What has this to do with the hospitality management? Two things:

Firstly we must never forget that the competition may not be the hotel or restaurant down the road, but may be the option to stay at home, get married on a beach, go camping, hold that meeting as a webinar.

Secondly the importance of building a relationship with your customers. This does not mean flying them half way round the world, but demonstrating that you value their custom, and sharing with them some of your story, your values, getting to know your team, spending some time talking to them and getting to know what is important to them. This builds trust and loyalty, and is a key step in building a lasting long term relationship with your customer and the prospect of repeat business.

Building the guest relationship is covered in more detail in the Hotel Success Handbook

Caroline Cooper

As a starting point, you can host meetings or club/group dinners and general social events. To take the step further you could invite topic experts, celebrities or people of specific interest or host quizzes or workshops. This might provide another opportunity for a joint venture.

For example, if your topic is gardening, you might be able to form a partnership with a local nursery, garden designer, gardening author, historical/ famous garden, manufacturer of garden products, or market gardener (or all of these).

To capitalise on your expert topic run educational weekends and breaks. These might include a combination of the above. Continuing gardening as an example, it might include talks from experts, transport and free entry to a number of local gardens of interest (maybe as exclusive guests of the owner), plant sales through a local nursery, special promotional prices on other garden products from manufacturers or wholesalers, menus planned around locally grown produce.

It’s even better if you can tie in with any specific gardening events happening locally, such as RHS flower shows, Gardeners’ Question Time, etc. Or host your own Gardeners’ Question Time calling upon local gardening celebrities.

You could follow a similar theme for any specialist area be it spas, cars, food, fashion, sailing, singing, cheese making, wine tasting, archaeology, geology, and anything else you can think of.

Promoting this type of event is so much easier than general promotions as you have a specific audience who you know has a particular interest. And (importantly) if you share this interest, you are in a much stronger position to present things in a way that will appeal to your target audience. If you do not share this interest, then involve someone who does, who can totally relate to and empathise with your prospects and guests.

For more ideas on using promotions to add value and increase sals see 21 Lessons in Running a Profitable Hotel Promotion.

Becoming an expert gives your hotel something that will make you stand out from everyone else. It also means you are more likely to attract the type of guests with whom you can build up a good rapport and a better prospect of repeat business. It’s very easy to be enthusiastic and passionate about something that interests you, and this enthusiasm will translate into bookings if managed smartly.

An expert topic gives you the opportunity to get noticed by writing articles, blog posts, guidebooks or maybe even organising clubs or seminars in your hotel relevant to the topic. Any of these expert-related actions can form great PR and an opportunity to attract the attention of your prospects, and are also a fantastic way to help you build your prospect list. They enquire or request information and in return you get their contact details.

Here are a few examples of how you can use your expertise to get guests:

• If you have a spa, you could write articles about different treatments and therapies, and put together your own small guide.
• If your hotel is popular with golfers, you could include tips from a golf pro, blog about golf tournaments, or review local courses.
• If you have an interest in classic cars, you might want to promote classic car events in the area, write about the events, and maybe even chart your progress with your own car if you have one.
• If you have a particularly extensive or unusual wine list and want to make this a feature, you could review the wines, or ask your wine supplier to write articles for you.
• If you have an unusual or particularly renowned menu, using local ingredients, put together your own recipe book. You may even want to include the source of some of your ingredients and maybe get your key suppliers to share the costs. Then offer cookery lessons or courses centred on your signature dishes.

All these examples are ways of being unique and different using your expertise. You can make your expertise the differentiating factor of your hotel, and a way of connecting with a potential audience. If you have a very niche interest, then this will translate to a very niche target market, so try and have a focused but broad enough area of expertise.

Having a specific area of expertise also makes it easier for you to find a forum or networking group where you can get your name known, as well as finding potential opportunities and prospective joint ventures. And once established as an expert, you can build on this by offering themed events and weekends.

One word of warning on your expert topic – don’t let this detract from the basics of a well-run hotel. Get the basics right first – your accommodation, service and food – then focus on your areas of special interest. No use having the best-run spa in the county if your rooms don’t live up to it, and you certainly won’t attract wine lovers if your food isn’t up to the same quality as the wine, for example.

For more ideas on making you stand out from your competitors see the Hotel Success Handbook.

Tomorrow we’ll talk about how you can use your expert topic to add a perception of value.

And my hairdresser isn’t the only one doing it. I get regular texts from another store that I’ve not visited in 18 months, but they are great at reminding me when it’s Mothers Day, Valentines, or any other time I might be wanting a gift, or to help someone else celebrate.

But surprisingly I get very few mailings or communications of any kind from any hotels or restaurants where I’ve stayed or eaten. To the contrary, when we celebrated our Silver Wedding Anniversary a few months back, when I booked our favourite local restaurant I told them it was a special anniversary. Not one single mention of it while we were there. I was actually disappointed that no one had picked up on the fact.

People seldom celebrate alone; so helping your guests to celebrate seems an obvious opportunity to bring in more business. Capture your customers’ birthdays, anniversaries and special dates on your database, and then invite them to your hotel or restaurant to celebrate, and receive their special gift, offer, or maybe just that little bit of extra attention.

• Invite wedding couples back for their first (and subsequent) anniversary.
• Make birthday cakes or even just a cup cake and candle, as a surprise to give a day to remember.
• Invite businesses to celebrate any awards.
• Keep a note of special anniversaries for local businesses – their AGM, awards dinners, anniversary of their launch.

Make any offers or incentives worth while to encourage people to bring their family, friends or colleagues and make up a big party. What you lose in profit margin in one area generally you’ll more than make up for with the extra spend on other items.

But it’s not just about the additional business on the day. Bringing their friends, family or colleagues introduces others to your hotel or restaurant; look after them well and you’ve got a great opportunity of winning new customers.

And receiving a birthday card with a voucher – or an invitation to celebrate a forthcoming anniversary – is a pleasant surprise, and adds a very personal touch. (If you can hand write these, even better.) It can make a huge difference and really demonstrates your interest in your customer, building their loyalty and repeat business.

Adding personal touches and rewarding customer loyalty are some of the topics discussed in the interview series ‘How to Give Your Hotel a Competitive Edge‘ which starts today and runs until 16^th July. Register at any time, but the sooner you register the more calls you’ll have access to.

Caroline Cooper

The result? Unhappy golfers as they had to pay premium rates, unhappy hotelier as he had to turn away business, and worse still unhappy regular guests who could not get a room.

The moral of this tale? Talk to your customers, get the dialogue going and discuss the options to achieve a win-win

Caroline Cooper 

But for this to happen a number of things had to be in place:

• Setting the rates to make it a tempting offer
• Training staff to make the suggestion
• Staff knowledge of the rooms (how else would she be able to describe the room to us?)
• Giving staff the authority 

The result? A win-win.

Caroline Cooper

The power of ‘Try before you buy’ should not be underestimated. It’s a great no risk way of allowing someone a taster of what you have to offer. So whether it is to entice them away from another regular venue, experience your premium rooms or simply to encourage them to buy products which are complementary to your core offer, it’s a win win. They are happy to receive the ‘trial’ product or service, and you in turn get your high margin product and service in front of more customers. And we know that once we’ve experienced to best we don’t want to down grade again (think about when you test drive a car, you are always given the model with all the bells and whistles). The spin off is it starts to build the relationship with new customers and build loyalty with existing ones, even if what they experience isn’t to their liking

Here are just a few suggestions:

• Taster evenings for your new menu for your local neighbourhood or regular guests. You don’t need to give a full-blown meal, just a sampling of different menu items. Although the food will be free, people will still be buying drinks. If you do this before your normal service times, it might also encourage people to stay on for a full meal.
• Give regular guests a room upgrade when available so they might be tempted to book this type of room on their next visit.
• Wine tastings, particularly when you are changing your wine list. Your wine merchant might also provide some sponsorship for this.
• Invite local clubs, associations and business groups to use your meeting facilities free of charge for their first meeting.
• For guests booked for 2 or more nights on a room only basis offer a complimentary breakfast on their first morning, so they are encouraged to take breakfast every day.
• Invite representatives from your local tourist information centre to try out your facilities and experience what you offer first-hand. This means you will be the first venue to come to mind when asked.
• Invite front-of-house staff from local tourist attractions to sample what you have to offer so they can make recommendations to their visitors.
• Invite existing customers to bring a friend with them for free (your existing customers are your best form of referral and by inviting them to bring a friend you are increasing the loyalty of the existing customer).
• Offer first conference booking free if they book a series of events.
• Invite social secretaries from local clubs to a function menu tasting.
• Invite PAs and secretaries from local businesses to a networking meeting enabling them to sample your meeting and conference facilities.
• Offer a tasting session, lunch, or dinner for the couple and parents to potential wedding parties.
• Set up a networking event for local trades people enabling them to sample your food and meeting facilities, so they might refer you to their customers.
• Offer a one month trial membership to your spa or fitness suite.

All these suggestions are an ideal risk-free way to give your guests and prospects confidence in what you provide. Even more importantly, this starts to build a relationship and loyalty towards you.

Caroline Cooper

Motivate and encourage your staff to sell more, while making guest service a priority. This is dependent on good training that gives staff the skills and confidence to do this in the right areas, so take the time to invest in this.

Being transparent and open about your restaurant or hotel business helps build trust and can be very eye-opening for staff. Ensure that your staff understand your margins and how these are calculated. Without this knowledge it is all too easy for them to give away (or eat!) your profits. If they understand your budgeted margin and how well you are performing towards this, they are more likely to take some ownership and are in a stronger position to come up with ideas and contribute to your margins.

Rather than limiting incentives to a straight sales figure, you might consider a prize for the person who makes the biggest increase on their sales compared with the previous month (this incentivizes those starting from a low base). Or how about rewards for those who make the best suggestions (this includes back of house staff), and those who get the best guest feedback? Obviously, when using guest service as a metric this can be subjective, so you’ll need to be clear on the criteria for measuring this.

Ensure a fair policy for tips, service charges or tronc system that incentivises all team members to excellence in all areas that impact on the guest in some way, not just those in direct guest contact. It’s very easy for waiting staff for example to ‘see’ the results of their efforts, but this needs to be shared and communicated to everyone in the business.

 Caroline Cooper

By under pricing, the hotel potentially leaves money on table; by overpricing, it may price itself out of the market. The constant challenge, of course, is trying to determine the optimal price on a given day or afternoon. Prices may rise as occupancy increases (giving incentives for early booking), but might also drop again at the last minute if target occupancy levels look as if they wont be reached. 

The debate was whether or not dynamic pricing is the only key to unlocking revenue potential and taking advantage of every revenue opportunity out there. 

Whilst there were compelling arguments for dynamic pricing – primarily of the reminder that we are in business to make a profit – those against the motion reminded us of the following:

• The need to consider the lifetime value of the guest, not just the price they pay today
• The additional incremental revenue that may be generated by that guest. (Anyone who has staying in Las Vegas will know that this is a key driver on determining the room rate and the standard of room.)
• Does a lower price devalue your brand?
• Recognition of guest loyalty; will changing your pricing alienate your most valued guests and encourage them to go elsewhere?
• How can travel companies budget if prices are so variable?
• Can your distribution systems cope with the changes?
• How consistent are any price changes against advertised promotional rates?
• If focusing just on rooms on the book, does this take into account forecasted bookings?
• How do guest feel when they talk to someone who has paid half the price they paid?
• Is your offer suddenly worth any more (or less) today or this afternoon just because the market demand has shot up (or down)? 

Should you be consistent or should you go with the flow and let the perceived market forces dictate your pricing levels? In other words should your hotel compete on price?

What’s your view on this? Do you flex your prices according to demand?

Caroline Cooper

For example of only 45% of your guests take breakfast, this leaves another 55% who go without or go elsewhere. Even if they don’t want a full blown breakfast are you missing out on sales of croissants, coffee or fruit?

If you know that only 25% of your guests eat in the restaurant, this means 75% find an alterative. If only 75% of diners order a side portion of vegetables, 25% just have the main dish; if 40% of conference organisers want coffee and pastries on arrival, 60% go without. And if only 10% of your restaurant diners have a dessert, that leaves 90% who don’t.

But before you can address this you need to understand why.

Sticking with the dessert example ask yourself, is it because:

• The order is being taken too soon and diners are too full
• The dessert menu is too boring or does nothing to sell itself
• It’s too expensive, not seen as value for money
• It’s too cheap, giving the perception of poor quality
• Main courses are so big diners don’t have room for a dessert
• Service is slow so people are in a rush to get home or back to work
• The ambiance is wrong and diners feel they don’t want to stay around
• Diners feel rushed don’t feel welcome to stay
• Dessert menus are slow to materialise so people have gone off the idea
• There is too little information so people don’t know what they are buying
• Not everyone wants a dessert so those that do go with the majority
• They simply aren’t offered dessert

Some potential solutions:

• Review your dessert menu and include one or two extra special items
• Add seasonal choices using in season produce to give variety and perception of freshness
• Ask customers what they’d like to see on the dessert menu
• Let customers see the dessert menu at the start of their meal to get the idea in their mind at the outset
• Offer non-sweet alternatives at the same time: port, cheese, more wine, specialist coffees for the non dessert lovers
• Make a point of dessert portions for sharing
• Offer take home desserts
• Give staff an incentive to upsell on desserts
• Ensure staff are confident to describe all the dishes on the menu

Whether you are a hotel, restaurant or conference facility, adopt the same approach with all your offers and services where you are potentially leaving sales on the table.

Caroline Cooper