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 […]
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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 […]
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The world’s largest travel community conducted a survey of 2,200 travelers worldwide recently and just announced the results. They wanted to know what travelers say makes hotels great. Interesting results indeed - here are the 3 most important factors:
When asked what makes a hotel great, 30% of respondents said location is the most important factor. […]
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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. […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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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 […]
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The Direct Marketing Association and AccuData have teamed up to offer a free webinar entitled Three Steps to Finding Your Model Customer: Defining, Segmenting and Scoring.
The webinar will take place Tuesday, April 29, 2008 at 2PM ET. And did I mention it’s FREE?
Kate Webster, Ph.D. AccuData’s chief statistician will lead you through the three critical […]
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