Innisfree Hotels

We are excited to announce that Anthony Eman, assistant manager at the Holiday Inn Resort in Fort Walton Beach, has been awarded the position of general manager at the very same hotel.

Eman, who has been with Innisfree Hotels since 2006, admits to some level of surprise.

“I never thought I would be a manager,” he says. “Let alone a general manager. When I first started in the business, I was in college trying to be a teacher. Now, I am a general manager.”

But Anthony certainly didn’t start out in management. He had to work his way to the top. Tackling jobs anywhere from a room service attendant to head sushi chef, Anthony has truly done it all in the hospitality arena. As it turns out, he had some help along the way.

“Terry Branch is a great mentor,” he says. “He knew I had a food and beverage background, so he focused on teaching me other things to help develop me and pushed me every day.”

And the Innisfree pool of mentors is vast.

“Gina and Sherri were also great teachers,” he says. “They made sure to push me every step of the way to make sure I consistently tried to do whatever I was doing better.”

As a general manager, Anthony hopes that he can return the favor.

“I’m excited to pass along all the great things my mentors have taught me,” says Anthony. “I am truly blessed and thankful for the opportunities that Innisfree has provided for me. I hope to continue the path and keep growing with the company.”

Congratulations to Anthony on his well-deserved promotion!

It is with great pleasure and excitement that we are able to announce that Jeremy Skinner and Terry Branch will be joining the corporate team in Gulf Breeze as our newest Directors of Operations.

Jeremy, who helped open the Hilton Garden Inn Fort Walton Beach as the General Manager, remarked on the moment he found out about the promotion.

“I was excited,” he says. “Jason and I have been talking about the potential opportunity for some time, and I was very happy that it worked out.”

And according to Jeremy, you don’t have to dig too far into the Innisfree culture before finding some hints toward the promotion.

“Lots of companies preach promoting from within, but you see Innisfree do it every day,” says Jeremy. “#1 on the ten commandments is to start with trust. I have trust that Innisfree sees the hard work people put in, and it pays off in the end.”

Not to be outdone by his neighbor, Terry is ready to bring the tools that made him successful at the Holiday Inn Resort to the corporate team.

“I’m excited to work with the great teams at each property,” he says. “I’m going to keep developing great teams to achieve great results.”

Terry finds himself agreeing with Jeremy when it comes to the Innisfree culture.

“Innisfree is a company with a great culture,” he says. “But they don’t just talk about. In this case, actions speak louder than words.”

Gulf Breeze, FL — On September 19, 2018, Innisfree Hotels celebrated the “topping out” of the new Springhill Suites in Panama City Beach, Florida. The Gulf Breeze-based company marks this as its fourth property in the Panama City Beach area, including the brand new Hampton Inn & Suites, which was finished in 2017.

“There is a lot of planning, coordination and good old-fashioned blood, sweat and tears that go into building a large project,” says Kevin Warwick, one of Innisfree Hotels’ project managers who has been working closely with the Springhill Suites. “‘Topping out’ is identified as the completion of the final and, most often, the ‘top’ components of the structure. It is a celebration that is ardently hosted by building owners and general contractors to express their appreciation for the workers and their efforts.”

The event kicked off with tours of the property followed by opening ceremonies, including speeches from a number of Innisfree Hotels executives and their building partners, Robins & Morton.

“This is an amazing accomplishment for Robins & Morton,” says Julian MacQueen, Chairman and Founder of Innisfree Hotels. “We take great pride in being able to come back into the community and hire great people to do the same thing you did down at the Hampton Inn & Suites.”

MacQueen has been drawn to the Panama City Beach area since his formative years.

“When Julian MacQueen came to the Gulf Coast for the first time as a teenager, he was struck by its beauty and mesmerizing emerald waters,” says Katja Chatfield, General Manager of the Springhill Suites. “Here we are celebrating yet another topping out of an Innisfree property in Panama City Beach. With Innisfree Hotels’ rapid growth and several hotels in the pipeline, we look forward to the next topping out ceremony.”

The Springhill Suites will feature 200 suites with 15 guest accessible floors, including an impressive list of amenities.

• all-suite smart rooms and balconies
• beachfront lazy river pool
• mobile check-in
• free breakfast
• food and bar service
• free wi-fi
• in-suite work spaces
• fitness center
• garage parking
• dune walkover with direct beach access

The Springhill Suites is scheduled to start welcoming guests in Spring 2019. For more information, visit the Springhill Suites website at https://springhillsuitespanamacitybeach.com/.

Selected as the recipient of this year’s 2018 Best Western Premier Champion Design Award, The Best Western Premier Tides Hotel in Orange Beach is beaming with excitement. Their sophisticated one-of-a-kind design features a stunning array of sea-inspired shades with added accents of natural driftwood and spectacular showers of sunlight. Rich Chism, Innisfree Hotels’ Director of Development noted, “I’m very proud of the team that worked on this project: Innisfree Development and Operations, Spencer Maxwell Partington Architects, ACCD Interior Design, WAS Landscape/Pool Design and Choctaw Engineering. We are thrilled to be recognized for this hotel’s design, which helps create fun, memorable experiences for our guests!”

Guests in search of a more personalized piece of paradise will revel in this intimate 86-room property located along the sparkling shores of Alabama’s most famous beach. Home to sweeping oceanfront views, unparalleled amenities and an awe-inspiring contemporary style, The Best Western Premier Tides Hotel welcomes guests with more than just its southern hospitality.

At The Best Western Premier Tides Hotel in Orange Beach, guests will unearth the ultimate fusion of chic style and tropical vibes as they experience an oasis of unrivaled relaxation. Their impressive list of amenities includes everything from a beachfront pool & hot tub to free breakfast, a grab & go deli, free ‘rocket-fast’ WiFi, on-site activities for adults & children, free beach cruiser bikes, beach chair-rentals, family suites, a poolside bar and so much more.

To learn more about the Best Western Premier Tides Hotel, visit the website at https://tideshotelorangebeach.com/.

Newly renovated beachfront hotel ready to delight guests

ORANGE BEACH, ALA. — The Holiday Inn Express on the Gulf in Orange Beach, Alabama has completed a total renovation, just in time for the summer season.

The hotel enjoyed a total makeover, from the exterior paint to the rooms, lobby, meeting spaces and all public areas.

“The entire color scheme is happy and on trend,” says Jasmine Hunt, General Manager. “Everything both inside and out has changed, and our amazing staff is excited to provide guests a bright, clean property with better flow and less hassle.”

Changes to the Holiday Inn Express Orange Beach include …

• New paint and modern furnishings
• Updated Breakfast Bar with overflow seating
• Fun furniture and bigger TVs in new, social lobby
• Larger gift shop with more items for sale
• Refreshed meeting spaces for groups
• Sturdy and attractive balcony furniture

The hotel still has plans to update the parking lot, landscaping and elevators, as well as new furniture on the pool deck.

“These continued improvements further solidify our commitment to the highest level of quality and service along Florida’s Gulf Coast,” says president and CEO of Innisfree Hotels Ted Ent.

ABOUT INNISFREE HOTELS

For more than three decades, Innisfree Hotels has expertly managed and developed dozens of hotels in partnership with many of the world’s most recognized hotel brands. Today, the company owns or manages 2,935 hotel rooms, with approximately 2,000 employees. Innisfree is the largest beachfront hotel owner-operator on the Gulf Coast, with 14 Gulf front properties totaling 2,128 rooms.

Innisfree is a triple bottom line company, measuring success not only in profits, but also through its impact on people and the planet. To these ends, Innisfree strives to promote a culture of responsibility and service to humanity. A value-driven corporate culture enables the company to have a deeper understanding of the needs of its guests, partners, and clients, thus delivering service that is synonymous with creating fun and memorable experiences.

Savvy hotel GMs manage a lot of stuff — vast influxes of vacationing families, cleaning rooms, and ensuring those morning eggs are cooked just right. The last thing you need is something else to take care of!

When it comes to your hotel website, we all know it would be easier to “set-it-and-forget-it” and skip the monthly fee marketing agencies charge for website maintenance contracts. Here’s why you, savvy GM, should pay an agency to take care of your hotel website.

Set and forget worked in 2007. Back then, in the dark ages, websites didn’t require very much attention. Businesses hired a developer who wrote the code, added the content and launched the site. If you needed an update, you paid your developer to execute it, and you only made changes when something in your business changed.

Website maintenance wasn’t a thing. People weren’t worried about keeping their websites secure or having one second load times.

WordPress Rules!

A lot has changed. Most importantly, you no longer need to know how to code to build a website. The rise of the Content Management System (CMS) software like WordPress, Squarespace, and Wix have enabled the masses to create websites and update content without knowing how to code. Your grandpa can now build a website and publish his ideas for everyone to read (yes, there are pros and cons to this).

Innisfree Hotels‘ In-house marketing agency uses WordPress for our hotel websites. WordPress is an online, open-source website creation tool. Open-source means that anyone can use or modify the WordPress software and everyone can use it for free. WordPress is the most used CMS program today and powers 29% of the websites on the Internet, and 500+ new WordPress sites are launched daily. The White House, CNN, Spotify, Microsoft, and The Rolling Stones all use websites powered by WordPress.

Some other hotel marketing agencies use their own proprietary CMS when they build websites for their hotel marketing clients. This isn’t optimal. If you fire your agency, you’ll have to create a new site from scratch. With a platform like WordPress, you own website, not your agency.

How WordPress Works

WordPress websites have three parts. First is the core, made up of the hundreds of files that support the essential functions of every WordPress install.

Second are the plugins. These are pieces of software that can be added to a WordPress website to extend functionality. There Are 48,500+ WordPress plugins with more being built by programmers every day.

Our team built a custom plugin for our hotel websites that integrate our franchise booking engines and date pickers. We also use a plugin called Gravity Forms that enables users interested in booking a wedding to enter information such as name, date, and email address into a form that is auto-forwarded to our sales teams.

The final part of a WordPress website is the theme. The theme supports the front-end design, including layout, font, colors, and so on. There are tens of thousands of WordPress themes that can be freely downloaded or purchased from developers.

Most larger businesses hire a developer to build them a custom WordPress theme. Our in-house agency built a custom theme we call ‘Beachfront Hotel’ and all of our hotels use it. We make regular updates to our theme and rebuild it completely about every three years. Using the same theme for all our hotel properties enables us to build websites quickly and economically.

WordPress websites require an ongoing maintenance program. Here is an outline of what our agency does to keep our websites happy and healthy.

Back-Ups

If something goes wrong, and it inevitably does, websites can become slightly messed up, irreparably broken, or gone. We back up our websites monthly, so if the worst happens, we can restore our sites from the most recent backup.

Updates

Our in-house marketing agency also updates our WordPress themes and plugins every month. Because WordPress is open-source, anyone can update the core code anytime. New features are continually added, bugs are fixed, and security holes are plugged. When updates occur, the component parts, such as themes and plugins on individual websites, need to be updated as well, or your website functionality may break or become vulnerable to evil-doers.

Load Speed

Another critical component of website maintenance is monitoring and optimizing load speed. Load speed is so crucial that monthly speed tests are essential. Consumer expectations regarding website speed are escalating. Consumers expect a webpage to load in two seconds or less, and 40% of these will abandon their search if a website takes more than three seconds to load.

HTTP Requests

When a user visits a web page from a web browser (like Chrome), a ping is sent to the website host asking the server to send over the website content files. This is called Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP), and browsers must submit an HTTP request for every file on your site.

Therefore, the more files we have on a site, the more HTTP requests our browser must make. The more requests there are, the slower the site will load. Large files slow things down even more, and high definition images and videos are the worst culprits. Hotels marketers love high definition images and videos!

Our marketing team regularly analyzes how many HTTP requests our websites must make to load, and sometimes we need to make hard decisions about what content is essential. For example, recently we learned that our website weather widget was slowing our sites down but decided it was worth keeping.

Databases

WordPress is a database-driven CMS system, meaning that all of the content on our site (such as pages, blog posts, and pictures) is stored in databases. Over time, databases become bloated with junk, including old pictures and deleted posts that slow down our websites. We have a protocol for regular database cleanups.

Redirects

Our in-house agency also checks our websites for 404 errors every week. A 404 is URL indexed on search engines that no longer exists. For instance, when we delete a seasonal landing page, sometimes that link continues to appear in search results. Google penalizes websites with 404 errors.

The team fixes 404 errors by implementing a 301 redirect which points the dead URL to another page on the site.

Broken Links

We also audit and fix broken links on our websites monthly.

Content

Our marketing team regularly reviews website content with our property GMs to ensure it is accurate and up to date.

Phew… that’s a lot, huh? One less thing for you, savvy GM, to worry about.

Gulf Breeze, Fl — Innisfree Hotels, hotel management, development, and marketing company, has made its second acquisition on the Atlantic Coast, adding the Quality Inn & Suites in Cocoa Beach to its expanding portfolio. The Gulf Coast-based company has had its sights set on the famous beach destination for some time.

“The amazing proximity to Orlando and Cocoa Beach’s world-famous beaches and reputation as a premier surf destination are consistent with the demand generators in which our company specializes,” says Ted Ent, CEO of Innisfree Hotels. “This is a natural fit for our company’s culture.”

Innisfree Hotels also hopes to benefit from the second busiest cruise port in the world, Port Canaveral, by offering special cruise packages to guests. The seaport logged a record-breaking year in 2017, welcoming 4.5 million passengers and 104 port-of-call vessels.

“We even purchased an adjacent parking lot for people to leave their cars while they’re on a cruise,” says Ent.

The Quality Inn & Suites’ proximity to Kennedy Space Center is another factor that attracted Innisfree to the deal. With a projected 34-36 launches in 2018, 52 launches in 2019 and the encroaching possibility of public space travel, Innisfree is confident that Cocoa Beach will be a popular destination for years to come.

Innisfree will be exploring rebranding the property to become a unique independent hotel in future years.

The Quality Inn & Suites, Cocoa Beach features 170 rooms with the following amenities.

• Free hot breakfast
• Free wired high-speed internet in room
• Free Wi-Fi
• Free in-room safe
• Hearing and mobility accessible rooms for our guests with special needs.
• On-site coin operated laundry facilities
• Fitness center
• Kids play area with jungle gym
• Volleyball Court
• Shuffleboard court
• Full-service lounge

For more information about the Quality Inn & Suites, visit the website at http://www.qualitycocoabeach.com.

Our in-house agency specializes in hotel marketing and restaurant marketing and we love selling out a great event.

Events and restaurants go together like peas and carrots.

Events generate public awareness and guest loyalty. They re-engage guests who haven’t visited you in a while and attract new customers. Events give bloggers, social media stars and journalists something to talk about.

Best of all, events empower your best team members to showcase their talent.

Do you have a wannabe celebrity chef on your team who needs a little love once and a while? Events are their ticket to job satisfaction.

Make it Special

The first thing you have to do is choose a theme for your event – yes yes I know you’re thinking, “Thanks, Captain Obvious.” Nonetheless, it must be said, because if you spend a little extra time on this step, your event will outshine all the rest. Nobody needs another wing night, right?

Start by thinking about how to craft an experience that both reinforces your brand and appeals to the desires of your ideal guest.

Is your ideal guest looking for a rowdy beer pong tourney or a romantic date night? Do they like lengthy discussions about local food or bottomless tequila shots? Do they want to travel the world with their taste buds or play a rancorous game of bingo with MawMaw?

Your options are endless, and our event theme is the perfect opportunity to show off how bright and imaginative you are.

Make it Stand Out

The next step is to come up with an irresistible description. Your goal is to be conspicuous in busy calendars and entice an immediate ticket purchase.

Also, now is the time to carefully outline all the necessary information such as location, date, time, inclusions, ticket prices and how to book. (Realizing you forgot to note the date of the event after the print ad is published is a major downer.)

Next, you need to plan how you will promote your event.

Every event has unique requirements. A well-established restaurant with a sizable email subscribers database and a populous social media audience may only need a Facebook event listing and an email newsletter to sell out an event. On the other hand, a brand new restaurant hosting their first event will want to deploy every tool in the promotional kit.

Write Great Words

Your event promotion will require lots of words. If the words are concise, fun and outline the key selling points of your event, your advertisements will be more successful. Below is the copy production list the in-house marketing agency gives our Head Storyteller for our food and beverage events. Each item on this list requires unique copy of varying lengths and styles.  

• Website landing page
• Contest landing page
• Eventbrite listing
• Facebook event listing
• Poster
• Table talkers
• Print ads
• Street banner
• Social media posts
• Social media ads
• Email newsletters (at least 4 unique versions)
• Radio announcements
• Press release

Your copy must always include a clear call to action, such as “buy tickets” or “call for reservations.” It is also imperative to add essential information, such as date, time and price – duh right?

The copy isn’t finished until it goes through two rounds of proofreading to check for errors or inconsistencies.

Beautiful Design

Okay, the words are perfect now, they’ve been double checked and approved by you your savvy restaurant GM. Phew, you’re wiping your brow now. That was a bit epic.

The next step is to produce the visual elements for your kick-butt event including photos, videos, and graphics. Ideally, some of these will come from last year’s event, but if not, get creative and pick something from your content database. (Yep — you need one of those.)

Our in-house designers typically produce the following:

• Event logo
• Social media tiles (graphically designed image in the perfect size for sharing on social media)
• Snapchat filter (graphically designed overlay users can apply to their Snapchat posts)
• Email newsletter headers (at least 4 unique ones)
• Street banner
• Website landing page header graphic
• Contest landing page header graphic
• Poster
• Table talker
• Print ad
• Content package for social media influencers to share (tiles and teaser copy)
• Content package for employee advocates to share (tiles and teaser copy)

Blast Off

If you build it they will come, right?

Your website landing page and your Eventbrite listing will be the cornerstone of your promotion. Your goal is to push as much qualified traffic as possible to these pages and compel people to make a reservation or buy a ticket.

There are lots of advantages to using Eventbrite for online ticket sales. Users love it because they enjoy the ease and convenience of booking online. Also, your servers and bartenders are always doing three things at once, and more phone calls are not ideal. Facebook recently partnered with Eventbrite to enable users to buy without leaving Facebook which makes buying tickets even easier.

Eventbrite also helps you avoid lost reservations by digitally recording every ticket sale. On the day of the event, your team can download the guest list or check guests in via their app.

Marketers love Eventbrite because they can collect guest email addresses and use them to promote future events. It also has a user-friendly dashboard that enables us to track ticket sales, so we know when to ramp up or turn off our promotions.

Email Contest

Contests help you build an engaged email subscriber list for your restaurant. It’s optimal to launch a “win free tickets” contest four to six weeks before your event, so you have ample time to get lots of entries. Promote your contest with Facebook ads targeted at your potential event attendees.

To enter the contest, users must share their name and email address. When they do, you should load this data into your Facebook advertising platform so you can show your event ads to these folks on Facebook and Instagram. Also, add them to your email database and include them in your newsletters (for this event and future ones). This is how you keep your event at the top of their mind so they don’t forget to buy a ticket.

Overtime contests will build your email user database so you can sell out your events with minimal marketing dollars (goodbye expensive print ads).

Speaking of Email

Your email newsletter subscribers are the people most likely to buy tickets to your event. So you probably want to send them an email newsletter weekly for four weeks prior.

You need to keep them engaged by ensuring that every email you send is unique, useful, fun and compelling. You can vary the frequency of email newsletters as needed. For instance, if your event sells out early, let everyone know because this will create anticipation and urgency for your next event and then send no more emails.

The effectiveness of your email campaigns will improve over time. Test what works for subject lines and calls to actions and optimize your approach for best results. Segment your email list so you can send the right message to the right person at the right time. You want to send a different message to people who regularly attend your events than you do to someone who has never attended, right?

Facebook is Your Friend

Facebook’s fantastic search functionality makes it easy for users to find events happening nearby, on a particular date or of a specific genre.

Your first step is creating an event listing the event details with a recognizable custom banner photo. Then boost this event listing with paid advertising. You can laser target users by geographic location, age, relationship status as well as users with special interests like food and beer.

When users click ‘going’ or ‘interested’ on your event listing their friends are notified. Talk about an excellent word of mouth promotion with a like-minded audience!

You can also target Facebook ads to users who previously engaged with any event page you’ve ever published, users who indicated interest in your event, or bought tickets to a similar event. You can also exclude folks who have already purchased a ticket (no need to drive people nuts).

Facebook automatically sends users who indicated interest in your event a notification reminding them that the event coming up, so they don’t forget to buy a ticket.

Facebook events listings also help us gauge how many people are planning on attending the event so you know how many crab cakes to make.

What Next? Hopefully Nothing. But if You Need To. . .

In most cases, a smart email and Facebook campaign is all you need to sell out a great event. However, if you need a bit more exposure, there are still some other tools in our event marketing toolkit.

Instagram

Create a custom designed tile with the event name and date accompanied by a caption that teases the event with a Call to Action to learn more. A tagged link will take users to the event landing page on your website.

Hashtag Campaign

Create a hashtag campaign for your restaurant event. Expand the reach of your Instagram posts by researching and using hashtags that will reach your target audience.

Also, develop an event hashtag and use it to generate online buzz before, during and after your event. You may want to incentivize event attendees to post images and video using the hashtag during the event so that you have great content for next year’s promotion.

Update Your Links

Usually, your property Twitter, Facebook and Instagram bios link to your website. But when you’re promoting a big event, you may consider changing these links, so they send visitors directly to the event page.

Social Media Influencer Outreach

Our marketing agency works to build relationships with local bloggers and social media influencers. We maintain lists of users with more than 3,000 followers on Instagram, Facebook or Twitter. We vet them to ensure their interests and style are aligned with the brands we promote. If we need extra exposure for an event, we can send them content to share and offer them free tickets.  

Employee Advocates

Why not get your team members to promote your event on their social media platforms? Provide them content and incentivize them to share it!

Last But Not Least (Well Kind of Least)

It is important to promote your event on property with table talkers and posters and to ensure your team members are prepared to talk about the event with your guests and tell them how to purchase tickets.

You can also find partners who are willing to promote your event with you (yeah local breweries).

Other tried and true event promotion tactics are press releases, radio ads (stations will often trade), posting flyers on community bulletin boards, placing print ads in local entertainment magazines and updating free local event listings.

Don’t forget to send good content producers to your event to share on social media after the event. Save this great content for next year’s event promotion.

Sound fun?  Good! Go plan some events!

Yep, we are talking about cake. All the green paper ‘cake’ you, a smart hotel General Manager, will make if you understand your marketing funnel. So read on.

Traditionally marketers frame the customer purchase journey through the metaphor of a funnel. The notion is that customers start thinking about buying a product at the wide top end and are propelled (by brilliant marketing tactics) to the narrow bottom end where they buy – or, in the case of your hotel, book.

The internet has transformed customer purchase-making journeys, especially for travelers. The route they take to your door is getting more complicated every day.

Marketers are conceptualizing new customer journey models shaped like circles, infinity loops and whatever well paid consultants dreamed up last week. All you need to know is that understanding your customer journey, even if it’s shaped like a squircle or an eggplant, is important for conceptualizing smart hotel marketing campaigns.

Why should a hotel General Managers care about this crazy non-funnel?

GMs like you care about two things the most. Creating fantastic guest experiences and bringing revenue down to your bottom line. Understanding your hotel guest purchase journey is critical to achieving both of these goals.

If you understand what triggers, motivates and finally compels your guests to book your hotel room, you can make some smart choices about how to nurture them along their path to purchase, while giving them a delightful experience along the way.

It is important to be everywhere on the path to purchase. That means drawing consumer attention from the inspiration stage, through the time they spend researching, to when they make their final booking decision.

However, you shouldn’t use the same marketing message for a guest is who is thinking about where to travel as the one who is ready to book. You need to understand how to create experiences they crave at every step of their journey, craft the right message for the right moment and spend your limited marketing dollars in the most impactful channels.

Note that every guest moves uniquely through the funnel. Some may flounder at the top for months. Others will book on Google Hotel finder without even looking at your hotel website, while some will read every review and shop prices on multiple sites.

Nevertheless, some steps are common to all of them … so let’s dig in.

What does my hotel marketing funnel look like?

Stage One: ASPIRATION

Let’s call your guest Savannah. She will start her journey when something triggers her desire. Maybe it will be a friend’s humblebragging vacation picture on social media or a Visit New Orleans advertisement on the side of a bus. If you can be this trigger, you’re likely to create an emotional connection that will make Savannah more inclined to choose your hotel when she is ready to book.

So think about what you can do to light the spark that will eventually compel her to click the BOOK NOW button on your website. Luckily, hotels are often located in beautiful or exciting locations, so hoteliers can trigger desire simply by delivering beautiful content with the right message on the right channel.

The best channels to inspire travelers are Facebook or Instagram. According to Expedia, social media users are very open to travel inspiration. However, Savannah might also find inspiration in Southern Living magazine, a Rick Steve YouTube video or the Zero to Travel podcast.

Next, you need to understand the reason Savannah wants to travel so you can create content that compels her to engage. Maybe she is longing to create memories her children will cherish, or float in the Gulf of Mexico, or get backstage at Jazz Fest.

Note you should avoid selling at aspirational touch points. Top of the funnel (TOFU) content should be about your customer, not about you. It ought to entertain, educate and solve problems, not explicitly promote your hotel. Savannah is not ready to buy, and if you show her a picture of your hotel room, she will tune you out.

Example marketing strategies you can use in channels where your potential guests are aspirational are:

• Produce and post beautiful, fun and entertaining photos and video on social media.
• Launch paid Facebook and Instagram ads.
• Promote hashtag photo sharing campaigns on property to trigger word-of-mouth sharing.
• Produce blog content about your destination and share it online.
• Place aspirational ads in a travel magazine or podcast.
• Invite social media influencers and bloggers to post about your property and destination.
• Engage in conversations in online communities about your property and destination.

Okay, it worked! Our Savannah is inspired to visit your destination. What now?

Stage Two: AWARENESS

Savannah is ready to travel. Your content in stage one nurtured an emotional connection and trust. So now it’s time to bring Savannah to your website, and then follow her around the internet with ads for your hotel.

The more present your hotel is at this point, the more likely she is to maintain her interest. Your content should highlight your hotel’s Unique Selling Propositions such as location, amenities and fantastic views.

Example marketing strategies you might use in channels where your potential guests are in the awareness stage are:

• Retarget in-market audiences with programmatic ads on Sojern or Adera.
• Build custom audiences in the Facebook advertising platform and target social media ads at them.
• Launch ‘Win a Stay’ website contests to attract people to your website, get their email addresses and then use their email addresses to target ads to them on Facebook, Google, Bing and Instagram.
• Transfer contest entry email addresses to your email newsletter distribution platform and send newsletters with cool content about your hotel and local events.

Stage Three: RESEARCH

Savannah has now narrowed her choice to your hotel and three others. According to a 2015 Traveler Attribution Study conducted by Expedia Media Solutions, Savannah will visit an average of 38 websites before booking, so at this point, you need to make sure your hotel shines on all of them.

Example marketing strategies you might use in channels where your potential guests are in the research stage are:

• Manage your online reputation by optimizing the content on review sites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp.
• Post timely and authentic responses to all guest reviews.
• Entice your guests to review your hotel to place well in review site rankings.
• Produce fantastic professional quality images of your property’s best selling features and use them to optimize your website on all third-party digital platforms.

Stage Four: BOOK

Savannah is ready to pull the trigger. At this stage, she is deep diving into the room types listed on your website and comparing prices with Online Travel Agencies.

Example marketing strategies you might use in channels where Savannah is in the booking stage are:

• Place Google and Bing search ads targeting users who have visited your hotel website and are searching for valuable keywords such as ‘hotels pensacola’.
• Place Expedia Travel Ads.
• Place TripAdvisor Sponsored placement ads.
• Optimize your hotel website to ensure the information users need to finalize a decision is easy to find.
• Optimize the hotel booking engine so completing the reservation is simple and intuitive.
• Bid on ads on meta search engines such as Google Hotel Finder, TripAdvisor and Kayak to increase direct bookings.
• Ensure your website and booking engine are mobile friendly.

ANTICIPATE

Congrats! Savannah booked a room in your hotel. Take a minute to do a happy dance, and then remind yourself that she is still in your funnel. According to a 2010 study published in the journal Applied Research in Quality of Life, anticipating your trip can make you happier than actually taking it.

You’ll want to continue to engage and delight Savannah, so she becomes a loyal guest and a repeat customer. Note the anticipation stage is also when she will be open to buying more stuff, like room upgrades and chocolate covered strawberries.

Example marketing strategies you might use in channels where Savannah is in the anticipation stage are:

• Respond and engage on your social media pages.
• Craft a fun, authentic email confirmation.
• Link to your local guide blog in the email confirmation.
• Send a second email with destination information a few days before her arrival.

Yay! She’s on her way! Surprise and delight Savannah while she is on property, and she will hop right back into your sales funnel again someday soon.

As a hotel General Manager, you’re the most practical, result-driven human being on the planet. You have to be to survive.

Everything is an emergency, the hours are long … and the chaos is real.

So it’s not surprising that when three social media content producers show up at your hotel and use your time and money to take pictures of Millennials lounging by the pool in monogrammed sun hats, your first thought is, “What the ****?!?”

Then, when your agency account manager tells you she wants do this again next month to produce “fresh content,” it does not surprise us that your response is again, “What the ****?!?”

I get it. It seems weird, for sure, but I promise you there is a method behind this madness.

Here is why you hotel General Manager should get excited about (and pay for) content marketing.

What is content marketing anyway?

There are as many definitions of content marketing as there are Millennials taking selfies in monogrammed sun hats by your pool. But in a nutshell, content marketing is making and distributing useful and compelling ‘content’ to attract customers to your hotel.

Great content marketing is customer centric, which means it’s more about your guests than it is about you. To be impactful, your content must align with your customers’ aspirations.

For instance, does your ideal guest want to learn, dream, plan … or solve a problem? A software company might produce ebooks and webinars to solve problems, while a beach hotel creates aspirational pictures, videos and destination blogs.

Why do you need to have professionally produced content?

You think your 14 niece can do this for you right. Wrong! Not all content is created equal.

Producing excellent content requires natural talent, training, gear and software. But being under the age of 30 does help 🙂

If you want our content noticed in a busy, noisy online world, it must be fantastic – super-frick-fracking-over-the-top-ahhhmazing.

In the next 60 seconds in the world this is going to happen;

• 3.3 million posts to Facebook
• 65,972 posts to Instagram
• 500 videos uploaded to YouTube

Your content must stand out in a crowd by being jaw-droppingly magical. It also must be entertaining, fun, memorable, fresh, timely and trendy and, most importantly, it must speak to your target audience (i.e. your potential guests).

Smart strategy, data, and testing should underpin every piece of content your agency produces. And you need a lot of content.

Your hotel marketing team ought to update Facebook, Instagram and Twitter three times a week with jaw dropping, original content. To keep your audience entertained you need to mix it up with video and photography and pair the images with witty captions. That’s at least 468 photos and videos a year.

This is overwhelming. Why bother?

When your ideal guest is dreaming about a holiday, what does she do? Look at hotel websites, magazine ads or welcome center brochures? Of course not! She isn’t trapped in 1995. She hops online to search and discover travel inspiration on her favorite social media channels.

Does she want to see a picture of your standard double queen hotel room in her Facebook feed? Heck no! She wants to fantasize about spending a leisurely day sitting in a beach chair on a white sandy beach sipping a frosty drink. You need to give her that.

Fantastic destination-focused social media content transforms aspirational online lookers into hotel bookers by spawning an emotional connection at a critical time in the sales funnel.

 

You want your ideal guest to fall in love with your hotel, so when she’s ready to book, she’ll choose your hotel over all the others. If she’s in love with you when she clicks the BOOK NOW button on your website, she will be less price sensitive, and when she checks in, she’ll be more loyal.

Paid advertising and sales tactics cannot compete with love.

When you post great content, people will engage with you, and you need to join the conversation. Developing relationships with potential customers is marketing gold.

So, you – the savvy hotel GM – need to get that amazing content out there in the world, and then engage users who interact with it 24/7. This is critical at a time when consumer trust in traditional marketing is at an all-time low.

You better hire someone great to help you because content marketers in all industries are stepping up their game, getting more creative by the minute. This is where your agency comes in. They know you’re in the business of managing a hotel, and you do not have time to produce 468 pieces of content this year.

That being said: nobody knows your guests better than you, so gather your team members and brainstorm about what kind of story you want to tell about your hotel and destination. Then, let your content producers know.

In the meantime, remember that content marketing is to marketers what revenue management is to hoteliers. Do it well, and you’ll make more money than your competitors.