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.

In his post about new PR practices, Robert Scoble says the new PR is about “creating visually-rich experiences”. I completely agree.
Recently some clients hosted a welcome party for the Singing Children of Africa who were touring Scotland to raise funds for their school and orphanage in Kenya.
We talked to the media and as a result there was a television feature in the evening news with a slideshow to come in a national newspaper.

However, you can’t leave these things to chance and as part of our coverage of the event we shot our own video to distribute to other new organisations, for the hotel’s website, the charity’s website and for the local council. Needless to say, it can also now be found on video sharing sites, including YouTube.
There was a delicate balance to be found between promoting the client and making a more universally useful piece. I would really like to know what you think of it as part of a new-style PR package.

We just returned from a short family break at the Isle of Eriska. Stunning: weather, facilities, service. This is one of those places which constantly evolves (new spa suites, water garden, statuary) while retaining its essential character.

That character comes across in spades in the Isle of Eriska blog. I was glad to hear Beppo’s updates are really popular with guests. I am not sure the blog is much of a selling tool at the moment but it certainly keeps loyal fans happy.

Once you have polished off the nightly after-dinner tray of chocolate truffles in the drawing room, you hardly need to find more chocolate on your pillow. Instead there is an Eriska bookmark with the blog address, encouraging you to stay in touch. Good idea.

Update: I just found this in a TripAdvisor review:

“A nice surprise after returning was finding a blog that Beppo, the owner of the island with his brother, posts each day about what’s happening at The Big House….A great way to make the experience continue!”

I find plenty of cynicism in the hotel business about the value of blogs in their online marketing. That is why it is encouraging to read recent comments from Scott Allison, a Marriott VP, on the subject of Bill Marriott’s blog.

As reported on the Idea Hatching, Allison considers his boss’s blog to be very successful.

Even our competitors have acknowledged the blog as a competitive win for Marriott. Not only has it provided a great channel for customers, it also allows him to very personally communicate things that are important to him. The blog has also encouraged Marriott to expand the initiative to other Marriott executives including our corporate executive chef.

He continues:

Because Bill Marriott believes that he is first a foremost a hotelier, one of the side benefits has been the buzz generated by people who blog with him, and then link to a page to make a reservation – revenue from people who came through what wasn’t originally intended as a booking channel.

Also:

Fortunately many people read his blog and interact with us through this exciting channel, and it has definitely contributed to shifting traffic to the brand site with 80% of e-commerce being transacted on Marriott.com.

You may not have a Bill Marriott at the top of your organisation but the very idea of additional revenue generated via his blog ought to spark some interest.

Hotel chain City Inn has decided to put a brand new iMac in every room in its London and Manchester hotels. [From UK hotel chain adds iMacs to the list of in-room amenities]

It is more than two and a half years since I helped the Isle of Eriska set up a blog (c’mon Beppo, time for a blog make-over) but it still provides a breath of fresh air among my daily reads.The hotel may be one of the smartest and most expensive in Scotland but it has always had a gung-ho, family-run feel to it and Beppo’s posts read like the polar opposite of the carefully crafted five star hotel press release.For example, when last did the general manager of your local Starwood Resort go through this sort of ordeal?

Then sheer panic as I realised the oil was rushing to the boiler house but that I had not yet reconnected the fuel hose so a sprint to the boiler house and before I could avert disaster the fuel was flowing so I grabbed the nearest recepticle- a welly boot- and let it flow   

Some people might be put off a visiting a hotel where the manager resorts to filling wellington boots with runaway fuel but a bit of eccentricity is part of Eriska’s USP and most people love it.

Who pulls out the Rants & Raves on the Trip Advisor front page and will they take a bung to add or remove your hotel? That was my first thought when I saw the new-look site. Maybe these highlighted quotes have been there all along but now the front page has been de-cluttered, there’s no missing them, with a big thumb up or thumb down and customer rating.

It is bad enough finding your hotel slagged off by a dissatisfied guest deep amongst the Brighton pages but to find your “severe case of bed bugs” occupying prime real estate on the home page where every casual surfer will hit it up is likely to cause apoplexy. Back to my question then: does anybody know who chooses the reviews to highlight and the address of a decent counselling service for distressed hoteliers?

Side thought: there’s something very Old Granny Antimacassar about that Trip Advisor colour scheme, all those shades of beige and green. It’s not to my personal taste but the advertisers must be delighted. See how well the Tui logo stands out against all that sleepy, soothing subtlety. Blah.

I wonder how many hotel PR’s would be relaxed about the blogosphere if they thought staff were writing about their guests’ filthy habits on a near-daily basis.

Hotel Chick (via the VacantReady hotel industry blog) does this and more in a forthright blog, which pulls back the covers on – no, you probably don’t want to know. It’s certainly a warts and all (and warts are the least of it) picture from the room cart.

Many of the rooms she tackles at check-out seemed to have been turned into some sort of a dirty protest over the course of just a couple of days, but in terms of ordure hitting the fan, that will be nothing compared to when the management find out about Hotel Chick’s blog.

In the meantime, count me subscribed. It’s great to hear such a candid view from the trenches.

Many people like their job. Being a filthy pig ruins our day.
Seriously. If you take a pee, be courteous and lift the toilet seat. If
you brush your teeth, try not to spray it all over the mirror. If you
eat food, throw your trash in the proper bin and not on the floor. When
you see a rubber mat for the tub, put it IN the tub and not rolled up
on the back of the toilet. If you see a small rag, the size of a
handtowel somewhere near your bathtub, it’s made for the floor, so you
don’t drip water everywhere. Understand, even though our shoes say
skid-free we can slip and injure ourselves on YOUR water.