Hraba Hospitality Consulting

I had been finding it difficult to explain *exactly* what I am doing for hotels.  Lots of the baby boomers are confused about it, but they know the kids are getting them on facebook.  Even the tech savvy ones that understand social media’s impact still can’t wrap their heads around it.  So I wanted to write a concise definition that I could pass around to clients, friends, family, etc.  I think this is good.  Any feedback is appreciated.  Cheers!

Social Media and traditional marketing, In or Out?

This isn’t marketing or press in the traditional sense, and thinking of it like that is where a very large disconnect will start to occur.

Print media marketing is highly manipulated brand management, with an “opt out” style of force feeding clients your information.  Most people think of this as spam now.  Billboards, print ads, radio commercials… all mentally tuned out and becoming ineffective.  That media model will always exist, but now….even Tivo makes it so people don’t even *WATCH* commercials anymore, let alone listen to them.  Print will always be around, but the media has effectively stopped working as it did.

Social media, conversely, is where consumers choose to “opt in” to your brand.  What’s more, they control your brand with one social voice, therefore encouraging you to build and maintain a brand that has an ethic, ethos, and intent that the consumer can identify with.  Damage control and retroactive brand management doesn’t work as effectively.

So, social media is not about forcing people to like your brand, but courting those that already do.  100 people interested in your brand are worth much more than the 10,000 print media people that are not.  There are photo sites, mini blog sites, and more where people are talking about you!  Conversation is happening everywhere, and it is important to engage these people as an interested, interactive community member rather than someone just selling something. Consumers will only trust, identify with, and endorse your brand if you are transparent and earnest.

Interested consumers are talking about you all over the world and you need to engage them!!

Social Media is not a place to complain.  It is a place to resolve problems.

Oh wait.

I just had a guest that we caught mid experience through her online review… resolved and righted the entire experience on site so that the latter half of the stay was perfect.  This woman decided to go on and review it based off the first half, suggesting “had I not complained” it would have remained that way the entire stay.

Oooooh… that is so unfair.

News flash to the grumpy reviewers… *WE WANT YOU TO COMPLAIN*.  Of course we do… while you are on site, or even if we catch your review during your stay, and we see you unhappy, dissatisfied, or angry… we are going to attempt to do something about it.  It is sort of in our interest to have you pleasured, versus consternated while gritting one’s teeth.

Typically, as hoteliers, we all dream and hope of the day there is nothing to complain about.  But that day won’t come, and if we think it has it means we aren’t listening.

SO… if there *are* issues, it is our business model and in our self respecting interests to want to resolve that situation.  To have a business dialed in enough to recognize the issues with one’s experience and resolve them seems to me to be a rolemodel of a business; catering to consumers, and listening to demand. 

For someone to go home after the experience and pretend nothing had actually happened but a miserable stay seems short shrift and unfair.  Of course, I am a skeptic enough to suggest we may have failed miserably, or the gaffe was insurmountable.  I am also a realist enough to simply suggest there are some miserable people out there that don’t feel they have a voice.

But that would be wildly unfair in favour of the consumer.  The client is always right as the adage has gone from century to century.

In regards to reviews… we love them.  I am not saying they are worthless by any means.  Of course, review us!  Don’t hold back!  We take anything and everything *ANYONE* writes straight to the heart.  We think about it, talk about it, and learn from it.  We have made changes because of it.  So it is effective.

But just remember business is a two sided affair, and for it to work most efficiently we would love to know what you are having problems with, instead of waiting and venting your frustrations through a stoic keyboard.

If you do the latter, there is no guarantee that your review will ever reach us with the depth of space that is the online reviewing portal world.  Even if we do see your placid words on a lonely page, we are ill prepared to relate to the depth of sentiment or for those words to properly intone your experience.

We will try.  No doubt about it.  I am scouring the internet for people’s experiences as we speak.

But if you want a sure fire way to alert a business to a problem, get someone to listen, and resolve professional issues to your satisfaction… don’t hesitate to actually talk to a human while you are there.

Completely novel concept, to be sure.

Hell I have fun being employed to do what I do… but actually fixing the problem seems a better outcome than us retroactively realizing we had a chance to make someone happy and missing it.

It works for both sides a lot better in every possible way….

Let us know of any issues, inconveniences, thoughts, comments, etc while *AT* a property…. instead of waiting to vent your disappointment through tapping out idle words into a machine lacking listening skills.

Just a thought.

We want to be the best, and if we aren’t we want to get better.  Alerting us to problems long since passed doesn’t seem like the most efficient way of helping us to get there.

Again… some react in favour of the brand.  Others react in favour of the consumer.  This online reviewing world gets some heated opinions.

But what happened to the old days where people in business actually dealt with issues and talked face to face about things?  I am as modern as the next guy… but dammit we need professional consumers again.

Just the odd rant now and again.  Thanks for pondering along with me.  I felt those eyes shifting over the lines.  Cheers to you!

The old marketing model has been flipped upside down, and now people are trying to figure out how to reach consumers that *want* to be reached… branded consumers that want to identify with your brand, rather than ignore it dutifully with the endless visual and aural “spam” that litters every street we walk down, store we walk into, or sites that we surf. And it is in this that we find our best opportunity… consumers no longer want to be advertised to. However, they will endorse your brand in the interest of their personal identity… which is why Yelp has been such an incredible opportunity from a business end. Not only do I like to reach out and talk to the consumers, I like the challenge of rectifying bad situations! It is a personal mission for me to redefine “advertising and marketing” with being real and transparent to the guest. I want them to identify with my quirks, possible (yet unlikely) typos, and my individualistic approach at really responding to each consumer… knowing each consumer is much more amplified than a traditional non social site reviewer. Like it or not, the consumer is now easily tiered into multiple levels of VIPS, not unlike what hotels have done for years.

Initially, very few businesses took advantage of yelp. Then came the terror and panic…. Business owners realizing it was a force, almost a lobby, that they needed to address, which led to an amazing moment in yelp history of business owners lashing out and acting like defensive bullied playground kids. Then things starting calming down a bit. This is the point we rest at… a moment when more and more hotel (business) owners are becoming involved, not because they are worried about customer perception… but because they realize the tool this is, in a violently upset world of dying print media and traditional marketing tactics going awry. Finally, in a world where we are moving further apart and less connected to our clients…. We have a direct and professional way to approach them.

Yelp has gotten me to the point of actually knowing our clients. It has been enjoyable finding out about their families, preferences, suggestions, and complaints. Yelp has helped me to humanize my client base. And because of this…. The angriest yelpers became some of our most branded and loyal customers because we showed that we were engaged, earnest, and interested in improving our relationship, service, and brand.

So Jim wanted a simple testimonial, and I blather on. But the ROI is never easy, and we need a new way to measure things. However, I can speak plainly of unhappy guests that have returned on a comp night from the hotel, that happily spent incremental revenue (outlet revenue like spa or restaurant). I can also speak of positive reviewers that have been given discounted rates and have returned, already branded, to enjoy our hotel yet again, and we await yet another update. What some of you at yelp might not have realized is how much of this is branding… that you are reinforcing your brand as they write a review…. But if the identify with the review they are tapping out because they hold the company/hotel/etc in high esteem…. That review they type out is literally reinforcing the brand as they type it.

Yelp is much more important than a review site. It is on the threshold of being the epicenter of the “new” marketing model. It is no longer about shoving adverts down the throats of consumers who want nothing to do with you. It is time to recognize we can not only talk to branded consumers thirsty for information…. But we can find depth and meaning in the relationships between clients / guests and create a new approach to business that not only has demonstrable ROI, but is a more human, interested, and excited approach to knowing your client base.