Your hospitality properties image will affect your bottom line. Here are the steps you need to develop your brand.

In a past podcast, I talked about why you need to brand your property. If you have not heard it, you can find it at

keystonehospitalitydevelopment.com/khdc064

What Steps Should You Take When Developing Your Brand Story?

Well, the first thing you should do is answer the following questions.

What Makes Your Hospitality Property Unique?

What differentiates your property from your competition?

Does your building or area have a historic or architecturally significant?

Do you offer any extraordinary or outstanding service?

Is there something intriguing about your design or features?

Determine what, from a guest’s perspective, will make you stand out from the competition and build an identity around that.

Once you determine what makes you stand out, you want to communicate the benefits you offer with your branding, comparing them to other similar properties in the same area and star rating.

You also want to consider where you want to be as a brand in the future, not just where your property is now. This allows you another gage to evaluate all of your future marketing decisions.

Here are 6 Steps to Consider When Planning How to Brand Your Hospitality Property

Step 1 – Brand to a Specific Market

Hospitality Properties that brand to a specific market normally have higher profits and happier guests.

Are you trying to attract corporate clients or leisure travellers?

Is your perfect customer a backpacker or a luxury traveller?

It’s important to know who your target market is before you establish your brand imaging. This is to make sure that it properly reflects the best you have to offer and helps you meet your end goal.

You also need to consider where you target market comes from and ensure that the specific geographical locale should be reflected in your branding.

Step 2 – Connect on an Emotional Level

Successful Hospitality Properties deliver a distinct experience, rather than just four walls and a bed. You want to be able to connect with your guests’ emotional wants – the romance, the adventure, the visual stimulation of being in a new environment that is interesting and engaging. If you can do this, you are able to increase the revenue rate by standing out from your competition.

Step 3 – Being a Big Fish in a Small Pond

Determine what niche is not being serviced in your market and target that audience by marketing specifically to them. You will probably find that your marketing costs will decrease because you’re not trying to hit the entire general population, and your target audience will be more likely to book with you and pay a higher rate to do so.

Step 4 – Make it Easy for Your Guests to Market You

Today, this is a no-brainer. Social Media rules. Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, Twitter, YouTube and all the other video and photo sharing platforms out there, your guests are snapping and posting photos videos left and right to show how exciting their lives and vacations are.

Step 5 – What Does Your Brand Look Like?

Now, you should choose which visual elements to include in their branding, again, based on your goals. Typical visual elements of a brand include the company’s name, logo, tagline, website design, collateral, etc.

Your logo should be simple and easy to recognize, no matter where guests see it. Over time, this image becomes associated with a level of credibility, quality and satisfaction in the consumer’s mind.

Your tagline should create an emotional connection between potential guests and your property, illustrating the most unique elements of your property.

Overall, your brand’s visual elements should communicate with potential customers why they should choose to book your hotel over your competition.

Your brand image will develop over time through marketing/advertising campaigns with a consistent theme, and will be authenticated through the customer’s direct experience.”

Step 6 – Getting the Message Out

Once you’ve decided on the key elements to your brand and developed each piece to appeal to your ideal guests, it is time to start implementing your marketing, advertising and public relations campaigns. Because you’ve identified your target audience, you can easily determine which mode will be most effective for promoting your property. Once you’ve decided on the best mode of marketing, remember to stay consistent with the elements of your brand and your messaging, across all channels.

Here are Some Snags to Avoid When It Comes to Branding

Lack of investment

Many hospitality properties don’t put enough value in the development of a strong and consistent brand. If potential guests don’t know or recognize your property, they are much less likely to book with you for their upcoming trip.

Being too wordy

When it comes to branding, less is more and an effective copy can be a great marketing tool. Your copy should be catchy and clever, using as few words as possible. The message should be very clear, so your tagline sticks in the minds of consumers.

Inconsistency

A lack of consistency is a huge reason that many hospitality properties brands are ineffective for inspiring trust with potential customers, which will result in diminished bookings over time.

When making a marketing decision, you should ask yourself:

Does making this decision reflect what our brand communicates and who my company is?

Does it reflect where we want to be in the future?”

If the answer is no, re-think your decisions to maintain consistency.

Too many or too frequent visual changes

If you are constantly editing your logo, you will confuse potential customers. A consistent, clear logo is an essential part of developing brand recognition with potential customers. If your logo is memorable and powerful, consumers should be able to identify your company simply by seeing the image, even without your tagline.

Promises you can’t deliver

If your brand conveys luxury and your customers arrive to find out that your hospitality property is a budget property without many amenities, your brand image will be damaged, which will most likely result in a negative review.

Well, I hope this post will give you some food for thought and encourage you to give serious thought to How to Brand Your Hospitality Property

With this in mind, we want to challenge you.

We want to challenge you to the 6 Day Challenge.

We at Keystone HDC have taken our years of experience as hospitality property authorities and have produced the

“6 Day Challenge“

A video series with many actionable tips & techniques that you can take and use to help improve your properties patronage and profit.

And the most exciting thing with this video series– it’s 100% Free!

This 6 Day Challenge will take you step by step through the process of operating a successful hospitality property, including:

Determining What Type of Owner/Manager You Are

How to Set Up an Organisational Structure

Secrets to Great Customer Service

How to Market Effectively

How to Benefit From Social Media

How to Make Your Guests Want to Return

Whether you are operating a one-room bed & breakfast or a 500 room luxury hotel, there is always something new you could learn.

As a famous quote says

“Never stop learning, because life never stops teaching”

It is important as a hospitality property owner or manager that you never stop learning.

So, what have you got to lose? Are you up for the challenge?

Visit

keystonehospitalitydevelopment.com/6-day-challenge-log-in-here

Good Luck!