Branding is a fundamental necessity for hospitality businesses, where potential guests make decisions based solely on the strength and credibility of your brand identity.
Guests might choose between boutique hotels to prioritise excellent personal service, corporate hotels for business travellers, large chain hotels for family-friendly and low-cost accommodation, or a well-known hotel brand in a new city for familiarity and reliability.
The only way customers may know what your brand stands for and the customer experience to expect is through your branding – and how this is showcased through your website, social media platforms, marketing materials, and the tone and style of your communications and advertising campaigns.
Of course, the hospitality industry includes a vast scope of businesses, from restaurants and venues to caterers, bars, and others – each has a similar dependence on their branding to make them stand out as an obvious choice for their target audience.
The Key Importance of Strategic Branding in the Hospitality Industry
Hospitality is somewhat unique because the service customers pay for isn’t a tangible product. Instead, they choose brands based on experience and how well this aligns with their expectations.
Brand strategy always comes before anything else. It helps you pinpoint the special and unique qualities that define your brand image, identify ways to link marketing back to your brand story and heritage, and demonstrate what you are all about.
Businesses operating in this fast-paced environment may also have very different target markets. Describing and communicating what you offer ensures the guest demographics you want to appeal to pick you over comparable hotels, restaurants or businesses because they can see that you meet their needs and fulfil their objectives.
Your strategy underpins all other brand marketing and promotional activities, creating a definitive brand narrative that steers your themes, service delivery and values, whether based on luxury, cost, relaxation, leisure, business or something entirely different.
We’ll stick with hotels as an example while reiterating that similar principles apply to all hospitality-focused businesses. The pivotal point is that a repeat customer or new guest will choose your business because:
- They trust you: They understand the brand and what to expect and can rely on you to deliver.
- They like you: The brand appeals to their objectives and represents a business the guest wants to select over their competitors.
Branding really is that simple at its core: creating consistent, distinct, and relatable branding that customers resonate with and that drives their decision-making in your favour.
However, developing a brand strategy is undoubtedly a little more intricate. We begin by auditing your brand to gain a clear idea about your current positioning and performance and discussing the results you’d like to achieve, whether you’re embarking on a rebranding project or want to start afresh with a newly revamped brand image.
There are several aspects to creating hospitality branding that delivers lasting impressions. Still, your strategy should begin with specifying the ‘why’ that sits behind the business, what your hospitality company exists to do, and the background and histories that have gotten you to where you are today.
It’s also essential that a brand strategy isn’t seen as an administrative task but is actioned across the board, helping you create a strong digital and physical presence through cohesive logos, visual brand assets, and symbols representing your hospitality brand’s values and purpose.
Common Problems Ambitious Hospitality Brands Overcome With Brand Consultancy and Strategy Services
Flintlock’s expert brand marketers work with a broad cross-section of hospitality businesses, many of whom recognise an issue within their branding that has meant losing out to competitors, seeing their market share fall, or identifying drops in brand equity.
Some of the most frequent issues we address include:
- Differentiation challenges, where two competitors are seen as so similar or without any key factors that separate them, which can lead to a ‘gridlock’ where neither particularly stands out or appeals.
- A lack of flexibility to adapt, especially during down periods outside of peak seasons where brands are not in a position to offer alternative or adjustable services.
- Lack of consistency throughout the brand. The ideal is to implement brand guidelines that ensure even larger multi-site hospitality companies always communicate and phrase their offerings in the same tone.
- Challenges with changing customer demands, or expectations, or where outdated branding continues to target a demographic that no longer has the same needs or priorities.
Barriers to expansion or sustained profitability don’t have to be permanent and can often be managed and turned around through strategic brand building.
By revisiting your foundational branding, unpicking areas that are no longer meeting your business needs, conducting market research to determine the wishes and preferences of your target audience, and creating a strong brand identity, you can effectively reposition your hospitality brand and begin moving forward.
Professional Brand Strategy Support From Our Specialist Hospitality Team
Flintlock is passionate about the power of branding, and how seemingly simple visuals, styles, lettering, logos, and displays can create a compelling, enticing and exciting brand offer that draws in new guests and captures the attention of existing loyal customers.
Our unique ‘sparking’ process allows us to get underneath the noise and extract meaningful, real-world data to inform the brand strategy development process, where we know how your brand is perceived from the inside out.
Comparing that position with your targets or how you’d like to see your brand perform in the future provides a comparison we can use to determine the stepping stones along the way or where communication or branding problems are causing that gap to widen.
A brand strategy acts like a roadmap that sits behind all your marketing efforts, publicity activity, and brand assets from that point onward. It can determine how you create a self-sustaining niche within a competitive market, the identity of your hospitality brand, and why that appeals to potential guests.
Contact Flintlock Marketing to discuss your hospitality brand strategy requirements and we’ll be happy to provide more tailored guidance.