As a hotel marketing agency, our initial step in any new collaboration is to establish a clear understanding of the dynamic landscape of marketing. It's essential to recognise that marketing has undergone substantial transformations over the past decades, adapting to changing consumer behaviours and technological advancements. Traditional marketing, the traditional method of developing, promoting and selling products or services, has been the cornerstone of marketing strategies for many years.

Initially focusing on the 4 Ps – Price, Product, Place, and Promotion – this approach has since evolved to encompass a broader spectrum and additional dimensions - like Physical Evidence, People, and Processes - forming what is commonly known as the 7 Ps.

However, it's crucial to acknowledge alternative perspectives in marketing. In 1973, Professor Koichi Shimizu introduced a paradigm shift with his innovative 7 Cs Compass Model. Unlike the company-centric focus of the Ps, the 7 Cs framework adopts a consumer-centric viewpoint, emphasising crucial elements such as Customer Value, Communication and Convenience (Carniel, 2022). This shift highlights the importance of aligning marketing strategies with the ever-changing needs and preferences of modern consumers.

For decades, the P and C models helped hotels and businesses to define their marketing mixes and align their marketing activities with their respective markets (as implied by the very term “MARKETing”).

However, it became increasingly apparent that the essence of traditional marketing began to veer away from its original intent – to glean insights from the market, develop products and services tailored to meet market needs, and enhance overall market value. Instead, there emerged a growing reliance on persuasion and manipulative messaging to compel consumers to purchase products or services.

Over the last decades, however, new marketing thought leaders have reshaped the definition and perception of marketing. Seth Godin (2019) defines marketing as follows in his ground-breaking book “This is Marketing”:

Marketing is the generous act of helping others become who they seek to become. Instead of selfish mass, effective marketing now relies on empathy and service. Marketing is not a battle, and it’s not a war, or even a contest. Marketing is the generous act of helping someone solve a problem. Their problem. Effective Marketing is about understanding our customers’ worldview and desires so we can connect with them. It’s focused on being missed when you’re gone, on bringing more than People expect to those who trust us. It seeks volunteers, not victims.

1. Clearly define your hotel marketing budget

As a hotel marketing agency, we always say: you need to invest some money to make more money. And this totally applies to hotel marketing, where strategic investments yield substantial returns! Unfortunately, it’s too often that small and independent hotels never take the time to create a marketing budget.

Therefore, our MAdvice:

• Define an annual marketing budget. As a rule of thumb, your hotel marketing budget should be between 8 and 12% of your hotel turnover.
• Define the return on investment you expect, e.g. how many new guests, the ADR, the occupancy rate, etc.
• And then, make sure to define HOW you will measure the ROI! Because, as we like to say to our clients: what you’re not measuring, you can’t optimise.

2. Hope is NOT a strategy

After defining your hotel marketing budget and your hotel marketing goals, it’s time to plan it out. Together with our clients, we start with a yearly plan and scheduling tasks, actions, outputs, per quarter. As a last step, we define top goals per month.

Our MAdvice: set monthly goals aligned with your quarterly goals. Be flexible about how you are going to reach them.

3. Don’t try to be everywhere – be specific

One of the biggest pitfalls we see hotels and small businesses fall into is trying to be “everywhere”. Let’s look at hotel social media to illustrate what we mean by this.

There are an array of social media channels out there, with every channel having its own rules, do’s and don’ts. All too often we see that hotel clients try to be on all of them, without realising that being specific and choosing the channels carefully, and planning the content out in detail on those important channels (= the channels your potential guests and clients are on), delivers much better results. Our guiding mantra at our hotel marketing agency is: Class over Mass!

Our MAdvice: choose your channels wisely, be focused and deliver the best content you can. Quality always wins in the long-run.

As we highlighted earlier in this blog post, marketing encompasses seven key functions, often represented by the 7 Ps or 7 Cs. Let's delve into one of these functions in this concluding section: communication. Traditionally, marketing communication has been characterised as loud, paid, persuasive, and sometimes manipulative. However, if you aspire to elevate your hotel marketing for sustainable success, we at MAp advocate for one overarching principle: sustainability.

Sustainable Communication means you are communicating in a socially-responsible and ecological manner, with no negative impact to society, the economy and the Planet. The objective of Sustainable Communication is therefore to reduce the environmental and social footprint of communication activities and to make sure that all can profit from them.

We’re convinced that the future of marketing (AND hospitality) is sustainable, and you can learn more on this topic here. As always, we extend our gratitude for your commitment to #neverstoplearning.

After reading this blog post, we encourage you to engage in marketing endeavours that you take pride in – ones that address People's needs and contribute to creating a better world for everyone!

1 – Do I really need a hotel umbrella brand?

It’s not a simple undertaking. In fact, it’s far from it. Creating a hotel umbrella brand means that you have an additional brand to take care of, which of course results in extra administrative, operational and business costs as well. Not only that, you will need to invest additional time and resources to make sure that the hotel umbrella brand is respected and reflected in your sub-brands always and in all ways. However, if you plan to unite diverse hotel brands under one umbrella, a well-designed and holistically implemented hotel umbrella brand will enable you to gain credibility and trust, build brand awareness, achieve brand recall, and above all, establish an emotional connection with customers and ultimately generate higher returns on investment.

2 – What are the goals for my hotel umbrella brand?

It’s time to get down to the nitty-gritty detail. What issues are you struggling with that the envisioned hotel umbrella brand is solving for you? Back in 2014, we realised that by creating Pulse Hotels & Resorts, our client would benefit from a stronger standing and impact in the market with an umbrella brand in place for the launch of its first property. Furthermore, the defined and implemented hotel umbrella brand structure would facilitate the launch of additional properties as well as enable benefits from operational synergies. Your answer may differ as the reasons for creating a hotel umbrella brand vary. However, be clear on your specific goals because they lay the foundation for all the steps that follow.

3 – How will the individual sub-brands relate to each other?

When looking at global players, the different sub-brands are all branded in the same way, have the same standard and the same set of amenities. Think of Accor Hotels as the umbrella brand and ibis as its sub-brand. Only by hearing the name “ibis” do you exactly know what the logo looks like, and what bath amenities and general operational standards you can expect.

From the beginning, it was clear that for Pulse Hotels & Resorts, we wanted to follow another approach. Our promise to guests is that all of the sub-brands hold the same brand values and deliver innovative experiences in their segment. However, at the same time, they are branded individually, appeal to other guest segments and are refreshingly different in their own specific ways.

4 – What is at the heart of my hotel umbrella brand?

Don’t forget what hotel branding is all about: it’s about identifying the true nature of your hotel umbrella brand, and consequently as well as continuously, differentiate it from others. Why? Because the more differentiated and distinctive your hotel umbrella brand is, the less likely your customer will switch to a substitute.

If you opt for uniform sub-brands, the core of your hotel brand might be to clearly define your buyer personas and afterward derive a standardised classification, facilities and services from it. For example, the budget 4-star hotel group for Millennial business travellers with contemporary business facilities and 100% natural amenities.

At the core of Pulse Hotels & Resorts – a hotel brand that prides itself on being innovative and forward-thinking – are innovative and forward-thinking brand values: “The Pulse Hotels & Resorts values are at the very core of the company. They reflect what the company is about, how it conducts itself and where it strives to be: smart, playful, rooted, responsible and human.”

5 – How do I implement and bring to life the hotel umbrella brand?

Our MAdvice: start from the top. Start with defining the basics for your hotel umbrella brand. Only when you are clear on your objectives, architecture/strategy and brand core, can you start working on the sub-brands.

This approach also led us to develop two very distinctive sub-brands for Pulse Hotels & Resorts after the hotel umbrella brand had been defined. Kandima Maldives, the first Pulse Hotels & Resorts property that opened in 2017, is a game-changing lifestyle (desti)nation where guests are invited to relax, reconnect, refresh and rediscover their sense of adventure. Hiriyafushi, the second Pulse Hotels & Resorts property, sets new standards in high-end hospitality in the Maldives through its innovative concept and approach, offering guests a premium luxury experience that is second to none.

Our final MAdvice: think long-term. Don’t think of your hotel umbrella brand as an object that is created, launched and immediately generates returns. Think of it as a living being that needs dedication, patience, and guidance to define its personality. It is something that grows over time and needs to prove its qualities to people (guests, partners, employees) before it creates an emotional connection and ultimately generates returns.