Hospitality Marketing the Podcast Show 235 February 7th 2020
Hospitality Marketing Podcast 235
Hospitality Marketing Podcast Show 235 Transcripts (US English)
(Announcer) — Welcome to this week in Hospitality Marketing. This is podcast show number 235 with your host, Loren Gray.
Loren — Hello, everyone, and welcome to hospitality marketing in the podcast I’m your host, Loren Gray. This is episode number 235 where each week we spend around 20 to 30 minutes sharing these interesting tools, news and techniques being used in marketing for the hospitality industry. Well, also do a quick recap of our weekly live video show this week in Hospitality Marketing, which also airs every Friday at 11 30 Eastern US. So with that, let’s get started. (Announcer) And now today’s new resource tool Loren — so our tool to review this week we actually have to contribute to one of our clients, bringing to our attention, and that’s called https://userway.org/
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Now, this tool is more of a plugin. We found it more successful putting it into GTM shell, it is actually is a WordPress plugin but do either. It also goes on a variety of other platforms that create websites and so forth. But it’s great functionality is in its ability to help you with your ADA compliance is as we know, there are no base standard requirements as of yet that says that we are qualified to do everything for ADA compliance, which unfortunately is created a large legal swell of lawsuits and everything else that has people chasing you down, trying to sue your business as being uncompliant within ADA access for your website. We know that this is an issue that there is yet to be minimal standard.
Compliance is to it, and it’s so easy to follow the compliance, even just one image without the proper alt tagging could create a problem for that. And of course, a lot of these lawyers, legal entities they’re chasing around and literally making free money by walking in snapshotting your website showing that there was no compliance and then tell you if you don’t pay them, then they’re going to bring the suit to bear and so forth. And so when people get scared and they just pay well, blood money basically.
I’m sure there are some lawyers out there that are trying to make that a deal, that it is to help with the audience for ADA compliance and what have you but to give you some reasons for some of this that make it very important. They have some interesting stats on this website. First off, it’s a free plugin, which is awesome, and when you use it, it puts a little icon, and you choose where you want the icon to be on your page. Upper Corners Mid Range left her rights.
What have you and when it does when it opens it up without having to any additional Cody, it creates a few actually a lot of things that that are very helpful to those that have special needs. When it comes to engaging with websites, um, it grates a keyboard navigation icon. Pat me. Use your keyboard to never get rather than the mouse. It will actually read the page. It can change the contrast to your page. It can highlight the links within the page. If you’re a bigger tax variation of it, it could increase the text basing for those who have difficulties with that, it can stop the animations so that people can see it in static form.
It creates, allegedly forms of you using unclassified funds or non-regular funds, it’ll standardize the funds for easier reading. Um, we use a curse of functionality and create two tips as well. It does a lot of very, very cool stuff just as a plug him now. As I said, you could get it for free. Place it into your G teams out. I’ll give you the code you put in your website and so forth. It also gives you immediate compliance form that goes to your site so that if somebody wants to understand what you’re offering from a compliance requirement of saying, Hey, look, this is how you contact us.
This is what we do so forth. It will actually help you create one for yourself if you don’t already have one. And it’s critical that you do have one, because these are the things that help mitigate When these lawyers chasing down that you have this on your site, you have every effort showing. Look, if you have any problems with navigation, here’s your contact for us. Here are the ADA complaints form a page that shows you all the things that we’re doing. And now you have this with that pops up, is here.
We’re gonna help you navigate our site using this tool in ways that you needed to be used for whether it’s increasing contrast, changing text and fonts and so forth. It does all of that stuff for you. So it really helps you help the ADA community that needs those kinds of functionalities and as a byproduct, helps you Should you be chased down legally for not being in compliance of something that this is an effort made. This is things that you’re trying to do to your website to improve your engagement with those that need these kind of service is now.
There’s some big numbers to this process. We’ll go over this a little bit on some other details. But right now, one out of five people are user disabled. 8.1million of them are visually impaired. Two million actually blind, 7.6 million. Are audio impaired. One in five suffer seizures in epilepsy, which leaves physicality controlling a mouse and so forth a challenge and 19.9 million motored impaired that can’t use a mouse. So, in the spirit of hospitality. We want to provide service to all those that want our service, that we can help them stay with us and know that we’re trying to accommodate their ability to understand what every consumer needs to know about to make a decision on purchasing a hotel room.
This goes just to the functionality of the website. This app, this plug into your website, helps in that process by doing the things we just described helping with contrast that links in the fonts and what have you that functionality? That engagement, that ability to navigate is really to helping those that need this type of product to work through the sights because, as we all know, with our websites, Web developers and so forth going back to them saying, OK, now I need all these compliance technologies color contrasts, abilities to create font selections, abilities to space fonts, freeze image ings highlight hypertext speech readings Quite daunting.
A lot of companies just like Oh my gosh, how much it’s gonna cost me to do this. So I was really hats off to these people for making this. Now the white level means that they have in the bottom of this pop open of their app that there is ability to know that it’s them. And also, if you want to donate to them, to expand, that they’ve expanded quite quickly and so forth. You can also, if you would like pay per month to White label. I think it’s $10 a month to white labels so that it doesn’t go there.
Ah, and also, you could pay $10 a month if you wanna put your own logo in there. But really, in all honesty of just putting it onto your site as a means of contributing to ADA usage for your website is a huge benefit. Once again, that is a useful way, userway.org, and that is our tool of the week. (Announcer) — Now for this week’s hospitality technique.
LOREN — Okay, so our technique this week is a continuation of a conversation ADA compliance, But Maurine, the tune of ADA compliance and how it benefits your bottom line.
Um, having lived through the earlier ADA compliance is of people and literally lawyers traveling around in chasing hotels for accessibility issues and and and wheelchair spaces and ADA rooms and so forth. It’s so stressful for hotel ownerships of management groups and so forth that as they try to fit in tow, how to put lifts beside the pool so that people that one of you enjoy your pool can of having hallway spaces and rooms that accommodate ADA compliance. But to do so Maur than just the minimization of it. Where, unfortunately, say some hotels, their compliance meant that some 80 excesses meant that they had to park behind the hotel to use the ramp at the loading dog to make it into the hotel, which was compliance but certainly not a guest center.
Certainly not helping drive business to you because you’re willing to make the physicality changes to your product to accommodate those that need those except those additions to it. And it goes beyond the spectrum of just ramps and doorways. Wide entries is so forth. It’s going and taking not just the desk drawer out of the desks that we’ll check and go underneath of it and reducing the usability of the desk. But actually getting the furniture to fit it correctly. Uh, not putting the coffeemaker on top of the TV Anwar, So that Really?
Yes, you have a coffee maker, but nobody gets to it. Um, making sure that there are rooms that have, you know, the visual alarm for a smoke alarm rather than just the audible. Andi. All the complaints too, But then to bring this to a bottom-line level. And this goes back many years when I was attending the conference about special needs travelers. And this goes before social Media to give you some idea how long ago and I was enthralled with the fact that there was this market, that people that needed refrigerators for their insulin or accessibility requirements to their rooms visualizations to their rooms, phone types to their rooms so that they could communicate in some of this again being before cell phones were well used.
And so I go to the speaker afterward and I said, This is wonderful. How can I communicate to your audience that we have these things? He says you don’t have to. You just simply have to provide it. They’ll share within their communities that you’re accommodating them to that degree, and they’re not necessarily as rent sensitive, knowing that you have this available to them. They will share with like-minded people cause as a social community problem. Before we call social media, social media the social communities would share the fact that X Y Z hotels and X Y Z locations had this functionality for their needs, that they had many refrigerators for insulin, for those that needed to travel with that consideration, that they had ramps that were in the front of the hotel, not the back of the hotel, to come into the front desk that had a lower front desk before it was a mandated requirement.
And door entries and visualizations of alarms and accessibility is for making sure that people didn’t get to put high up in the building because they couldn’t come down the stairs and on and on and on, tailoring that information beyond just the minimum requirements so that you can, legally, acceptably say you’re under the compliance of all these issues, highlighting the fact that you’re embracing that community to come to your hotel, that you feel that you’ve addressed bring in people that have these needs one of the things that are of high importance of these days going back to the ADA compliant accessibility of your website is, there’s a lot of services is out there that is often with called live ADA complaints checks.
It gets quite expensive, to be honest with. You used to be affordable until they realized they could make more money because it was more people asking for it. But basically you’re hiring a service that monthly with the limitations that they have of navigating a website, check your website the way they use it to see whether or not it is in compliance. Did they find something that doesn’t fit them? Their software is to do that that can check your website. We do that as a monthly log, which is highly recommended.
Should always do make sure that you’re doing this for two benefits 1 to promote what it is that you make sure that your website is compliant. With that. You can help those that need to use your website in that way, but also from the legalities that you’re following complaints as best as you can. The second edition of that is to make sure that you hire some live ADA tracking where they month it will go in and check your website and create a report for you and tell you if there’s something that is a miss or wrong that your Webmaster needs to correct her adjust for.
And these programs are constantly evolving. You’re getting more refined. But the third is that from all of this, perhaps when you see that you can embrace this type of business and expand its value proposition of offering service to it, that you’re really finding a niche within your community, that it makes it distinct between you and others. Now obviously is a brand hotel. You’re built to accommodate most of these things, but some do it better than others, and some have more opportunity to know some summary for building from previous brains, and others are new builds that are built to the latest standards of things.
Any which way you have these air highlighted assets that you can promote to these communities based on what you feel you can best address. Obviously, if you’re soft on what you’re into comedy for some and you don’t have a lot of those rooms, you don’t have a lot of those accommodations. It’s not a strength of a highlight. But if you have strong a combination and scale that you can point and say, Look at all this that we can really accommodate to make it a part of your market strategy.
Make it a part of what you’re proud of that you are addressing to the heart of the servant hospitality, this type of service to those who need it. So there you are, taking this week’s ADA compliance and how it benefits your bottom line. (Announcer) — Now, this week’s hospitality news that you should know.
LOREN — Okay, so for news and show review, we had a fun show. Um, as it always works out. Sometimes the fewer the co-hosts, the more active the dialogue. And we were able to tackle a lot of the topics that Mr. Robert Cole together on his newsletter, which he promotes.
And, if you would like to send it for Robert Coles Weekly, well-curated list that used to go exclusively to just ageism a board members, you can reach that out at Bit.ly/rockcheetah all lower case, and that you can sign up and get his newsletter as we get it relatively late on a Thursday night because he likes to catch the latest of the latest before we do our show in the morning but well-curated Great content and this week was no exception.
Um, With Me was with Mr. Robert Cole with RockCheetah and also Lily Mockerman from T C R M Service’s and Think Up. She’s a revenue management consultant and also a marketing consultant. Um, I thought I noticed a lot from what we were talking about, that there was a pretty centric theme to the topics that Robert got that I kind of struck a chord with on the devaluation of brand contribution. And I say that because of the list of articles that were kind of presented, hinted towards those come on commonalities that things that were happening within brand that brand just can’t solve that.
Independent hotels have a much greater edge for, or smaller owner shoes have a very good way of adapting to what they’re using brand for more so than brand can do for itself. Before I started that conversation, we did catch an update on the Coronavirus. It is affecting traffic, as we all know that statistically, we’re showing a massive loss to a lot of not only just the Chinese travel market to the U. S. But also the U. S. To the Chinese market and to the Canadian market.
And there’s a change of demand, plus also a concern in travel that even though it hasn’t spread to certain areas to the unfortunate degree has in China that it has the potential to dampen travel plans because of the potential of what the outbreak is because of its uncertainty of of contagion and how fast it goes on. And in Mr. Cole’s Roberts newsletter, he did point out that we did have two days of diminished expansion doesn’t mean it wasn’t so expanding, but that the numbers were larger than the day before.
And we were hoping that that was a potential trend that we would like to see, that it was on the containment side of things perhaps per se. But all things to be concerned with and to be aware of in what we’re doing and how it may change your strategies will be having that conversation the next week’s show as well. But we did cover a host of content Associated Toe really brand-wise was a kind of recognition that we need to always be thinking more strategically, less tactically when it comes to our short term interpretations of market swings and some of the articles that we hit on so you can get all of the links to all of the topics that I’m referring to here in the show.
Notes of the podcast at HospitalityDigitalmarketing.com/Podcasts Look for show number 235. There you have the Player and also all the show notes and links that we had in the live shows. Well, plus, also, if you would like to see are the complete replay of the live show, which lasted over two hours, as usual, we have it that at the hospitalitydigitalmarketing.com/live again look for show number 235 there will be the replay of the live show, plus a timestamp-based.
When we talked about what topic and all the links associated with the conversations that we did and did not get to, but some interesting highlights to my context of how brand has kind of diminished in its potential value proposition. There was an article. Do abandoned hotels branded hotels outperform single branded hotels, and you were hoping for an answer. And all it said is there’s enough data, which was an unfortunate because it showed where there was some advantage to the operational costs of sharing brand. There was a loss of value when it comes to the duality of marketing those same two brands, so kind of like, not really, which lends itself to the topic of, well, how much brain country should there be?
Even if you have multiple brands that you can draw to your single entity, it’s still not proven to be a strong benefit to that. Um, one comment I made about one of the articles, which was Ouch Marriott Hotel category changes for 2020. There was an over the cross board 15% increase in cost of redemption coming up. Now you have until March 7th to book on the old scale, but pretty much only a 7% reduction on some. But there was a 25 or something 22% increase on others anyway. It averages out to a 15% increase already on what was increased last year.
So I’m sure all of the Starwood um uh, members really, really happy that it has come true that having joined Marriott is been a unfortunate decline in the value proposition of their membership relationship from the previous Star War. Starwood Days. Talking a little bit about how consumer report just popped up with a nearly half of travelers book through third parties. Now that lends itself to the conversation that if Brand is doing such a great job, why are we still facing these type of numbers? Why isn’t that Marriott from its size and diversity and so forth dominating its inventory capabilities and bringing the guests through to them on discovering the hotels that are in market for those people?
Interesting going to it? And we have the discussion that was quite interesting about how their death of content really is not there, Um, for their own scale abilities with their hotels and the limitations of what they allow their hotels or the monetization of what they ask their hotels to pay them to create for them has created very small depth of content. They’re reduced to modules and pages and short term keywords, which you know key words, not even a reflection of what really is how we are discovered anymore, not with the bird roll out from Google in October, where it’s about the intent of usage of words and so forth.
So ah, lot of modalities. Air creating where branches can’t sustain their identity as strongly as third parties who have more depth of content. Because, let’s face it, when you go to the experience of hotels in booking dot com of the world, you have not only the hotel and its rating dates, but you have what to do while you’re in market. Other things to think about it. Market. Oh my gosh, there’s no pay packages that you can include flights and hotels and car rentals and maybe create better pricing models for yourself.
Where branches don’t have that, they may offer an incentive sponsored discount for car dealers, a carb rental, Laura potential coupon in relationship to using their credit card or an airline credit card in combination with whatever hotel. The offer. But the value propositions, as always, are never the strongest. The opaque combinations that are created in the third parties nor the content of destination, and this is a real value opportunity for independent hotels and small ownership groups that have maybe a little bit more lateral content development. But you’d be on social would have you where they can explore and expand what it is that they’re talking about in the context of what people are looking to discover we’ve had on conversation both on the podcast on the live show.
This is Google. Zero proposition, for those who not know that we’re referring to is that little answer box that we see almost down everything. Now Google’s trying to answer your question based on the career of the search he created without having to drive you to a variety of websites to answer that. So they’re hoping that by giving you an answer and variations of that answer, then they in fact, are providing the source or the results that you’re looking for in that you don’t have to go exploring elsewhere.
That’s called Google zero. Now you can get in there with proper schema, proper content development, and you are the answer to those questions, which makes it very valuable because Google’s giving you that space, should you earn it well before they ever look down past the paid results into the organic results, which were on a mobile platform. Eight pages of scrolling. So it is talking about the fact that we need to address our content value. We need to be an authority in what we are in our market by content, not just by keyword or modules or how we want to try to perceive selling ourselves.
So we had a fun conversation about that. We did talk about interesting other things, like 12 essential steps to creating a robust digital strategy in 2020 usually titles like that or Click Bait. But in this case, it was a nice, fundamental Yes, it’s captain obvious stuff, but I’d like to the fact that they highlighted the content development, the need to be an authority for what you’re creating and identify who you’re talking to and structure your content related to that, not on how you want to try to sell yourself.
So that was interesting. One that, of course, always we have what’s called the boob in the road. The group, which is the feel good, you know? Well, that’s Robertson. Creation of this, we talked about the 10 best all inclusive resort in the Caribbean way have to remind ourselves that there’s things that are done right, and there’s beautiful places that do it. And we had a fun talk about some of the ones that were in the crew that did that. And then, of course, we had the right row, which is the unfortunate underbelly of some things that happened in our industry.
And that was Man uses rodents, his scam hotels into offering free stays. I guess somebody had to tie to think they were going try to get away with it, and it seems that he did it more than just a few times as well. So with that, there was a lot of contents. We talked about influences, the value influencers. The one topic I want to bring into our news item for us. Discussed on the podcast today was one that I thought was very insightful toe. What’s totally a blind eye to brands.
If it is, there certainly have no independent initiative for this that I could see out of any of them. They may have tied to touch on it from time to time, but certainly nothing that shows that they are dedicated to the concept. And that was an article that came from Focus Wire and that was travel. Suppliers need to be thinking more about second wallets now. The article brought up of really neat concept about the fact that people went booking their travel c two perspectives to what they’re spending.
There’s the what we would say First wallet, which is the How much is it gonna cost me to get there, and how much is it gonna cost me to stay there? And for that reason, hotels are part of that engagement. But then there’s a second concept of once that’s been attained and the concept of how much is to be spent on those. There’s a second value proposition of how much can I do I have to spend on what I want to do while I’m there, eat while I’m there and have and and things about being there.
And that second wall and concept is a fun one to consider as to how can you interject yourself into that conversation? Lily brought up the fact that maybe there’s a value process that, as people are booking that you give them food and beverage buying opportunities, you know, spend X, but its value is why when you arrive include breakfast, your entire state. But then Robert completed that. Maybe you don’t want breakfast every day that you’re there. So maybe giving them a voucher or value comparatively to or credit that they can use beyond breakfast might be more of a value.
And that goes into the demographics and the personas that you’re talking to. Some with. Families really just want to get breakfast out of the way. And let’s go down to the cow trough and pick up some food and head back to the room, or romantic or business travelers or so forth might say, You know what? I just want something that I can come back to grab lunch with, maybe dinner with chill at the end of what I’m here for. Uh, so there’s lots of different ways to approach this and that second wallet concept.
What other values can you give? Can you maybe go to? And this is a benefit of independent hotels to some of your more predominant businesses around you that you would like to create affiliations with and maybe go in and do a 50 50 split and say, Hey, I’d like to give a $50 coupon to come to your restaurant. I’ll eat $25 of it if you eat the other 25 and everybody that comes into my hotel Ali the give it two, or they could buy up or I can offer it as a direct channel.
Value had huge success with that, where food credits given to direct channel. Of course, you will give it to anybody that walks to your front desk, but they would have to give you some way of communicating with them that’s direct, as in their direct email. Or if you and Tessa messing if they’re localized market, maybe that as well. But get that there would be a con conversion because it always said that ot eights and third parties, I’m fining them, driving first generation business to the hotel. I’m not fine with making its second generation business, because then I’ve failed because if I can’t communicate while they’re at my property, the value proposition to communicate with me directly should they want to return to my property when they come into the market, then I’m not doing my marketing job.
I’m not doing my operational job. I’m not doing my sales job. So for that reason, these types of incentives thes second wallet conversations of saying please let me communicate with you directly. Next time, number one euro is gonna get the best rate guarantee. But there’s a value proposition to it. Number two, I’m gonna Taylor what I talked to you about in ways that you want to know about because of being able to silo your data based on communications. And third, I will always value you to coming back by giving you something in reward for that.
Not carrot on a stick like Marriotts Ingres Bonus program points program, but rather and gratification reward saying you know what? When you come in the door and your repeat guests among you did this in a direct channel, I’m going to do this and this and you’re always gonna get this. This and this. This is what creates the loyalty of a loyalty program. This is what creates the return percentages of people coming back to your hotel that when they come to your market, you’re their choice. And if you can give them reasons to know what’s around the hotel so that they feel that they enjoyed to the full benefit they didn’t miss.
You know the foam. Oh, the missing of the biggest ball of twine because was around the corner And you didn’t tell them that Onley and reemphasizes the value proposition of who you are to them for what you are. And there you have it. Remember, you can find us on Google Play Apple Die tunes I heart radio, sound clubs, Sicher, Spotify on and unknown actually, 36 different platforms we’re broadcasting on for our podcast. You can even go to Google Assistant and say, Hey, Google play hospitality podcast will play the latest episode or Alexa, even Siri will do that for you so that if you if this is your first time finding us, please subscribe to us.
If it is not your first time, we sincerely appreciate a comment or review on the platform that you used to follow us on. It helps others to discover this content. And, of course, you have any feedback comments, suggestions as to what we should be talking about or would even like to join it as a co host for an interview with us on the podcast. You can, of course, reach me at Lauren at Hospitality digital marketing dot com. There I can go over and answer any and all questions, which I do.
Um, if for any reason you would like to go over and reach out to us for our live show, you can go to hospital. Did you marketing dotcom four slash live and also reach me via email at Lauren and Hospitality, digital marking dot com. So with that, thank you, as always for the privilege of your time, remember that we do have our live video broadcast every Friday at 11 30. Eastern called this weekend Hospitality marking the live show. Next week will be Show 236. If you elect to register to watch that show next week, you can go to bit.ly/hdmshow236 There, you’ll see the registration.
You’ll be notified via email or SMS or both of you prefer as to the start of the show. We do Sam Oh, casts also on Facebook, Twitter, Linkedin, YouTube and on lots of different platforms, including a recast for H S IMI I A pack and a chess match. European region at 11:30 a.m. Wednesdays at their respective time of Sydney and 11:30 a.m. for a pack and 11:30 a.m. For London for the u addition as well. With that, thank you again and we’ll talk to you next week.
You have been listening to this week in Hospitality Marketing, the Podcast show 235 brought to you by Hospitality Digital Marketing in support of the HSMAI, the Hospitality Sales and Marketing Association. International all rights reserved copyright 2020.
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