Business goes on... Sales Tips for an Uncertain Market

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Writen by The Publisher at Victoo - Saturday, 25 October 2008 09:39

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In a tough market, every room night counts.These days, as we struggle with how to best market our hotels, do we continue to create promotions and spend money on advertising when customers simply aren't traveling? Do we advertise the way we normally would? Or do we lay low, ride out the storm and spend when things pick up?We saw negative cycles during the Gulf War and after 9/11, when those hotels that were active in sales were the first to feel the positive impact of the upturn. Maybe they cut their advertising spend or specific areas of marketing budgets, but sales and promotional efforts remained active as they introduced new opportunities for clients.While this downturn may seem more painful, business goes on and you need to be out there. Here are several ideas to keep your sales efforts strong:

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DIRECT SALES & THE PERSONAL TOUCH:Start calling customers to thank them for their stay and to see if there's anything you can do to enhance their next visit.

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* Hotels can learn a great lesson in customer service from other industries, which make courtesy calls and practice personal outreach. "We noticed you returned something in September and just wanted to make sure you were happy and had the items you wanted. And...remember all our replacements for returns get free shipping, so when you want to reorder, just let us know and we'll waive the shipping." Your customers will certainly spread positive word of mouth about you when you make an effort like that.

* Build personal relationships with your customers. Stop emailing and pick up the phone to have an actual conversation with clients. Talk about what worked or didn't in the past and how you can gear up for next year. They'll appreciate the unexpected personal outreach. * Now is the time for operating departments to put their sales hats on. Every manager in your hotel should contribute to the sales effort. Coach them on how to ask vendors where their company's managers stay when in town. Where do they hold meetings and holiday parties? Offer incentives for each piece of business that operations managers generate.

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INCREASE PUBLIC RELATIONS EFFORTS:The hotel business will always be a people business that relies heavily on personal relationships. With members of the media being bombarded with pitches from all sides, you may think that setting up face-to-face media visits is a public relations tool that has passed its time. But press visits are still a valuable tactic that can set the stage for building relationships and garnering significant coverage.

* Consider inviting travel writers to stay overnight and experience (or re-experience) your product first-hand - and reap the benefits of the resulting publicity. The Doubletree Hotel in Annapolis organized a press trip when it opened under a new flag and with an extensive renovation. Ultimately, the effort resulted in substantial editorial coverage in the hotel's feeder market cities. Hotel owners worked closely with the local CVB to organize activities for the media guests and the city reaped the benefits of press coverage as well.

* Various convention and tourist offices also organize press efforts each year - either with visits to media in different geographic markets, or targeting specific niche media. Partnering with them is always a good idea.

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CREATE PACKAGES THAT HIGHLIGHT YOUR AMENITIES:As travel patterns change, sales, marketing and public relations hotel activities need to be modified to appeal to travelers' specific needs. The media is not only interested in covering seasonal promotions that offer considerable savings, but packages that tie into a particular lifestyle or trend.

* For example, consider the popularity of traveling with pets. Various hotel brands have rolled out doggy welcome mats with creative amenities and packages. Components run the gamut from pet welcome amenity bags and special dog-friendly guestrooms, to pet entrees available from room service and other creature comforts..

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DEVELOP PROMOTIONS TO REWARD YOUR GUESTS:Create promotions and packages with value-adds worthy of a press release to post to your website and distribute with a wire service. It may even garner more results than a print ad.

* The Ramada Mall of America in Minneapolis and the Holiday Inn Express in Boynton Beach are each offering an "in-state resident rate" to encourage locals to visit on the weekends. In addition, the new Hotel Indigo Chicago-Vernon Hills, a suburban property, has positioned its indoor pool as a weekend escape for the local market. The hotel has also used local radio to get its name out there, create a "local resident rate" and encourage locals to visit.

* The new High Peaks Resort in Lake Placid helps air travelers by picking up their baggage fees to encourage them to stay at their hotel and not worry about the number of bags they travel with.

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BE CREATIVE WITH YOUR WEBSITE AND ONLINE MARKETING:Social blogs enable hotels to communicate to clients more frequently, obtain higher rankings, spend less money and have a higher ROI.

* Use social media to increase your website foot print. Create your own blog with newsworthy items posted on websites which link back to your hotel. If guests link back to your hotel, they can learn about packages and take advantage of special rates offered. This will also enable the hotel to increase its database, which can, in turn, be used for email marketing campaigns.

* If your hotel is located in a destination which may have experienced a hurricane, tropical storm, or other act of nature, use this medium to communicate updates on your hotel so guests understand that the hotel is in good shape, or in the midst of clean up, etc.

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CONDUCT SALES CALLS TO BUSINESSES IN YOUR OWN COMMUNITY:Reach out to your local community to book wedding, family reunion and church meeting business.

* A limited service hotel in the South East U.S. recently sent its General Manager, Director of Sales and Executive Team to visit more than 200 retail stores, real estate and professional offices within a 3-day period. Every store or office manager that the hotel team met with received a basket of cookies and flyers promoting various rates and packages. They were also invited to attend a poolside cocktail party at the hotel the following week. Nearly 40 people attended the party and one guest immediately booked a wedding room block for an off peak month!

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KEEP YOUR SALES TEAM MOTIVATED:Motivating the sales team is important, particularly during a tough market when sales managers tend to receive more rejections than signed contracts from clients who have cut back on meetings and business travel.

* A franchised hotel in the Midwest recently instituted this incentive: The individual sales call quota for each month is 100 telemarketing calls. The Director of Sales challenged the team to increase their telemarketing calls by 25%. Each person who met or exceeded the goal would be awarded a 4th day off during the Memorial Day weekend. Everyone exceeded the goal, booked additional business and enjoyed an even longer holiday weekend!Whether your hotel is located in a major metropolitan area or smaller suburban locale, is a resort or airport property, and whether you enjoy the benefits of cooperative marketing from your franchise or flag (and particularly if you are an independent hotel), be sure to use your creative selling thinking cap to stay vocal during this down cycle.

How to Write a Marketing Plan for a Hotel

HOW TO WRITE A HOTEL MARKETING PLAN: Getting Started
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By Jeff Coy
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· Understand the marketing planning process
· Appoint the marketing planning team
· Set the marketing planning schedule
· Find out what the owner wants
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Are You Flying into the New Millennium Without a Map?
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You’re rushing into a new century at warp speed, facing a complex marketing environment with a whole new set of issues and challenges!
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Did you file your flight plan? Do you have your road map, your script --- you know what I mean? Do you have a written marketing plan? If you don’t have a written marketing plan that was created by a team of your key people, then you’re still in the dark ages! Oh, don’t tell me you don’t believe in marketing plans. Don’t tell me planning is a waste of time. Please, don’t even try to convince me your marketing plan is in your head and your employees can read your mind. With all the issues and challenges you face, you better have a good road map and script for your key people to follow.
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Most hotels are not organized to do market planning. Nobody, it seems, is assigned the responsibility. That’s why hotel marketing planning and action are so inadequate, incomplete and ineffective. What’s the status of your marketing plan? Here’s an easy way you can get it produced and implemented --- professionally.
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First, Let’s Understand Marketing and the Planning Process
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Almost all definitions of marketing focus on the customer. Marketers think about consumer needs, wants, preferences, benefits and need satisfaction.
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Marketing is thinking about people instead of things. When you realize that the customer is boss, then you are marketing-minded. When you think in terms of your guests instead of your hotel, then your are thinking as a marketer. Marketing is the process of identifying what different types of potential customers need, want and prefer, and then developing ways to communicate and satisfy those customer needs so well they want to spend their money and return again.
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Planning is visualizing a future end result and setting a course of action to achieve it.
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Producing a marketing plan is easy --- if you do a little each month. Just focus on the 12 steps to producing and implementing a hotel marketing plan.
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1. Get ready
2. Look at the trends
3. Analyze your customers
4. Know your competitors
5. Analyze your product
6. Forecast market conditions
7. Set objectives and goals
8. Set marketing strategies
9. Develop action programs and communications
10. Do a marketing budget
11. Determine measurements and evaluations
12. Present your plan for approval, funding and commitment
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Appoint the Marketing Planning Team
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Why a team? Developing a marketing plan is so critical to the success of your hotel that the task should not be left to one person or one department. Form a marketing planning team of the key people who actually run your hotel. Divide the work into 12 manageable tasks. Meet monthly to work one part of the plan. As you implement this year’s plan, revise and improve next year’s plan --- month by month. Make it a continuous process. This way, you can avoid the crisis environment and produce a plan that is based on research, analysis and strategic thinking without interrupting the operation of your hotel.
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Ask the people who will implement the plan to help prepare the plan. Keep the group small and productive, five to seven people. This working group may include the owner, general manager, marketing director, sales director, controller, front office manager and the food & beverage manager. Others may be called upon to contribute from time to time.
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Who is on your marketing planning team? List their names on a worksheet.
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Set the Marketing Planning Schedule
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Establish a monthly marketing meeting at a time everyone will plan around. Divide the marketing planning process into small manageable assignments. Set your objective for each meeting. You are the team leader or you can assign a team leader for each meeting to prepare the agenda and lead the participants through the assignment. Send out the information your team members will need well in advance of the meeting. Assign the homework to be done in advance. Instruct your team members to gather facts and be prepared to participate. Then, your team can meet, discuss, decide, write a section of the marketing plan and move on. An experienced team leader will keep the ideas flowing and make sure the meeting is productive.
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Meet in a place free from distractions, where you can retreat from the normal business interruptions and do creative thinking. Start and end the meeting on time. Keep the discussion on course. Reach agreement and take action on each idea. Use this series of articles as a guide. Make worksheets along with way. Write on the worksheets any conclusions reached, assignments made, so that copies can be given to each team member.
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MARKETING PLANNING SCHEDULE
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Appoint the marketing planning team. Establish monthly marketing meetings. Divide the work into small manageable assignments.
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Suggested Date, Time & Place
Assignments
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January
GETTING READY
Assemble the marketing planning team. Divide the work and schedule it. Understand the objectives and expectations of your owner.
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February
March
April
May
SITUATION ANALYSIS
Look at the trends in your industry, market and hotel. Analyze your customers. Know your competitors. Evaluation your product and service. Draw conclusions about your market position and priorities.
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June
MARKET FORECAST
Develop a forecast based on competition, supply and demand.
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July
OBJECTIVES AND GOALS
Set objectives and goals overall as well as for each customer segment.
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August
STRATEGIES
Develop several strategies for each objective and goal, outlining approaches and programs.
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September
ACTION PROGRAMMING & COMMUNICATIONS
Design and schedule programs, communications and actions needed to carry out strategies. Assign tasks, set deadlines and estimate costs.
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October
BUDGETS
Prepare the annual marketing budget.
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November
MEASUREMENT & EVALUATION
Determine ways to measure and report your progress.
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December
PRESENTING YOUR MARKETING PLAN
Present your plan for approval, funding and employee commitments.
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January
April
July
October
QUARTERLY REVIEWS
Implement your marketing plan. Perform quarterly reviews to determine effectiveness. Modify objectives, strategies and actions to improve performance.
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Review the sample schedule. Then, set your own schedule of dates, times and places for your team to write its marketing plan. Make a worksheet.
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This article is an excerpt from the industry best-seller, How to Produce & Implement a Hotel Marketing Plan, an 88-page leader guide and 170-page workbook, which guides hotel management teams through the 12 steps of putting a marketing plan into action.
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01. Get ready
02. Look at the trends
03. Analyze your customers
04. Know your competitors
05. Analyze your product
06. Forecast market conditions
07. Set objectives and goals
08. Set marketing strategies
09. Develop action programs and communications
10. Do a marketing budget
11. Determine measurements and evaluations
12. Present your plan for approval, funding and commitment
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.I have a model of a Marketing Plan for a fictitious hotel it has 33 pages with a lot of graphics and it would be difficult to post it here, so if you'd like a copy just send me an email.....

Writing and Designing a Hotel Brochure *

Why is a brochure important to your business? When should you use a brochure? This article examines different brochure types and reasons for using a brochure, as well as basic design and copy guidelines in creating your brochure.Strengths of a Brochure
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· Control over what and how is said, including graphics.
· Control where your brochure is placed or who receives it.
· Brochures are flexible.
· Can be done yourself. Although it is a good investment to hire a professional as soon as you can.
Weaknesses of a Brochure
· Generally given to all qualified customers, so using it for mass audiences may be cost prohibitive.
· The brochures can quickly become outdated and money is wasted.
· Trying to match the competition can be expensive.
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To begin creating a brochure for your business, you need a clear understanding of how you will use the finished product. There are two functions of brochures.
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The Two Types of Basic Brochure Design
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Adventoria - This brochure attracts attention and plays on the emotions of the customers. It compells people to pick it up and read it. It has an “attention getting” tagline or headline. It will contain lots of white space and short bullets or points, rather than long paragraphs. Included is a “call to action” that asks the customer to make an order, a phone call, come on down, clip a coupon, mail a reply card or some other action that puts you and the customer in contact.This brochure is the appetizer of your business.
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Informational - This brochure is the main course. This is for the customer who has learned of your company and has requested more information. Unlike advertorial brochures, informational brochures can be crammed with information. This style of brochure should not be used in display racks or laid out at a trade show booth. A potential customer who is unfamiliar with your business will not read a mountain of information just to see what you do.If you can only afford to do one style of brochure at this point in your business, do the advertorial brochure and place in-depth information a customer may request in a folder or one-page flyer.
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Basic Brochure Design: Where to Start
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The basic bi-fold brochure is constructed by folding an 8 1/2 x 11 sheet of paper twice to create 3 panels on each side. It is the brochure type most commonly used by small business because it can be mailed in a standard #10 envelope.With rare exceptions, businesses should develop the copy first. You only have a small amount of space to tell your story. You can identify and select graphics and pictures that enhance your message later on. Write your copy from the customers’ point of view, not yours. What does the customer want/need to know?When preparing your text, keep it short and sweet. The reader should be able to grasp the main points by simply glancing through the piece. If you bury your messages in a lot of heavy text, the reader may decide that it’s too much work to read your brochure and throw it away.
Speak directly to the customer. "We help you…" Use headings and subheadings to group ideas and help the reader focus on items that are of interest to him or her. Avoid industry jargon and acronyms. Use clear language that everyone can understand.Microsoft Word allows you to create multiple columns for brochures under the format tab. Word allows you to create basic brochures and import pictures from saved sources. Professional design programs such as Adobe InDesign, Adobe PageMaker or Quark XPress offer additional flexibility in creating your design and print the design at a printing service.
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Specific Panel Design
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Front Cover
Don't just name your product on the front cover, or your logo. Instead, develop a theme that captures attention and interest. Use your theme as a headline for your front cover and repeat throughout the brochure. Include a customer benefit, clearly stated or implied, whenever possible.
Back Cover
Don’t put anything on the back cover other than contact information. This is the panel that people are least likely to read, so if you put an important message there, it will be lost.
Inside Front Panel - first panel you see when the brochure is opened
This is the most important panel. Use it to summarize why the customer should choose you. It is a good location for a glowing testimonial. Although this is the most important panel, write it last. If you craft the inside spread first, you will have a better idea of what you want to summarize on the inside front panel.The inside front panel also is a great place for your phone number and/or web site address.
Inside Three Panels - When the brochure is fully open, there are three full panels to write a description of your business and what it does. Carry the brochure theme over into your inside panels.Use images, subheads, captions and body copy that continue your front cover theme throughout the brochure. Grab attention. Describe your top benefits. Present proof. Ask for the order.Once the copy is completed work on making it shorter and more descriptive. If you or your designer has created a consistent visual look to your advertising with repeated images, graphics or colors, continue it in your brochure. The familiarity will be immediately recognizable to the reader.
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How To Talk To Your Customers In Your Brochure
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· Ask your employees to write the brochure copy. Or, ask some of your better customers to help write it. You may be surprised at what you get.
· Try to eliminate as many decisions as possible in your text copy. Assume the customer will eventually buy the product or service. Don't use the words, "if" and "maybe.”
· Never ask open-ended questions in a brochure. Questions should be phased so the answer is "YES."
· Businesses should list the many important features of their products. Customers will not care about any feature unless there is a benefit to them. A "feature" is what a product has. A "benefit" is what a product does. The more benefits the product has, the better.
· You want your brochure to sound and look professional. A good brochure reads like a conversation, not a manuscript.
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Brochure No-No’s
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· Do not use more than nine or ten lines of type per paragraph.
· Do not average more than two or three sentences per paragraph.
· Do not indent paragraphs that have a space between them.
· Do not start sentences with numbers.
· Do not put two spaces after periods if using a computer. Page layout and word processing programs put the proper spacing after periods automatically.
· Do not use underline or all capitals as a way to stress a point. Use bold or italics instead.
· Use italic and all capitals sparingly as they are hard for people to read.
How To Get Started
· Go to your local Chamber of Commerce, Economic Development Office or a major hotel and look for a large rack of brochures. Stand back and look at the rack. Which brochures catch your eye? Which ones do you want to pick up? Is it because of the ink color, typeface, headline, paper color or visual design?
· Now, look again. Take out some of the brochures you didn't select and ask the following:
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o Why didn't you look at them?
o Can you find something specific that made you skip right over them?
o Was it the lack of an eye-catching graphic?
o Was it a hard to read type-face?
o Did the headline lack sales appeal? Was it a label instead of a call to action?
o Was it because the design of the rack hid the real message?
o Was it because it was printed on a blah color or paper?
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· Set up some basic ideas and blocks of text on a folded piece of 8-1/2 x 11 paper. Does your text flow well? Does the copy seem logical for those panel placements? What images/theme would benefit this copy and sell the brochure?
· If you decide to create the brochure yourself, begin laying it out in Microsoft Word in the column format or consult with a professional and present your ideas for your brochure design, which will then be completed in a design program.
* Reprinted with permission from the Ag Marketing Resource Center, Iowa State University Extension.