10 Post-COVID Marketing Tips for Your Hotel
The coronavirus pandemic lockdowns will end. We can be sure of that. We just can't be sure when.
Hotel marketers have never experienced an onset of pain as swift as that which March 2020 delivered, but even more severe pain awaits those who are left without comprehensive strategies to win back travelers' hearts and business once the crisis lifts.
Re-engagement will be at the core of most post-COVID boutique hotel (or any hotel for that matter) marketing strategy. Even if you entered the pandemic with an established brand, loyal followers and repeat customers, a “return to normal” will not be automatic.
Much of your community will be in economic and psychological distress. Many will want to travel but cannot. How do you engage the segment of your audience that can travel without alienating those who want to but can't?
The key is to balance restraint and empathy with aspiration in your marketing.
As you craft your strategy, do not lose sight of the following 10 benchmarks:
1 - Don't Forget Who You Are
Your brand is the promise you make to your audience through the sum-total of your design, content, programming and customer service.
Brands are fragile. While you have the power to build them, your audience ultimately controls them (Corona beer, anyone?). Crisis and post-crisis situations will put your brand to the test, so you must take care not to sacrifice your brand on the altar of expediency.
What does this mean? The need for revenue when the crisis lifts will be all-encompassing. There may be a temptation to carpet bomb your marketing channels with deep discounts, a lifting of length-of-stay offers and other incentives to get folks to pack their bags and stay with you.
You should have creative promotions ready to go, of course, but they must be tempered by your brand and the awareness that just about everyone will be in recovery mode.
For example, if your hotel has established itself as a relaxed, playful, young-at-heart destination that takes an active role in supporting the local arts community, your early post-COVID-19 promotions cannot be deaf to this part of your story. They will seem inauthentic, forced and hollow.
2 - Assess Your Strengths and Weaknesses
Successfully re-engaging your audience in the aftermath of a crisis requires alignment of all components of your marketing strategy. You cannot afford any weak executions, so be wary of employing a tactic that you don’t consider a strength.
For example, many hotels expertly use video to convey their brand and value to their past and future guests. If done well, video is indeed an excellent engagement tactic, but if it is not something with which you are experienced, avoid it. An Instagram post with a captivating photo and smart caption will do infinitely more good than a lackluster video attempting to convey the same CTA.
3 - Consider Your Budget
Many hotels will likely slash approved marketing budgets in the aftermath of COVID-19 in the interest of conserving cash. If not slash, then strongly advocate for savings across your line items. How do you decide what stays and what goes?
It is important to maintain your memberships with local and regional tourist organizations, who can assist you in promoting your re-opening endeavors.
Digital marketing (Display, PPC, etc.) should be hyper-focused on local feeder markets in the short term, but use care when composing copy and choosing images. Real estate on digital ads is limited, obviously, so make sure your messaging strikes the right chord between empathy and sales.
To extend your reach, consider cross-marketing with your B2B partners. Perhaps a neighboring restaurant will send an email to their list alerting them to one of your promotions. You could do the same for them.
4 - Add Value to Your Discounts
We all know that discounts are at the core of hotel specials, but in an attempt to win back customers, why not supplement (or replace) your discounts with value adds?
A classic example would be the deployment of a hotel package. The package could bundle a BAR discount with elements that emphasize the theme of re-connection with each other or a rediscovery of your local area.
For example, you could create a “CARE” package that includes a spa treatment, food and beverage incentive (or gift card to local restaurant if your property doesn’t have one), tasting at a partner winery or brewery and welcome gift when the guest checks in. The gift could be something unique to your locale, such as a truffle from a chocolatier or half bottle of wine.
5 - Revenue Management is Marketing
When using price to incent guests to return, make sure that your BAR price also reflects your brand positioning. If you always price higher than a globally branded hotel just down the street, the recovery is not necessarily the time to throw this piece of your revenue strategy out the window.
We pay attention to our competition when times are “normal,” but it is even more important to do so in crisis recovery.
6 - Prove to Your Audience that “We’re All in This Together”
One of the worst things you can do in your crisis-recovery marketing is to wallow in clichés. One of the most commonly heard refrains from brands during the COVID-19 crisis is “We’re all in this together.” This is a phrase you’ll see pop up again and again in the recovery as well.
Really? Are you? Is your hotel truly part of the solution? If you want to use an oft-repeated phrase at least attempt to back it up. Here are some ideas:
Donate a portion of revenue in the first month or so of your re-opening to a local fund for laid-off restaurant and/or hospitality workers.
If you have a spa, pick one day per week where you offer locals a special price on a 50-minute massage. Better yet, extend that special price to medical personnel as well
If you have a restaurant, extend happy hour by an hour for the first month or two following your re-opening.
If you have a vibrant arts community, allow a local artist to use one of your conference rooms for a class.
7 - Stories Have Never Been More Important
We all know that storytelling is the backbone of marketing. When your community re-opens, you will encounter numerous stories of resilience from restaurant owners and small retailers who were forced to shutter or scale back during the outbreak.
Sharing these stories will both lift the spirits of everyone who has suffered (including those who want to travel but cannot) as well as cast a sorely needed spotlight on the individuals and establishments that make your community worth visiting.
When you re-open, consider a weekly Instagram series with a unique hashtag (#strongertogether, for example), where you profile a business owner who contributes to the life of the community. If the business has a special offer designed to win back customers, promote it to your guests, or see if you can negotiate an offer that only your guests can take advantage of.
In any crisis-recovery situation, you cannot squarely focus on how you’ve suffered or what you’re doing to recover. Once again, if you choose to employ “We’re all in this together” language in any of your copy, then this marketing tactic is a good way to demonstrate that commitment.
8 – Manage Ongoing Customer Fears
Just as the economy will not immediately resume normal operations when shelters-in-place lift, your customers’ pandemic-inspired fears and anxieties will not fade the moment “nonessential” travel resumes. The end of the quarantine will not mean the end of the coronavirus. Social distancing will still be a priority for many.
It will still be crucial to market your hotel as a safe place for reconnecting, recharging and rediscovering. This means that the cleaning protocols you instituted when the pandemic was heating up should be maintained for the short- and perhaps even medium-term. It might even be necessary to continue curtailing housekeeping for stayovers.
Make sure you post your respective policies strategically throughout the hotel, such as in all guest rooms, front desk and poolside. Craft your language carefully such that it doesn’t convey alarm, but rather care for the happiness and well-being of all visitors. Housekeeping should continue to be visible in their frequent sanitizing of public areas for the weeks and maybe even months following the end of shelters-in-place.
9- Inventory Your Customer Touchpoints
Your crisis-recovery marketing should touch every aspect of the customer experience, not merely what appears on your website or in your social media feeds.
Do you need to update your voicemail greeting? What about the ads or promotions that run on the in-room televisions? If any of these convey “business-as-usual” sentiments or conflict with the tone of your other crisis-recovery outreach efforts, adapt them before you re-open to the public. If you care enough to update these touch points, it can only help to make your guests feel more cared for as well.
10 - Seek Quality over Quantity in Social and Email
If you curtailed your social media posts to 2-3 per week during the COVID-19 crisis, don’t immediately resume your original posting schedule. Ease back in to it, emphasizing quality over quantity. Your audience will be deluged with content and offers once shelters-in-place end, so don’t let desperation be the guiding force in your social media strategy. Here’s a possible social media calendar:
Once you launch your re-opening strategy, you must remember to be patient. “Normalcy” will not return immediately, if at all, but with the right strategy you can be assured of gradual growth and an advantage over those who are ill-prepared. While the disruption to your business was swift and severe, the silver lining is that it was temporary.