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1. 7 Crucial Mistakes of Your Hotel Marketing
By Viacheslav Makovich, makovich.v@gmail.com
You know that you could have much more profits from your hotel business just by
getting rid of the most common marketing mistakes?
Mistake # 1. No marketing at all.
The biggest marketing mistake is not to have marketing at all.
I get one little secret for you: “In today’s fast moving World Being Good Is Not
Enough”.
In order to provide successful result you have to be prepared not only to have a
good offer, but also to bring this offer to your potential clients. As a result of that
you should have:
1) More new guests
2) More satisfied guests
3) Who will leave more money at your hotel
4) Will recommend your hotel
5) And will come to your again and again
And that’s what marketing is about.
Mistake # 2. No target audience.
I’ll give you a short example, 4 000 000 times people search “Hotel in Paris” each
month. That’s a huge number, but do you think that your hotel has a high
probability to be founded on that request?
But if you be more specific, has a clear positioning and stand out from other hotel
by having your niche. That would be much easier.
Several hotels had a great financial results just by clear targeting: one made a focus
on pensioners, the other one on romantic couples, another on reach businessmen’s.
I guaranty you, that you will lose some guest, but by choosing the right audience
you will not only attracted more guests, but you will make them much more
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2. satisfied. For you that means that they will come back and more importantly tell all
their friends and relatives about you.
Mistake # 3. No offer.
I had a degree in marketing but what I learned about it in university didn’t work for didn’t works
for vast majority of hotels.
That marketing was focused on so called “image” advertising. That could probably work for big
hotel chains, but that didn’t bring results for small and medium size hotels.
I tested several approaches and find out that the most efficient marketing should has:
direct response opportunity with a concrete offer and lack of time
I mean that you should not just give information on your hotel, but you must give concrete offer,
that would be:
 Interesting for your target audience (that could be good price, special bonuses or
specific benefits of your hotel)
 Motivating to act NOW (deadline, small number offered bonuses etc.)
Generally speaking, you must give an answer to the following question: “Why should I choose
your hotel above all others and why should I make my decision right now?”
Mistake # 4. Not selling web page.
I hope you understand how many of your potential guests use Internet to book a
hotel. But unfortunately most hotels have just internet business cards instead of
magnetic web sites that generates you more and more guests.
And that could be a great opportunity for your business.
You need to concentrate on 4 main issues:
1) How to attract more visitors
2) How to make them want to book a room
3) How to make them proof their wants
4) How to make them book
The attraction of visitors is very large topic and I’m planning to cover it in one of
the next articles.
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3. Before coming up with my ideas on creation of desire to book a room in your
hotel, I would like to ask you a short question: “Do your clients make booking
decisions based on emotional or on rational factors?”
As it was shown in many studies, people use to make their decisions based on
emotional reasons and only after that they are trying to put it on rational
background.
So during the average 14 minutes while your web page is being looked through, yu
must create the emotional will of booking a room. What should you have for that?
 Nice looking friendly web page (not overloaded by sophisticated design)
 A lot of multimedia: great photos and videos
 Emotional writing: you have to describe not just a facts about your hotel, but
the advantages that it gives to your visitors and their feelings out this
advantages. By the way that would be also possible to mention some
disadvantages and give the information how it can be easily solved.
 Concrete, lucrative and motivational offer.
Then you should think how to make them proof the decision. And the best thing
for that is the social proof: reviews from other visitors (that’s way you need to have
a good motivation system of making a good reviews) and ratings.
Also don’t forget about rational facts, like price quality ratio.
And the last but definitely not least, there should be easy mechanism of making a
reservation from every page of a website.
By the way, I will give here a short, but profitable comment. Don’t forget about
upsale: when the reservation is made, suggest to order some of your additional
services.
Mistake # 5. Not enough additional services.
The vast majority of hotels have totally insufficient number of products and
services that they are offer. That’s a mistake, because there are a lot of things that
(1) could be interesting for your visitors and (2) could be profitably provided by
your hotel.
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4. Short example, when I was in Istanbul together with my future wife I was quite
amazed when I knew that some hotels in Istanbul has good additional profits
simply by offering a feet massage to it’s visitors.
Make a list of potential additional services, find appropriate persons or companies
which can offer it, test that services and start implementation.
When you give the keys to your visitors, give them also the paper with full list of
your services. You’ll be amazed with results.
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There is a single difference between my clients who have extraordinary success
and those who don’t: implementation. Consistent implementation means the
difference between struggling to make a buck and having the money flow to you.
That’s why not just read, but make a concrete steps to your development and if
you are interested in having really outrageous results I recommend you to order a
complete course on “Profitable Hotel Marketing” with the detailed road map.
Viacheslav Makovich,
makovich.v@gmail.com
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