As hotels and venues adapt to a new social and business environment, event planners, too, are pivoting to keep up with a new normal, brought on by the COVID-19 crisis. Your hotel marketing needs to pivot, and your first step should be to appeal to event planners new priorities and responsibilities.
Planners are working from home in most instances, relying heavily on the internet to stay connected and informed, balancing event cancellations, postponements and longer-term sourcing for 2021.
The world has changed, and as planners work to operate in this difficult situation, hotels need to revisit who they are and what they need to tailor their hotel marketing strategy.
Provide transparency, professionalism and communication above all
One thing is clear: in this uncertain environment, planners have no time to waste with venues that deliver partially complete RFP responses, inadequate communication or poor service.They value visibility, responsiveness and precision from hoteliers and expect transparency, professionalism and efficiency at all times. This is something you need to communicate through your hotel marketing.
Event planners are busy people – with 37% of planners saying they manage over 50 events per year – and current events have made their world even more unpredictable.
Know your audience
Knowing how to market to and communicate with planners improves your relationship with them. It will also help your sales teams create the right kind of tailored experience. As such, changing your hotel marketing to suit new planner needs is essential during this time.
To respond quickly to RFPs, cater to their specific needs and secure more MICE bookings and repeat business, you need to understand planner roles, challenges and priorities as the industry recovers.
Here’s a refresher on the seven types of typical planner types you’re likely to work with:
- The Third-Party Planner: These “TPPs” are professionals who rely on industry relationships and purchasing power to secure deals. Work with all types of events for all types of client.
- The Association Planner: May have a distinct theme or purpose of their events, and organise them for nonprofits and organisations.
- The Enterprise Planner: Work for large companies and corporations planning large-scale events. Great at navigating corporate hierarchies and focus on quantifying and delivering a return on investment (ROI).
- The Full-Time Corporate Planner: Manage many types of events, have very little time to space and are tasked with pleasing internal stakeholders.
- The Occasional/Part-Time Corporate Planner: This type of planner is often harried, need help and love advice. Putting together a meeting or event is just one element of their job.
- The SMERF Planner (Social, Military, Education, Religious, Fraternal): Handle everything from reunions to weddings.
- The Government Planner: Work in a highly structured environment and face restrictions on budget, vendor and site.
Pivot your hotel marketing to the new “digital” normal
Making all of your hotel marketing and interactions with planners digital is the best way to help them achieve their goals.
Site visits and walkthroughs of event space are impossible at this time, which means it’s more important than ever that you find new digital tools to allow planners to visualise meeting spaces and layouts.
This can involve photos of past events, video, VR tours and walkthroughs, or 3D diagrams.
Have this information handy online as it helps showcase your venue’s space. Here are six ways you can expand on your digital venue marketing:
- Images: The beginning and end of great hotel marketing. Make sure all images are high quality and showcase every part of your hotel, plus the spaces that make your hotel or venue pop!
- Floorplans: In the 2019 Planner Sourcing Report, 48% of planners said the most important thing before they send an RFP is floorplans.
- Diagramming: Event diagramming software can help you showcase your space easily to planners while giving them the ability to customise and visualise the space as they would have it set up.
- Virtual tours and videos: Virtual reality can transform customer experiences. Venues such as Courtauld Gallery and London’s National Gallery already see great success with virtual tours.
- Virtual site visits: Not only does this help planners out while they work from home but will be a great feature to provide them once life returns to normality.
- Search engine optimisation (SEO): Organic search is a competitive space. Your position in Google search listings is determined by many factors; a key one being how good your competitors are at SEO. Add this to your hotel marketing toolkit.
- Data-backed digital venue marketing: One of the best ways to keep track of your digital performance and hotel marketing is with data and intelligence. This will help you understand MICE demand and your performance next to your competitors’.
Read more about these here.
Communication is key
Staying in a planner’s good books means keeping up consistent, transparent and informative communication with them, especially when it comes to your venue and hotel marketing.
In general, even if your hotel is closed, you should publish an on-site preparedness plan and a consistently updated FAQ page. It should include the contacts and resources planners need.How you communicate that plan matters too. Make sure you’re using multiple channels and that your plans are on the homepage of your website, with links to additional information.
Make information sharing easy. Create a single webpage or resource area where event planners can go to get the latest updates, resource links, and contact details.
Stay informed to inform event planner
Read up on the World Health Organisation’s planning recommendations for mass gatherings and explain how your venue meets those expectations.
How can you help the planner communicate preventative measures to attendees and provide a point of contact if they have questions or concerns?
Be transparent about the steps you’ve taken to assure your facility is clean, and your staff is ready and able to perform their functions.
For events that can proceed once restrictions are relaxed, open communication and proper planning is critical. “I think it is important that attendees to any conference know that you have their health and safety as your primary concern,” said Marty MacKay, president of global alliance for Hosts Global.
“The Pre-event material might educate attendees on how the virus is spread. We’ve seen how conferences are adding hand sanitizer and ensuring all meeting and break out rooms are wiped down between sessions. Coaches and other forms of transportation are also being wiped down. Some events have added a no-handshake policy.”
How Destination Marketing Organisations can help
Times are tough right now. That makes thinking about future business more important and the assistance of partners even more vital.
When it comes to attracting future business from meeting and event planners, hotels and venues should lean on (and support) their local Destination Marketing Organisations (DMOs).
As most hospitality professionals know, Convention and Visitors Bureaus (CVBs) and other DMOs are nonprofits that help promote and facilitate business and leisure travel in the area.
Consider them almost an extension of your sales team, because they’re always eager to promote the area – including your hotel.
CVBs and DMOs are serving as community organisers, connecting planners with updated information on their city’s current situation and pointing them to reliable resources.
Destination organisations are aware of the impact the pandemic having on their business communities. A recent study from the Destinations International Foundation and MMGY Travel Intelligence revealed that CVB and DMO expectations of “extreme impact” jumped from 8 to 79% during March.
The survey found that close to 35% of DMOs surveyed are now creating a pandemic emergency plan. It reaffirms the role these organisations play in supporting meetings and events industry through local insights and strategic partnerships.
Here are a few ways you can partner with these organisations:
Share resources for better insights
No matter the size fo your property, the best way to keep a strong relationship with your CVB or DMO is to make sure it’s a mutually beneficial one. Aside from leads and reciprocal marketing, build a relationship based on resources.
Leverage the destination organisation for the information travellers need, including safety updates and assistance with rebooking. As an example, VisitDallas is encouraging planners to reschedule instead of cancel their events.
They are prepared to help planners and venues juggle their bookings schedules during this uncertain time. Conversely, you can also provide insight from the hotel perspective by sharing pace reports, cancellation trends, and reschedule updates.
This helps the destination organisation create more effective and targeted advertising that boosts confidence in travel to the location.
Establish a partnership and plan for the long term
By sharing data and information, hotels and destination marketing organisations can create powerful partnerships that provide key insights for future planning.
These organisations help you by providing a holistic view of the locale – which in turn showcases future trends and opportunities. For example, the Singapore Tourism Board has already created a Tourism Recovery Action Taskforce made up of public and private groups.
The taskforce is charged with the job of “restoring confidence and providing assurance to Singaporeans and foreign visitors.”
Your destination marketing organisation can help restore confidence in the following ways:
- Vital communication and updates
- Local and innovative event ideas
- Strategic future planning
- Assistance with rescheduled events
These are uncertain, challenging and sometimes scary times and worrying about the future of your hotel business is only natural. Take this time to review strategy, pivot to this new normal and ensure your venue and hotel marketing is what’s going to help win planner business for Q4 and beyond.
If you found this content helpful, download the full ebook: “The Hotel Manager’s Guide to Marketing in Uncertain Times“. See how hotels are responding to the COVID-19 crisis and how you can use marketing, sales and sourcing to reach and appeal planners right now.
