Providers are excellent facilitators to reach much bigger goals than if you try to play on your own, trust your vendors but make sure that everything you do together is a great game and business for them.
Alfredo Lamadrid*
Today more than ever the Hospitality industry requires a great quarterback for the Marketing & Digital Services playbook. What do Superbowl champions and hospitality organizations have in common?
Both need:
- A great, but not necessarily extensive and complex winning playbook to beat the competition
- Excellent staff of Coaches & Coaches, to provide guidance before, during and after the commitments made to their clients
- A great Quarterback, leadership and commitment to execute a winning plan in real time
The owners and guardians of all this are the key to success.
1 winning playbook
A winning digital services playbook combines sales, marketing and revenue management to gain spaces current competition markets, target markets or even emerging markets where the strategy is to improve positioning. Like the Superbowl winners, the playbook is a dynamic document that continues to change. Team owners and coaches work out the strategy and then the players execute it on the pitch.
It requires considerable reflection and research. Developing a winning digital services playbook should be a primary focus of hospitality owners and managers.
A digital marketing playbook should include events at strategic points, expenses, organizational goals, and bid schedule. You should also anticipate market changes due to seasonality and competition. This playbook should be shared with the players of the suppliers and revenue management, it is important to share the strategy with the main vendors and put them in tune with the game.
Providers are often excellent facilitators to reach much larger goals than if you try to play on your own, trust your vendors but make sure that everything you do together is a great game and business for them too, avoid generating relationships where you only believe it is also for them, make sure they remain committed to the playbook and motivated to give everything for you in the game
2. great coaches
Hotel digital marketing is complex. It's a holistic strategy that combines website design and functionality, search marketing, social media and content marketing, in addition to email marketing and campaigns. Typically, there are vendors who provide advice and guidance on data and systems in each of these areas.
Or try generating your own hybrid, internal & external models, trust your people equally and especially your young people, listen to them and they can probably surprise you, generate a balance of generations and get with certainty the best Digital strategy
Like Superbowl champion owners who choose winning coaches and leaders who guide the entire organization at all levels, hotel owners must make the right decisions about which vendors to partner with.
Not necessarily multinationals, foreign and extremely large are the best option, but do not misunderstand me, nor does it mean that national or local ones will be the best option, my recommendation is to make sure that the one you give an opportunity demonstrates knowing your industry, being flexible, disruptive thoughts and willing to recognize their own weaknesses.
Like the digital services playbook, bringing together the best mix of providers is an important task for owners. These coaches should be able to challenge strategy and get the most out of each player.
3. A Grand Field Marshal
Executing hotel digital marketing in real time in a market and above all in a particularly changing world is difficult. Like a winning quarterback, making the right plays and timely adjustments is based on being able to read the situation. Keeping an eye on key performance indicators for digital marketing plus revenue management results is crucial.
There must be a digital marketing quarterback capable of making the right decisions based on great training and a solid playbook. A quarterback doesn't have to be right all the time. But they should have reason enough to post a winning "score" for the owner.
In today's challenges it is crucial that your team plays as such, regardless of the execution that is not something minor, playing as one, Play as one is something that you must put as a goal and priority at all times of the game
Tips for Owners and Senior Managers
Dedicate time, effort and resources to the digital marketing strategy. Make sure the strategy aligns with property assets, human capital, and all of your capital investment.
Choose the right suppliers and partners that fit the objectives of the organization and are willing to work together, this we talked about earlier the important thing, do not necessarily look for perfect vendors in my experience that does not exist and when they promise it much less, it does not matter if you put it in a contract inclusive, the reality of the operation, the satisfaction, loyalty and great experiences of your customers will not be able to measure them in a contract
More than suppliers you need allies both technological and other diversities of services.
Hire the best "quarterback" to develop and run the digital services playbook, I know it sounds easier than it necessarily is, but remember not always all the answers are necessarily inside the team or outside.
*Alfredo Lamadrid Alducin is an expert consultant in hospitality technologies; Managing Director @ PDT Positive Disruptive Thinking Hospitality Guest, Managing Partner @ HOSTEC Mexico. You can contact him through the [email protected] and [email protected]
