Where Small Luxury Hotels go for Marketing Advice and Insights
Posted in Direct Marketing, Internet, Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies on Sep 16th, 2008
Here’s the situation: You’re the GM of a small luxury hotel. Demand is soft in your market and your chief competitor started offering huge discounts. How can you compete? (Sound familiar?)
Matching discounts won’t stimulate demand and you’ll end up in a lose-lose situation (see Hotel Discounting - Part I ). On top of that, deep […]
Posted in Direct Marketing, Internet, Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies, Uncategorized on Sep 11th, 2008
In times of slack demand companies with perishable product (hotels) are often quick to offer discounts in an effort to stimulate occupancy. But is this the right marketing strategy?
Large hotel chains with sophisticated revenue management systems can surgically modify pricing months in advance to minimize the disruption discounting can cause on the bottom line. But […]
Posted in Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet, Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies on Jul 10th, 2008
How is this for telling it like it is?
“Businesses today exist in an era in which it’s nearly impossible to escape the likelihood of being evaluated.” said Linda Shea, senior vice president at Opinion Research, in a statement, “There’s nowhere to hide.”
Like it or not consumers have taken over control of hotel comment cards. […]
Posted in Blogroll, Direct Marketing, Internet, Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies on Jul 7th, 2008
Advertising Age Magazine has a great article on the changing demographics of American households that every hospitality marketer should read - it titled “The Changing Face of the American Consumer.”
In addition to outlining how demographics are changing the article adds insights in marketing tactics and messages to use and to avoid when talking to different […]
Posted in Blogroll, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet, Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies on Jun 26th, 2008
New information published in April by Jupiter Research confirms that the ranking of your web site on Google is critical to being seen. Search Engine Optimization has never been so important!
Today nearly 30% of web searchers confine their searches to the first page - only. This is up from 15% in in 2002.
There […]
Posted in Blogroll, Direct Marketing, Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies on Jun 5th, 2008
It’s January 2008 and Hillary Clinton was ready for the coronation. As the front runner for nomination as the Democratic Presidential candidate she looked invincible.
How times have changed. As the media pundits start to dissect what went wrong a valuable marketing lesson for small luxury hotels is emerging.
To begin with, Hillary’s main message (experience) was […]
Posted in Blogroll, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet, Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies on May 22nd, 2008
A recent survey by Habeas, an online reputation management firm, reveals consumers prefer e-mail as a primary method of communications in their personal and business lives.
In fact 67% preferred email and 65% believe this will continue to be true for at least the next five years vs. video conferencing (19%), instant messaging (17%), SMS text […]
Posted in Direct Marketing, Internet, Marketing, Marketing Strategies on May 16th, 2008
Here’s some news that got me wondering about the future of hotel brochures - Bloomingdale’s is shutting down its catalog business in 2009 to concentrate its direct marketing efforts on the web where sales are growing faster.
Higher paper, production and mailing costs are affecting every business that employes brochures, catalogs and direct mail.
A small luxury hotel […]
Posted in Blogroll, Direct Marketing, Email Marketing, Internet, Marketing, Marketing Strategies on May 12th, 2008
On a recent [very long] flight I had time for a thorough read through the HSMAI special report entitled, “The Travel Marketer’s Guide to Social Media and Social Networks: Sales and Marketing in a Web 2.0 World.”
If you have ever wondered about what was happening in Social Media, what the fuss is all about or how you […]
Posted in Direct Marketing, Internet, Loyalty, Marketing, Marketing Strategies on Apr 16th, 2008
If hospitality marketing wasn’t hard enough already! TripAdvisor, the 1,000lb. gorilla is now a 1,500lb. baby. In June, 2007 the site had 10 million reviews. It just announced that figure is now over 15 million ! A 50% increase in less than a year.
What amazes me is many small luxury hoteliers I talked to don’t pay much attention to […]