The Evolution of Hotel Marketing and the role of the Hotel Marketer: Part One

Written by Pamela Carvell, HMA Life President.

In this blog I share content that Harry Fielder and myself developed for an in-person Hotel Marketing Association event at the Hart Shoreditch in Autumn 2025. I include some of my experiences & personal views, as someone who has a Marketing Degree, but more importantly has worked in hotel marketing for several decades, both as a consultant and at a senior corporate level. Many of the figures that I quote came from ChatGPT, with a source check where necessary. These are my views, experiences & opinions.

Part One covers Product (inc Brand) & Price.

Part Two covers Place & Promotion.

Introduction: Marketing Defined

The framework for modern Marketing was established in the 1960’s by academic Peter Drucker, but popularised by Philip Kotler, whose Marketing textbook became the global standard and created the structure for Marketing as we know it. Not only is Kotler still alive, but if you ask ChatGPT for the best current Marketing textbooks, the vast majority have been co-written by Kotler. To quote him,

“Marketing Management is the analysis, planning, implementation and control of programmes designed to bring about desired exchanges with target audiences for the purpose of personal or mutual gain. It relies heavily on the adaptation and co-ordination of Product, Price, Promotion and Place for achieving an effective response.”

And so the 4 P’s of Marketing were born. The 5^th one of People was added in the 1980’s and in recent years Process, Profit and Performance are occasionally added, as relevant to the business or industry sector.

Prior to this ‘marketing’ was largely seen as selling and advertising.

Hotel Marketing

Hotel Marketing has traditionally considered itself slightly ‘outside’ of this traditional structure for a variety of reasons:

• Marketing has little influence on the actual physical product. Although it has the capability to develop products such as weekend break programmes, to market.

• The Product is only part of what is delivered to customers, with service and services being probably even more important, and certainly key differentiators.

• The product is ‘perishable’ i.e. if you don’t sell a room tonight, you can’t sell it twice tomorrow night to recoup the lost revenue.

• Price is often the domain of either the brand owners or the Revenue Management function.

• Marketing has no influence over the physical location of the product i.e. Place, but of course can influence the places the product is sold, as the place of purchase is often not the place of consumption of the product.

The Evolution of Hotel Marketing: Product & Brand

Just as the modern car or home has evolved in recent decades and bears little resemblance to the cars our grandparents drove (no electric windows, seat controls, power steering etc) and the homes they lived in (no central heating, just one bathroom, ill-fitting wooden doors and windows etc), so have hotels and the hospitality experience. I remember launching a new hotel brand in the UK with the USP, promoted on 96 sheet posters being that all our bedrooms had colour TV’s with remote controls!!!

At a strategic level, there are now far more hotels and far more brands, producing a much more competitive landscape. In the modern world, Brand is probably the most important component of Product, as epitomised by the world’s most successful brands like Apple, Coca Cola, Nike and McDonald’s.

There are approximately 10,000 branded hotels in the UK alone, represented by 150+ brands. Contrast that with the early 1990’s when there were just 25 brands in the UK and the world’s largest hotel chain had just 1750 hotels globally in 1984. The top 10 chains currently have 45,000 hotels in the USA alone.

The explosion in the number of brands has given marketing muscle to the companies that own them. Marriott is the largest with 37 brands and over 9,300 hotels worldwide. Hilton has 24, Choice 22, Wyndham 25 and IHG 19. There are also powerful hotel brands in areas like China. This explosion of brands gives those companies significant marketing muscle, but has also produced less clarity regarding brand standards, as the companies’ motivation is for 100% of people to be aware of at least one brand, not necessarily to be familiar with the brands’ USP’s and minimum/maximum standards. In fact a visit to many brands websites will leave you none the wiser as to how one brand is really differentiated from another. Contrast this with the early 1980’s when for example Holiday Inns had global USP’s of a swimming pool, at least one double bed in every room and 24 hour room service.

Another major global challenge is the expansion of product types which effectively compete with traditional hotels. Bed & Breakfast establishments and pubs with rooms have always been around, but thanks to channels like Air BnB they are now serious competitors in all segments and locations.

This lack of clarity re brand standards and a plethora of branded hotels in most locations, also produces less clarity re target market, and a huge challenge as to how you can stand out in a crowded marketplace. BUT major opportunities for independent hotels both in terms of USP’s and specific targeting.

Brand Essence

Brand Essence is a relatively new concept, developed in the mid 1990’s, and in a marketplace swamped with products and brands, it is a very important differentiator and an important area for Hotel Marketers to focus on.

Brand Essence is defined as ‘The core intangible attribute that defines what a brand stands for at its deepest level’ i.e. it is the heart and soul of the brand. It is typically no more than one sentence or group of words.

As a Marketer you need to define the following:

• Who are we at our core?

• What emotional connections do we create?

• Why do people love and trust us?

• Nike’s is ‘Authentic athletic performance.’

• Apple’s is ‘Simplicity that inspires creativity.’

Independent Hotels

Historically independent hotels, in the broadest sense i.e. including pubs with bedrooms and B&B’s, dominated the UK hotel landscape in terms of number of both units and rooms. In many locations, including large towns, they would have been your only accommodation choice, as recently as the early 1990’s. In simple terms they had the monopoly on the USP’s of price and location. This changed, especially with the rapid growth of budget brands from 2005 onwards, which totally changed the UK hotel landscape. Interestingly, from 2010 onwards the successful TV series Four in a Bed allowed independent B&B’s and small hotels to showcase how they can deliver a very unique and special experience, and appearing on the show often resulted in establishment being fully booked for many months ahead.

Growth Sectors

• Budget chains, especially Premier Inn and Travelodge have transformed the UK hotel landscape.

• Branded chain hotels are now present in most large towns, in several locations in cities and at the larger airports.

• Spa hotels are now widely spread across the UK, with 1,300 in England alone.

• Boutique hotels are also now present in most towns, with Malmaison having paved the way back in 1994.

• Country House Hotels set the industry alight in the 1980’s, with properties such as Cliveden being transformed into luxury accommodation and even some of the larger chains developing their own brand in this sector. However, their popularity was short-lived as they became viewed as fussy, tired, old-fashioned & expensive. A resurgence has occurred since 2010 with properties like The Pig, Lim Wood and Dormy House leading the way with a more chic aesthetic.

In conclusion, not only has the hotel product evolved , with the provision of more and more amenities and services, but there are more hotels, there are more ‘alternative’ accommodation providers, there are more brands, there is less clarity re the standards of different brands, there are fewer tangible USP’s and more market sectors. Add to all of that the fact that the identification of target markets is more ambiguous and challenging than previously, and in 2026 the challenges facing Hotel Marketer are tougher than ever before!

The Evolution of Hotel Marketing: Price

Price used to be both the most simple and the most exciting part of the Hotel Marketers role. Every hotel had a Rack Rate i.e. full price, which was typically either set by the brand, was determined by the hotel’s star rating or was set in collusion with other hotels in the same location! Marketing had little input into this. Then there was a Corporate Rate which would offer a discount of between 5 &15% off Rack, depending on the expected volume of business, negotiated by Sales. Group Rates, as the name suggests were for leisure or business groups, and a discount of 20-30% would be negotiated, again by Sales.

The area where Marketing had the greatest influence and control was in the pricing of Leisure Breaks and packages. This emanated in no small part because Marketing held the funds to carry out the marketing to promote these special rates, whether via a brochure, press or Radio advertising or special promotions e.g. competitions. Packages could be created at very short notice, promotional spend established & the marketing activity launched.

A typical promotion might be 50% off rack rate for up to 4 people in a room, including complimentary breakfast for any Sunday night. Or for a 2 night minimum stay the rate might be discounted by less, but breakfast and dinner included, and it may be for any Friday / Saturday / Sunday stay. Tickets for local tourist attractions were often included in packages, that the hotel would have secured at a discounted rate.

Can Hotel Marketers carry out such promotions now? In most cases no! Why? Because of Revenue Management! And the very clever software that is constantly matching and predicting supply and demand and customers’ willingness to pay certain prices at certain times, leaving few opportunities for Marketing to develop a creative pricing promotion.

Revenue Management (RM) has in essence taken responsibility for pricing away from Marketing. The discipline started as Yield Management in the world of airlines in the 1970’s, crept into the hotel industry in the early 1990’s and established a significant positive impact as it evolved into the Revenue Management that we recognise today. Originally a ‘side line’ of the Reservations department playing around on spreadsheets, it has evolved into the professional function that we know today, using very sophisticated software to optimise rates and revenue by reacting in real time to real events & levels of demand and interest. It may still have personal input at the initial stage e.g. a top performer or band announce a concert tour, will ideally have someone input this, rather than waiting for the increased number of people shopping around to be detected by the software. In such a scenario, Marketing are likely to have little input, and as prices go way above ‘rack’ rates, may have to suffer the brand being criticised on social media and in the press for doing so, with the corresponding damage to the brand values and trust in the brand being totally out of their control.

So, there are fewer opportunities for Marketing to create price-led promotions, as this may clash with the RM strategy, which understandably wants to respond in real-time to optimise revenue.

Conclusions

The 4 P’s of Hotel Marketing and the role of the Hotel Marketer have evolved significantly in the past few decades. In this article we have explained how Product presents today’s Marketer with tougher challenges than ever before, while responsibility for Pricing has almost totally been removed from Marketing.

In Part 2 we will discuss how Place and Promotion have changed, presenting an array of constantly-changing opportunities for the Hotel Marketer. We also consider the availability of detailed data and the endless opportunities for personalised, targeted marketing, which simply did not exist until the past decade.

This article was written by Pamela Carvell for the Hotel Marketing Association and can only be reproduced in part or in full, so long as full credit is given to the author and the HMA and a link to the full article included.