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Mastering the Hotel Marketing Ecosystem at the Property Level

Today’s hotel visitors have never been more connected. With multiple devices and countless online resources to consult during each phase of the guest lifecycle – from the point they make their booking decisions to well after they check-out – travelers’ hotel expectations have shifted.

Long gone are the days when the hotel marketing tactics were all deployed pre-stay and offline. Today, easier access to guest preference data, past purchase behavior and social media profiles has made the hotel marketing discipline a multi-phase and multi-channel practice that requires involvement from many different key stakeholders at the brand and hotel-property level.

In this webinar, Greg Bodenlos, social media and digital marketing hospitality consultant, walks us through this complex hotel marketing ecosystem. In the process, Greg reveals strategies and tactics for mastering the innumerable amount of hotel marketing priorities. The following are just a few of the questions that will be addressed:

  • What are the most important marketing focus areas at the property level?
  • How has the definition of hotel marketing evolved in the hospitality industry?
  • Where should hotel marketing live in the overall hotel operation ecosystem?
  • Who are the various key stakeholders to involve in hotel marketing initiatives?
  • What new hotel marketing challenges are on the horizon?

Greg Bodenlos is a passionate hospitality marketing consultant and HSMAI leader based in Boston, Massachusetts. With a passion for digital trends, social media and innovation – and over five years of hotel and technology work experience – Greg possesses a unique perspective on the hospitality digital marketing landscape. Playing digitally-focused marketing roles at the destination resort, luxury independent property, and now city center hotel has allowed Greg to play an active role in shaping hotel marketing best practices at the property-level as well as help bring hoteliers closer to creating more meaningful, personalized travel experiences for their guests. It was in his marketing role at Revinate – a SaaS start-up in Silicon Valley that designs and develops technology to improve the guest experience – where Greg was able to help hoteliers and academics better understand the power of leveraging consumer intelligence to drive better service and maximize revenue streams across the entire guest lifecycle.

Greg is a proud graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and has been featured as a hotel marketing expert on National Public Radio. Greg has been featured as a contributor in Crowdcentric Media’s Social Media Week New York blog, eCornell’s Blog and HotelMarketing.com, as well as played a co-authored role in an award-winning piece for Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research with Chris Anderson entitled Best Practices in Search Engine Marketing and Optimization.

Greg can be reached by phone at +1 781 686 2177, email at gregbodenlos@gmail.com, on Twitter @gregbodenlos or LinkedIn.

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Price Positioning Strategies

Learn the merits and drawbacks of five price positioning strategies and use our price positioning worksheet to experiment with your own pricing strategy.

The Internet has dramatically changed hospitality pricing. Its speed and transparency have removed most barriers between customers and suppliers. With OTAs like Hotwire, Orbitz, and Hotels.com, you no longer need be an industry insider to find the best pricing to suit your needs. Yet, hotels and restaurants still need to make pricing decisions; these new challenges simply up the ante. Today, we’re looking at five price positioning strategies, explaining their merits (and drawbacks), and providing examples. When you’re done reading, download a free price positioning worksheet to experiment with your own pricing strategy.

The Price-Value Matrix

Many factors will influence your prices, including your competitors’ rates and products. As the name implies, your goal is to develop a pricing strategy that places your brand and its products in a certain position relative to your competition. One way to visualize this is the price-value matrix (right).Price Positioning -- The Price-Value Matrix

The position of your products within this matrix is a function of your brand proposition, your competitors, and your pricing objectives. Are you looking to maximize short-term revenues or profit? Are you seeking higher profit margins in a luxury market with sporadic sales? Do you need to differentiate more to penetrate the market? Or, is your business in survival mode?

Once you identify your pricing objectives, plot your prices and those of your competitors on the price-value matrix. At a glance, you’ll see how your pricing lines up with your objectives. If your rates need tweaking—either because they “say” the wrong things about your brand relative to competitors, or because they’re undermining your pricing objectives—consider using the following strategies to position your rates or prices more appropriately.

Price Positioning Strategies

Skim

This strategy clearly positions your company above the rest; it tells consumers something is special (i.e., worth paying more for) about your products. For example, look at the prices The Old Homestead restaurant has set for their steaks and chops. We can smell the fried onions and seared, aged prime meat already. We can envision the long white aprons of the wait staff and the impeccable table side service. To skim, set your prices higher than the competition does in order to “skim off” customers who are willing to pay more. This strategy can be highly profitable, but be careful: Though high prices imply high quality for many customers, it’s still critical that they understand why they’d pay more to stay or eat at your establishment.

Match

This strategy puts your pricing on par with the competition, but not necessarily for all rates. To match, set one rate comparable to your competition and another slightly higher. This allows you to stay competitive for a larger pool of customers, yet doesn’t undercut the competition.

Surround

Price Positioning Strategy - SurroundThis strategy positions your first room type as the cheapest in the market, but offers your rooms with better options at a price that’s close to your competitors’ first available rates. Hence, you’re “surrounding” the middle market, hoping to capture customers willing to pay in those ranges. For example, look at Sizzler’s $16.99 sirloin steak and lobster special.

Outback Steakhouse offers a similar item for $24.99, but uses a filet and includes two sides instead of one. Outback also offers a 6 oz. sirloin steak for $10.99. This strategy allows Outback to attract customers looking for an inexpensive steak dinner, while offering customers willing to pay more, well, more, but at a price far shy of Ruth Chris’s smallest filet steak at $35.

Undercut

By undercutting your competitors’ rates in some categories, you can potentially attract more customers. To undercut, offer a price that’s comparable to your competition and another that’s lower. Take this example from the hotel industry.Price Positioning -- Undercut

Both hotels are located near a major airport, both have the same star ratings and amenities. But look at their airport parking packages for 14 days free parking plus a room: $359 versus $189.  These hotels had very similar best rate rooms, but one has chosen to undercut their competition on this package, likely in hopes of driving more cost-conscious travelers their way.Price Positioning -- Undercut

Price Positioning -- Penetrate

Penetrate

Being the low-priced option in your market has benefits and drawbacks. The strategy is primarily designed to get people in the door and in seats. For new establishments, low prices often seem the best way to entice consumers to try their products. But this strategy also can depress market prices, lower margins, and set a poor precedent as your business grows. Do your prices reflect how consumers value your hotel or restaurant? Here’s what consumers see as they peruse online hotel options; those using penetration pricing certainly stand out.

Set Your Own Price Positioning Strategy

Price Positioning WorksheetHere’s an exercise taken directly from my eCornell course series New Media Marketing for the Hospitality Professional. This example illustrates the outcomes of five pricing strategies if your competition is charging $79.

Now, download your free price positioning worksheet here.

Though pricing can be a complex issue, this simple, effective tool provides an excellent start.

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Dynamic Content Personalization: Hoteliers’ Powerful New Tool to Maximizing Website Revenue and Conversions

Traditionally, hotel and resort websites have served the same content to all site visitors regardless of their preferences, demographics, past booking behavior, or even geographic location. Today, technology allows us to personalize content for property website visitors, making for a more intimate brand experience, and a profitable one at that.

HeBS Digital’s Mariana Mechoso Safer and Sara O’Brien discuss how you can use dynamic content personalization to deliver unique and relevant website content to specific customer segments. When dynamic content is delivered effectively, travelers enjoy service that is tailored specifically for them, while hospitality organizations enjoy more website engagement, greater conversion rates and increased revenues. You’ll learn to:

  • Recognize and reward specific customer segments by displaying personalized and relevant content that speaks to their preferences and expectations.
  • Differentiate your resort or hotel from the competition and the OTA channel.
  • Deliver higher levels of consumer satisfaction from the direct hotel website experience.
  • Significantly increase website conversions and revenues

Mariana Mechoso Safer is Senior Vice President, Marketing at HeBS Digital, overseeing advertising, marketing and public relations. Mariana heads the Las Vegas office, developing and implementing digital marketing strategies for HeBS Digital’s West Coast partners. She frequently conducts industry research and publishes in major travel and hospitality publications, and is also a guest speaker and presenter at hospitality events and conferences.

Mariana can be reached by phone at +1 702 463-1857, email at mariana@hebsdigital.com, on Twitter @mmechoso or LinkedIn.

Sara O’Brien is Senior Marketing Manager at HeBS Digital. She manages the development and execution of all HeBS Digital advertising, marketing and public relations. Starting with a position in consulting and client services, Sara has a solid understanding of hotelier’s business needs and objectives, including how to help them generate the highest ROIs from their most cost effective channel – their own website. Sara’s professional experience includes over nine years of advertising and marketing experience. Sara has a Master’s Degree in Global Marketing from Emerson College in Boston and a Bachelor’s Degree from University of Wisconsin, Eau Claire.

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Hotel Marketing Summit 2015

Three of the hotel industry’s most creative and forward-thinking marketers joined eCornell for a live YouTube summit on hotel marketing in February, 2015. Access the video below.

ReviewPro’s Josiah Mackenzie, HeBS Digital’s Mariana Mechoso Safer, and hospitality marketing consultant and HSMAI Boston Chapter leader Greg Bodenlos discussed, debated and dove into emergent technologies and practices to predict what’s most likely to influence hotel marketing strategies for the year ahead. They also covered:

  • The hotel marketing ‘ecosystem’, from guest experience design to multi-platform marketing and operational feedback analysis.
  • Personalizing the customer journey, from the inspiration stage to booking and beyond.
  • How to leverage user-generated content to increase customer engagement.
  • What you should focus on when analyzing your ‘reputation’ online, and how to use that data to improve your business.

Josiah Mackenzie leads business development at ReviewPro – helping partners across the hospitality industry use 360-degree guest intelligence to create better travel experiences for their guests and unlock new areas of revenue growth for their businesses. The rise of data from the social web – where people are leaving digital data trails wherever they go, 24/7/365 – has given the hospitality industry a dramatically expanded ability to understand consumer sentiment and trending new demand areas.

Featured as a hotel technology trends expert by media outlets such as CNN, PBS, MSNBC, The Washington Post and Entrepreneur Magazine, Josiah is also a frequent keynote speaker at conferences throughout North America, Europe, the Middle East and Asia.

Josiah can be reached by telephone at +1 415 671 9629, via email josiah@josiahmackenzie.com – or on Twitter @Hotel_Intel.

Mariana Mechoso Safer is Senior Vice President, Marketing at HeBS Digital, overseeing advertising, marketing and public relations. Mariana heads the Las Vegas office, developing and implementing digital marketing strategies for HeBS Digital’s West Coast partners. She frequently conducts industry research and publishes her major travel and hospitality publications, and is also a guest speaker and presenter at hospitality events and conferences.

Mariana can be reached by phone at +1 702 463-1857, email at mariana@hebsdigital.com, on Twitter @mmechoso or LinkedIn.

Greg Bodenlos is a passionate hospitality marketer and Hospitality Sales & Marketing Association International (HSMAI) Chapter leader based in Boston, Massachusetts. With a passion for digital trends, social media and innovation – and over five years of hotel and technology work experience – Greg possesses a unique perspective on the hospitality digital marketing landscape. Playing digitally-focused marketing roles at the destination resort, luxury independent property, and now city center hotel has allowed Greg to play an active role in shaping hotel marketing best practices at the property-level as well as help bring hoteliers closer to creating more meaningful, personalized travel experiences for their guests. It was in his marketing role at Revinate – a SaaS start-up in Silicon Valley that designs and develops technology to improve the guest experience – where Greg was able to help hoteliers and academics better understand the power of leveraging consumer intelligence to drive better service and maximize revenue streams across the entire guest lifecycle.

Greg is a proud graduate of Cornell University’s School of Hotel Administration and has been featured as a hotel marketing expert on National Public Radio. Greg has been featured as a contributor in Crowdcentric Media’s Social Media Week New York blog, eCornell’s Blog and HotelMarketing.com, as well as played a co-authored role in an award-winning piece for Cornell University’s Center for Hospitality Research with Chris Anderson entitled Best Practices in Search Engine Marketing and Optimization.

Greg can be reached by phone at +1 781 686 2177, email at gregbodenlos@gmail.com, on Twitter @gregbodenlos or LinkedIn.

 

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Applying the Dual-System Approach to Executive Education

For decades, European and Asian countries have embraced the dual-education system for professional development. The concept is built upon a “learn-on-the-job” model, where training is highly targeted, timely, and designed to align individual competencies with broader company goals.

While education costs continue to soar, the dual-education system delivers specific educational tools at a very specific point in time, while keeping the “cost-value proposition” in perfect balance.

This approach can also be applied to executive education because it is an adaptive, agile and proven model for delivering high-quality education. In the dual-education model, executives receive ongoing, timely and targeted training that helps them make the greatest contribution to the organization, while fostering engagement, inspiring a motivational culture and helping to retain the highest-performing executives.

Join Uwe Wagner, a senior eCornell faculty instructor and CEO of Innovative Think Tank International, for a look at how the dual-system approach should be applied to executive education.

 

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Applying Business Intelligence in Demand Generation

More than 50% of B2B marketers cannot accurately measure the ROI of their marketing efforts. In order to accurately measure the impact of their demand-generation programs, marketers must take a more holistic and strategic approach to demand generation.

Data is often not the problem as the B2B enterprise has expansive amounts of data. The challenge lies in determining the context of the data and knowing what actions should be taken based on the data analysis. Without this insight and analysis, B2B marketers will only rely on guesswork as they seek to optimize their performance and drive more revenue from their demand-generation investments.

In this webinar, Adam Needles, Chief Strategy Officer and Principal at ANNUITAS shows you:

  • What KPIs marketers should be measuring to get better visions into their demand-generation performance
  • How to use the intelligence of your data to better optimize performance
  • An example of a client and their success with business intelligence and analysis

Adam is a passionate B2B marketing change agent—helping companies build successful, modern, buyer-centric demand generation programs and transform their lead-to-revenue demand processes to drive profitable revenue growth and build sustainable brands. He is the author of Balancing the Demand Equation: The Elements of a Successful, Modern B2B Demand Generation Model, a book written for B2B marketing leaders.

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Introducing the Sales Growth Certificate

In our ever-evolving marketplace, it’s easy for sales teams to be overlooked. But the fact of the matter is, your organization’s sales team is crucial to the organization’s overall health and success. Sales team members must have up-to-date skills and an extensive knowledge of what works—and what doesn’t.

To that end, I’m thrilled to announce the launch of Sales Growth, our newest certificate at eCornell! Based on the book Sales Growth: Five Proven Strategies from the World’s Sales Leaders, authored by experts at McKinsey & Company, the five courses within the certificate translate insights from 150 worldwide sales leaders into clear and practical guidelines for action.

If you haven’t seen it yet, you can get a taste of what to expect with eCornell’s summary of the Sales Growth book.

The certificate in Sales Growth will expand on the concepts introduced in the summary, giving you and your team tools and strategies to create a plan to drive real growth in your company. Here’s some of what you’ll learn:

  • The value of micro-market analysis to find hidden and unique opportunities for growth.
  • Strategies to streamline your go-to-market process to increase face time with the highest- priority clients.
  • How to focus your value proposition to the individual needs of the client for higher conversion rates.
  • Tools and techniques to move away from pricing tunnel vision during negotiations.
  • How to choose the right metrics and targets to track for growth.

Each course is two weeks long, so you can earn your certificate within two and a half months. This certificate program is available only to organizations.

To learn more about the certificate, click here! Looking for printable information? Click here.

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It’s Not About You: Why Hotel Marketing Needs to Change

Is your marketing all about you? About how beautiful your rooms are, how delicious is the restaurant’s menu, how soothing are the spa services? All this may be true, but let’s be realistic: Your potential guests are hearing the same thing from every hotel.

In addition, a 2012 comScore study found that average ad effectiveness increases with age, meaning, traditional marketing is less effective with each new generation that comes along. Millennials (the youngest generation in the study) are more difficult to persuade via advertising when compared to older viewers. In just a few years, the majority of hotel guests will be Millennials, and traditional marketing will be useless.

So what should hoteliers do? Hotels need to switch from all-about-me marketing to targeted, guest-centric marketing.

Revinate marketing experts Daniel Mason and Betty Mok show you:

  • why marketing needs to change.
  • what hypertargeting is and how to do it.
  • how hoteliers can leverage customer data to deliver effective marketing, enhance the guest experience, and drive greater revenue.
Betty Mok, Director of Product Marketing

As the Director of Product Marketing at Revinate, Betty is responsible for new product and feature launches including pricing, packaging and messaging. Prior to Revinate, Betty has over 10 years of marketing experience at a range of businesses from small businesses to Fortune 500 companies including Intuit and American Express, with a focus on online marketing and launching new technology products. Betty has a BA from NYU, Stern School of Business and an MBA from Columbia Business School.

Danny Mason, Head of Demand Generation
As the Head of Demand Generation at Revinate, Danny is responsible for creating and managing programs that drive interest in Revinate, quantifying the success of those programs, and refining/optimizing performance. Prior to joining the Revinate team, Danny earned his BS in Hospitality Management from UNLV (sorry Cornell team!).

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Marketing Strategies: Driving Demand and Connecting With Today’s Buyer

Are you failing to make a real connection with customers? Are you dragging down your sales team by delivering low-quality leads?

In a recent B2B study, ANNUITAS found that only 2.8% of organizations rate themselves as effective in demand generation. That’s abysmal, but insightful at the same time. The study revealed that too many marketers are overly focused on tactics in lieu of a cohesive strategy.

Carlos Hidalgo, CEO of ANNUITAS, discusses:

  • The fundamentals of strategic demand generation.
  • How to build a demand-generation strategy that will guide your tactical game plan.
  • How to align your inbound and content marketing efforts around buyers’ needs.
  • How to measure ROI and optimize your marketing efforts for the greatest success.
  • The skills required to become a successful marketing strategist.

 

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Proactive Customer Experience: A High-Profit Strategy

With so much customer data and powerful technology at our fingertips, we have the opportunity to delight and dazzle customers like never before. But obsessing over the client experience isn’t just an exercise in integrity; it’s a proven strategy for revenue generation and business growth.

John Goodman, Vice Chairman of Customer Care Measurement and Consulting and author of Customer Experience 3.0 shows you:

  • How to be proactive about customer satisfaction with “Psychic Pizza”—that is, delivering the pizza just before the customer orders it.
  • How to set priorities and make decisions around the right customer data, which will drive more business.
  • The technology, staffing and process requirements for proactive customer experience.
  • How to demonstrate the ROI of customer experience, in a way that the CFO, the CMO, and the CEO will accept.
  • How to identify quick wins for measurable impact.
  • How to train yourself and your team for next-level business performance.

Customers expect more than ever before from business. It’s time to deliver on your company’s brand promise.