TOP 10 CARIBBEAN HOTEL MARKETING MISTAKES

Mistake No. 1

BELIEVING YOU CAN MARKET A PRODUCT THAT IS FUNDAMENTALLY BADIf your rooms and your service are bad, or you aren’t located where most guests want to be, you cant hide behind fluffy ad copy. No matter what you say, no matter how hard you sell, you’re in for trouble every day of their stay.

And they’ll trash you… big time, on the spot and online.

They’ll be waiting for you at the front desk. They’ll be complaining out loud in the lobby. And they’ll be bashing you all over the Internet. Even before they leave the property. So if you do have an inferior product, whatever you do, don’t over hype it.

Fix it instead.

The higher you raise the expectations of your guests, the greater their disappointment. And their anger. The truth is, you only have two choices when your product isn’t what it needs to be. You can fix it. Or you can adjust your rates so your clientele can live with it. If you decide to improve your product, start by raising your level of service. That’s usually the easiest area of improvement to address (and least capital intensive). Get rid of bad apple employees. Raise the bar for the rest. And stick to your new standards. You can also improve your product offering by creating special packages that put the emphasis on the best of your features and amenities. In other words, sell what you deliver best.

Mistake No. 2

TOLERATING ANYTHING LESS A+ PERFORMANCE FROM YOUR WEBSITE

• Make sure your booking agent is world class. If it’s unfriendly and just plain clunky, you’ll actually lose business in the booking process

• Welcome meeting and group travel decision makers. Make them feel special. Speak their language. Invite them to visit and encourage them to see for themselves

• Enrich your site with all that your location and surrounding area has to offer. Give your visitors details and let them go as deep as they’d like in exploring the area

• Equip your site with the latest technological tracking and retargeting tools you need to continually hone in on your target audience.

Every piece of information you gather from visits to your Web site is critical to the refinement of your marketing strategy. It’s also critical to have a site that is mobile-compatible with iPads and mobile devices, which account for a steadily increasing amount of traffic and a fortune in bookings.

Before today’s travelers go anywhere, they go to the Web.

They research. They investigate. They compare you to your competition. And all they have to judge YOU on is YOUR website. It’s up to you to make the very most of that prospective guest’s initial visit.

The longer they stay, the greater the possibility of a booking. In fact, the most critical job of your website is to get them to book directly with you.

Here are some absolute musts for your site to be the most forceful weapon in your arsenal:

• Make certain you greet your visitors with a clear, simple statement of exactly why they should stay with you. Tell them what makes you uniquely different in the most concise, most memorable way possible

• Use quality imagery, both stills and video, to illustrate your property in the best possible light

• Call your visitors to action. Give them incentives. Give them a sense of urgency. Offer them deals they won’t want to miss out on and let them know the clock is ticking on the offer

Mistake No. 3

NOT HAVING A PLAN.Trying to market a property without a comprehensive/consensus Sales & Marketing plan is like trying to start a relationship without understanding your partner’s values. Success depends on knowing where you’ve been, who you are, and what your goals are.

Your plan needs to have the endorsement of ALL your stakeholders and itemize the steps required to increase revenue. You need a strategy for each feeder market and core target segment (leisure, group, travel/trade, etc). You also need to identify the specific obstacles to achieving your sales projections and the tactics necessary to overcome them. ADR, AOR and RevPar data must be documented and projections need to be made.

A campaign specifically aimed at meeting planners may also be required. And if you are a flag hotel, the role corporate marketing will play in meeting your projections needs to be included. Also, an assessment of F&B competitiveness may be required, with plans for making specific improvements. Critical aspects of the property itself may need to be evaluated and areas of improvement need to be identified and budgeted for. Factors beyond the gates of your property and beyond your control must be also documented and dealt with.

Are there changes on the horizon of the competitive landscape? What will the effects be of pending shifts in airline schedules? How long will the bad press from a recent natural disaster linger? Finally, every bit of guest feedback available must be taken into consideration in planning where you put your emphasis in the year ahead. But is all this work really necessary? Wouldn’t all that time be better spent doing, rather than planning? Not when you’re your property’s success depends on it!

No matter how appealing your property, no matter what your competitive edge, if your key sales people don’t have compelling tools, sales won’t happen. Group and meeting planners expect exciting “infotainment” material at their fingertips.

Provide collateral that speaks directly to meeting planners. Educate them. Inspire them. Put special packages together for their groups. Prepare an annual calendar of local events. Provide a menu of transportation options from the airports that serve your location. Include pictures and videos of previous meetings you’ve hosted… these can be very powerful motivators for new clients.

Your sales material and web content must convey the unique ambiance of your property, instantly communicating how your property can deliver a flawless, memorable experience that will make the Planner look like a star!

And in today’s world, your sales collateral cannot be confined to ink on paper. You have to tell your story equally well in all electronic formats, whether presented on a large-screen laptop, a crystal-clear iPad or a smartphone/iPhone.

Mistake No. 4

FAILING TO PROPERLY ARM YOUR GROUP SALES FORCE

OOPS!

Mistake No. 5

NOT TAKING SOCIAL MEDIA SERIOUSLY.According to a recent study, six out of ten travel shoppers change their mind after reading reviews from previous guests on social media sites.

Why is social media such a critical new component to your property’s marketing success?

Social media has transformed consumer behavior from simply searching and reading to actively sharing, reviewing and participating. Travelers now post reviews, photos and itineraries…which impact how potential guests make purchase decisions.

Because travel is seen as a luxury, travelers are much more prudent with their vacation dollars and are investing more time educating themselves before booking their destination or hotel. Social media allows them to validate their options by reviewing previous travelers’ experiences. Then, during and after their visit, social media creates an unlimited digital accelerator for word of mouth advocacy. This virtual evangelism by your guests can have a tremendous impact on your hotel’s revenue... and reputation!

Social Media also gives properties the opportunities to engage guests in two-way communication at every point of the vacation experience, whether it’s someone shopping for a hotel, a dissatisfied past (or current) guest or delivering cost-effective messages to your past guest fan base.

Here’s a few more ways smart hotel marketers use social media to increase revenue:

1. Announce news, offers and launch contests that can attract an enormous amount of interest and brand exposure at very little cost, all leading to additional revenue.

2. Implementing a booking engine on outlets like a Facebook Page to convert social traffic into direct bookings.

3. Utilize the “voice” of the hotel across the social sphere to clearly define the hotel brand and shape the demographic of the hotel’s following. By actively engaging with guests (pre, during and post stay), properties are in greater control of their online reputation and will see more frequent, positive reviews as a result.

Mistake # 6

IGNORING THE TREASURE BURIED IN YOUR PAST GUEST DATABASE.

Your database of past guests is gold. Not to mine it for everything it’s worth is silly. After all, when people have a good experience with you, they are not likely to take their chances elsewhere next time they are visiting the area. You are familiar to them and (hopefully) they like you.

In order to extract the treasure buried in your database of past guests, you’ll need to have a robust PMS or CRM system capable of housing and reporting more than just basic contact info. The best systems make it easy to extract quick reports (and lists) on which past guests might be the best targets for future campaigns. These systems gather data based on recency, frequency and previous spending habits at your property.

Have low mid-week occupancy in Summer? Look for guests who stayed mid-week last Summer… Need more spa business? Send a promo to guests who spent twice the average amount at your spa in the past.

Better yet, new social media tools enable you to find and “friend” past guests based on the email address (new appending technology can easily find/add email addresses to past guest records) housed in your CRM/PMS system. Once you connect with past guests on Facebook for example, you are able to communicate an ongoing stream of promos and messaging to your audience with no incremental marketing cost. And then, every past guest who befriends you via social media (See #5 above) becomes a free word-of-mouth evangelist for your property!

Mistake # 7

ALLOWING YOUR COMPETITORS TO OUTRANK YOU ON SEARCH ENGINES.

Travel begins with search. If you’re not prominently displayed on search engines, you don’t exist. But once you acquire top rankings, you have a powerful competitive advantage. Because everyone covets those precious high rankings, search engine marketing has become intensely competitive, requiring serious mathematical and analytical skills.

Now you may think your ranking is well beyond your control at this point. We’ve all been frustrated in the past trying to work the system in pursuit of a first-page, above-the-fold ranking position. But that was then and this is now. The science of SEO has evolved and a few hospitality search engine experts have emerged as true masters of the process.

And good news! You can afford to hire them… or a better way to say it might be: you can’t afford not to hire them. If your competitors are using a search ninja… they will soon have an unassailable competitive advantage on you!Mistake # 8

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Mistake # 7

DOINGTHESAMEOLDTHINGYEARAFTERYEAR.

If it isn’t broken don’t fix it is great advice for clockmakers. But you’re running a hotel. No matter how good business may be, you can’t afford to take a business-as-usual attitude… even if you’re way ahead of your competition in RevPar.

Sustained success depends on consistently finding ways to stay one step ahead. Keeping an eye out for what’s working, not just what’s new. You should read hotel technology blogs and as much trade press as you can handle. Keep fresh marketing minds around you, especially younger “digital natives.” Make certain your marketing team and vendors embrace the technological advances in e-marketing and mobile opportunities that are shaping the future of our industry.

And watch your competition! You don’t want to wake up one morning to find they’ve adopted innovations you haven’t even budgeted for yet. Keep testing new software, new systems and every new means of reducing your marketing costs and increasing your bookings.

If you need some inspiration, here it is: this link will bring you to the hottest new marketing technology companies in the industry today.

Mistake # 9

MISMANAGING REVENUE MANAGEMENTThe most important element of marketing in the hotel business is having a unique, delightful product. But pricing can also be a major factor in your marketing success or failure. If you don’t have some semblance of a revenue management and pricing strategy, all your other marketing efforts will be wasted and your RevPar will be lower than your competitive set.

No matter what your property looks like, no matter how good the service, the amenities, your F&B...deriving the greatest possible amount of revenue out of every available room is the ultimate determiner of financial success.

Dynamically setting that room rate through a professional revenue management process is key. It’s your formula for success, rooted in the basic fundamentals of supply and demand. But proper revenue management is not easy. Room rate adjustments must be made based on a number of ever-changing considerations and sometimes rather illusive information. Up-to-the-minute reservation activity, historical data and even intuitive forecasting must be applied to the pricing process.

As occupancy increases, discounted rate tiers must be closed. And when times are bad, but historical booking high points are approaching, you have to be patient enough to hold the line. If you manage the entire process intelligently and diligently, you will maintain a consistent base of business in perfect sync with historical data and external economic factors.

What’s more, once you have achieved that level of pricing control, you can begin to alter the forces of supply and demand by dialing your marketing budget up or down. This is how a hotel can get the greatest return for its marketing dollar. Through dynamic flexibility, in pricing and promotion. And this is what distinguishes the winners from the losers.

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Mistake # 10

FAILING TO MEASURE MARKETING ROI

Imagine opening a bank account without knowing what your rate of interest will be. Or sending your kids to a private school and never seeing a report

card… Nobody does that. And yet some people in the hospitality business have no way to measure the return they are getting on

the money they invest to generate traffic and drive sales.

What a mistake!

Even if business is good, and ‘something’ is working, your marketing ROI should be measured regularly. Especially when marketing ROI has never been easier to measure. Many of today’s digital/analytical tools provide near instantaneous information. In fact, the world of e-marketing has put a whole new generation of measuring mechanisms at our fingertips. They go well beyond simply measuring raw metrics like site traffic or call volume.

Dedicated phone numbers can track inbound calls from specific markets in response to specific campaigns. Online analytics can tell us who, from where, has been interested in what, for how long, and why. And they can tell us exactly how much it cost to convert an e-blast recipient into a booking.

We can even sync our booking engines to campaign monitoring dashboards, so all your data can be right

there in front of you anytime/anywhere… giving you the ability to measure ROI yield on a minute-by minute basis

and enable you to kill low yield programs or ramp high yield endeavors almost instantaneously.

What a mistake to let an opportunity like that go unexploited!

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ABOUT TAMBOURINE:Tambourine is an ROI-obsessed marketing agency driving demand, revenue and brand awareness for travel and lifestyle clients since 1986. Based in South Florida, Tambourine creates inspiring digital experiences and engaging campaigns that produce measurable results.

We are the instrument many of the world’s most advanced marketers use to create a steady beat of traffic and revenue growth. We provide a 360º integrated marketing program that delivers predictable ROI and a sustainable sales and marketing rhythm for your brand.