When my son was two, he said thank you a hundred times every day. Seriously. It was among his first—and favorite—phrases. And I loved the enthusiasm with which he said it. As a society we work really hard at teaching our children to be polite—yet somewhere along the way we lose sight of this very … ▸ Read more
I’m a big proponent of prioritizing your hotel’s online marketing efforts. Clearly, a regional manager of multiple two-star hotels has far fewer resources to dedicate to online marketing than a five-star hotel with dedicated marketing staff. That said, there is very little reason for any hotel not to be taking advantage of EVERY opportunity to … ▸ Read more
This past fall, Yelp announced it would acquire its European rival Qype, further strengthening the review site’s global influence on travelers, diners, and more. With the site becoming more universal, you might wonder just how important those stars are. According to a Berkeley study, a half-star increase in ratings on Yelp can make a restaurant … ▸ Read more
Okay, so I know I suggested prioritizing based on whether you’re marketing to leisure or business travelers. Of course, you must. Who can do it all? But this is a startling statistic, and you need to know about it. After browsing social sites, 52% of travelers changed their plans. 35% switched hotels (compared with 15% … ▸ Read more
With all my talk last week about knowing your “right” guest, I find it interesting that we don’t differentiate a whole lot when we talk social media statistics. Everyone’s a traveler. But there’s a big difference between a business traveler and a leisure traveler. (And there are big differences within both of those categories, so … ▸ Read more
We talk a lot about reputation management as marketing. Someone in marketing, perhaps yourself, makes sure negative feedback is being addressed. Maybe there’s a quick overview of the feedback at the morning meeting, and others are asssigned property or service improvements. Then that line item is checked, and it’s time to go back to creating … ▸ Read more
What if the quality of your hotel guest is more important than the quantity? Practical, maybe not; true, probably so. Reputation isn’t truth; it’s a set of beliefs or opinions. Reputation is simply an interpretation of reality, how one person sees an experience through his or her particular lens. I see a grungy old pick-up … ▸ Read more
Pinterest was once a social media outlier for businesses, but you’d be wise to keep it in your sights. It’s an indulgent space, where users are following and cultivating their passions—gourmet food and recipes, fast cars, beautiful homes, and luxurious destinations, among other things. There’s apparently a temptation to simply upload stock hotel photos. Don’t … ▸ Read more
The thing I find fascinating about Instagram is that the hotels doing it well have very few photos of their rooms, sometimes few overt photos of the property at all. What you’ll notice if you scroll through the account of say Morgans Hotel Group or The Standard Hotel is that you still get the hotel’s … ▸ Read more
Instagram and Pinterest are fundmentally about creating image. Or better put, helping people imagine. Where they’ve been, where they’re going, where they want to go, how they’ll feel when they get there. They are seemingly perfect spaces for hotels to communicate experiences, yet many hotels overlook creating a real strategy for the “image” sites and … ▸ Read more