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The Value of a Strong Brand: Show Business Lessons for Hoteliers.
By Mila Petruk ~ Exclusive Column
Friday, 3rd February 2012
 
Every hotel – from international chain hotels like Hilton, Marriott, or Mandarin Oriental to small Good Night Inns in the middle of some small towns – aims at building a strong brand.

However, the strong brand is very commonly misunderstood by hotel marketers. What the real value of the hotel means, strong brand has nothing to do with the branding itself.

And recognizing this is already a step forward towards building a strong hotel brand. Strong brand is something which has nothing to do with advertising and promotion. The place where hoteliers can find strong brand examples is not even found anywhere near hospitality industry. Strong brand examples come from show business.

The world where every single gesture is already a story and where things change so rapidly that remaining competitive and up-to-date becomes almost an impossible challenge.

Show business is a hard and severe industry. But we, hoteliers, can learn a lot from how the show-biz personalities build their strong brands and which strategies they apply to sustain their brand's strength.

1. Show business is not about just telling how good you are. It is about telling that you are and that you are unique in your own way. It is quite challenging for hotels to be unique as the majority of facilities are the same everywhere – rooms, restaurants, lobby bars. Even the amenities in the room are almost always the same. However, there is a touch of uniqueness in what the hotel focuses on and how it behaves within its area of focus.

2. Show business does not focus on the positivity of any news but on the extent to which this news is spread. For hotels, with the growing number of complaining customers on Trip Advisor and those customers who describe their amazing experiences this is a very important lesson to learn. Instead of just answering the emails and comments by customers, hoteliers should learn how to make a story about each and every experience of their past guests. Even negative experiences can be wisely used and increase publicity of the hotel.

3. Show business is first of all about personalities. Let personal service live! Let your staff get more personal with your guests so that they can feel themselves at home, relaxed and happy. Let your staff never wear this traditional smile ‘Dear Ladies and Gentlemen', but the smile of ‘Dear Mr. Hoffman and Mrs. Bright'. This is a more sophisticated way of doing business which in most cases pays off.

4. Show business does not generally publicize itself. It allows others to write stories and to create content in the Internet. Interesting content is now and will always be published and shared. And these people who publish and share it become your free of charge marketing staff who promote and sell your hotel facilities.

5. Show business teaches hoteliers one very important lesson – change is constant and it never stops. Every day there are new hotel apps for iPhone, every day hotels launch new special offers. A hotel in Gothenburg, Sweden opens with a 4D show on the building of the hotel, and the IT departments launch new better software for hotels.

Hotel schools are booming, and the quantity of literature on hospitality industry increases. This creates a huge pressure which needs to be addressed appropriately by hoteliers. Being up-to-date and staying always in touch with innovation is like keeping the property in top ratings among competitors and within the scope of customer's vision.

Show business is an important industry in terms of branding. Let us never commit the mistake of just being  ‘a brand'. Every hotel can and should be a strong one.

Mila Petruk is a hospitality consultant and a founder of Milina Outsourcing Management (MOM) which provides consulting to hotels and restaurants including mystery guest audit, temporary staffing and training support. Being a hospitality industry enthusiast, Mila has a global insight into the developing trends of hotel and restaurant business all over the world.

Having a rich international hotel work experience and an MBA from one of the reputed Swiss hotel schools, she has applied it in almost every hotel department she had worked. Contact Mila at mila.petruk@gmail.com
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