Are You Effectively Marketing Your Hotel?

During this time of challenging Occupancy and ADR how are you marketing your property to the business and leisure travelers? (I am assuming that you have enough experience to know that NOW is NOT is the time to cut back on Sales and Marketing; now you need to ramp up your presence so you can continue to dominate the market.) What are the tools at that are available to you?

Web Site
GDS
Third Party Aggregators
Social Media
20th Century Marketing Tools

Lets look at each.....

The web site is the cornerstone to your online presence. This is not your paper brochure migrated to an electronic version; it needs to be interactive. "Content is King" on any site (where have you heard this before) but the site should be organized in a very simplistic manner. A hotel web site would not be complete if it did not have a booking engine.

The GDS (Global Distribution System) is simply the system that travel agents use to book business into your property. Depending where you are located, this can be huge. Eventhough you may not like paying the TA fees, they are your alley in this tour environment. Use it!

The use of Facebook, Twitter and a Blog are becoming a neccessity to reach the mobile traveler. Are you monitoring Trip Advisors RSS feed? The key to Social Media is to stay on top of it. Use Facebook as a way promoting your property, encourage people to tweet about their stay at your propety (remember not every experience is good), use mobile coupons (do these really exist?)

What 20th Century Marketing tools worked.....AAA Book, Brochures, Coupon Books, Director of Sales, etc. These tools are cheap and thus need to be exploited.

Good Luck