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Leading Hotels of the World: a sorry situation

October 6, 2008 by Neil Maclean 

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Can five star hotels afford to be superior? Some brands just seem to consider themselves above adopting a human and personalised form of communications. I never got anywhere with Orient Express, beyond providing a seminar on social media. I was pompously rebuffed by a marketing exec. from Pride of Britain. And Leading Hotels of the World are currently showing themselves to be utterly clueless in the art of contemporary corporate communications. The company’s immediate problem lies with a promotion launched to celebrate the group’s 80th birthday. It hit the rocks for all sorts of reasons and online commentators have been quick to criticise the way LHW have handled the subsequent mess.

One of these is Alex Bainbridge who has republished the CEO’s apology and skewered the thing like a frog on the dissection table. Along the way, he points out that a video apology would have been a good deal more effective than this rather wooden missive and rightly cites the now famous JetBlue effort as a classic apology of its kind.

We are big fans of using video to get your message across but it doesn’t suit everyone and even if Leading Hotels were reluctant to run VT, this situation shows that if you want to play in the new media landscape, you should adapt your communications approach to avoid the new and very public potholes.

Lesson number one is surely that it is smart to get into some sort of continuous and authentic conversation with the market right now and on as many different fronts as possible. That way you build up relationship collateral in case things go belly-up later.

Filed under: Hotel PR, Travel PR
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Comments

8 Responses to “Leading Hotels of the World: a sorry situation”

  1. Abroad Reviewer on November 5th, 2008 12:48 am

    clueless in the art of contemporary
    corporate communications
    for travel guide

  2. Healism on November 29th, 2008 1:58 am

    For me big hotels doesn't mean Five Star Hotels but big hotels means that serve their guests as if they are their bosses.

  3. Instant Confirmation Hotels on December 23rd, 2008 6:22 am

    Big Hotels are the ones that charge value for money irrispective of that star rating.

  4. Alisha on January 13th, 2009 2:37 am

    I don't think that only rich persons can afford luxurious hotels like 5 star /7 star hotels.

  5. Bunny Ranch on January 16th, 2009 1:52 am

    This is surely a sad time..

  6. Expat Philippines on January 18th, 2009 8:45 am

    What is the world coming to. They overlook the simplest fo things

  7. John Alex on January 22nd, 2009 3:50 am

    For me luxury hotels should also be assessed by the food they offer. A hotel isn't luxury unless it has good food

  8. Portugal Holidays on January 28th, 2009 1:52 pm

    That is a wonderful article, just added your site to favorites. Thanks so much.

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