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Sandy and Eric of Panetiere Marketing Advisors attended the Resort Management Conference at Phoenix in April 2005.
Here is our report for our clients - hotels as well as resorts
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The Resort Management Conference, sponsored by HSMAI and The University of Denver, took place in Phoenix , USA in early April. There were many interesting trends and facts which were shared by the presenters and attendees as well. We tock the time to attend and we thought that our Carino resorts - and even our hotels - would find some of this information enlightening and helpful as you all work towards attracting guests to your properties.
- The strong growth market is now something called TOGETHERING.
Adults are so over-scheduled that they keep having to cancel dinners, tennis, and get-togethers with friends. So as to be sure that they get quality time with their close friends, they are planning weekends or long weekends together at a hotel or resort WITH their friends. They get the TOGETHERING done at the hotel/resort - by planning ahead and booking flights or rooms, this forces people not to cancel the trip and makes it much more difficult to back out of. This type of TOGETHERING includes family gatherings, "girls" weekends, male bonding weekends, couples trips and trips with other families and their children .
Marketing TOGETHERING:
3 and 4 day packages with a master suite, hospitality, activities. Talk about "getting together". Let the user (see below) build the package. Pull options out of a dynamic database.
When asked what they would most like to do on a vacation with their parents, kids say that they yearn to have dinner with their family and participate in adventures and activities with them - they don't want to be sent off to the "children's program".
Staying up late watching TV , eating pizza and chips doesn't even enter the radar screen.
Hotels and resorts should reveal all those activities that the family/group can do together, and that is not golf! The study showed that kids had little or no interest in golf - even with their parents.
City hotels - don't fear. You can get into the togethering action as well.
- market your pool, your spa, shopping, dining, interactive museums - other activities to do as a group. For people who want to get away together but can't get to a resort destination, city hotels are the perfect place to meet friends for a weekend.
- water action is the market attractor for the children --- get yourself real water activities, grow that pool, add lots of water functionality for the kids. Show it, talk about it, review it, include it.
- of course frozen water still works fine for the winter . . .
- all inclusive resorts.
Those that have switched to full American Plan, all activities included as in Club Med are seeing tremendous growths in occupancy.
At the highest end of the market, there have been intriguing results to the "ALL INC". We believe that part of the demand is driven by the luxury feeder markets’ requirement to "GET A DEAL".
From Smith Travel Research, Mark Lomanno
Over the course of 2004, the group demand increased 6% but rates held steady. This year the rate is tracking upwards to catch up to that 6% demand: rates are expected to increase 6% for groups.
- resort web booking average: 6% of total revenue through the hotel/resort's own web site.
- " the user is in control not us"
- this is the key piece of the web puzzle. We are NOT the feedeers. We are NOT at the top of the food chain on the web.The client is. The client requires and now can get real knowledge about your property - not just what you want to say.
- our hotels must co-opt the Tripadvisor stamp of reality and do reviews on their own site or a "neutral" 3rd party site
- we must do a much better job of revealing what the resort is REALLY like as an experience. Not corpo speak but emotionally engaging editorial and masses of photos that tell the whole story not just the photo stylist’s vision of the story..
- we must get ready to use a blog (call us and we'll explain how that works)
- we must let the user create special packages - mix and match for personalization
- even super luxury travelers want to know that they got a "deal" - and that's for the foreseeable future.
We, at Panetiere Marketing, have built ready-made responses to some of the above issues such as:
1. a guest comments page with responses from the hotel. It just attaches to the member’s current website.2. a neutral 3rd party review site/forum for members’ clients to write their comments and hotels their responses. Coming in July.
2. a set of web pages that highlight the people who really make the property work and bring it to "human" life. Again, this is an attachment to your own site
3. a blog attachment for a member’s site
4. a user interactive concierge/activities planning - building system that attaches to the member's current website.
-national statistics show that a resorts with spas hold a $70 room rate advantage over a resort without a spa -- but every other detail must live up to the spa image or you are in a more perilous position than with no spa. It sets certain expectations.
- sell your Sunday to Thursday rooms with huge spa deals - example from Mii Amo spa in Sedona: Package Sun -Thurs all inclusive spa food and 2 sessions a day: FOR ONLY THE PRICE OF THE ROOM. Extra revenue generated: the spa sessions are lengthened (paid for) and the guests book more sessions. Big "deal" - big "win" for a happy guest and spa with action on normally low demand periods.
Check-out what Mii Amo Spa is doing here: http://www.miiamo.com/packages.shtml
- yield the spa like you do your rooms - manage spa revenue Fri - Sun with higher pricing during day and lower pricing after 6 PM. Offer deals on Sunday afternoons when most people have checked out.
- attack your local markets; they are your core. Use the local markets, with marked price benefits, for the Mon -Thurs challenges.
- there was much discussion about spa "contract" employees and this was found to harm the spa experience and profitability - quality, marketing, training, team, and legal.
- there was some discussion concerning the value of incremental revenue that a spa is able to generate.The figure being discussed as "fact" was $7 in incremental revenue for every $1 in room revenue.
- inference form all the "on the ball" GM's with spas was that they are rocking revenue goals for the whole resort through and with their spas. Some of the war stories were impressive.
- urban hotel spas can get a boost in revenue from - in a market that is not over-crowded.
Carino Collection Co-Op Marketing has negotiated substantial discounts for Carino members who wish to make use of spafinder.com. The discounts start at 10% and rise to 40%.
That's the short version. It was an excellent conference. To find out about the 2005 Resort Management Conference go to http://www.resortconference.com. A number of report downloads are available there.
from Sandy Heydt and Eric von Starck, May 2005
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