Marketing for Future Guests

I had an absolute ball moderating the "Marketing for Future Guests" panel at the LodgingStream Conference, hosted by Long Living Lodging, on April 30, 2020. In the landscape of COVID-19's dramatic impact on hotel demand, we talked about how marketing fits in at this moment in time. Who should hotels be marketing to, and what should we be saying? Below, I'll hit the highlights, and you can watch here.

Greatest Panel of All Time

Greatest Panel of All Time

The Panel of Hotel Marketing Experts

Andressa Chapman, founder and President of Trigger Hotel Marketing.

Stephanie Smith, founder and digital matriarch at Cogwheel Marketing, and partner and consultant at Cayuga Hospitality Consultants.

Kristi White, Vice President of Product Management at Knowland.

Makarand Mody, Assistant Professor at the School of Hospitality Administration at Boston University.

Mike Medsker, President and Co-Founder of Focal Revenue Solutions.

The Big Marketing Questions Hoteliers Have

What does recovery look like? When will it happen? Who will travel first? How do we get to them first? When can we start selling again?

- It will be local first.
- Travelers say they are thinking about traveling in three to six months.
- Market-wide occupancies of around 40% or higher are a good signal that group is on its way back.

What should we be doing right now? Are there marketing channels and target audiences that we can and should be going after?

- Use email marketing without a hard sell to stay in touch and top of mind.
- Build agility and learn how to make faster decisions.
- Communicate and provide value to your audience.
- Don't look for a silver bullet.

What kind of messages will work? What channels or methods will be most effective? What can we do today to prepare for tomorrow?

- Duty of care: safety measures for guests including PPE, cleanliness, etc.
- Wanderlust: inspirational content to feed the desire for travel
- Pivot planning: how your meeting space configurations will change; what F&B options will be available

How can hotels save money? What free resources exist? If our marketing budget has been slashed, can we still get results? Should we even bother? What should we be spending?

- Learn how to use your existing business intelligence tools
- Focus on drive markets first
- Use Google Trends to determine if search volume is increasing
- Explore Adara's trends tracker
- Don't spend money on metasearch
- Renegotiate with your agencies without turning off completely
- Place small bets on new things

Quick Ideas for Hotel Marketing Now

What is one thing a hotelier should do today to prepare for post-quarantine marketing?
- Close your go-to-market strategy gaps. Identify and remove the obstacles that slow down the process from idea to launch.
- Train your employees.
- Create a sensitivity analysis: best - middle - worst case scenarios.
- Check your website and all listing sites for accuracy.
- Become more agile.

What tool or resource should our audience look into/learn about now?
- Facebook and Google Ad travel grant programs
- Google Trends
- Cross-training on business intelligence tools
- Learn about commercial strategy

What is one common hotel marketing practice that you hope goes away after quarantine?
- Un-targeted marketing
- Last click attribution
- Un-targeted discounting
- Generic email marketing

What is a piece of bad advice you are seeing out there that you think hoteliers should ignore?
- Cutting all sales staff.
- Expecting to customers to accept lower levels of service at the same price.
- Using automation to replace the people part of hospitality
- Metasearch advertising
- Going dark on social media and/or email
- Focusing too much on unknowns

I highly recommend that you check out all of the great panels that made up LodgingStream; you can access here.

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