We’ve written before about the rise of experiences with consumers spending more on going out and travelling than they have done in previous generations. That all sounds great for an industry – hotel real estate- that is a beneficiary of said increased spend but it doesn’t guarantee all properties will be successful.
In the years after the pandemic when the world opened up and people were willing to splash the cash on hotel stays after being confined to their home for so long. The problem was that the industry was still recovering from the impact of a near-total shut down. Employees had been jettisoned and capex deferred: reality collided with expectations.
All this means that owners and operators have to now think much harder and act more creatively when it comes to selling the experience – even in a budget hotel. It is what potential customers expect.
“The good thing, I think, about narrative and story work in branding and hospitality is that it’s shrinkable it can scale at any level,” said J Bayfield, travel journalist, educator and consultant at the Resort and Residential Hospitality Forum in Athens.
For Bayfield it is about working on the “emotional underpinning” of your offering regardless of where you are in the chain scale.
“So if you don’t have the luxury budgets you can still give it that emotional underpinning by being authentic to who you are, [what] the building is - the experience you want to give,” he said.
Educate and inform
The aforementioned labour crisis has left many hotels without the requisite skillset to make the most of what they have when it comes to telling the right story
“The key thing is you need to pay for talent,” said Brett Gregory-Peake, managing partner at Liaison, an advisory firm aimed at real estate and luxury brands.
Having the right people, helps you go beyond the usual.
“There are so many places that obviously showcase their experiences but how deep are they?” Gregory-Peake added.
Narrative and storytelling have got to be a at the core of what you’re offering, otherwise you risk superficiality. But if you get it right those customers that bought into it become your brand ambassadors.
Live like a local
One fascinating example of substance over style is the Ergon Foods brand. A Greece-based hospitality brand that has grown from a small family deli in Thessaloniki into an international ecosystem of hotels, restaurants, and food halls across Europe, the Middle East, and soon the US.
Ergon, it turns out, has had a lot of success by doing things counterintuitively. Food comes first, then the rooms are added after.
“What we are doing is we start by creating the F&B space as a standalone destination for locals […] and then we add some rooms,” said
The idea is to create a destination that locals love before tourists are encouraged to visit and stay.