Mr. MacKenzie

Sales & Marketing

Five TripAdvisor All-stars Discuss the Link Between Management and Marketing

By Josiah MacKenzie, Founder, Gradigio Group

Using a slick marketing campaign to promote a poorly-managed hotel isn’t very smart. Sure, you might attract lots of guests — at first. But once they visit and have a disappointing stay, they’ll simply spread the word. And bad news always travels faster than good news, especially in these days of instant communication.

Smart hoteliers understand how key management decisions impact marketing, for better or for worse. To explore this link, I interviewed a diverse group of five hoteliers whose properties are near the top of the TripAdvisor listings for their respective cities. With over 30 million guest reviews, TripAdvisor is the de facto benchmark of online guest opinions. Those hotels at the top are obviously making wise business decisions that positively affect their marketing and image.

The hoteliers I spoke with are:

1. Mariquel Waingarten of the Tailor Made Hotel in Buenos Aires, Argentina
   
2. Michael Rosney of the Killeen House Hotel in Ireland
   
3. David Craig of the Hotel Teatro in Denver, Colorado
   
4. Adele Gutman of HKHotels in New York City
   
5. Jonathan Raggett of Red Carnation Hotel Collection in London

Interestingly — and probably not that surprisingly — the management styles of the five are quite similar. Here are their top tips.

Start with a clear, specific vision

Waingarten Mariquel Waingarten of Buenos Aires’ Tailor Made Hotel is a seasoned traveler who often found her luxury hotel experiences lacking. If she was paying top dollar for her room, she didn’t want to be nickeled-and-dimed for amenities like WiFi and bottled water. And even if she was seeking a luxurious, haute couture hotel experience, she wanted to feel welcomed and comfortable.

"Design hotels can be pretentious,” she says, “and it's easy for the guest to feel a little out of place." So at Tailor Made, she makes sure the vibe is friendly and casual, not stiff and formal. A friendly "personal concierge" also assists guests throughout their stay. Local wines, in-room Apple computers, WiFi, international calls, and laundry service are all competely free.

Her warm, welcoming strategy paid off: Tailor Made is consistently at the top of Buenos Aires' crowded market of hip, new design hotels. And its marketing efforts are much more successful because of this.

Respect word-of-mouth

All five successful hoteliers have a deep respect for the power of word-of-mouth. Generating guest referrals is a top priority for all, with their managers and marketing team collaborating to make this happen.

Rosney The Killeen House Hotel is a 23-bedroom, country house-styled hotel. Owned and operated by Michael and Geraldine Rosney since 1992, a full 70 percent of their business comes from repeat guests and referrals. "When we first became aware of TripAdvisor a couple of years back, we immediately identified it as a tool that had tremendous [word-of-mouth] potential for us to get the message and the ethos of our property out into a marketplace that we otherwise had no hope of reaching," says Michael Rosney. Their message was this: guests are our friends, and are treated warmly and with special consideration.

Communicating this to their staff, everyone works together to make sure that’s the feeling guests experience. They usually do, and that’s led to positive referrals and, now, positive online reviews. “Anyone glancing through the reviews we have garnered on TripAdvisor will be clearly struck by the big number of them that specifically mention the people rather than the place,” Rosney says. “It’s not within our power to make the bedrooms bigger, or to order up 80 degrees of sunshine, but it is very certainly within our power to ensure that all of our guests receive a uniquely warm and Irish welcome from all of us here in the Killeen House."

Exceed expectations

Gutman Working in New York’s competitive, sophisticated hotel market, Adele Gutman knows the importance of exceeding expectations. Vice president of marketing for HKHotels, Gutman says merely satisfying your guests’ needs won’t get you anywhere. "If you want your guests to shower your hotel with good word-of-mouth, both on and offline, you have got to wow them with exceptional service and a unique experience that leaves them with something to talk about,” she says. “If they get home and their friends, colleagues and associates ask them how their trip was, you want them to be able to say, ‘You’ll never believe what an awesome hotel we stayed at. They had this, that and the other thing, and the people there – that was the best part of all.’”

On the flip side, creating false expectations by planting fake reviews on sites like TripAdvisor is a dangerous move, warns Waingarten. "If you create false reviews, people could come to your hotel and be disappointed, and that is the worst thing that could happen. A customer with failed expectations is impossible to satisfy."

Design systems that make everything revolve around the guest experience

Waingarten invests a lot of time carefully planning the guest experience outside her hotel as well as inside. When someone makes a reservation at the Tailor Made Hotel, he’s invited to fill out a form sharing his plans and expectations for the trip, whether it’s viewing local architecture, exploring historical sites or shopping. The staff then builds a customized itinerary for the guest to use if he wishes. "Guests appreciate knowing the places that I would go to myself," says Waingarten.

Craig David Craig, general manager at Denver's Hotel Teatro, agrees that traveling is a holistic experience. "It’s not just an airline flight, a hotel, a dinner and a trip to the theater, but all of these things combined. We work diligently to provide as many of these services as possible … to ensure a high-quality experience."

Remember your hotel staff is a marketing tool

Front-line employees play a critical role in how a hotel is perceived. After all, these are the folks guests are interacting with during their stay. Our group of savvy hoteliers pays extra attention to hiring and training people with extraordinary customer service skills.

"Hotel Teatro has an inherent culture of exceptional service," Craig says. "We hire our hospitality professionals very carefully, and work diligently to train them to five-star and five-diamond standards." Associates are involved in many of the decisions affecting hotel operations, leading to a strong sense of ownership. Additionally, they’re empowered to make decisions that ensure a positive guest experience.

Gutman looks for a specific type of person when hiring for her New York hotels. "Our philosophy is to hire the kindest, happiest people we can find – people who are naturally inclined to love to help people,” she says. “Then we develop their natural talents … so that they are more than simply their title, whether it be bellman, guest service agent or housekeeper. They are all professional luxury hoteliers dedicated to providing personalized, luxurious service to each traveler who crosses their path."

Raggett

Jonathan Raggett, CEO of London’s Red Carnation Hotels, approaches staff selection a bit differently. Rather than looking for people with a bent toward customer service, he looks for unique personalities that will create a memorable hotel experience. "We consciously recruit 'characters' with personality and flair,” he says. “So, for example, you have … Alex, who not only checks you in but may also sing at your table. The staff here is driven by an expectation of success rather than a fear of failure. This frees them to be themselves, and excel."

Hotel design and amenities play a big role, too

Our All-Star hoteliers go to great lengths to ensure their properties are aesthetically pleasing. To get people talking, you have to be remarkable. A great way to do this is to offer a unique, memorable design, plus luxurious or interesting amenities.

HKHotels operates some of the most intriguing properties in New York, including the Library Hotel. Just steps from the New York Public Library, rooms are themed according to the Dewey Decimal System and filled with artwork and books corresponding to their theme. "Giving each hotel a bit of a concept, a unique identity, gives the guests and the journalists a hook to rest their story on,” says Gutman. “The Library concept, everyone loves to talk about it and write about it … We get a lot more play and exposure from that than anything else we can do."

Having a unique design or rare amenities increases your chances guests will talk about their stay, or take the time to write a positive review.

Use social media to spread the word

All five hoteliers are fans of using low-cost social media to spread the word about the service and amenities their guests receive. For some, this is the only marketing they do. And when done right, positive social media exposure can lead to mainstream media coverage. The Tailor Made Hotel is a good example of this. "We built such a good online reputation that mainstream travel publications such as Condé Nast and Travel + Leisure contacted us to do a story,” says Waingarten.

The viral nature of social media websites amazes Craig, who says it’s definitely changed the way hotels must do business. If you’re not on board yet, you’d better get moving. "I don’t think that even Mark Zuckerburg, when he established Facebook, could have foreseen its exponential growth ... Yelp, Facebook and Twitter are ultimately where our clients are sharing their experiences, and TripAdvisor is clearly the most-visited site for guest reviews."

Read – and use – online customer feedback

Unlike some of the less popular hotels on TripAdvisor, All-Star managers take online feedback extremely seriously. They often build their entire marketing and communications strategy around what people are saying about them and to them online.

At first, HKHotels received low TripAdvisor rankings. But once Gutman set out to improve their position by responding to the feedback, things quickly changed. "We started making a big deal out of the reading of every review at our morning meetings to observe what our guests really responded to and learn what we could do better,” she says. “Now we share ideas between the hotels, and involve all our staff, including every bellman and housekeeper, in the process. Our staff loves it, too."

Craig uses a similar strategy. "We also spend the first portion of every staff meeting reading our newest TripAdvisor reviews aloud to the group. This establishes a forum for recognizing favorable performance and for developing solutions where we have areas of opportunity."

Rosney of the Killeen House admits a lot of hoteliers are dismissive of TripAdvisor’s power, and some are cynical about its content – but he says those are mostly people whose facilities receive low rankings. For these five All Stars, its positive guest referrals are an important source of business. In the end, successful hotel management and marketing is a smooth, integrated system: managers invest resources in creating a remarkable guest experience, listen to feedback (and act on it), then watch as guests return and spread the good news to their friends – both in person and, more and more often, through social media.

Josiah MacKenzie is the founding owner and marketing brain of the Gradigio Group, a San Francisco-based collection of media properties catering to the hospitality industry around the globe. He also has roles in other ventures, with business interests in North America, Europe, Southeast Asia and Australia. Mr. Mackenzie has published over 100 articles, and has appeared in the Washington Post, MSNBC.com, and Entrepreneur magazine. His new book, The Savvy Hotelier's Guide to Hotel Marketing Ideas, reveals over 1,000 of the most profitable marketing tactics used by hotels. Mr. MacKenzie can be contacted at 415-671-6235 or josiah@gradigio.com Extended Bio...

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