How hoteliers can create a real ‘personality’ for their property

Hotels need personality in order to attract customers. It’s no surprise that those hotels picking up awards, winning praise from the industry, and ultimately seeing a rise in profits are the ones who are already doing this.

We’re involved in many hotel launches here, re-launches, and various other activities that are centred around hotels trying to re-invent themselves.

Too often hotels are going about this the wrong way round. They’ll refurbish some rooms, change the reception area around, bring in new furniture for the restaurant (give a separate name to the restaurant even) introduce a new logo, have an event, do some advertising and so on and so forth (we all know the drill). But what is so often forgotten is the hotel’s identity, the hotel’s story, the hotel’s personality. This should be at the core of everything a hotel does – from refurbishment work, to interior design, to recruitment, to marketing and comms.

Personality needs to be addressed properly, from the beginning and before any major changes take place. Or, if recent work has been undertaken and your hotel is what it is, then you need to look at everything you have, and create a personality that helps bring everything together.

The key is being joined up, and being different. It’s easy to say, yes, but understanding who you are as a hotel, and understanding your target audience is vital.

So how can you go about creating a real personality for your property? Here are a few tips, and some examples:

1: Know who you are, and know who they are

As a hotel, your identity doesn’t solely revolve around a pretty logo, a fancy name, and some vibrant interior design.

First off, you have to recognise and establish the type of hotel you’re aspiring to be. Do you wish to be perceived as a fun, quirky establishment with real individuality, or as ultra-high-end and cosmopolitan? What’s your story? Is there something from the history of the property that you can play on, and then this becomes a theme for the hotel? Or is there something locally that you can bring into your brand and make it part of your personality too? Finally, who are you trying to reach? What look, and messaging appeals to them?

2: At the hotel

Inside your hotel is the chance to really reflect who you are. If yours is a country hotel and you want to stand out in quirky ways, your property needs to reflect that inside. An example might be using a stuffed toy instead of the usual ‘do not disturb’ signs. You could have toy sheep, cows or hedgehogs (playing to the country theme) in each room for guests to place outside bedroom doors, with staff recognising their significance. The hedgehog character, as an example, could perhaps appear on menus too as a recurring theme, putting ‘add a bit of spike to your evening’ perhaps next to certain selections.

If quirky is the route for you, then get witty in all your written communications, it grabs people’s attention and becomes a talking point. A hotel we know recently reiterated its health and safety instructions as a comical letter to the guest, which included ‘we don’t swim in your toilet, so don’t pee in our pool’ in its content. That particular example might not fit within your brand, but it’s little things like this that mirror your personality and get people talking about you.

3: The People

Recruit great people – the right people – for key roles. It might seem obvious, but so many hotels don’t do this. Many people are good at their jobs, but this still may not mean they’re right for your business. You need to bring in people who can help deliver the personality that you’re trying to create for the hotel.

Just recently we’ve been carrying out a big comms project for one of our clients, the Feversham Arms hotel, which is centred around its key people. The Feversham Arms, has a great team of staff. From the GM, Head Chef through to the Spa Manager. For each key member of staff, we have been working on various profile building activities. One example is with the Food and Beverage Manager (Daniel Marshall), where we’ve been putting together various videos of Daniel making the Feversham Arms’ signature cocktails (with him talking throughout). After uploading the first video (Daniel making the Feversham cocktail) to the hotel’s Facebook page it generated over 14,000 views, gained over 200 likes, and reached just short of 50,000 people in only 48 hours. People connect with people and this is a good example of this. If you’ve got the right people in place, who have the personality that matches what you’re trying to create at your hotel it really is a case of win-win.

4: Beyond the hotel

Your personality needs to be correctly portrayed to the outside world through all communications; website, social media, press materials, emails and so on.

For this, all imagery and written content should echo the personality of the brand on your website. Social media should act as a constant source of communication between you and your guests. Just to touch on another example, over the last few months we’ve been working very closely with the GM (Craig Webb) at Cotswold House Hotel on all things PR. As part of this we’ve been working really hard on the hotel’s social media. Before we came on board, the social accounts had no real personality behind the content, resulting in just a few followers, the occasional like etc. In just a few months we’ve injected the friendly, approachable personality that is very much at the heart of the hotel into all its social comms. As a result, its Twitter followers have risen from 1,000 to over 5,000 in the space of four months. The hotel’s gift vouchers are only promoted through social now, and gift voucher sales have increased by 200% bringing in a good source of income each month. This is something that happened directly because of the social engagement.

To summarise then, attraction is key. It’s just like people; a person (more often than not) is attracted to another person because they have something about them. Hotels are the same – they need something about them, they need personality and it is absolutely essential in order to succeed.