Allow me a Difference in Opinion.

When I first read the article "Most Hotel Reservations are Decided and Made by (Fill in the Blank) by Emmanuel Gardiner, I thought it was interesting. When I read it again on another news wire, it brought me back more than twenty years to a time when the industry was abuzz with the same issue.

At that time, several large franchisors devoted considerable funds to explore this possibility. At that time, female travelers had begun to explode onto the travel scene and hotels, always eager to find a new niche, huddled in their board rooms to discuss ways to tap into this new emerging market.

Companies like Marriott, Holiday Inn, and Hyatt, always quick to invent, came up with many of the suggestions in Mr. Gardiner's article. We were excited by this new prospect. After all, this could be the magic panacea to solve the huge occupancy problems of the early 80's. To this writer, the 80's inflicted far worse occupancy damage than today's position.

I remember cute little bud vases, cheesy paper slippers, and other such items bursting into our new "female" traveler rooms. My gosh, we used shower caps for years until finally deleting them. Hotels hustled to get pastel colored robes and special make-up mirrors to lure this new market to choose our hotels. The result was that the more we tried to differentiate between male and female travelers, the more it turned off one or the other.

The conclusion…

We discovered that security was the driving issue for female travelers and many women did not want to be treated any differently than male travelers. Female travelers and female hotel shoppers have the same concerns as male travelers. The more we "catered" to females, the more we turned them off with this special treatment.

All the items mentioned by Mr. Gardiner are more or less standard to all hotel guests, today. This resulted from much research and consumer focus groups representing all travelers.

Mr. Gardiner mentioned some very important issues in his article and I don't want to diminish that. I guess my concern lies with the advice to concentrate on female travelers and female shoppers as if they are that much different from their male counterparts. In fact they are not.

The primary concern by all travelers today is security, comfort, and cleanliness not trinkets or anything having to do with specific female-oriented items. Concentrating on those things and making them female issues could cause a hotel to lose focus on those things which all travelers seek. We've come a lot a long way, baby.

Frankly, many of the standard amenities used by most hotels are those which both sexes enjoy. Allow me a different opinion.

Contact:
Neil Salerno, CHME, CHA
Hotel Marketing Coach
www.hotelmarketingcoach.com
NLSalerno@hotelmarketingcoach.com