WHAT ADVERTISING SHOULD WE DO?

Even hotels in the most prominent positions rarely realise their full potential without some advertising. As it is increasingly expensive, it is of the utmost importance to select your media carefully, consider the content critically and spend your money wisely.

The cheapest source

Your own guests are your best ambassadors. If looked after properly and sufficiently impressed, they will spread the word and save much formal advertising – and money.

How do you get started?

Until you get known, there are steps you can take to put yourself on the map:

• Introduce yourself at the local Tourist Information Centre. Take a sheaf of brochures and/or business cards.
• Speak to the person who runs the local Hotels Association, which you may already have joined. Be guided by any advice given.
• Call at local places where potential guests stop off, eg public houses, cafes, restaurants. Leave a few brochures and/or business cards.
• Send a couple of brochures and several business cards to each of your friends and relatives for them to distribute.
• Always carry brochures in the car, ready to hand out.
• Distribute business cards like confetti. Everyone who just might give a lead to business ought to have your card in their pocket.
• Become an active member of the local community. Locals, particularly business people, are there to help you and you them.
• Introduce yourself to other hoteliers nearby. You would like their overflow when they are full and you will then know the best places to pass people when you’re full.
• Make sure at least the outside of your hotel is tidy and welcoming.

Existing advertising

You will probably have been pleased to pay for advertising the vendor arranged so that you have a continuing presence in the various guides. The fact that it has been paid for, however, is no guarantee you will derive business from it. It may have become a habit as opposed to being under constant review to assess its financial viability.

Every time someone telephones you with an enquiry, ask where they heard of your hotel and write it down. Keep a permanent record with a view to working out the cost per enquiry at the end of the year. At the same time ruthlessly prune out those sources which are useless.

Assessing your own needs

In journalism, you need to know your market and tailor what you are capable of writing to a specific publication. In the hotel industry, you need to know the type of people who will be attracted to the services you are capable of providing. Once you know this, it will help you accurately assess which publications you should place your advertisements in.

Three guides:

• Witling’s Press Guide
• Benn ‘s Media Guide
• British Rate and Data (BRAD)

list virtually all newspaper, magazine and guide book publications, together with circulation figures. They are very expensive to buy but most reference libraries keep them.

Take a good look at specialist interest magazines when there are facilities within easy reach of your hotel. Boating, angling, walking, hill-climbing, pony-trekking, steam railways, nature reserves, are but a few. Remember specialist holiday guides as well.

Once you have listed the publications you think may be suitable, contact them and ask for a media pack. This may well include a copy of the publication, all the advertising information you require and a readership profile. From that profile, you will see what proportion of the various socio-economic categories read that publication.

The standard categories used are:

• A higher managerial, administrative or professional
• B intermediate managerial, administrative or professional
• C1 junior managerial, administrative or professional
• C2 skilled manual workers
• D semi- and unskilled manual workers
• E those at the lowest level of subsistence.

From all this data, you will be able to ascertain the publications which will reach the maximum number of the type of guest you want to attract, and an appropriate cost.

Weekly local newspapers

Advertisements cost much less in weekly local papers than in their national brothers, are regularly bought by many who habitually visit the area on holiday and, to a lesser extent, by those seeking property (see page 39). Few hoteliers realise this and steer clear of local advertising unless they have a restaurant open to the public. Incidentally, if you know the vendor had a poor reputation, stress ‘under new ownership’.

Daily local newspapers

Consider these only when potential guests are already in the area, eg business clients, at peak holiday times and/or you are open to non-residents.

The best timing for newspaper and magazine holiday advertisements is not easy to predict. Much depends on the economic climate; if buoyant, holidays get booked up earlier than if the economy is depressed. Certain weeks often work well for particular hotels but no general pattern can be established. Most importantly, don’t advertise summer holidays when people’s minds are on other things, like Christmas, or autumn breaks when most are taking their main holidays. Check out the timings of newspaper advertisements with regard to:

• Easter breaks
• the main holiday season
• off-season breaks
• Christmas/New Year breaks.

What about content?

An advertisement is not an ego trip for you. It should be a means, in the most economical way possible, of getting across to readers the benefits to then of staying at your hotel.

Selling is an art, and advertising is an essential part of your selling process.

Based on well established principles, any advertisement must:

• first grab the reader’s attention
• stimulate interest
• create the desire
• prompt action.

CASE STUDY

The advertisement (Figure 23), intended for a golfing magazine with predominantly A, B and C1 readers, adheres to the AIDA principle shown above. ‘Bourne to be pampered?’, using a play on words, is intended to grab the attention of readers who subconsciously think they are of a higher social standing than they actually are. Everyone wants a holiday to remember and, as the attractions unfold, using ‘bullet points’ for ease of reading, the interest and desire are created. You will notice the Brights set their stall out. In stipulating the age of children, the message is to assure those without children that their tranquillity will not be spoilt by youngsters. Finally, to prompt action, ‘immediate’ attention is promised, inviting readers to reach for the telephone.

Should you have brochures and/or a website?

Brochures can complement a website, or be superseded by one. It is fact that more than half of all hotel bookings are currently made via the Internet, and the percentage is rising. This is because so many of your potential clients work with a computer screen permanently in front of them and regard it as their right to conduct much of their personal business whilst at work. Booking flights, holidays, etc has therefore become commonplace during working hours and the Internet is the means employed.

It is also fact that getting a website professionally designed and installed need cost no more than a quantity of good-quality brochures, and much less if you have the time and the expertise to do it yourself. So should you have a website? The answer very much depends on your situation. If your hotel lends itself to filling up from passing trade, probably not. If, alternatively, you rely on advertising, a website should be seriously considered – some would say essential. Go on line, bring up your local tourism site and see, via the associated links, how many local hotels are advertising on the Internet. As with visiting hotels when you were looking for one, assess whether or not you think the various hotels are advertising to best advantage. Look at their own web pages. Would their advertisement tempt you to book with them? Are they conforming to the AIDA principles? Could you do it better?

If you have a small bed and breakfast establishment you may consider a website too costly and/or too cumbersome for your needs. In that event, if you subscribe to an entry in the local guide, you could speak to your tourism centre and ask if you could be put on their main website with contact details to include, if possible, an email address. On the other hand, if you have concluded you need a piece of the action by having your own website, the next question to ask is, can you do it yourself? To help you make up your mind you can be guided by Bruce Durie’s Creating a Website, in this series.

Supposing, after due consideration, you decide you cannot cope, or if you’ve had a go and got into difficulty, you will need the services of a web designer. If you have been particularly impressed by one of the hotel websites you have visited (but bear in mind that big is not necessarily best – see below), ring them up and ask who their designer is. You might get round to finding out what the cost was – it’s only by asking questions that you will get the whole picture! If not, you will need to ring around to find one who is experienced in hotel web pages and ask if they will quote before you employ them. To design a website of, say, five pages, to include obtaining a domain name, renting the web space and submitting to a few directories, should cost no more than £600 (in 2007) with possibly a £200 commitment each succeeding year.

There are many directories, the owners of which are dying to take your money. From your observations when you were checking out other hotel websites, and in consultation with an experienced web designer, you should be able to reach the right decision as to which directories best suit you.

Although web designers should understand the principles of advertising, make sure yours does and do not be talked into commissioning unnecessary pages. For example, if potential clients are searching via the local tourism website, there will be links to all the tourist attractions. You do not therefore need to list them yourself, just provide sufficient material to grab the attention and to stimulate interest.

If you need digital photographs of your hotel for attachment to the website and you are unable to do them yourself, your web designer may provide them. The web designer who advised on The Bourne Hotel pages (see acknowledgements) does the complete job and this helps to keep costs down.

If your hotel is difficult to find, you may need to include a map on the Find Us page. Otherwise, a hyperlink to the AA website (www.theaa.com) will, via Site map and Route planner, bring up a route. You can also see a map and even zoom in on the street you are looking for!

Should you also be commissioning brochures, make sure your printer and/or photographer knows precisely what you want and provides detailed quotations in writing. In providing text for brochures, do not gild the lily to the extent that you contravene the Trades Descriptions Act. Keep to standard paper sizes to avoid unnecessary expense.

Shown in Figures 24 to 28 are five web pages you might consider adapting to your own hotel. Since they contain information that might change, eg tariffs, it is essential that you keep your site bang up to date. Also you will need to know the effect of your inclusion in directories. You can receive the data you want for a few pounds a month from, for example, www.web-stat.com.

Since web designers may come and go, make sure you are supplied with a user name and password so that your site may be accessed for any alterations should your original designer become unavailable.

Costs and budgeting

Having set an amount you are prepared to spend on advertising, do not exceed it. Easy to say, but not so easy to stick to when bookings are slow coming in. A few years ago at such a time, a hotelier well exceeded his budget by spending £5,000 on a half-page ad in a prestigious newspaper. He got not one reply. By all means build in a little reserve to give your bookings a boost, but don’t make such a calamitous mistake yourself.

As well as value for money, always watch out for deadlines. They are often weeks, sometimes months before publication dates.

For an in-depth and absorbing look at advertising, read Michael Bennie’s Do Your Own Advertising in this series.

CASE STUDY

The Brights have already paid £650 for advertising done by the vendor. Since newspaper advertising costs from about £50 per single narrow column centimetre, they have opted for two magazines, one a general-interest weekly and one a monthly for golfers. The £500 set aside for February will over four weeks aim at bookings for Easter and summer, the same in May to give a boost for summer, the same near the end of August to publicise autumn breaks and the same in November to advertise Christmas and New Year. They have spoken to another hotelier whose website impressed them and who holds office in the local Hotels Association. Chris has good computer skills and has designed a website herself. She has nevertheless engaged their new friend’s designer to get the site up and running and they have spent the remaining £500 on his services and five directories to kick-start their business. They hope to reduce this commitment as their business takes off.

Invitations to advertise

Sales people will telephone you what will sometimes seem like daily, inviting you to advertise in this or that newspaper, magazine or holiday guide. They are very persuasive and always have a special offer or attraction.

Having carefully researched your advertising media, do not be tempted to make a spur-of-the-moment decision. If it sounds attractive, make a note and research the publication but stick to what you have planned.

If they are over-persuasive, offer them, instead of a fee, a percentage of the bookings you receive from their advertisements. I have yet to have such an offer accepted!

Widening your horizons

When times are hard, and they can be lean before your reputation has spread, consider what you can offer to generate business.

Speciality weekends, eg cooking, painting, photography, guided walks, wine-tasting, creative writing and so on are much in vogue. Is there any sort of weekend you could run yourself, or maybe organise with a guest host?

If you offer inclusive package holidays, eg theme breaks, you may need to comply with the Package Travel, Package Holidays and Package Tours Regulations 1995. Trading Standards Officers will advise. A free DTI publication, Looking into the Package Travel Regulations, is available.

Other ways of generating turnover in quiet times are to:

• do cream teas (providing you are in the right location)
• be host to local organisations for lunches, dinners, meetings and the like
• host small conferences for companies
• run whist drives, chess and/or bridge evenings.

A ‘conference pack’ showing what is needed is available free of charge from your regional Tourist Board.

Ask yourself:

• What special knowledge have I got?
• What facilities can I offer?
• Who can I offer them to?

Bear in mind, however, you must keep to the terms of your premises licence. It is for this reason that if you envisage you may in the future want to serve alcohol to outside groups, or to provide entertainment, etc, you should widen the scope of your premises licence at the outset (see page 165).

CHECKLIST

Do you know:

• How to fix your tariff?
• How to price your bar goods?
• How VAT affects your prices?
• All about holiday insurance?
• How to get the bills settled?
• What banking is costing you?
• What a trade association can do for you?
• How your rates bills are assessed?
• How to publicise your new hotel?
• What are the best publications for your advertisements?
• How to word an advertisement?
• How you could increase your turnover?