Tech-nifying the Hospitality Experience: Unleashing the Future of Guest Services

 

Technology is continuously evolving, and we are starting to see its ever-changing effects on the hospitality industry. Many hotels are starting to implement these game-changing innovations in order to make customer service and behind-the-scenes processes much more efficient. Many leading hotel chains have seen incredible benefits from these innovations, so here are a few of the ones being implemented.

Smart Hotels:

With a rise in artificial intelligence and augmented reality, hotels are increasing their digital connectivity. Smart Hotels allow guests to easily move through the check-in and check-out processes, while also bringing an increased sense of comfort to their stay.

Features can include facial recognition and voice control for guests to enter their rooms and turn the lights on. They may also use their mobile devices to lock and unlock their room. All of these features are helping make the guests’ journey simpler and more efficient, making it all the more enjoyable!

DocMX:

DocMX, a process automation technology, is being used across the globe to shorten the time spent on lengthy processes usually found within human resources, finance and sales departments. These behind-the-scenes positions are starting to use DocMX due to the labor shortage hotels are facing.

With fewer people, time-consuming, data-driven tasks should be the least of the staff’s worries. By using DocMX, the staff can focus on more personable, thoughtful tasks. The implementation of DocMX is also helping to reduce hotels’ operational costs. This way more time, energy and money can be used to better the guest’s journey.

Sustainability Efforts:

It’s no secret that waste produced by hotels greatly affects our carbon footprint, and many companies are deciding to provide their data on how they’re impacting the environment. Companies are also moving towards implementing more sustainable efforts into their daily tasks and reports. They are specifically focusing on energy consumption, water consumption and waste per individual room in order to accurately capture their effects.

Travelers have started to see the effects their visits are having on the environment and many are advocating for hotels to start taking sustainability seriously.  According to Booking.com, 81% of global travelers have stated that traveling sustainably is very important to them. Hotels need to start moving towards ways to be environmentally conscious in their operations, as even their guests see this as the future of hospitality.

Let McConnell Marketing help you reach your guests and let them know the steps you’re taking to implement these suggestions, contact us today or call us at 330-286-0487 to get started. Also, don’t forget to follow us on all of our social platforms. Stay up to date on our monthly newsletters, full of more helpful tips and tricks!

Essential Email Marketing Tips for Hotels

 

Email marketing is a powerful tool that hotels can use to expand their audience, maintain communication with guests, advertise hotel promotions and nurture guest relationships. With the right strategies in place, hotels can create engaging email campaigns that resonate with their target audience and yield measurable results 40 times greater than those using Facebook or Twitter. Here are some key tips for effective email marketing for hotels:

Focus on existing guests:

Instead of putting all marketing resources into reaching new guests, focus on enhancing the experience for those who have already booked their stay. This includes confirmation emails, upselling or offering your guests upgrades and pre-arrival welcome emails with important information.

Build a targeted email list:

Instead of buying a list of email addresses, put your focus on growing an organic list of subscribers who have a genuine interest in everything your hotel has to offer. This means embedding sign-up forms on your website, promoting sign-ups on social media and in person.

Segment your audience:

Your customer base most likely has a wide range of reasons for frequenting your hotel, so be sure to target guests based off their interests and needs. This means you can send specials out to families, couples or business travelers that are catered to their interests, leading to higher engagement and conversion rates.

Use eye-catching subject lines:

Your subject line is the first impression to your recipients and will decide whether someone wants to click, so make it short, sweet and to the point!

Provide value:

Offering exclusive promotions, discounts, helpful travel tips or destination guides will help your subscribers feel they are getting value from the content your property shares.

Use high-quality visuals:

Visuals are a powerful way to engage your audience and showcase the beauty of your hotel. Use high-quality visuals in your emails to give your subscribers a sense of what it’s like to stay at your property.

Make it easy to book:

Above all else, make sure the call-to-action is clear in your email. Having a booking link in your email will make the process seamless for your subscribers.

 

Let McConnell Marketing help you unlock the full potential of your email campaigns, contact us today or call us at 330-286-0487 to get started. Also, don’t forget to follow us on all of our social platforms. Stay up to date on our monthly newsletters, full of more helpful tips and tricks!

How to Identify Phishing and Prevent Falling for It

 

Phishing attacks are becoming increasingly common in the marketing world, with over 255 million phishing attempts occurring over a six-month period in 2022 alone. If you fall victim to a phishing attack, it can harm your brand’s reputation and potentially interfere with your SEO ranking or conversion rates. Therefore, it’s crucial to know how to identify phishing messages and how to handle the consequences of responding unknowingly.

What is Phishing?

According to Imperva, phishing is a cybercrime in which an individual or group pretends to be a legitimate organization through email, telephone, or text messages to deceive people into revealing sensitive data such as personally identifiable information, banking and credit card details, and passwords. While it may seem like solely an IT issue, phishing attacks can have a severe impact on marketers as well. A successful phishing attack on your company could harm your brand reputation and even interfere with your SEO ranking or conversion rates.

How to Spot Phishing

Phishing emails and text messages often tell a plausible story to get you to click on a link or open an attachment. The message might appear to be from a company you know or trust, such as a bank, credit card or utility company, online payment website or app.
The message could be a variety of these examples:

  • suspicious activity or log-in attempts
  • there’s a problem with your account or your payment information
  • confirm some personal or financial information
  • share an invoice you don’t recognize
  • click on a link to make a payment
  • eligible to register for a government refund
  • offer a coupon for free stuff
  • be from your boss without using their work email

How to Protect Yourself (and Company) from Attacks

To protect yourself, it’s essential to keep your phone and computer up-to-date security-wise, and ensure that they have the latest program updates. Google offers a free authentication app that adds extra security to all your accounts, requiring two or more credentials to log in. It’s also essential to regularly back up your accounts and data on an external hard drive or on the cloud to make sure you can restore them in emergencies.

What Do You Do if You Responded to a Phishing Email?

If you think you’ve responded to a phishing email, take immediate action. If you believe a scammer has your information, such as your Social Security, credit card, or bank account number, go to IdentityTheft.gov for specific steps to take based on the information you lost. If you clicked on a link or opened an attachment that downloaded harmful software, update your computer’s security software and run a scan to remove anything it identifies as a problem. Also, be sure to report any encounters you have with potential scammers to the Federal Trade Commission’s Fraud Department.

 

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Creating a Winning Website: 5 Key Elements of Design to Help Drive Traffic

Creating a Winning Website: 5 Key Elements of Design to Help Drive Traffic

 

Website design plays a crucial role in determining the success of a website. A well-designed website needs to provide a great user experience, making it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for in addition to being visually appealing. We’ve compiled a list of 5 key elements of web design that can help make your business stand out against competitors and help drive more traffic, gaining you new customers.

Navigation

First and foremost, it is important to have a clear and easy-to-use navigation. Visitors should be able to find what they are looking for within a matter of seconds. This can be achieved by keeping your menu items short, with a maximum of 6 to 7 categories in total, and making them easy to read at a quick glance. Try to keep the category names at 1 to 2 words, if possible.

Layout

Another important aspect of website design is the layout. A clean and organized website makes it easier for visitors to read and understand the content on each page. This can be achieved by using a grid-based layout that acts as the framework for each page, using consistent typography throughout the site and making sure each section is easy to digest at a quick glance.

Colors and Imagery

It is also important to pay attention to the color scheme and images used throughout your site. The colors should be consistent to your brand and should complement the overall design. Deviating from your color palette should happen sparingly to avoid being labeled as inconsistent or untrustworthy to your customers. Images should also tie into your color scheme and be high-quality and relevant to the content on each page.

Responsive Design

One of the most important aspects of website design is making sure your site can be viewed across devices. With the increasing use of mobile devices to access the internet in place of desktop computers, it is essential that a website is optimized for all screen sizes. This means that the layout and content should adjust to fit the screen, providing a seamless experience for visitors regardless of the device they are using.

Load Time

People are busier than ever these days, which means you may only have nanoseconds to make your impression upon the user. That being said, visitors will quickly lose interest if a website takes too long to load. To improve load time, it is important to optimize images and reduce the use of large files on your site.

 

By paying attention to these key elements, you can create a website that not only looks good, but also provides a great user experience and drives more traffic. Looking to redesign your website or start a brand new build? Contact us to get started, or give us a call at 330-286-0487 to get a custom quote today. Also, don’t forget to follow us on all of our social platforms. Stay up to date on our monthly newsletters, full of more helpful tips and tricks!

The Secrets of Long-Standing Brands

The Secrets of Long-Standing Brands

 

How is it that some brands have stood the test of time despite a market where visual trends change by the minute, technology is always advancing and culture is constantly shifting? Brands have two options: they can either ignore these obstacles and become irrelevant, or they can adapt and remain a strong presence in their respective markets.

 

There are three things that all long-standing brands have in common: they are consistent, true to themselves and they adapt when necessary. A brand achieves consistency when they remain aligned with their values and mission over time. This is executed through actions and can also be communicated visually. Let’s take a look at a few brands that have successfully achieved consistency in their lifetime:

Tiffany & Co.

Tiffany & Co. is a great example of a brand that has remained persistent over their lifespan. Tiffany has been around since 1847, and in their 175 years, their logo has remained the same.

 

 

This isn’t something that would work for every company, but in the case of Tiffany, it only strengthens their brand. They have a clear vision to be the arbiters of taste and style. Every choice they make must fall in line with that vision. The longer they exist in the world of luxury, the more desirable they become and they have a strong understanding of this. Tiffany is most famous for their signature Tiffany Blue, which has been an unwavering element in their branding. Even Tiffany must still make an effort to remain relevant in their industry. They implemented very subtle rebranding in recent years, which focused on scaling of their logo on bags, boxes and other materials, to achieve a modern high-end feel. They also made small changes that focused on giving customers a more luxurious experience through material choices.

 

 

The Ritz-Carlton

The Ritz-Carlton has a rich history, originally founded by Caesar Ritz, the King of hoteliers and hotelier of kings. The first US Hotel was founded in 1911, but The Ritz-Carlton Hotel Company, LLC was not formed until 1983. Through many acquisitions, the Ritz has still maintained its original purpose of creating a luxurious, elevated hotel experience. The logo reinforces the brands historic relevance by showcasing the British Royal Seal and a lion, which represents a financial backer.Changes were made to the branding in 2015 that may not have been recognized by the average consumer, but the brand cited that with the change in the hotel industry, they needed to keep up with the modern luxury consumer that prioritizes unique experiences when choosing their destination. They created new brand standards with the overall goal of achieving consistency in experience while also allowing every location to have a unique sense of identity. Visual changes were made to modernize the type, the balance of their logo and they changed their signature blue, amongst other changes. Over-all, The Ritz recognized where they needed to pivot and it paid off, allowing them to remain a staple in the luxury hotel market.

 

 

Starbucks

Undoubtedly one of the most recognizable brands in the Coffee industry is Starbucks. Founded a little over 50 years ago, they have come a long way from a Seattle roaster to a household name. Starbucks has remained popular through many culture shifts. They have seen a major evolution in their branding; once an ornate emblem of a siren paired with their name, they have now simplified to a modern icon of their famous siren and dropped the name from their logo, joining the likes of Apple and Nike.

 

 

In the past decade, the coffee market has become saturated with copycats and also highly unique roasters. While Starbucks has remained true to their brand, they have also adapted. In the early years, their coffee was sold in brown paper packaging, but in the 90’s they started printing interesting designs on their bags implementing visual storytelling, helping them stick out amongst competitors.

 

 

Most famously, they popularized the famous holiday cups, a design choice that generated consumer excitement season after season with its Instagram worthy design.

 

Recognizing that the modern customer was looking for unique experiences when visiting coffee shops, Starbucks introduced their Reserve Roastery, highly unique locations that showcase innovation. Other design choices were made to appeal to those who were socially- and climate-conscious: Starbucks changed to a recycled material for their cups and have continued to focus on sustainable choices, reinforcing their presence at the top of the market.

 

Any brand that takes the time to understand their customer, their voice and the market they exist in, can avoid following fleeting trends and become an industry staple.

 

For more tips and tricks for navigating the current marketing and branding trends, join our mailing list to hear more! Need help updating, revamping or starting your brand? Contact us.