3 steps to build a brand in a hotel, with the aim of increasing profits in the hotel business
Branding and branding in the hotel is one of the most important tools by which the hotel can be distinguished from other hotels. Brand building at the hotel helps increase guest loyalty and hotel booking rates. David Ogilvy describes the hotel brand as “an intangible summary of the attitude with which a service or product is designed and manufactured, which is reflected in its name, presentation method, price, price, history, reputation and marketing method.”
“Your brand is what people talk about when you’re not in the room,” says Amazon co-founder Jeff Bezas of the brand. In fact, what is said in your absence is the brand features in your hotel that are perceived by people. If you summarize these two quotes, you can define the brand in your hotel, name the necessary features for it, find ways to promote it, and finally impress your audience.
We talked about the brand in the hotel in the article Alphabet of hotel branding for hoteliers and we will not talk more about the concept of brand in the hotel. If you already have branding in your hotel, we suggest you read the following article: How to take your hotel branding to the next level . Otherwise, the following are the three main foundations of branding in a hotel that can form the basis of branding in your hotel.
- Knowing and understanding the audience
- Reflecting the brand in the hotel with the staff
- Benefit from design and graphics
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- Step One: Recognize and Understand the Audience
We all know that most of the people who introduce your name and brand in your hotel to others are people who have been your hotel guests before; So if your hotel branding strategies are important to these people, you can be happy that they have become loyal customers and will introduce your hotel brand to others for the rest of their lives. The important thing is that we know how high the trust of people in word of mouth marketing is.
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But if you do not already have a potential customer to plan for their loyalty, you should think about creating a customer. There are two ways you can increase the brand power of your hotel by influencing people: First, by influencing those who have been guests at your hotel; Second, influence those who can influence people who have not been your guests. Complicated? We are talking about “influencer marketing”. If you can not easily introduce your hotel brand to people and turn them into customers among competitors’ markets, you should take advantage of those who influence them.
Influencers to influence the brand in the hotel can be anyone, chefs, hoteliers, bloggers, social media influencers and even the hotels themselves. Just make sure you choose them correctly and try to focus on one or two specific groups instead of accessing different types of people. For example, only business travelers for business hotels or only the target community of health tourism for hotel hotels.
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- Reflecting the brand in the hotel with the hotel staff
“Your culture is your brand and the brand is built with few people in any company,” says Tony Hessie, CEO of Zapos. The meaning of this sentence is summed up in the level of executive power of your hotel staff. In the past, hoteliers paid exorbitant costs for marketing and branding in the hotel. Now the situation is a little different. With the spread of the Internet and virtual networks, corporate internal issues have become somewhat clearer. Therefore, the dissatisfaction and negative feedback of your employees can be observed. On the other hand, awareness and creating a brand culture in the hotel for employees, like word of mouth marketing will bring you customers.
There are several simple ways to create a culture that displays the brand in your hotel:
- Ask staff to explain the brand features of the hotel, make it clear to them if it is wrong, and if they all give the wrong brand sign at your hotel, think about changing your branding strategies.
- When hiring a new employee, check to see if it matches the brand culture of your hotel.
- Appreciate employees, have plans to make them happy and respected, and most importantly, keep them a team.
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- Benefit from design and graphics
After the initial steps to create a brand in the hotel, it is time to show it. The simplest and first way to display a brand in a hotel is to use graphic methods. The hotel logo, color and font are all responsible for displaying the meaning of the brand in the hotel. In this way, be sure to get help from the best graphic designers. The important thing is that the brand should be seen everywhere in your hotel. From office letters, business cards, websites and web pages to shampoo, toothbrushes, towels, and water bottles. Guests may bring small items from the hotel, such as small shampoo bottles or a few sheets of tissue paper, when leaving the hotel; In this case, when you see them, they will remember the hotel and the brand in your hotel again and the memories of staying in the hotel will be fixed in their minds.