Guest Editor
“Invest in transparency and collaboration with hotel owners.”
Nothing presented in a report or heard from someone else should ever come as a surprise to an owner,...
“You don’t have to do it all on your own.”
Ask for help. That’s the advice I’d give any owner or operator of a small, independent hotel. After decades of working in hotels, I’ve seen how hard it can be for smaller properties to get the support and resources they need. The key is knowing where to ...
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“The lines between marketing and revenue management have blurred.”
We’ve reached a critical point as an industry where it’s no longer forward-thinking to believe that marketing and revenue management must collaborate. Organizational success simply demands it....
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“Want to improve the guest experience? Go to work every day.”
Without being on property every day, you'll miss those small moments—those often subtle, but sometimes significant opportunities to make an impact....
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“Think your hotel doesn’t have a story? Create one.”
I think every hotel has the potential to tell a story that resonates with guests. I'm not saying it's easy. But finding out what makes a property unique is part of marketing....
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“Make people love your
hotel so much they want to live there.”
That’s not just a marketing mantra. Making people love our properties so much they want to live there also happens to be our job....
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“Tired of talking about direct bookings? Me too.”
We’ve been talking about “shifting share” away from the OTAs for something like 15 years now. It’s more than a little disheartening to think that we’ll still be talking about this for another 15 years. ...
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“Play to your strengths. Reposition your weaknesses.”
As hotel marketers, we’re trained to play to our strengths. It’s in the strengths of our product that we find those key differentiators that separate us from our compset. But what about our weaknesses?...
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“Invest in transparency and collaboration with hotel owners.”
Nothing presented in a report or heard from someone else should ever come as a surprise to an owner, whether it’s something good or bad....
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“Loyal guests are
a force multiplier.”
In our industry, we place a lot of focus on attracting new guests. So much so that it can defocus us from fostering loyalty among past guests. But a repeat customer is incredibly valuable to your bottom line....
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“I’m a Revenue Manager. Not a Digital Marketer. Or so I thought.”
Digital marketing is a world where numbers meet creativity, and it's here that this life-long revenue manager found a new home....
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“It’s not a dining outlet. It’s an experience.”
It's easy to get caught up in the big picture, especially when dealing with multiple businesses in the same building. The temptation to cut costs and cross-utilize staff and marketing efforts is hard to resist....
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“Everyone is planning their next trip, even if they don’t know it. ”
The customer is always somewhere in the consumer journey. That’s a concept we’ve embraced at JC Resorts. Some people look at the consumer journey as linear. We see it as spherical. ...
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“Just give customers what they’re looking for.”
A digital marketer’s job is to think like the customer. What do they want? How do they shop? What would I want if I were them? And then from there, we build digital experiences that speak directly to them....
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“There’s a difference between creating a brand and executing one.”
Branding is an essential part of a hotel’s success. It’s so much more than a name, a logo, and a font. Every touchpoint is an opportunity to curate a "brand experience"....
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“We need to inspire the next generation of hoteliers.”
Who better to lead the industry forward than the generation who values experience over everything else? But, as an industry, we’ve got to make hospitality appealing to this next generation of professionals. We've got to do a better job of educating the full ...
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“Focus on technology that connects you directly to your target audience.”
With new technology, new marketing tools, and new social platforms, we have to be diligent in investing in strategies that align with our target audience....
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“As independent hoteliers, independence is our superpower.”
As independent hoteliers, our independence is our competitive advantage. Independence grants us freedom from rigid rules and protocols, which means we can be more creative and flexible with our websites and marketing tactics....
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“Create an environment where the best ideas win.”
At Retro Hospitality, we specialize in independent hotels. Many of our hotels are in historic buildings or are adaptive reuse, and it is our goal to breathe new and exciting life into them. Our approach, and I believe our success, is based on what I call ...
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“When you know who you are, you find out who your customers are.”
You can have a lot of grand initiatives, but if you don't understand how customers are experiencing the property, who they are and how they are shopping, what goes into their decisions, you’ve lost sight of your job as a marketer. ...
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“Find the Right Partners And Get a Great Traffic Controller”
When I took over marketing at Kessler, I decided I would contract out most of our marketing, leaving my in-house team to determine the overall strategy, as well as manage and coordinate our partner’s efforts....
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“Stop competing for talent. Create your own farm team.”
As hospitality leaders, we are competing against other management companies, brands, and digital agencies for the same dwindling talent pool. And that’s just in the hospitality space. We’re also competing with other, sometimes sexier, industries that can b...
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“How do some marketers get everything they want?”
As an independent hotel, we’ve got a great advantage in the marketplace. We’re nimble. We can change directions at a moment’s notice and pivot when we need to pivot—unlike, say, a big brand....
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“Know where your customers are. Then meet them there.”
As a hotel marketer, I can’t create demand. I can’t get people to stay at my hotel if they don’t want to visit our city. That was true before the pandemic. And it’s still true after. The good news is that creating demand is not my job. ...
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“You’ve got to deal in realities. The market is the market.”
As hotel marketers, we have to deal with the realities of the market. I’ll be the first to admit, being a Trump branded hotel in the middle of extreme political polarization and the covid pandemic has not been easy. There’s no need to hide from it or sugar...
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“We transformed a two-season hotel into a four-season destination.”
There’s no getting around it—Cape Cod is a tough sell in the winter. But, the pandemic forced us to get creative. Really creative....
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“Hospitality needs a new kind of marketer.”
As marketers, we live inside digital platforms. If you're not deeply in tune with digital trends and the technology, you can't build a meaningful marketing strategy....
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“We blew up the silos and never looked back.”
Those infamous silos. We always hear about them. And we always hear about breaking them down. What needs to happen is a change in culture and that doesn’t need to be scary or painful for the organization. ...
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“Experience is the new commodity.”
Whatever feelings you might have about Instagram, the smartphone explosion, or your friends that take pictures of everything, one thing is clear: people crave experiences....
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