Should Hospitality Marketing be Managed In-House or Outsourced?

“Hotels that aren’t affiliated with a large brand or management company often lack the talent, technology investments, and bandwidth to be able to properly manage all the responsibilities of today’s hotel marketers. Most hotels do not have a dedicated Marketing lead on property supporting the asset. It’s often a DOSM who is split between wearing two very different hats. As digital marketing and eCommerce have grown in importance, the skillset gap has increasingly widened for those who are responsible for leading hotel efforts.

When you consider all that falls within their remit including the website, booking engine, analytics, SEO, paid media, email marketing, social media, mobile apps, check-in kiosks, public relations, sales and marketing collateral, reputation management, digital signage, META search, TravelAds, you can quickly assess that it’s a job for more than 1 person.

Digital Agencies are a great resource to leverage as they can support marketing leaders who may not have a background in digital. Whether it be for web design, SEO, SEM or Social Media, working through an agency can eliminate the need for dedicated support while leveraging SMEs across a complex direct channel landscape. Not to mention the fact that you can leverage their relationships with major players like Google and META.

I find that leveraging agencies for support on tactical initiatives and those that require huge technology or labour investments best live outside the hotel team. This requires great communication and collaboration between the marketing leader and the agency to continuously drive strategies forward. It’s about determining where your team’s strengths and weaknesses lie and incorporating 3rd party support where it makes the most sense. Regardless, the marketing strategy and lead should come from the property.”

“As an agency specialised in Digital Hotel Marketing, our experience is that all things digital are best to be outsourced. Together with a specialised agency, a tailored strategy can be created. Finding the route to your guests should be the essence of this strategy. Hotels that work with specialised web design agencies instead of creating something in generic tools like WordPress or Wix, have better cards in hand for a successful online marketing strategy.

When it comes down to running Google Ad campaigns for example, specific knowledge is necessary too.

Creating content for the various channels and marketing instruments can be conducted internally when the capabilities to do so are in place. In general, collaborating with parties that do not know the industry, or carrying out tasks by employees that do not have the right skills might seem cheap in the beginning, but will be expensive in the long term due to possible mismatches in communication and the reputation damage this may cause.”

“I have been on both sides of the fence, working for a management company and now running an agency. So while I may be biased, you need to find a partner that can complement your team. In-house marketers easily get roped into internal needs so it makes it hard to stay on top of trends and be experimental with new test and learn strategies. But, agencies like to have a “quarterback” on the client side to get things done.

1. First, create a plan with defined goals and objectives.
2. Second, choose a partner that knows your industry.

Leverage agencies to help with things that need expertise, like website development, search engine optimization, paid media (PPC, programmatic, OTT) and social media.
Alternatively, look for help for your operations and sales support, in terms of reputation management, collateral design, email marketing and so on.”

“I believe that Branding and Marketing have become much more important than 10-25 years ago when we just saw it as a tool to do sales and therefore clustered it as Sales & Marketing. Nowadays these are two totally different playfields and I believe that the traditional S&M managers and teams are not expert enough in the field of branding and marketing to keep up with all the trends, analyses, tools, and types of advertisement and to translate this from the brand core to actionable plans.

Therefore I strongly believe in splitting it and getting an expert (team) on board and making sure you have an external agency working with you to design the foundation and strategy. Then you can decide if you will manage day-to-day action plans yourself or also outsource.”

“In my experience, review platforms are an incredibly underutilized and overlooked marketing tool. With over 3.5 billion searches per month on Google and Trip Advisor combined, review platforms are a fantastic opportunity to promote your hotel’s Xmas package; spa; facilities; restaurant; car park; or even a book direct campaign and yet because responding to reviews can be time-consuming, many hotels either do not respond to their reviews at all, or else tend to respond with a generic “Thank you for your review. We take our guests feedback seriously and look forward to seeing you again”.

This is why outsourcing your review management can be a game changer. The time professionals take to respond to and manage a hotel’s reviews, ensuring that certain key search words are used, and contact details and marketing are included, results in more direct business, more traffic to their website, and ultimately, an increase in revenue. It really is time to recognize the importance and influence that responding to reviews has and to ensure that it becomes an integral part of your marketing strategy, and one that should be outsourced for the best results. Of course, some may argue that reviews should be responded to internally so the teams have their fingers on the pulse regarding their guest’s feedback. However, hotel employees can still analyze and read reviews without the added stress of responding to them physically.”