Mr. Grossman

Sales & Marketing

Five Powerful Practices in Hotel Media Outreach

By Lanny Grossman, President, EM50 Communications

The competition is fierce. New hotels open each day, older ones undergo renovations and everyone in the middle is vying for the attention of the media as well. Whether a small boutique hotel, large chain hotel, far off country estate or a city center business hotel, one thing remains true across the board. In order to garner the desired media attention, you need a story.

There are said to be somewhere in the neighborhood of 75,000 hotels worldwide. In major cities like New York, Los Angeles, London and Paris there are in excess of 50 “luxury” hotels per city alone. If you divide the number of total luxury hotels by the number of available editorial travel pages each month, they, to no surprise, do not match. Hence, the importance of effective media outreach and most importantly, the need to differentiate one’s property with an intriguing story. An existing hotel with nice clean rooms, room service and maybe even a spa, is not press worthy by itself. There are plenty of nice hotels with clean rooms and good service. After all, that is the general idea of the hotel industry to begin with. What is new? What is different? How is what you are doing relevant to today’s traveler?

Create A Unique Guest Experience

Over the last several years, guests have become more sophisticated, more discerning and have an increasing number of hospitality choices at all levels. In choosing a hotel and / or a destination, there are now more criteria and requirements that are taken into consideration during a traveler’s search. Guests are concerned with the overall experience and how it matches either who they are, or quite often, who they want to be. The unique guest experience is not only going to attract the end consumer but it will generate the appropriate media in order to get the guests there in the first place. As such, hotels must identify one or a few attributes that are representative of the property and hang their proverbial hat on them. For example, there is a small hotel in Mexico where the staff comes from the local village. The chef is an older local woman who makes homemade guacamole at every meal with locally grown ingredients. Guests always seem delighted by the snack as it is representative of their location. Although that’s nice and rewarding for guests, it is not good enough for a story or memorable guest experience unto itself. To take it a step further, the chef provides guests private classes on how to make the perfect guacamole themselves so they can replicate the experience at home. Those guests are not going to go home and talk about lying on the beach. They are going to brag about learning how to make guacamole from a local Mexican chef at the hotel. That experience, can now be ‘sold’ to the media as a trend and unique guest experience worthy of coverage; the idea of ‘authentic, indigenous culinary education.’

It’s All About Value

In addition to the Unique Guest Experience stories, the media, particularly during the current economic uncertainty, is very interested and focused on ‘value’ and/or ‘deals.’ Most daily newspapers and now numerous online websites / blogs have weekly “Deal” columns or e-newsletters. Combine the unique guest experience offering with financial value and you have a winning combination for media worthiness. Hotels do not have to give it away free to offer value. The perceived value is equally as important. Be clever; use the amenities and offerings at your disposal. Even better, use those that have little or no cost to you but have value to the guest. For example, if you have a parking lot and normally charge $50 per night for parking, you can include parking in a package and immediately pass along a $50 cushion of value to the guest, all the while maintaining your revenue per room. A good rule of thumb for “deal” coverage is that the package or offer needs to represent a 20-30 percent savings compared to published retail prices. You can also use the deal or offer to drive business where you want or need it. For example, if Sunday night is the slowest night of the week, offer a weekend package where guests can stay for Sunday night at half off and enjoy a complimentary bottle of wine at dinner. It drives additional room revenue, food and beverage revenue, as well as gives the travel media something new to talk about. Remember, a combination of creativity and value gives you the best chances at coverage…and happy guests.

Know Your Target

For any of the aforementioned strategies, you have to know the outlet (i.e. magazine, newspaper, blog etc.) you are targeting. Understand your target before attempting to secure coverage. Take a national travel magazine for example. In the front sections there are normally a few pages dedicated to the new and notable. There are often feature reviews, general destination coverage, food and beverage oriented coverage, spa, driving trip etc. Do you homework and select the section in which you think your crafted story fits. Then find the appropriate editor and pitch a specific story for a specific column. Journalists very much appreciate if you have done your homework and already know what slot you fit in. The more you can help them fulfill their coverage needs, the better chances you have at them helping you.

Build Relationships

That said, after you do your homework, find the appropriate writers and editors, do all you can to foster those relationships. Let us say you have pitched a story on interesting turndown amenities because your hotel delivers handwritten poems on local parchment each evening. Help the writer find other offerings that are similarly interesting elsewhere saving them time, adding the value you bring to them and expediting the writing of your desired story. As we decided above, the story needs to be there, but you can certainly help it along once it is.

Play Host

All of the above is effective and a loose framework for achieving media results. However, there is nothing that compares to first hand experience. Invite journalist to stay on an individual basis. Host an organized press trip for a small group at once. Work with the local CVB to support their efforts and host journalists they recruit. There are certainly more costs associated with hosting a journalist but it will pay off in spades with the journalists’ ability to tell a first person account as well as feel a bigger responsibility for doing right by you after the hotel has been gracious hosts.

When dealing with the media, there are never any guarantees. One plus one does not always equal two unfortunately. Deadlines change, pages disappear, coverage topics get shifted, etc. That said, the above suggestions are the most effective way to accomplish the goal of securing media coverage for a hotel. Always keep in mind that the idea is to build brand awareness and / or drive reservations. Ensure that the story being told or requested fits in line with one or both of those goals. Otherwise, it is not worthwhile. Each time you think you have a story to tell, simply ask yourself, would I want to read this about somebody else?

Lanny Grossman specializrs in PR, luxury lifestyle marketing and consumer outreach. He began working with notable hotel properties such as the Waldorf=Astoria in New York and Le Byblos in Saint-Tropez, after which he became the Director of Public Relations for two of America’s famous restaurants, Tavern on the Green and the Russian Tea Room. More recently, Mr. Grossman was Director of Brand Communications for Small Luxury Hotels of the World, an international hotel consortium whose portfolio boasts over 450 of the finest hotels in more than 70 countries. Mr. Grossman can be contacted at 646 861 2801 or lanny@em50.com Extended Bio...

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