Branding is essential for hospitality businesses looking to stand out in a crowded market and build lasting relationships with guests. Developing a strong brand strategy enables hotels, resorts, restaurants and other hospitality providers to shape a distinct identity that resonates with their target audience.
Whether you’ve built a loyal customer base and are looking to strengthen your existing brand or need help with branding from the ground up, Creatives On Call has the expertise to help. As a marketing and creative consultancy with a vast team of professionals, we can help build your dream team of branding and marketing experts to help you drive growth in an increasingly competitive space.
The Importance of Branding in the Hospitality Industry
Before detailing brand-building frameworks, it’s critical to examine why branding holds importance, specifically in the hospitality industry.
Difficulty Differentiating
Unlike products that have distinct features consumers can compare, hospitality offerings like hotels and resorts can appear very similar on the surface. Most provide amenities like accommodations, food, amenities and services.
This makes it incredibly hard for consumers to distinguish one brand from another when seeking places to stay. Without a branded identity that communicates their defining traits, hospitality businesses risk being overlooked as consumers default to huge chain brands they’re familiar with already or make decisions at random.
Reliance on Peak Seasons
Many hospitality organizations rely heavily on peak seasonal demand to drive a majority of their annual revenue and profitability. Summers, school holidays and events put heads in beds. But the flip side is that off-peak periods can be devastatingly slow and empty.
Smooth year-round business is dependent on branding efforts that inspire consumer desire and loyalty beyond getting away from icy weather or killing time before the kids go back to school.
Brand Consistency Challenges
Many hospitality businesses chronically struggle to keep branding guidelines intact across locations and consumer touchpoints. When messaging, visuals and brand experiences are inconsistent, it quickly erodes the perception of your brand in consumer minds.
Without vigilant brand asset management and guidelines in place internally, this leads to disjointed and confusing brand impressions. Consumers begin doubting if they can rely on your brand promise.
These unique challenges demonstrate why hospitality organizations must place added emphasis on intelligent brand strategy frameworks compared to other industries. When done effectively, branding has the power to drive choice, affinity and loyalty among target demographics regardless of season or external factors.
With over 130 top-rated hospitality and leisure companies trusting Creatives On Call with their marketing efforts, we understand what it takes to drive brand strategy in this competitive industry. We can build an on-demand team that takes the time to understand your business and audience deeply and delivers on critical, creative branding initiatives that set you apart as a hospitality business. From hospitality copywriters to audience persona experts, we have professionals who can tap into every key aspect of branding.
Defining Your Target Audience Personas
Now that the critical importance of branding for hospitality is established, where should brands begin establishing differentiation?
Identifying Your True Target Audience
Hospitality businesses serve diverse guests. Business travelers have very different needs than retiring couples seeking relaxation. Active families prioritize amenities differently than wedding parties do.
Using market research and consumer analytics, hospitality brands can isolate various audience segments with shared behavioral and demographic patterns. Composite profiles called “buyer personas” represent fictional yet highly detailed representations of key customer groupings.
Defining the hospitality audience segments you aim to serve allows brand messaging, visuals and experiences to be crafted specifically to resonate with their self-image and lifestyle aspirations. Creatives On Call’s branding strategists use data and consumer psychology to build detailed personas that guide decisions.
Crafting a Distinct Brand Identity
Once target hospitality audiences are well defined through personas, brands can establish identifying traits that appeal to them exclusively. This process involves:
Clarifying Your Differentiating Attributes
Take stock of what makes your hospitality brand inherently special. What amenities, service styles, locations or offerings are unique to you? For example, a resort may offer exclusive beachfront villas with private plunge pools versus typical hotel rooms. Or a boutique inn might be the only in the region with a Michelin-star restaurant and sommelier service.
Architecture and decorative elements also set brands apart. Defining tangible traits in terms of accommodations, cuisine, amenities and design establishes a distinct experience.
Codifying Tone, Messaging & Visual Identity
The next step is codifying the verbal and visual language reinforcing your brand personality consistently across channels.
What is the copy tone: enthusiastic or peaceful? What colors and logo font fit? Do photos feature families splashing in pools or couples toasting by the sunset? Guidebooks detailing these layered brand elements in detail ensure alignment internally and externally.
Without establishing clear guidelines that define your unique hospitality identity, fractured messaging creeps in over time. Creatives On Call’s creative strategists help uncover points of differentiation and then amplify those strategically through aligned touchpoints. This builds crucial mental availability and memorable first impressions versus competitors.
Tangible brand differentiation makes it easier for consumers to recall what makes your hospitality brand special, which builds that crucial mental availability versus competitors. Our experts help uncover your points of uniqueness to feature prominently across touchpoints.
Building Brand Awareness Actively
Even iconic branding must be proactively shown to consumers repeatedly in order to stick. Creatives On Call recommends for hospitality brands to leverage a mix of channels to ensure wide visibility, including:
- Content marketing: Well-produced blogs, videos, podcasts and social posts allow brands to engage both consumers and search engines with valuable information and storytelling. This builds authority and relevance over time to stand out. Creatives On Call can build content marketing teams that create engaging products to help you gain influence in the market, from quality video production to email campaign copywriting.
- Owned media properties: Your website, mobile app and on-location materials like room keys and event signage all make powerful statements. These materials should be consistent so that they reinforce your brand visually, through content and through delivering an exceptional customer experience (when applicable).
- Paid digital campaigns: While organic reach builds brand equity over longer periods, paid digital ads generate immediate visibility. Programmatic display ads can retarget visitors who browsed your site but didn’t book. Promoted social campaigns inspire consumers to dream of getaways. Paid search ads on Google and online travel agencies (OTAs) put your hotel in front of people ready to finalize plans.
- Search engine optimization (SEO): Appearing prominently on Google and other search engines for relevant queries is also massively valuable for traffic and awareness. Our creative teams specialize in complete digital visibility packages tailored to hospitality brands’ specific audiences and goals.
Encouraging Engagement & Loyalty
While first-time conversions are important, hospitality brands should keep top guests engaged long-term. This builds resilient revenue and growth. Branded loyalty programs play a major role, as do personal touches.
To combat unreliable seasonal demand spikes, branding aims to build year-round consumer relevance. Emotional connections inspire travelers to return based on the love of experiences you offer rather than situational convenience alone.
Surveys collect useful guest feedback to help hospitality brands customize engagement, too. Personalized packages, amenities or offerings also demonstrate reliable care. This earns trust and retention, which drives lifetime value.
Tracking Brand Health Over Time
Just as crucial as it is to build brands, hospitality organizations must track branding key performance indicators (KPIs) over time. Key indicators like unaided brand awareness, consideration and affinity metrics offer actionable insights.
Listening tools also allow brands to monitor voluntary online mentions and brand sentiment metrics. Watching how consumers talk about you on review sites and social media reveals perception trends.
At Creatives On Call, our team excels at establishing clear scoring frameworks, conducting primary consumer research, analyzing performance, and course-correcting messaging or experiences accordingly over time. This prevents brand equity deterioration while maximizing return on investment (ROI) long-term.
The Role of Creatives On Call
As an industry-leading marketing and creative consultancy, Creatives On Call knows how to tackle marketing and communications challenges. We’re skilled in empowering our hospitality clients to meet their business objectives by identifying their needs and deploying specialists to help them achieve their goals.
While we believe digital marketing should be an ongoing, coordinated effort, we can also connect you with brand management experts for single projects. Or, using our team of creative consultants, we can bring together a group of professionals committed to knowing your brand and taking you to the next level in the hospitality industry.
From branding strategy experts to hospitality copywriters, our consultancy has creative professionals with years of experience to form a dream team for you.
Wherever you are in your hospitality marketing journey, we’re here to meet you and get to work. Contact us today to get started.
Frequently Asked Questions
What are some top hospitality and hotel branding strategies?
Here are some proven and effective hospitality branding strategies that Creatives On Call focuses on:
- Defining audience personas through market research data
- Codifying a signature visual identity and logo
- Building consistent multi-channel brand visibility
- Creating personalized guest engagement opportunities
- Tracking and optimizing brand health KPIs continually
What builds loyalty for hospitality brands?
Key hospitality branding tactics to build lasting loyalty include:
- Offer personalized packages and perks to delight repeat guests.
- Create branded mobile apps that provide exclusive conveniences.
- Send special seasonal or birthday packages/promo codes.
- Empower staff to provide above-and-beyond service.
- Consistently meet brand quality and experience promises.
What are characteristics of strong hospitality brands?
Key traits that define strong hospitality brands include:
- Ownable visual identity: colors, logo, imagery
- Defined personality that conveys a unique style
- Targeted marketing messages tuned to audience aspirations
- Authentic and emotional brand positioning
- Consistent on-brand guest experiences
- Multi-channel brand visibility and access
