How Hotels manage the period between when insight is first generated and when a concept is ready for development is the key to getting discontinuous innovation off the ground.
These are crazy ideas that don’t fit the existing capabilities of the Hotel business models and carry high risks.
And these crazy ideas represent Blue Ocean Strategies.
Blue Ocean Strategies focus on uncontested markets and traditional Red Ocean Strategies focus on known markets.
A shift towards High-Value alternatives
Blue Ocean Strategies presents a systematic approach to making the competition irrelevant and outlines principles and tools any Hotels can use to create and capture their own blue oceans.
Now is the time for Hotels to be proactive and not think tomorrow will look like today, but anticipate change and implement new innovative Content and Social Media Strategies.
Content and Social Media Value Innovation is the key component for the future.
Four key factors to become a leader in Content and Social Media Hospitality are;
Value proposition: The Hotels promise to deliver on a particular combination of values – price, quality, performance, selection, and convenience.
Value-driven Hotel: A combination of operation processes, management systems, hotel structure, and a culture that provides the hotel to deliver its value proposition.
Value discipline: Combining operation models and value propositions to be the best in their markets.
Value innovation: The Content and Social Media Tipping point for Hotels lays in Value Innovation. Value Innovation is created where a Hotels action favorably affects both its cost structure and its value proposition to buyers.
Cost savings are made by eliminating and reducing factors that the Hotel Industry competes on.
Guests today are seeking new and innovative ways to add value to their overall customer experience.
As Hoteliers, we play a key role in our guest’s journey, stories, and experiences.
Traditionally innovation has represented a predictable pattern based on studies, surveys, forums, and trends.
Today we are facing major shifts towards more disruptive innovations. Disruptive innovations break new barriers and tap into new markets and value networks.
We have seen that disruptive innovations have been introduced by entrepreneurs and that millennials have been more adapting to this.
Content and Social Media Strategies that makes competition irrelevant
Today customers have all the information available in the blink of an eye. They don’t even have to google information or use a metasearch engine to gather valuable information that will help make an educated decision.
Any Hotel with respect for itself has a Social Media presence today. So, do Online travel agencies and community-driven online marketplace, and hospitality service.
Content and Social Media Strategies are crucial today, but Hotels need to focus on fundamentally different strategies that make competition irrelevant.
Of course, Hotels can always continue to waste time trying to out-tweet, out-publish, outshout, or out-webinar the next Hotel.
Disruptive innovation focuses on changing the way customers think about the basics of Hotels.
Making a market-creating strategic move
The key for Hotels today is to take on the role of a teacher, coach, and mentor.
All they have to do is ask their Social Communities, and they will get an abundance of information.
There are three ways in which market-creating strategies are made. Hotels can:
- Offer a breakthrough solution for the industry’s existing problems.
- Redefine the industry’s problem and solve it.
- Identify and solve a brand-new problem or seize a brand-new opportunity.
In the hotel space, we know that price traditionally boosts the intensity of the competition. This leads to shrinking profit margins and market shares.
And on top of this, we know more Hotels are built, and in many areas, the supply is overtaking the demand.
We see Hotels claim differentiation, but when it comes down to the basics everything is still the same – providing guests products and services like a room to stay.
It is a challenge for Hotels to make a shift towards creating a new market space that is uncontested.
A disruptive innovative approach focuses on looking at;
- Alternative industries
- Strategic groups within the industry
- Redefine industry buyer group
- Complementary products and service offerings
- The functional-emotional orientation of the industry
- Shaping external trends over time
Alternative Industries
There might be several alternative industries for Hotels, but start looking at the one that has the largest demand. Here you find the greatest number of non-customers that you want to learn more about.
To start cultivating a blue ocean offering that is both differentiated and cost-effective start with these questions:
- Identify the major problems or needs that your Hotel offer, solves, or addresses from the buyers’ point of view.
- ASK! What alternative industries solve the same problem or address a similar need for buyers?
- Among these alternative industries, which capture the greatest catchment of customers.
- Why do buyers trade across to alternative industries? What is the chief negative for the Hotel Industry? What is the chief positive for the alternative industry?
- Record all key insights gained.
Strategic groups within the Hotel industry
In the Hotel industry, we see that five-star Hotels tend to focus on outdoing other five-star Hotels, three-star Hotels focus on outcompeting other three-star Hotels, and so on.
Hotels need to learn more about the factors that determine buyers’ decisions to trade up or down from one strategic group to another.
Focus on identifying the decisive value and costs that separate the various strategic groups.
- Identify the strategic groups in the Hotel Industry.
- Focus on the two largest strategic groups.
- Interview buyers from each group.
- Record all key insights gained.
Redefine Hotel industry buyer group
From a Content and Social Media, the strategic aspect understands this step is what dip into the ripple effects of Social Media.
In thinking about who’s in the chain of buyers, it is critical to consider potential influencers, people who could be brought into the decision-making process but currently aren’t.
Today for most buyers the purchasing decision involves, directly or indirectly, a chain of buyers: the users of the product or service, the purchasers who paid for it; and also, the opinions of the influencers.
It is not uncommon that outsiders observing your Hotels products and services see challenges, opportunities, and potential solutions better than Hoteliers themselves.
This is why it is so critical that Hotels understand the value of Social Communities.
- Identify the chain of buyers, users, purchasers, and influencers in the Hotel Industry.
- Identify the main buyer group your Hotel currently focus on. Then shift towards those that your Hotel has largely ignored.
- Interview buyers from the untargeted groups.
- Record the insights from each untargeted buyer group and group like-minded responses together.
Complimentary Hotel products and service offerings
The key for Hotels defines the total solutions buyers seek when they choose to purchase their product and services, and then eliminate pain points of intimidation across the total solution.
Here your Hotel has to look to the largest segment of noncustomers.
- Look at the real context in which your offerings are used by identifying what happens before, during, and after its use.
- Observe buyers as they actually use your product or service.
- Use the Hotel Content Funnel to identify noncustomers.
- Record all insights gained.
The functional-emotional orientation of the Hotel industry
Competition in the Hotel Industry or strategic group tends to converge around the basis of its appeal.
Some Hotels compete principally on price and functionality. Their appeal is functional. Other Hotels compete on generating positive feelings. Their appeal is emotional.
A new value-cost frontier can often be opened by shifting the appeal of a Hotel product and service from one basis to another, or by blending the sources of its appeal.
To identify customers’ and noncustomers’ overall impressions of the Hotel Industry, ask what they would say if they had to choose – functional or emotional.
- Identify the Hotel’s currents orientation – functional or emotional?
- Listen to your customers and noncustomers characterize your Hotel.
- Look for commonalities across their responses and group like-minded comments.
- Explore what the offering would look like if you flipped the orientation.
- Record all insights gained.
Shaping external trends over time
Today we now external Content and Social Media trends affect Hotels over time.
Trying to project external trends and actions can be very tedious and seldom provide insight into opening new high-value alternatives.
Start looking at how a trend will change what your Hotels customers value, and how it might impact your business model over time.
If this external trend continues as it began, what about our Hotels current offering will no longer make sense and even detract from buyer value, and therefore should be eliminated or reduced?
What is your Hotels offering will you need to create or raise to deliver a leap in value to buyers?
- Identify the three to five trends that are seen as having a decisive impact on your Hotel.
- Discuss and assess the relevance of trends for your Hotel.
- Discuss and assess the extent to which each trend is irreversible.
- Discuss and assess whether each of the trends is evolving along a clear trajectory.
- List the implications of all the trends that are decisive to your Hotel, irreversible, and evolving in a clear direction.
- Record all insight.
Conclusion
Shifts are never easy, and there is no such thing as gain without pain.
I use a combination of tools together with Social Media to answer many of these questions. And in my travels, I get to meet hoteliers and travelers that provide valuable insight.
Blue Ocean Strategies and the Hotel Content Funnel are new high-value tools that will bring noncustomers to Hotels.
It is all about the model of the concepts that work. And remember this is a team effort.
As a Hotel Blogger and Social Media Consultant, I represent the disruptive innovations of Hoteliers.
The Hotel Content Funnel – a dynamic process
I work on content strategies that support The Hotel Content Funnel. This is an ongoing dynamic process where data, information, and innovation will reach the relevant consumers for a given Hotel.
Or you can work with our Social Media Management team, and we will take care of it for you.
Try something new it will magnetize your Hotel!
We are in this together!
I need to let you all know that we are in on this together. If you need to vent, talk, cry, or just have some to talk with then I am here listening. Since I am working part-time at the local Kroger, I will to the best of my ability to work it out around my schedule.
But you can reach me here:
Email: hotelblogger@aremorch.com
Also, join us at our Facebook Group – Hotel Social Media Community
We will get through this unprecedented event together! #hotelstrong #hospitalitystrong
For any specific information on COVID-19, I recommend go to CDC, WHO, AHLA, AAHOA, and HSMAI. Also, follow information from your local authorities.
NOTE
We are starting to reopen some hotels again (Yay!!!). Make sure you follow their guidelines and say THANK YOU to those that now show a unique spirit to serve, and helps us all get through this!! #hotelstrong #hospitalitystrong
About Are Morch
Hi, I am Are Morch. Your Digital Marketing Coach and Customer Experience Expert specializes in creating effective digital customer experience offer for hotels while growing and scale customer acquisition and revenue.
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