Marketing During a Crisis: 11 Things Hoteliers Can Do Right Now
I published a blog barely ten days ago explaining how to increase hotel sales in low season. With markets crashing in the US amid the coronavirus outbreak, it looked as if we were hurtling toward an economic recession…
But that was then.
This is now: As of my writing (late March 2020), the U.S. now leads the world in the number of confirmed coronavirus cases. Travel bans are in effect worldwide. Numerous countries are under strict lockdown with their restaurants, hotels, and other public places officially closing their doors.
To say the situation has changed is, frankly, an understatement. In many countries, it’s still changing daily, even hourly.
Sadly, the hotel industry has been hit hard.
Chains like Marriott, Hilton, and Hyatt have taken big measures to staunch the bleeding, announcing layoffs, reducing hours, and freezing all hiring. To save their businesses, independent hotels face similar decisions around cost-cutting and staff reduction.
Maybe you’re new to marketing in a hotel — or you’re an owner suddenly left wearing many hats. Know that there are still many things you can do right now to better position your property for a successful recovery.
August 2020 Update: Here’s another useful article, Hotel Recovery Strategy: Your Post-COVID Marketing Plan.
1. Look after yourself
This has to be said: It’s OK to place your wellbeing and mental health far above anything else suggested in this article.
More than OK, in fact. It’s critical.
Research shows that mass layoffs have a profound emotional effect, not only on those left suddenly out of work but on those who remain.
Anxiety, sadness, fear, shame… it’s normal to feel all of these things and more.
Experts at Stanford University offer some suggestions for coping with the emotional impact of a layoff or furlough:
Talk to your friends and family about what you’re going through. Accept their help and support.
Keep moving! Exercise at home or go for a long walk in nature.
Be mindful of your eating habits.
Get enough sleep.
Do something every day for no other reason than it makes you feel good. Meditate, take a warm bath, write in a journal, paint, listen to music…
Try to maintain a positive attitude. Easier said than done, but while we can’t control what happens to us, we can control how we respond to it.
For some, meditation is a great way to find a sense of calm amid the chaos. Whether you’re new to it or not, Headspace is now offering free guided meditations on their app and website.
Before you tackle anything else on your to-do list, please remember to take care of yourself.
2. Provide assistance to your community
If you’re a hotel marketer unsure of what to work on, why not put your time and resources toward helping your community?
(I hope the caveat is obvious here: If your hotel is in a position to help its employees at all, please start there. If you’re able to do more externally, consider the below suggestions.)
In the hospitality industry, taking care of others is what we do.
Can you donate perishable food items?
Consider sending these goods to your local food kitchen or a charity. You could also try rallying other hotels in your area to do the same, and working together to increase the amount of donations.
Many restaurants are trying to bring in revenue by shifting to takeaway/takeout services. Depending on your location, this could still be a viable option for your hotel while also providing a helpful service to your community.
Another idea: Create care packages to help those in need. In addition to pantry items, you could include extra supplies that might otherwise go to waste, including toiletries.
There are more extreme measures to think about, too.
Some hotels are being turned into temporary hospitals, while others are negotiating with local governments to provide shelter for folks under mandated isolation. The Four Seasons hotel in New York City offered free lodging to healthcare workers — several other luxury NYC hotels soon followed suit.
(Again, if you’re able to support your employees with these or similar measures, I’d urge you to start there.)
3. Touch base with clients and partners
Now is not the time to bombard clients with sales offers, but it’s a good idea to check in. Make it a point to touch base and show clients that you care.
Fire off an email! Pick up the phone! Schedule a quick, “face-to-face” catchup using Zoom!
There are plenty of ways to check in, just make sure you do it.
Use this “downtime” to nurture those client relationships. While they might not be able to book anything right now, you want to be the first person they call when business picks up again. (And remember, it will.)
This doesn’t just apply to sales, either. Marketers, if you work with any outside agencies or contractors, you should do this, too.
Due to cost-cutting measures, you may have put outside contractors on pause. These relationships are still important to maintain! Make it a priority to check in often with your public relations firm, paid media or advertising agency, social media specialist, or go-to hospitality copywriter.
While you might’ve stopped their work temporarily, you’ll want to be ready to hit the ground running once things turn around.
4. Audit your website content
In my past life as a hotel digital marketing manager, this was one of those tasks that often got pushed to the bottom of my to-do list… Now’s the time to get it done!
There are a few different ways to find a list of all pages on your hotel website:
Get the sitemap - Open a new browser tab and type in http://yourwebsite.com/sitemap.xml or http://yourwebsite.com/sitemap_index.xml (Bigger hotel websites may have more than one sitemap.)
Use Google Analytics - To see the list, go to Behavior > Site Content > All Pages
Run a “site:” search - Open a new browser tab and type “site:yourwebsite.com” into the search bar. Hit Enter, and the search results will display every page on your website.
What you want is a simple list of every page on your hotel website, so you can go through them one-by-one. Any of those methods will do the job!
If you opt to use the Google Analytics method, I suggest sorting the list of pages by visits — that way, you can prioritize your most important pages.
While you’re reviewing each page, consider whether the content is up-to-date and actually useful.
Ask yourself: Does your competitor have a similar page? How are they using it? Can you add more information to make your page better? Or, should you trim off excess content that doesn’t add value?
During these hectic times, I’ll bet you made some hasty changes already.
You probably added some copy about COVID-19 to your homepage or updated your booking policies to reflect changes due to current events. Your restaurant and outlet pages most likely had to be changed to announce closure or amended services, too...
I strongly recommend writing some refreshed “normal” copy for these pages.
Open up a Google Doc and set aside this updated copy for your key pages. That way, you have it on hand, ready to go when things calm down.
The other piece of content I suggest you prioritize? Anything for the “Dreaming” phase of travel planning.
If your hotel has a blog, the best time to work on it is right now. Content marketing for hotels is a long game, so now is the time to get started!
Start writing fresh posts about your destination — the art scene, great places to shop, top museums and attractions, beautiful nature, etc. Look ahead to the later half of the year for what drives demand annually in your area. Write guides to those events.
Folks will be eager to travel when the restrictions ease up. They’ll be searching for ideas — make sure you show up in search engines as well as on social media. Learn how to write social media captions for your hotel in my free class below.
5. Revisit your marketing calendar
If you started the year off with a detailed hotel marketing plan, well done! Now, go ahead and throw it out.
Ugh.
Sadly, 2020 has taken us all in a direction no one anticipated. Whatever you were planning to promote this summer — and well into the new year for some hotels, honestly — will need to be scrapped.
Salvage what you can. Any creative concepts or fun promotions could still be viable ideas for another time. Focus on the reality of our current situation.
Chances are, your F&B outlets have closed entirely or pivoted to takeout/takeaway offerings. You might not even be open to room bookings right now. Weddings and corporate event planning will certainly be on hold.
It’s time to get creative.
Rather than using your valuable advertising dollars to promote sales offers, save it. Shift most of your ad budget into later in the year, when travel demand picks up and your hotel reopens.
If you can keep some budget aside for now, great. Keep reading for some suggestions of what to do with it.
If not, don’t sweat it — focus your efforts on what you can do right now organically, like social media, content marketing, and hotel SEO. (Those links lead to relevant blog posts on each topic, by the way!)
6. Create useful, virtual content
Most of the world is unable to travel right now. Even at home, social distancing measures mean we can’t check into a local hotel or dine out at our favorite restaurants.
So how can hotels bring their services to you?
Take a cue from these seven virtual hotel experiences or this great roundup of luxury hotels bringing their services to guests stuck at home — and put some of your amenities online.
Here are some ideas:
Have your chef host a weekly cooking class and provide easy-to-follow recipes. Consider keeping the ingredients list basic, prioritizing simple recipes that use pantry staples.
Invite your bar manager to lead a cocktail-making class. (Again, stick to simple cocktails without too many ingredients!)
Are you a resort with a Kids Club? Share some at-home arts and crafts ideas.
Offer a yoga class or guided meditation.
Have your fitness trainers conduct one-on-one personal training sessions over Skype.
Consider shifting in-person seminars or talks into an online one, and stream it from your Facebook page. Invite a few local tastemakers to present.
Set up a live video feed of your most beautiful view.
Create a virtual walking tour of your property; inside, outside, or both.
Make a location-inspired Spotify playlist that folks can listen to.
Those are just a few ways to capture and share your hotel’s experience virtually. Think about the in-person services you offer and get creative!
7. Grow your email list
You can’t just rely on advertising and social media to reach your customers. There’s a lot of “noise” right now and the chances of your message getting through are slimmer than ever.
Your hotel needs an email list.
While it’s not a good time to be selling, you could be serving your customers with the useful, virtual content you’re working on.
Email is the quickest, most efficient way to get your content directly to those contacts.
Make a plan to communicate regularly, whether that’s weekly, bi-weekly or monthly. This is how your hotel will stay top of mind with interested customers and repeat guests.
If you’re struggling with what to say/send, I’d say look back on point #6 — or read my email marketing guide for hotels.
What if you don’t have much of an email list? Well, I wrote another article on this blog about how hotels can use lead magnets to grow their email list.
8. Send out a personalized offer
It’s important to tread lightly with sales efforts right now. You don’t want to slash your rates or go too aggressive with constant sales messages.
However, if you’ve been communicating with your customers and serving them with useful (free) content, you might want to consider selling… a little.
Just be strategic about it.
The simplest suggestion is to send out a gift voucher promotion.
Gift cards can be purchased now and used later, making them pretty attractive for folks who already know they’ll book with you at a later date. Just make sure you clearly communicate your policies around booking and date changes.
My other suggestion is to retarget past guests with a personalized offer. If you have the means to do this, I’d opt for personalization over a generic gift card email any day!
Look at what data points you have available in your CRM.
You could target guests who previously stayed at your property in Q3 or Q4 and send them a personalized booking offer. Or, look for guests who make annual reservations, perhaps even for special occasions, and tailor your offer to that.
Email is a super powerful tool for communicating directly with your customers. Now more than ever, it’s critical to have a plan for email marketing.
9. Repurpose your most successful content
If you’re really struggling with what to post, share, create, or promote, repurposing old content is a good place to start.
Most social media platforms have an admin feature that shows you the top-performing posts. You can also use Google Analytics to see what your most popular hotel blog posts are.
Re-share this successful content or consider re-working it, to make the post more timely.
For example, maybe your most popular post was a roundup of great museums or attractions nearby. To make this content more timely, you could share a list of local museums offering virtual tours or online experiences.
To keep wedding or event planners engaged, consider sharing “throwback” content around past events.
10. Get organized
Some hotel marketers are hyper-organized — others, not so much. Either way, it’s a good idea to make organization a priority during this downtime.
Run an audit of your social media profiles. Are they consistent? Are the profiles completely filled in? Are you tracking all traffic coming in from your links?
Have you claimed your hotel’s Google My Business listing? Is the information accurate?
Run an audit of your third party listings. Sites like Cvent, The Knot, and others all drive valuable traffic and new leads, so make sure they are in tip-top shape!
While direct bookings should be the priority, go ahead and audit your OTA listings, too. Have you filled in all profile information? Is it up-to-date? Do your room type descriptions look good? How are the photos?
While you’re doing this, start or update a running document with all of your logins.
This is important to have for business continuity, should you need to make a quick handoff of responsibilities. It’s also a general best practice, given the sheer volume of logins we need to manage!
If you don’t love the idea of an Excel spreadsheet kicking around, LastPass is a great way to safely store your login info. You can also automatically generate and save more secure passwords, rather than re-using the same one. (No affiliation, but I do use LastPass and love it.)
11. Learn something new
There’s no time like the present to upskill. Online learning was already on the rise pre-coronavirus, but it’s now poised to really take off.
If you’re already comfortable with the basics, these free courses from Google are an excellent way to expand your general online marketing knowledge.
Another interesting course that caught my eye? Yale University’s popular “happiness” course, called The Science of Well-Being. It’s currently being offered for free online.
You can always brush up on your operational skills, too, with one of these free online hospitality management courses.
Final Thoughts
This public health crisis is unprecedented, but it’s still a scary time to be a hotelier.
I hope this article provided a little guidance in terms of what hotel marketers can work on right now.
If you’re still new to all of this and not sure where to begin, I shared everything I wish I’d known when I started out marketing in a hotel in that article there.
Remember, this too shall pass and when it does, travel demand will come back and your hotel will recover. Do what you can now to be ready when it does!
If you’re interested in learning more about hotel marketing, I created TWO online hotel marketing courses — specifically for our industry — on key topics like social media strategy and SEO.
Check out enrollment details here, or get a little sneak peek at what’s in store by watching this free hotel social media training below. ⤵
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