Hotels that fail to differentiate

Nowadays, many hotels offer similar products and services. Glancing through the websites of several independent hotels in Sri Lanka, it soon dawned on me that many of them simply did not communicate how they truly differentiated themselves from the competition.

What they all relied on was to show beautiful (some not so beautiful), photographs of guest rooms, restaurants, fitness centers and swimming pools (rooftop or otherwise), laced with hyped up marketing metaphors and effervesce smiling faces of models posing off as hotel employees. The resorts by the beach tell more or less the same story: sun, blue sky, beach and ocean views.  Most hotels offered “Great food, Great Service and Great People” The worst part is the belief that it all sounded original.

It’s imperative to tell me why I should buy from you. It’s the question nobody asks but everybody wants answered. These hotels missed “Positioning”. In fact, far too many hotels don’t have one, and in the absence of this primary paradigm of marketing, it invariably leads to blurring the lines between brands and their hotels, thus confusing the customer. And when the choices are all near identical, mediocrity creeps in as well.

Positioning is the process of differentiating from the rivals on the market, identifying one’s unique niche, and communicating that to one’s target customers. It helps a brand stand out from the competition, and allows for building a good reputation.

Every day one reads about new hotels openings. It may augur well to some customers who may say ‘the more the merrier’. One may well ask, why? Because amidst all the deafening noise created to grab the travelers’ attention and owing to expanding competition, where establishments fight for occupancy, it will allow for increased choice at better rates. Yet even this answer can be disputed, since it relies on the fact that everyone is looking for a good hotel at the best rate. And that is not the case.

Hotels that wish to set their business apart from the rest and are remarkably different will defend their ‘positioning’ at any costs - least of all, by not lowering prices. Unless of course one’s positioning statement goes something like, ‘we will always be the lowest priced brand in this market’.

Admittedly, differentiating is challenging, particularly in the hectic times we are living today. Perhaps it is a perfect time for hoteliers to step back and take a seriously unbiased look at what they are saying across all media and ask some pertinent questions, such as:

• Do I have a clear positioning?
• Does my target market actually see me as different from the competition?
• Will they perceive me as better?
• Is the benefit I am offering motivating?
• Is the benefit a unique proposition?
• What is the proof of that benefit?

Should the answers to all of the above questions be ‘yes’ – great, if not, it’s time to develop a point of differentiating. And that’s time well spent, because it may well be worth it and make your marketing more forceful.

Shafeek Wahab - - Editor, Hospitality Sri Lanka, Consultant, Customer Service Trainer and Ex-Hotelier

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