Any hotelier who has been to an industry event will no doubt have met plenty of folk they get on with, shared lots of tips on best practice, maybe even promised to pop in for a drink with the next time they are in the area, and so on. Under the surface, however, the reality is that the business is a deadly serious one in which there is lots of competition. Standards must be high if you are to be successful, particularly outside busy periods when simply being available after everyone else has been booked up will no longer help you fill your rooms.
In the first instance, your own hotel must have a high-quality offering that provides good value for money and plenty of customer satisfaction. That much should be obvious enough, for without that there will be no way of persuading people to come back and you can be sure that word will get round if you have some significant shortcomings. In an age of TripAdvisor, there is nowhere to hide. However, being good is not enough. You need to be better than the competition. And to do that, you need to offer something that they don’t.
Discussing this challenge, Hotelogix blogger Manisha Pathak listed a number of ways in which a hotel could take steps to get ahead. By deploying these, the standard of service will provide an edge over all but the very smartest and best-equipped competitors (in other words, nearly all of them).
Make good promises and keep them
Offering value for money may make sense but, the writer suggests, it is important to go further and justify it. Since people are generally prepared to pay a bit more for extra comforts these days, it is vital to provide plenty of information at the booking stage about just what they are getting for their money. However, this comes with a warning: hotels must be able to walk the talk on these points. If something extra is on offer such as a tablet in the guest room, this must be delivered. Broken promises are sure to attract bad reviews, so everything must be done to ensure these are kept. Let your competitors fall short and they can take the rap on social media. Moreover, offering something extra can be a great way of bringing people in. The writer suggests a spa package is a good example of this, but it could be lots of things: a free breakfast or letting the first child go free, discounts on local theatre tickets or a bottle of champagne in your room every night.
Smart online marketing
Of course, good offers are all very well and by providing better ones than your rival down the road, you could get an edge. But none of that helps unless the world out there – and in particular your potential customers – knows about them. This is where good marketing becomes vital. Once again, if you do it very well, you can be sure you will be doing it better than many of your competitors. A sure way to achieve this is to use multiple online channels. If your website has lots of optimised content, you should appear on lots of channels and this will act as a superhighway of communication between your hotel and the potential guest. Say, for instance, your hotel is located in Birmingham. If the phrase ‘hotels in Birmingham’ is in your content, you have a better chance of being spotted when those words are put into a search engine. Social media is another way to develop a strong online presence. Plenty of hotels are doing this and there is an obvious logic. Facebook, for instance, has more than a billion users. Twitter, Instagram and all the rest have large numbers too. So if you are ‘out there’ it is easier for people to spot you.Indeed, one thing social media can do is help with peer recommendation. If your friend ‘likes’ a hotel on Facebook, for instance, that can ensure it appears on your feed. And if they comment on your Facebook page, so much the better. For that reason, it is a good idea to maintain interest by continually publishing material on social media, whether it is news, static content or details of special offers.
Service always matters
Finally, make sure your service is really good. This is all about user experience and the good publicity it generates, both for retaining existing custom and attracting new guests. You can have all the gadgets and mod-cons, lots of comfort, fine decor and much else, but if the hotel lacks a personal touch, all that will go to waste. By contrast, good service and an evident determination to go the extra mile to get things right (and put things right if anything goes wrong) will pay dividends.In short, the hotel industry is as much a part of the rat race as anything else. So make sure your rodent is able to run faster than the rest.
