Ep. 42: 10 Hotel Marketing Lessons From The Past Year

TravelHotelsHotel MarketingMarketing Podcast

Apr 20

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Today, I’m reflecting on a year of podcasting and a year of pandemic life. It’s hard to believe that we’ve been living through a pandemic for this long, and it’s almost disorienting to look back on the last year. So much has shifted.

For the hospitality industry in particular, we’ve been badly bruised. Many hotels were forced to close their doors all together, for months. Some are still working on a reopening plan, while others will not reopen. For restaurants, it’s much of the same, with one stat citing that 1 out of 3 restaurant in New York City would be forced to close. The hospitality businesses that have managed to weather the storm, have done so with the help of their communities, their team core working extra hours and crosstraining, and really taking some chances when it came to trying new things, and reaching different audiences.

Some hotels, like The Downtown Clifton in Tucson, Arizona, became safe havens for the neighborhood in the midst of the pandemic, protests, and an undercurrent of police brutality.

It’s abundantly clear that U.S. is in the middle of a reckoning. We’ve marched, we’ve mobilized in support of BLM, in protest against ICE, and in solidarity with marginalized communities.

We’ve learned to use our voices, not to center ourselves, but to speak up and speak out against oppression, in all of its forms.

At least, that’s what I’ve learned.

And when it comes to marketing hotels in this last year, it was impossible not to let the social and political events and movements inform our messaging. It felt almost negligent or tone deaf, to ignore it. After all, travelers and our future guests were living through this, and as much as everyone needed an escape from the news cycle, they first needed acknowledgement that things had changed. That things were different. That we were experiencing a reckoning, too.

In this past year, it’s probably not surprising that marketing—like everything else—became more challenging, and not just because travel halted to a stop. The bigger challenge was managing to communicate throughout multiple crises, figure out what to say, and to really tap into travelers, and hoteliers, mindsets.

I joke that marketers should really be getting psychology degrees, because that’s the level of human understanding we’re tapping, into to appeal to today’s travelers and meet this moment.

After a year of really digging in, and creating marketing campaigns in the thick of pandemic life, and a year of building relationships with non-traditional hoteliers on my podcast, I’ve certainly learned some lessons, and I’m sharing those with you today.

Here are 10 hotel marketing lessons from the past year:

Lesson 1: Evergreen content does not exist in today’s world.

We figured this out pretty early on in the pandemic.

See for years before that, we’d look back at last year’s campaigns and duplicate them. It was a shortcut that proved incredibly effective. Not only could we see which campaigns drove web traffic and bookings, we also knew that the travel cycle would repeat itself. We knew certain things to be true—like when school gets out in June, we’d see a bump in bookings through Labor Day. But all of that changed a year ago. Marketing isn’t nearly as simple nowadays, travel habits have changed, and who’s traveling has changed.

Hotels that historically relied on city-wide events and conferences had to completely shift their marketing efforts from group business to transient, in hopes of staying afloat.

From a content marketing perspective, itineraries needed to change to reflect outdoor, socially-distanced activities, which meant updating website content, stay cycle emails, and what we were sharing on social media. “Set it and forget it” went out the window, in favor of double and triple checking all of our content and updating it based on the state or regional travel guidelines and restrictions.

Lesson 2: You can be contactless and thoughtful.

So with evergreen content out the window, marketers were also charged with writing lengthy COVID landing pages that outlined a new, mostly contactless guest experience. We wanted people to know they’d be safe, and the safest way to travel would include as little human interaction as possible. Hotel operations teams created contactless check-ins, complete with QR codes, plexiglass, and for hotels that could swing it, fully mobile check-ins, room entry, and concierge services. As a marketer, and frequent traveler myself, I couldn’t help but wonder if we’d taken hospitality out of the hotel experience, by removing all of the human interactions? Turns out, you can be contactless and thoughtful.

A couple of examples of how we made sure guests felt cared for: one was simply communicating. When we were closed, we continued to send emails to past guests, providing updates from the GM on property and letting them know they were missed. When hotels began to welcome guests again, certain outlets had to remain closed—like spa, dining, and fitness centers. We got creative to rethink these experiences, offering guests in-room spa kits, providing guides to outdoor dining experiences, and even creating Peloton Suites for guests needing to prioritize fitness during their stay.

Lesson 3: Hotels aren’t built for everyone.

When the pandemic began, we learned some new language—we were introduced to, of course, Coronavirus, droplets, and mask-wearing. Toilet paper became a hot commodity, and grocery delivery became essential work. We started to Zoom, and haven’t stopped. For those of us who were non-essential workers, we were relegated to working from home, kids were also home from school, and vacations were cancelled. With more time to pay attention to the world around us, systemic racism (which has been brewing in our country for 400 years) came into focus. Along with that, came the realization that essentially all of the institutions in our country, are built by old white guys via generational wealth and opportunities.

Not only are there incredible barriers to entry for anyone that doesn’t fit into that category to become hotel owners, but also, hotels built by one type of person, are intrinsically going to serve that one type of person. In my interview with Damon Lawrence on episode 13, Damon shares in detail the many ways he realized that hotels were not built with him in mind. He also recognized that people that looked like him, weren’t represented in hotel ownership or hotel management. Damon set out to build Homage Hospitality, the first hotel group dedicated to Black culture. In its very first iteration, The Moor Hotel in New Orleans, Damon realized that by building something for the most marginalized, he built something for everyone.

Interviewing Damon set me on a journey to connect with, and learn from more non-traditional hoteliers in the industry—like Moniqua Lane, the owner of The Downtown Clifton and The Citizen Hotel in Tucson, Arizona, on episodes 21 and 22, Jamila Ross, the co-owner of The Copper Door B&B in Overtown, Miami, on episodes 30 and 31, and Robin Staten on episode 35. Their reasons for building these hotels go so much deeper than owning a piece of real estate or creating guest experiences. Their perspectives and stories are incredibly eye-opening, unique, and inspiring. And I’d be remiss not to mention Davonne Reaves, a hotel consultant and investor who has set a goal to create 221 Black hotel owners in 2021. I interviewed Davonne on episode 38.

When we talk about building back our industry better than before, let’s not forget the systemic barriers to entry, and let’s make room at the table for these voices to be heard.

Lesson 4: In response to the pandemic, discounting rooms is the last thing we should do.

In normal times, when occupancy dips in the shoulder season, we lower our rates to incentivize travelers to stay with us during less desirable times. But during the pandemic, discounting rooms is the last thing we should be doing. Aditi Verma gave me this advice on episode 16—with good reason. After the last recession, it took years for rates to normalize since we’d deeply discounted our inventory. This time around, Aditi vowed to do things differently. Plus, this recession was different. The pandemic was the reason people weren’t traveling—safety was the reason people weren’t traveling—so if we shifted our focus to making people feel safe, we wouldn’t need to lower our rates, and the people who were willing to travel, would travel as long as they felt safe enough to do so. As marketers, we really had to fight the urge to drop rates to fill rooms, and instead hone in on sharing the new guest experience, complete with social distancing and certain limitations, as a positive instead of a negative. We started promoting seclusion, time in nature, outdoor adventures, and time to unplug—and slow but surely, the bookings rolled in.

Lesson 5: The OTAs are a necessary evil.

So, I’ve always dogged on the OTAs, but there’s this thing—this meta search thing—that’s a major factor when it comes to hotel bookings. We all know organic search comes largely from Google, but there’s this secondary search channel—meta search—which is essentially lists within search results. OTAs dominate meta search, because of their size and volume, they’re like digital encyclopedias of hotels in any given place. As a result, they get the first click. Travelers are using OTAs as search directories, to zero in on the best hotels in a given place, based on either their ranking, their imagery, and who’s coming up first. Savvy travelers know that booking through a third party comes with certain restrictions—it tends to be harder to cancel, and the available inventory might be limited—so they take what they’ve found on an OTA site, and paste it into a browser to poke through a hotel’s individual website to decide if that’s where they want to stay. That right there—that moment—is an opportunity to keep the guest on your site and convince them to book direct. OTAs grant hotels the billboard effect, the ability to be found online, and in many cases, provide that small window of opportunity to get that direct booking. So, from a marketing perspective, we can’t shun OTAs all together. It’s up to revenue managers to really work that system by limiting and fencing the available inventory, and for marketers to ensure the listing is fully optimized for search, with maybe that little something-something that would make a prospective guest decide to open another browsing window and visit your website. For tips on driving more revenue to your properties, and managing that necessary evil, listen to episode 25 with Sagar Bhakta.

Lesson 6: Inclusive marketing is not a quick fix.

I wanted to dive deeper into how to make marketing more inclusive, what I didn’t realize was that I plunged myself into the deep end. Thankfully, Joey Hamilton joined me on episode 23 and 24, and Sonia Thompson joined me on episode 37, to help me navigate these waters. First of all, inclusive marketing is not a quick fix—it’s not as easy as putting Black people into your print ads—because if you’ve been marketing to the masses, you’ve been missing out on niche markets, and one image will not fix all of that. Inclusive marketing is about figuring out who you want to include, and who you want to exclude. It’s about marketing to the niche instead of the masses. It’s about fostering cultural intelligence within your organization. Bottom line: people want to see themselves, and the people they love, reflected in your brand, and that takes work. If you’d like to learn more about inclusive marketing, listen to episodes 23, 24, and 37.

Lesson 7: Accessible travel is more than a checklist.

I had another reckoning recently, when I connected with Natasha Graves, the founder of Vacayability, on episode 41. I realized that we’ve been doing the bare minimum when it comes to accessible travelers. We’ve relegated accessible travelers’ needs to ADA guidelines, and not spent any more time thinking about the accessible travelers’ wants and needs. Natasha Graves went down to Sedona for a week of doctor’s appointments at the Mayo Clinic. An avid traveler with accessibility needs, Natasha wanted to experience more than the hospital hallways during her time in Arizona, so she went online to plan her adventures. Hiking was the main attraction of course, and while some trails were marked as accessible, there was limited information as far as what “accessible” meant—after all, accessibility needs are extremely varied, and are often limited to mobility-friendly needs. Guess what? Natasha ended up flying a bi-plane up and over Sedona, to experience what she couldn’t experience on foot.

As it turns out, accessible travelers want to have experiences just as much as the rest of us, and by providing the bare minimum, we’ve been limiting what they can and can’t do at our hotels and destinations. My conversation with Natasha has caused me to rethink the way we market hotels as accessible, and what more we can to do reach these guests, who—it’s worth noting—represent a $60 billion dollar industry. If you’d like to dive deeper on this topic, listen to episode 41 in full.

Lesson 8: Out with the old, in with the new.

Hotels are pretty old school. We tend to lean on old ways of doing things. We tend to wait for things to break before we fix them. When new technology rolls around, like mobile-friendly websites and booking engines, we tend to be late adopters. So it’s no surprise that when the pandemic reared it’s head, there was big learning curve for hotels—indies in particular—to get on board with the mobile tech that’s been around for a while. There are better ways to check-in guests that remove the friction, so checking in feels seamless instead of like a doctor’s appointment (and no, I’m not hating on temperature checks). I’m hating on check-in processes that involve a front desk agent who seems to be wrestling with an outdated computer system, or who is trying to reach housekeeping to figure out if your room is ready when its already half-passed six. As Bashar Wali puts it on episodes 28 and 29, we should be using technology to remove the friction. Bashar was also the first, of several guests, who’ve pointed out how ineffective guest reviews are at gauging a guest’s experience. We need to rethink why we’re checking boxes, instead of asking guests how the experience made them feel. After all, in Bashar’s words, “Service is what you deliver, hospitality is how you make people feel.”

Lesson 9: Be an early adopter.

On the marketing side, we also have to come to terms with the fact that marketing channels are constantly evolving, and our strategies need to adapt along with them. For example, as more and more people spent more and more time on social media, on channels like TikTok, Clubhouse, and Instagram Reels, hotels that were sticking to static feed posts on Instagram saw their engagement take a nose dive. That’s because users are using social apps differently than before, spending time in video feeds, and engaging with content in a whole new way. With the algorithm shifts towards video content, hotels that haven’t been able to get on board with video storytelling are missing out on millennials and more. Hotels that are adopting these new technologies out the gate, are able to reap the rewards of engaging with travelers in ways that are proving to be incredibly effective.

Turns out, 40% of users on TikTok are moms, and we’ve known for years that moms, and women in general, are making 80% of purchase decisions for their families. This isn’t about reaching the millennial population, it’s about reaching travelers where they’re hanging out online. I said it before, I’ll say it again, if a picture is worth 1,000 words, a video is worth 10,000, maybe more. We’re seeing 10 times the engagement on social video content than we are with static imagery. For tips on getting ahead of the curve when it comes to marketing on social media, listen to episode 36 with Austen Tosone.

Lesson 10: Join the conversation, and lead the conversation if needed.

The final lesson goes along with the last a bit—it’s about being an early adopter and taking the reins. Something really amazing happened in January. I got an invite to an app called Clubhouse, and as soon as I got on, Damon Lawrence invited me to join his club, Hospitality Professionals. He made me an admin, and in a matter of a month or two, we had thousands of people join the club. We started hosting weekly Hospitality Happy Hour conversations to talk about our industry forecast, travel updates, marketing and operations strategies, and current events. It was amazing to come together as a community when so many of us were still working from home.

I want to invite you to join the conversation on Clubhouse, hop on there and search for the Hospitality Professionals Club. From there, you’ll find me, Damon, along with several of my podcast guests from this past year. Together, we host events, like Hotelier Hot Seats and Hospitality Happy Hours, a few times a month, and it’s amazing what happens when we’re all in a room together. It’s just one more example of how technology really can move our industry forward.

We made it—that rounds out 10 marketing lessons I’ve learned over the last year, and I’ve left you with plenty of homework and listening to do. I had so many “aha” moments this past year, both on my podcast and in practice, figuring out what would resonate with guests and travelers. Now tell me—what are some of the lessons you’ve learned as a hotelier or as a marketer this year? You can share your comments with me on Instagram @howtosharepodcast, via my websites, or join the conversation on Clubhouse.

As always, keep sharing your stories.