The New Innovative Hospitality Mindset of Success
How can we as Hoteliers provide performance excellence in today’s disruptive market space?
As Hoteliers in today’s market, we now have to make a shift towards an innovative and disruptive culture. Customers are today influenced by New Media, Social Media, and technology. Real-time decisions are made through Smart Devices.
One major impact for Hotels is that traditional Direct Marketing does not work with Social Media!
With the Baby Boomer market segment, Hotels had lived through one of the most reliable and predictable market segment ever. It was possible to predict a budget, timeline, and objectives. Most Hotels could easily run a straightforward marketing campaign based on a defined offer, target audience, and series of messages intended to communicate the offer and convert.
One key challenge that comes with Social Media Marketing is community involvement. The future of Hotel marketing will include engagement, relationship, networking, profiles, live entertainment, 360 videos, real-time response, content, monitoring, listening, micro-moments, virtual reality, AI, augmented reality, and big data.
Social Media has made Hotels part of a virtual reality show. Today we all in some way have become performers in someone’s reality show.
A Hotelier’s Mind
My friend Jeroen Gulickx is the author of A Hotelier’s Mind. Jeroen was very kind to include my content ‘Why social selling is a hotel marketer’s best friend’ in the book.
Social Media is moving us all towards a new hospitality mindset and shift in Hotel culture. A new mindset comes with challenges for all of us. The unknown and unpredictable are areas many avoid dealing with, we prefer the known and predictable.
In his book, Jeroen touches on principles that are important for Hotels to becoming part of this new shift. Two key principles are incremental and disruptive innovation.
Incremental innovation represents the daily changes we explore and implement. Disruptive innovations are about reinventing the Hotels business model.
Uber and Airbnb are examples of disruptive innovates that created new uncontested markets as a result of the new market shift.
The innovation process is represented in some key steps. Discovery – building a foundation through anticipation, market insight, customers, and technologies. Experimentation – testing new models that build new pillars for the Hotel.
Most businesses today face very similar challenges as the Hotel Industry, guest profiling, cost reduction, price model, evolving customer needs and expectations, increasing competition, and the need to reinvent the customer experience.
The new mindset
Making a shift towards a new mindset is not as complex and scary as many make it out to be.
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Use Social Profiles to drive the new mission
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Define your dream, goal, and mission first. What is the big thing you want to achieve with your Hotels Social Media profiles?
Your Hotels Social Profiles works as tools that will help you amplify your message.
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Focus on the foundation
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Many tend to believe Social Media is a short cut to their end goal. Social Media is live, real time, and fast but it provides not a shortcut to the end goal. Hotels have to build a solid foundation and still allow for step-by-step growth.
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Build a community
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Engagement and relationships are the keys to success. When you focus on these principles you will build a community that comes to your aid when concerns appear.
Today we see brands that put out questions to their community and will receive responses that generated unprecedented values.
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Make connectivity part of the new culture
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Empower your team and leverage their informal knowledge. Are you allowing your Hotel team to become thought leaders? Create new channels that embrace real-time conversations with your team.
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Relationship building
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This is a crucial paradigm shift today. The acceleration of technology has forced us all to connect in a new way. We are now called to higher standards of authenticity, integrity, and transparency. Relationship building will take part both online and offline.
Every action we take online is now being tracked, recorded, viewed, and measured. Social Media Marketing is not just about the customer, but it also includes its network. The ripple effect of an unattended concern can be extremely damaging for Hotels today.
Conclusion
Social Media communities are today the real drivers that influence customer’s actions and decisions. Their foundations are build up around listening, awareness, trust, and culture.
If you want to ensure operational performance excellence in the future start shifting towards a new hospitality mindset.
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 that specializes in creating effective digital customer experience offer for hotels while growing and scale customer acquisition and revenue.
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