
• Dental care products
• Welcome/Sanitization bags
• iPad menus for food and beverage
• To-go and laundry bags
• Hand sanitizing wipes
• Pens
• Pads of paper
• Umbrellas
• Mugs
• Hats
• Shirts, tanks, and other clothing
• Towels
• Robes
• Slippers
• Glassware
• Coasters
• Mints or chocolates
• Face masks
• Sunscreen
• Ringed binders
• Conference room table blotters
• Table tents

 

Products to Brand and Sell

• Framed or rolled images of your hotel and destination 
• Tote bags
• Towels
• Spa products and other toiletries
• Hand sanitizer
• Pet bowls (at pet-friendly hotels)
• Robes
• Sunglasses
• Sunscreen
• Slippers
• Power supplies — business or adventure
• Face masks
• Luggage tags
• Brochure holders

 

Depending on your location, destination, or experience, the above list may vary, but there are always abundant possibilities for brand extension. If you would like to explore these opportunities for your organization, I invite you to connect with our team and creative director. Together, we can discuss how to enhance your brand exposure and affiliation through profitable merchandising. 

 Understanding Today’s Customer Journey & Competence 

 

As business owners, we continually explore the delicate balance between charging a competitive price and reducing costs in an effort to grow the profit wedge. With the travel and tourism landscape tighter than ever, it’s imperative to reevaluate our mix of channels, marketing, and pricing to establish the best output with very little to no increase in spending.

Most industry players agree that guest direct bookings are ideal. Hotel chains pay anywhere from 10 – 22% in commission to third-party booking services. When guests book directly with a property, it results in more profit and less hassle for hotel owners. 

Today’s consumers are digitally savvy, with 48% of US smartphone users reporting they are comfortable researching, booking, and planning their entire trip to a new travel destination using only a mobile device (Google/PhocusWright, 2018). Due to COVID-19, even consumers who are traditionally less savvy are purchasing more online, and their expectations are heightened.

When a prospective traveler is in the research phase, a seamless online experience that illustrates exceptional attention to detail and a focus on customer experience can make the difference between securing a reservation or not. The less a user has to work (i.e., fewer clicks) at finding pertinent information, the better their overall experience, and the more likely they will book. An intuitive website often equates to higher occupancy rates. 

 

So, what are the best practices and considerations on how to reduce website clicks to increase direct bookings? Let’s take a look.

 

Page Hierarchy

How many clicks does it take for a guest to see available room inventory? How easy is it to view the room details? Knowing that people are using their phones to research now more than ever (stat), what does the process look like when a guest navigates the site for the first time or during a subsequent visit when they’re ready to select their desired room and make a reservation? Since you can likely navigate your website like the back of your hand, it is difficult to be entirely objective. My suggestion is to give your phone to a friend at dinner and ask them to imagine they’re planning a trip to your destination. Their behavior will reveal a lot about how new visitors access and interact with your website.

Recommended Rooms

We’ve all used Amazon and seen how effective they are at bundling and upselling additional products. On any given product page, they show the user what is “frequently bought together” with that item, as well as other suggestions for similar goods. When booking travel, guests typically search for properties by price or location. Taking a page from Amazon’s book, we suggest providing recommendations for your visitors with an “In Your Price Range” section, or something similar. Additionally, create a feature in which users can compare various inventory options. Offer incentives to upsell them with the same strategies the big e-commerce brands are using.

 

Reframe Messaging

A small change in positioning can help guests understand how influential direct booking is to supporting local businesses. Just as Black Friday and Small Business Monday illuminate online and local shopping efforts, emphasize how direct booking puts more money into the local economy and impacts the quality of their stay. Many consumers are unaware of the high commission rates online travel agencies collect and would book directly with you solely for this reason.

Clear Incentives for Booking Direct

Make sure to display how much the customer can save by booking directly. If they’re booking for one night, show them a per night savings. If they’re staying longer, give them a lump sum for the duration of their stay, or provide information on how booking directly can help support local communities or businesses. This technique can be combined with creating a sense of demand and urgency if booking within a specific timeframe to drive them to act quickly.

Simplify the Cart Flow

When booking direct and reducing clicks we can’t just stop looking at the experience once your visitors leave your website. We also have to explore where we can optimize the experience when they leave your site and visit your associated booking engine. It is important to carefully explore the user flow and navigation of your booking engine system to ensure it too limits users clicks and isn’t cluttered with unnecessary and wasted steps. Often, they will be willing to work with you on customizing shortcuts and other approaches that simplify the booking process. By demonstrating proactive attention to detail and customer service, your guests are likely to hold you in high regard and be willing to pay for that extra convenience online because they believe you’ll execute that same level of commitment on property.

Lock Them in Before Upselling

Although there are certainly profits to be made from upselling add-ons, it is essential to secure the reservation first rather than convoluting the sales process and adding additional steps that create the risk of losing the customer altogether. Revisit and refine your post cart upsell and email sequence strategies to educate guests about these experiences instead of trying to close them on everything at once.

Provide Value to Secure Prospect’s Emails First

Since we know first-time website visitors are likely to research other properties and locations, give them an incentive to provide you with their email address. By using a unique contact form specifically for that stage of their travel planning journey, we can create drip campaigns and stay top of mind during their discovery process.

Establish Clear & Well-Positioned Calls to Action

Identify areas in your website flow ideal for calls to action that will drive direct bookings. Beyond the inventory pages, where else can you steer users toward making a reservation? Also, play around with on-brand calls to action that draw people in to learn more. For example, create a button with a catchy phrase consistent with your brand’s messaging that brings the guest to the booking page.

Recognizing that some guests will likely return to the site after completing their initial research, make it easy for them to book, learn more, or see details from the inventory overview page.

Be Exclusive & Remove Yourself from OTAs

While this may seem like a bold move, the desire to seek out unique and exclusive experiences is part of human nature. Suppose you can implement the rest of these ideas and have a healthy digital marketing approach locally, organically, and supplemented with paid efforts. In that case, you have a chance to be able to own your audience through positioning yourself at the top of the market. Booking exclusively through your website and nowhere else allows you to control your supply and demand and adjust room rates accordingly.

 

Implementing a few of these changes can go a long way toward converting traffic to more profitable bookings, especially during circumstances such as COVID when traffic is slow. While you may not have the resources to invest in a complete redesign of your website to integrate each of these recommendations, we encourage you to prioritize which strategies would most benefit you most. Gather information and feedback by watching some of your friends and neighbors navigate your site, and assess where you can make the most significant impact with a few of these ideas. Make sure to set up Google Analytics to track the percentage of direct bookings per unique visitor after implementing any changes.

 

If you are looking to update your website with several of these features but do not have the budget for a complete overhaul, SoCap can help. Allow us to perform an audit of your website and recommend how you can implement some of these tactics. As the market rebounds, you will surely see a significant ROI that is easy to track and more profitable than many other initiatives requiring the same resources, time, and investment.

 

 

How a United Rally Cry & Effort Can Provide a Better ROI for Resorts & Boutiques 

With the reopening of the tourism and hospitality industry, hotels worldwide are struggling to regain their footing, and the competition for bookings is high. Formerly, hotels were supporting and relying on the Destination Marketing Organizations to assist in marketing, but as a result of COVID 19’s effect on the industry, those budgets and resources have since been slashed. It’s imperative now to reinvent the ways in which hotels are using their marketing budget to drive exposure, awareness, and bookings, all while making their dollar go as far as possible. 

United Rally Cry – Connect and collaborate with other businesses within your community, and pool your efforts in marketing your destination. Be sure to niche down on the identity and experience of your destination. Then, within your network, identify a strong, credible voice to share your story, sentiments, and the allure of your location.

ROI goes Farther Together – Once you’ve honed in on your destination’s niche, and you have an authoritative messenger, establish your target audience and market your destination appropriately. Know that by marketing the appeal of your location, your hotel will indirectly benefit. 

Leverage and Tapout Social – Rather than trying to get new clients, redirect your focus, and tap into the networks you’ve already cultivated. Social media channels will be your friend while you look to retarget your already established audience. Leverage all you have to offer (think: restaurants, activities, and experiences, etc.), and partner with local businesses to provide discounts to your clients – an action that will ultimately benefit both parties. 

Harness a Platform – like ITRN – Knowing that the old way of competing has come to an end, it’s time to adopt a rising tide philosophy and a collaborative mindset. The growth will come when it’s harnessed collectively, and in a way that builds each of your businesses up. Tap into communities that can support you, like the International Tourism Resource Network, which was created in response to COVID, to assist hotels in getting back on their feet through events and resources. Understand that part of this is changing guest’s perception, which must be done as a community. SoCap is here to help you get there. 

We’d love to provide you with more actionable steps. Contact us for more actionable steps to leveraging your location and taking a collaborative approach to stand out amongst competition. As mentioned above, the ITRN is another great resource for hotels as they strive to get back on their feet. For more information, contact us today.