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Low Cost Marketing Strategies For Hotels and Guest Houses
Low Cost Marketing Strategies For Hotels and Guest Houses
Low Cost Marketing Strategies For Hotels and Guest Houses
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Low Cost Marketing Strategies For Hotels and Guest Houses

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As an independent hotel or guest house owner, you’ve got a challenge. You’ve got to make yourself stand out when there are dozens of chain hotels competing for your guest’s attention. As the travel economy grows ever tighter, this process only becomes more and more vital.

LanguageEnglish
Release dateSep 26, 2010
ISBN9781452398235
Low Cost Marketing Strategies For Hotels and Guest Houses

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    Low Cost Marketing Strategies For Hotels and Guest Houses - Tina Best

    Low Cost Marketing Strategies For Hotels and Guest Houses

    Tina Best

    Copyright 2010 The Butler Publishing Group

    All rights reserved

    Smashwords Edition

    ****

    Chapter 1: You vs. the Chains

    As an independent hotel or guest house owner, you’ve got a challenge. You’ve got to make yourself stand out when there are dozens of chain hotels competing for your guest’s attention. As the travel economy grows ever tighter, this process only becomes more and more vital.

    The chains have huge budgets, and they have staying power. They also have the option to simply pick up and move out of a market that isn’t working for them. You probably don’t have that luxury, and you probably need to keep your rooms full to keep your doors open. So you’ve got to beat the chains at their own game to avoid losing customers to them. Fortunately—this can be far easier than you might think.

    Many independents are in trouble. It’s not just the economy; it’s the state of the hotel industry—a look at any newspaper covering the hospitality industry will tell you that. Consider this excerpt from a 2009 Washington Post article titled State of Independence:

    "Can any luxury hotel or resort thrive -- or even survive -- as an independent property? In a world where a handful of global hotel chains -- Hilton, Marriott, Starwood, Hyatt, Accor of France, and InterContinental of Britain -- dominate the lodging market, can a single property, no matter how famous, stand alone?

    At least on the surface, the answer is no."

    You might not run a luxury hotel. You might run a small bed and breakfast or a quaint country get-away. Or you might, indeed, be attempting to cater to the 5 star crowd, running a historic hotel that’s been standing for generations.

    Or perhaps you haven’t even started yet. Perhaps running your own hotel has been a lifelong dream of yours, and you’re wondering if you’re defeated before you begin. You want to know what you’re getting into and whether or not you have a hope of success. These are fair questions, particularly in today’s economy. Yet your dream does not have to be barrelled under by a steady flow of homogenized hotel rooms.

    There are independent hotels that are surviving and thriving. They’re doing so with creativity, a fierce sense of personality, and a real heart for their customers, and you can do it too.

    Understanding What Makes You Different

    How much do you really need to think about your chain-based competition? In a very real way, you actually don’t need to spend much time at all. Your strength doesn’t lie in trying to be more like a chain hotel. Instead, your greatest strength lies in the fact that you are not just another chain hotel. You have strengths that the chains do not have, strengths they cannot carry off. You have the capability to rise above the mass marketed noise in order to become something truly different—something really special. You want to be the noteworthy lodging destination in your area, a place that stands above the crowd.

    Chain hotels have brand policies. Those policies might not be a good fit for your current market. They may in fact be constricting—keeping you from achieving those little touches that would make your hotel great.

    You have the ability to bring your guests that real person touch that’s so often missing in an increasingly automated world. You can speak to your guests and find out what they need—find out what’s really important to them. You can be real people and build relationships. Relationships are what today’s economy is all about. You can make your hotel more than just a place to sleep. You’re not a chain? Celebrate it! The keys to your success lie in not being Best Western, Laquinta, or Red Roof Inn—even in a tough travel economy. Especially in a tough travel economy.

    The Value Proposition

    You’ve no doubt heard of the value proposition, also known as a unique selling proposition. You may have thought about it only in terms of other businesses—after all, being in the hotel seems, on the surface, to be fairly straightforward. You have nice rooms, decent beds, a good location that is conducive to vacations in your area. Right? Yet as an independent hotel owner, it is extremely important for you to get a good handle on a value proposition for your hotel. You have rooms, yes, but who are the rooms for and why do people come to your rooms over anybody else’s rooms?

    If you haven’t actually bought your new hotel yet, you’re in a great position, because you can choose your value proposition now, and then purchase a hotel that’s most likely to fit. You can then mold your new purchase to fit your vision, rather than trying to retrofit and re-brand a hotel that’s been operating without much of a value proposition for years.

    If you’re an existing owner you can still do this exercise. In fact, it may become important for you to make some real changes at your hotel in order to massage a real value proposition out of whatever you’ve been doing to date. You may have the glimmers of a value proposition in your organization, or, more commonly, you may never have developed anything at all.

    You may have been relying on factors like a convenient location. You may be in a rut of simply selling a bed for the night. But with a lot of thought and effort you can start to understand the things you do well, things you

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