I quickly checked a few major hotel chains and found that Hilton have 47,000 Facebook fans, Best Western just over 20,000, Holiday Inn a measly 1,300, Premier Inn 1600 & Malmaison 1 person!!!! This suggests that hotel companies don’t have professional social media strategies. The hotel industry has never been at the cutting edge of marketing, but surely they have had plenty of time to wake up to the reality of social media and the relationship you can then have with your customers?

Ignore social media at your peril, but don’t make the mistake that some big brands have of trying to dictate to cosumers through these channels. It’s about being helpful and honest and engaging with your fans.

The traditional definition of marketing as being Product, Price, Place & Promotion has been around a long time. It became trendy to add the P’s of People and Profit at one point. Then we moved into an era where marketing was defined as a culture, rather than a function with marketing being the responsibility of everyone! More recent definitions suggest that Marketing is any activities aimed at a customer which help a company to make a profit.

Well the reality in the hotel industry is that in most cases we are just given the product to market, with limited involvement in its development. Pricing is now the domain of the Revenue Managment function. Similarly ‘Place’, whether meaning the location of the hotel, which we have no influence over, or the place your product is sold, these channels are again the responsibility of the Revenue Managers, so Place is no longer within our domain.

So, what is marketing in 2010? I believe it is now the 5E’s of Excitement, Engagement, Ease of Purchase, Evaluation & Exchange of Views.

Excitement starts with the CEO (think Apple, Dell, Microsoft, Timberland etc) and permeates the employees and then the consumers.

Engagement with customers is really at the hub of Marketing. It is now facilitated by a  mass of digital channels. Engagment with all stakeholders is key to a successful future.

Ease of purchase is why any company exists. We now have a global shopfront. Marketing should be continually exploring new ways to deliver the product to this global market.

Evaluation. Every company should encourage customers to evaluate them and their products and services, whether on third party sites or their own. These evaluations are now public and global. And, very importantly need managing by Marketing.

The final E stands for Exchange of Views. Social networking sites and blogs are here to stay. People exhange views, ideas, images and videos. Marketing needs to instigate some of this and participate in other exchanges so that they are genuinely part of the group. Marketing also has to monitor all of this activity, and ignore it at their peril.

The above is not just something I’ve written just to get people talking, but something, which after careful consideration, I believe reflects a need  for marketing to move into this new decade with a fresh approach and new responsibilities

This is how emailing should be used.

Anyone know of any similarly great ones from hotels?