The importance of Hotel P.R.

In a market as competitive as the hospitality industry, an effective PR strategy is essential and it must be creative, agile and adaptable. For smaller hotels without the benefit of a corporate engine, PR tactics are vital both in terms of positioning and creating valuable partnerships to help the hotel expand and grow.
PR as an art is about telling a story or creating a memory, and if word of mouth was always a valuable currency, social media platforms have made it more so, with customers sharing and interacting with one another and directly with the hotel as individual brands and hotel groups. The degree to which customers trust influences decisions has never been higher and is clearly rising. So whilst every brand behaviour is on public display, customer interaction and building trust is more important than ever.
To an extent, a brand’s story is now out of its control – the internet put paid to that – so we must recognize the customer as an author and fabulist exploring the possibilities of what they can give towards your overall PR effort, rather than take away from it and build outwards on that.
Hotels need to utilize as many platforms as possible and engage with as many of our customers as they can on a daily basis, developing conversations and points of view to enable a differentiated position in the market.
Hotels need to continually collaborate on ideas and innovations to keep their stories fresh and different, trying to stay a step ahead so they can be at the top end of any adoptive curve! You may not win the game by deploying PR, but you will definitely lose without it.

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Photography, social media and travel

According to a recent survey conducted by Schofields, more than 40 per cent of travellers under 33 prioritise ‘Instagrammability’ when choosing their next holiday spot. Across all markets, the travellers’ growing appetite for experiences that go deeper and farther beyond the established destinations are a unifying theme. The greater the lengths that travellers go to for the creation of these faux-spontaneous images, the more contrived and antithetical it feels to the spirit of travel.

Isn’t travel about staying, exploring and immersing yourself in the moment?

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The two concurrent challenges for hotels

The principle challenge faced by the industry is the availability of motivated associates. Hotels cannot deliver excellent hotel stays if they are understaffed or are experiencing disruptive associate turnover. To overcome this, they must start treating employees as critically involved members of communities. They need to be trained and supported as individuals.

The second challenge is how to adopt technology in a thoughtful and practical manner. The past decade has seen an unprecedented acceleration in consumer technology, and this pace is unlikely to slow. To this end, hotel brands must be careful to adopt proven technologies that enhance the stay experience rather than provide a flash in the pan. Technology solutions are expensive when rolled out across hundreds of rooms, so their impact must be measurable, experiential and centred on driving guest preferences.

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Mobile is still king

Global mobile commerce was up 40% and in 2019, experts predict that 70% of ecommerce sales will come from mobile transactions.
Search engines already favour mobile-friendly sites in their rankings, and search is a critical channel for the hotel sector. It’s increasingly important for brands to localize their mobile site content for specific regional audiences—from providing contact information of local properties in native languages, to offering payment options that reflect the preferences of regional customers.
Hoteliers must also create engaging, authentic in-language digital experiences that will satisfy the expectations of their guests in mobile-dominated markets.

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Hotels to capitalise on Immersive Technology – VR

Opportunities to leverage newer technologies like VR (Virtual Reality) in the hotel industry is the way to go forward. Imagine experiencing glimpses of your holiday experiences or stay at a resort or city hotel from the comfort of a VR room set up in a hotel lobby promoting experiences for different segments, for different hotels in the group and even for the same hotel itself. Locational experiences, adventure sports, relaxational therapies, entertainment and much more can be experienced by potential guests – thus making this a powerful marketing tool using immersive technology.

To understand this better, watch the Cannes 2017 award winning ad-film on how VR Vaccines (Brazil) battled childrens inherent fear of the injection shot.

 

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