Hraba Hospitality Consulting

A man wrote a letter to a small hotel in a Midwest town he planned to visit on his vacation.

He wrote, “I would very much like to bring my dog with me. He is well-groomed and very well behaved.  Would you be willing to permit me to keep him in my room with me at night?”

An immediate reply came from the hotel owner, who wrote:

“SIR, I’ve been operating this hotel for many years. In all that time, I’ve never had a dog steal towels, sheets, silverware or pictures off the walls.  I’ve never had to evict a dog in the middle of the night for being drunk and disorderly.  And I’ve never had a dog run out on a hotel bill.  Yes, indeed, your dog is welcome at my hotel.  And, if your dog will vouch for you, you’re welcome to stay here, too.”

This Quora question here finally provided me an outlet to sum up all my tired cliches. The best in this business are constantly innovating, but here’s why the overall industry is a conservative bunch of bores. This may clue all you tech and app people in to why we are so hard to reach, and even if you do find access to the innovator or connected “in the know” guy at any hospitality company, the difference between “getting it” and implementation is day and night… especially from a corporate HQ to property level.  Getting acceptance at corporate is easy.  Getting the idea distributed and implemented is a different story.

So, why don’t hotels innovate more?

Historically, we’re not a money business, and we’re certainly not a tech business. The famous saying is “Hotels aren’t pioneers, because pioneers were shot in the back with arrows.” We couldn’t afford to make capital cost mistakes with new fangled design, tech, etc. If you have ever let an architect make a daring and new “tech” design decision, and then during your opening week have to rip an entire HVAC system from a brand new hotel because it doesn’t work, you learn VERY QUICKLY not to take risks on innovating something if there is a potential failure rate. Within the last couple years, radiant flooring had been this issue – architects and owners designing from residential preference versus the complexity of commercial application. It’s a problem, and it makes hotelier like me seem boring. But the simple fact is this:

Do you want to innovate and potentially fail spectacularly, or do you want to be boring and conservative and have an operating hotel?

It’s not always *our* money to take those risks with, either… and a good ownership or management group will protect the assets. When we tried to pioneer infrastructural solutions ranging from phones or internet, we got burned by trusting salesman whose interest is to sell, and not worried about back end support. So we lost a lot of money trying to pioneer systems like that. Sales people will always sell products that their operational department can’t support – like marketing writing checks that ops can’t cash.

What we quickly learned is that we can have a hospital or dormitory spend their own capital (and public vs private) funds, learning from their errors…

Then we steal the way they built out infrastructure at infinitely lower costs because you don’t have the learning curve or associated costs with capital spending failures.

This is true of phones, which I talk about here:
The Story of the In-Room Phone, & the future of on property telephony

and even reaches something seemingly prosaic and simple, like in room coffee, which I talk about here: A coffee laden ramble about… hotel coffee. What does your coffee program, or lack of it, say about your hotel brand?

You will note the similar “pioneer” themes – and that we become conservative in the face of multi-layered complexities in regards to execution.

Basically, hotels aren’t a money business. They are about hospitality, and part of being hospitable means having things that work properly. Early adopters suffer everything from outages to glitches, and more – and it isn’t in the best interest of a hotel to spend liberal amounts of capital on things with high rates of failure. This is why you can easily see a trend of about 10 years behind the times for everything…. not just phones or wireless infrastructure, but even with websites and SEO, as well.

The sea change moment for hospitality might have been SEO – many hotels got so burned by their own unawareness that they vowed never to be left in the dust again. I still know some hotels that can’t be found in their market. That’s why the savvier of hospitality groups are *VERY* on top of social media, and most operators look at it as a phone, instead of the billboard. Marketing is trying to lead us astray, but in the end it will become an operator’s real time brand management and guest expectation / service tool.

Anyways, that basically sums it up:

Hotels aren’t innovators simply because we aren’t innovative. We rather be boring and actually work, than innovative and broken.

Why don’t we innovate? Because that, historically, hasn’t been our job, and we can’t afford to.

I don’t have much to say, other than I obviously don’t have kids or celebrate holidays. =)

See below.  I find this profound.  I have been harping on FB for years about this, not that they listen.

I was recently asked to respond to these questions. I believe my responses ran too long to be printed. =) Go figure. I thought you might enjoy my responses…

1. What can lodging operators do to affect sales using digital marketing. Is there any “low hanging” fruit that everyone should be leveraging?
2. How important is SEO and SEM or how important should it be to a lodging operator? Why?
3. Are social media sites like Pinterest and, of course, Facebook worth a hotel marketing department’s time? Why or why not?
4. How important should online travel agents like Expedia be in a hotel’s marketing strategy? Some of these agencies take a big commission on each booking?
5. Increasingly, I hear about hotels interacting with customers and prospects on TripAdvisor. Should this be part of each property’s marketing strategy? Why is this interaction important?
6. What is on the horizon digital marketing-wise? What do lodging marketers have to look forward to in the future?
7. How important is fresh content in digital marketing? I’ll bet today’s audiences get bored easily.
8. Please add anything you feel I might have missed that our readers should know about when it comes to digital marketing.
1. What can lodging operators do to affect sales using digital marketing. Is there any “low hanging” fruit that everyone should be leveraging?

1. What can lodging operators do to affect sales using digital marketing. Is there any “low hanging” fruit that everyone should be leveraging?

The low hanging fruit would be Management Responses on Tripadvisor, Yelp, and Google reviews. If you are unlucky enough to have to play with OTA’s, then also add management responses on those sites as well. The latter are easy to respond to via your extranets, while the former require signing up for accounts, and claiming your business. If you haven’t done so, do it! It’s relatively easy, It is vital to manage those profiles with fresh content, pictures, and info. But the management responses on user generated review sites are not just free marketing, but it’s customer service, concierge work, service recovery, sales, and more. It’s free, and it is vital to engage consumers and guests concerned enough with your brand to share their experiences with you, potential, future guests, and the world.

2. How important is SEO and SEM or how important should it be to a lodging operator? Why?

They are vital. SEO is so complex, and ever-changing with Google’s Panda and Penguin updates, it’s important not just to try and stay on top, but also not to fall to the bottom. SEM is important because it’s ROI is so simple, and clean. Hotel people have never been tech people, and our lack of capital makes us conservative and less innovative than other industries. Beyond not always knowing the right questions to ask, we prefer to let a dormitory or hospital pioneer the infrastructure, and pay for the learning costs of installing new systems. That worked for us for a long time, including phone systems, or accounting, etc. But when the internet started, we were so caught off guard, we lost our ability to control inventory, because we panicked about this new realm of distribution. We didn’t get websites right, we didn’t understand SEO, ad spends, etc, and many properties dropped off the face of the modern world. It took some properties 10 years to catch up, let alone those still struggling in cluttered markets. We hotel people are so skeptical of spending, it took many people a long time to understand the importance of SEO without a concrete return (prior to analytics). But I think that’s why clearer ROI with SEM has been able to keep many brands and flags in the game, and people were quicker to become involved in that, after the SEO and website debacle. Now, you note that many brands, flags, and independent / boutique operators were incredibly quick to understand and use social media as free, engaged marketing for their properties.

3. Are social media sites like Pinterest and, of course, Facebook worth a hotel marketing department’s time? Why or why not?

If you don’t have your review sites taken care of, and management response up, info updated, etc – Facebook should be the last thing on your mind. It’s a closed system that is more about “pictures as storytelling”, where the only meaningful updates you can share are local food and beverage / spa events, because you risk spamming your facebook following with “me me me” posts, cluttering their stream. Some hotels post every day, but you have to have a special brand (think Racey Vegas), but typically it is regarded as insecure and more like spam. People worry about being forgotten, but it’s more about helping them to remember at the right time. Regard your Facebook Page more like an email marketing blast – if you got an email from a hotel every day, would that be fun, or overwhelming spam? Twitter and Tumblr are for content generation without annoying users, as it’s an open network rooted in interest. Facebook’s closed network makes overly chatty people or biz pages look spammy, or self absorbed. It’s more about listening to other people, than being all about you. Pinterest is great to set up with all your best marketing images, but then it’s up to the community to perpetuate your brand. You don’t need to hover over every like and share. Sometimes, social networks are most successful for your brand when marketers make a conscious choice to leave it alone.

4. How important should online travel agents like Expedia be in a hotel’s marketing strategy? Some of these agencies take a big commission on each booking?

They are a necessary evil for some. But it’s also why our inventory is hard to manage, and revenue management is out of control (as well as why that role in a hotel is superseding Rooms and DOS decision making powers, in some situations). If you can invest in Tripadvisor’s Business Listing or CPC campaigns, or Yelp’s advertising (when you are in a market that it makes sense), along with SEM, it’s a better way to get people to your website to book direct rather than allow yourself to bleed reservations to online travel agencies. It’s still important for some hotels, but at all costs reduce your inventory and reliance on OTAs. Look into Google Hotel Finder, which is gaining momentum, and invest in driving bookings directly to your website. There are also hotel website booking engines that you can purchase with certain property management systems that have *NO COMMISSIONS*, which should perk up some ears. If you can find ways to do that, and drive booking direct via GDS with their delivery commission, you can save a lot of money, and have better control of your revenue management, ADR, and inventory. There are many ways to reduce self reliance on OTAs. I know many, but a Google search for excellent hotel posts on the subject is more affordable. =)

5. Increasingly, I hear about hotels interacting with customers and prospects on TripAdvisor. Should this be part of each property’s marketing strategy? Why is this interaction important?

The interaction does a number of things. First – it humanizes the hotel. UGR site users don’t connect with a hotel on a review site, or truly realize a human is on the other side of reviews, until they see that interaction. I’ve seen many situations where a hotel is going through a problem period, and prior to response, reviews are very aggressive and visceral. As soon as the management responses are posted, future reviewers tone down their antagonism because they understand a real human is involved, and it is no longer an anonymous profile to hurl negativity towards. What’s more, just by responding, earnestly, non-defensively, and transparently, I have seen people change their review score for the better, noting that they appreciate the interaction, and the hotel’s involvement. Some have completely deleted their negative review. It’s important to understand, whether or not your are responding to these reviews, they are happening without you. It’s a conversation online, about your brand, and you have every right to be a part of it. It’s very humbling to open yourself to this new world of transparency, where you can no longer control your brand in the traditional ways. But if you get past that, and listen, and learn, you will be able to self-attenuate, grow, and improve in a way that will create a resonance within the community, and stabilize your business. The first part of rooting yourself to the community and showing your enthusiasm for being a successful part of it, is expressing your concerns and appreciation to the people who take time to review you.

6. What is on the horizon digital marketing-wise? What do lodging marketers have to look forward to in the future?

Google’s movement into Travel is impressive, and we’ll see much more of that this year. Google Now, Google Flight Search, Google Hotel Search, Google Plus Local, and more. It’s very tightly wound in to search, so if your business relies on Google search to drive traffic to your website, or grab you business, or get directions via maps to arrive at your business, ignoring Google right now would be a pretty big mistake. Also, HD Video tours, from room tours to marketing of outlets like spas and restaurants, should increase. It’s relatively low cost to put together an informal, or well edited, video and put it on a Youtube page. It’s a way to engage your audience, and help tell the story as well as answer questions they might have. In fact, Google Image search is becoming more important too – at one property, 20% of our site visits come from Google Image searches (which surprised even me). The other thing that’s on the horizon is a lot of meaningless apps, bad ideas, and gimmicky tech as marketing guest experience. Make sure to do the numbers on anything you demo, and understand the real value vs the giddy rush to glam-apps. There’s a lot of people out there trying to sell stuff to us non-techy hotel people. I can’t remember who said it, but “Silicon Valley is exceptional at answering questions no one is asking” – so beware something that seems exciting, but is really just cost and no meaningful value. Invest wisely. We got giddy with OTA’s, and many made the Groupon mistake. It’s time to be wise with our cash.

7. How important is fresh content in digital marketing? I’ll bet today’s audiences get bored easily.

I think this worries many people, because of how hard it is to write talented copy, that pleases both web people, marketing people, etc. It’s hard to be free to write copy that doesn’t sound bound by groupthink. But, fresh content doesn’t just mean copy. In fact, I think SEO-based keyword-stuffed hotel page content (to meet the robotic needs of an a search ranking algorithm) destroyed normal web users patience to read *anything* on a web page. Videos and pictures are the fresh content that will be more meaningful, potentially share-able or viral, and more engaging to potential guests. A room tour is going to be more important than a new paragraph on your website. But the full package should be a friendly, neighborly blog that talks in a way that defines your hotel with a “voice” (hopefully a GM, or the like), a calendar of events for the local community (like farmer’s markets, concerts), and new pictures and videos (whether high gloss and pricey photos you get done for brochures, or crowd sourcing photos from instagram and tumblr). The new changes that make google’s search algorithm focus on local, mobile, and freshness of content will be much easier to manage if you have a proper content production plan. It doesn’t have to be forced, but it should be a hierarchy that is understood. The only advice is to *not* give this to marketing. They aren’t doing it right. Twitter feeds and Facebook pages look like spam – RSS feeds of specials or overly “me” focused, pat, disingenuous posts. You want to create a real voice, and really involve the operators at the property level. Often, PR/Marketing sits off in a silo, disconnected, and until they understand the need for a legitimate voice at the property, they are going to damage the reputation of the hotel. It’s meant to be a conversation – concierge work like a phone call. It’s not a hollow opportunity to use social as a one-way billboard. It’s much more dynamic than that, and engaging your audience with fresh content that tells a story about you, is more important. What’s most important is understanding the way traditional marketing has changed, but how it’s vital to have it synced up with modern marketing for real success. This is a difficult time for traditional marketing, but it has a bright future. When people stop the traditional pitching of their product, and think of their hotel more as a media outlet for information and events in relation to a geographic region and specific type of experience, they will better position themselves for the future rhythm that old world and new world marketing will have in the near future, and content will begin just to produce itself, in a way.

8. Please add anything you feel I might have missed that our readers should know about when it comes to digital marketing?

I could go for days. Hope this helps. I typed way too much for you, I think, and might reprint this whole thing on my blog, if that’s okay? After you do yours? Let me know what you think.