Sector-Specific Brand Marketing Services for the Hospitality Industry

Hospitality businesses cover a broad scope, from high-end boutique hotels to budget family-oriented lodges, travel industry companies, restaurants and chains, professional caterers and events providers operating everywhere from premium locations to sports stadiums and VIP spaces.

Branding comes before everything else, ensuring you have a strong, distinct and instantly recognisable brand and can build on that foundation through positive guest experiences, high-impact marketing campaigns, communications through your social media platforms, and other marketing activities.

However, leading on marketing without a brand strategy is a recipe for disaster, as the nature and pace of the hospitality sector mean guests make active choices based almost entirely on their relationship with your brand—whether good or bad.

Hospitality brands often need to nail their branding before pursuing expansion plans, launching new services or sites, or developing an updated pricing strategy or published room rate schedule because their branding is the foundation on which each of these decisions rests.

When we first work with a hospitality business, we start with a full brand audit, which gives us a wealth of data and insights to identify pinch points, problems, or areas where a lack of brand cohesion is holding the company back from achieving the revenues and volume of potential customers it is capable of.

As a brief overview, those obstacles that can be resolved with an effective, ambitious and forward-thinking brand strategy include:

• Problems with differentiation, which occur when consumers perceive that two hospitality businesses are comparable or don’t have sufficient knowledge of the brand to understand how their offering, guest satisfaction, or service quality make them special.
• The need for greater agility, where the seasonality of hospitality means many companies depend on peak periods, without any defined way to diversify and take advantage of shifts in services or offers in other seasons.
• Inconsistencies within the brand, without precise, clear brand guidelines that unify communications and brand values across every location, site, venue and team.
• Uncertainty over target audiences or a reluctance to refresh and update branding for fear of alienating existing guests.

Our data-focused, in-depth research services add certainty to all parts of your brand strategy. We dive into data extracted from multiple sources to unpick the values, qualities, and aspects of your brand that stand out and define the nature and style of your branding going forward.

Each hospitality marketing strategy we create is as unique and defined as your business, working to drive greater brand recognition, assist in revenue management or take hold of hospitality trends to help you get ahead. Below, we’ve summarised some of the key objectives we work on in collaboration with a diverse range of clients, from Michelin-star restaurants to hotels, travel services, spa and leisure facilities.

• Crafting Clear Hospitality Brand Identities: Hospitality businesses that are instantly identifiable by their logo, style, content or service quality have a powerful edge where they continue to appeal to repeat business users and clientele while their brand communicates what they are all about and the experiences potential guests can expect.
• Using Brand Marketing to Carve a Niche in the Hospitality Industry: Your defining attributes are those special characteristics that make your brand different. Capitalising on precise branding, whether through visual brand assets, value propositions or market positioning can all give you a standout offer that is unmatched.
• Delivering Unified Communications and Messaging: Many hospitality companies try to cover all bases, which can muddy the waters and confuse the marketing audience about the underlying brand values. Having clarity about who your customers are, what they want, and how you can exceed their expectations is key with a brand personality that is seamless and cohesive.

Talk to us today about barriers to growth your hospitality business is experiencing, and we’ll walk you through how the ‘sparking’ process works, one step at a time, to shed light on your greatest branding opportunities.

To learn more about how brand strategy can solidify your presence as a hospitality provider and act as a tool to help you remain relevant, appealing and credible in a crowded sector, please contact Flintlock Marketing at your convenience.

Our award-winning brand strategists, consultants, and creatives provide bespoke services to understand what makes your brand tick and share those stories and powerful messages with your key target audience.