During more than thirty-five years in the hospitality industry, Neil Salerno worked for several prestigious hotel management companies. Since he entered the industry in 1967, he held positions in hotel sales, marketing, and operations. Working his way from front desk associate, food & beverage management, and sales management, Salerno progressed during a time of explosive growth in the hotel industry. He has held positions in almost every area of hotel operations and sales; managing hotels from 60 to 1102 rooms.
Electronic channels have changed hotel sales and marketing forever. Internet website marketing, social media, the Global Distribution System, and third-party aggregators have all presented new marketing opportunities to hotels around the world. In effect, the Internet has created the first affordable global marketplace for large and small hotels everywhere.
Hotel Marketing Coach | Wednesday 15 December 2010
Every now and then, I come across an article which is so self-serving and outrageous that I just can’t resist giving an alternative viewpoint. It was titled “Does your website have its own CMS?” They were promoting the use of content management for hotel websites and encouraging hoteliers to make their own site changes and additions. It’s great to post articles for hoteliers, but to publish a cov...
Hotel sales training has been an important, yet somewhat controversial topic for many years. Everyone agrees that the potential benefits should make it a great investment. But, in too many cases, the results fall short of expectations. We often find that there is a huge gap between what people learn during the training and what they actually practice after training.
I first introduced “Revenue Management for Dummies” in 2006. My goal was to break down some simple steps to improve hotel profitability by focusing on managing rates and inventory instead of centering on occupancy alone. I still feel that some ‘experts’ make revenue management more mysterious and complicated than it needs to be for most hotels. My mission is to eliminate the mystery.
After performing literally hundreds of website analyses, it amazes me how many hotel websites are either totally or partially dysfunctional. There are so many sites which are not in-step with even basic search engine requirements; sites with poorly written text content; inadequate navigation; and sites which are not designed to sell rooms or anything else for that matter.
More than twenty years ago, I read a book about break-it marketing which, from that point on, influenced the way I view the hotel marketing process. Break-it marketing changes the way we look at everything we do. Everyone is familiar with the old saying “If it ain’t broke, don’t fix it”. This saying implies that what we are doing is working, can’t be improved, and should, therefore, be left alone...
I've read several articles lately which discuss rate building post recession. At least one of those articles, provided suggestions which are completely opposite of acceptable revenue management principles. So, before you blindly follow some of those suggestions, consider committing to revenue management. My sense is that there is still considerable confusion, among independent hotels and some sal...
In the last two years, the economy has taken a severe toll on our industry and its resources. In the resulting scramble to stay afloat, many hotels turned to every marketing and operational technique they could uncover. Some of those techniques helped, some didn't. Many hoteliers searched for that one unique tactic which would turn everything around; only to find that it doesn't exist.
Maybe I'm a little unusual, but I actually measure hotel marketing success by added revenue and profit. I'm still getting used to the increasingly popular measurement of counting followers and fans. I fear that many hoteliers are spending more time and resources tweeting and posting on non-travel related social media while neglecting the most important travel-related social media like TripAdvisor...
For many years, small independent hotels suffered from a tilted marketing playing field, which was dominated by their big budget competition. During the recession, they had to contend with larger franchised hotels, many of which had lowered rates, placing further sales pressure on smaller hotels. In normal times, these larger hotels wouldn't dream of competing with small independent ones.
