Re “Employees come First”, my view as a hotelier was always “look after your employees first… then the customers”.

All too easy to say “Put the Customer First”, but an employee who is not being treated well but is pushed to simply “Put the Customer First” is faking it…and customers see through that pretty quickly.

On the other hand, employees who are motivated and proud of their place of work.. will do a far, far better job of looking after the customers.

Thank your for this article and for your comments above. I completely agree that hotels (as well as other businesses) need to shift (parts of) their marketing budget away from external parties towards their internal clients. If the staff is aware of what the hotel is doing and plays a role in developing e.g. packages AND of course making their guests happy every day, they are the best marketing a hotel can have. Hence, it is: “employees come first”.

This is especially important when we look at the growing talent gap which will make it even more difficult for hotels to find good staff. Treating staff like partners will make them more loyal and they will enjoy what they do. Guests will feel this passion and will turn into regulars.

I am 100 % convinced of this.

Cheers,
Gaby
http://www.kommboutique.com

With regard to traditional marketing agencies, I don’t think they are dead at all, but not only do they have to adapt (and faster than they are doing right now), but, and more so, the hotel / business / destination etc that hires the marketing agencies has to far more fundamentally rethink their marketing model.

In the past, the traditional model may have been as simple as a) set budget, b) meet with marketing agency to give them guidance, c) let them work their creative genius and run the campaign, d) see the sales roll in.

In today’s world, I urge ALL businesses to radically shift their budget allocations to focus far more on increasing marketing and communications resources within their own business (eg at their hotel property), so giving less to their agency.

I sense a more detailed blog coming but :
- More. Passionate leaders who GET marketing, communications and engagement, not just people who sign the checks for the agencies
- More. Engage all your staff from top to bottom on communicating with their customers in a genuine and honest way. Let the customers then become your best form of marketing (word of mouth is STILL king, just turbocharged by social media.. and TripAdvisor).
- More. Take time and resources to ensure that all your staff know what makes something worth blogging / tweeting / FB’ing about, and have social media champions at your business ensure this is a constant process until is is embedded in the thinking…. if any member of staff sees something that you know should be tweeted out, it is “embedded” when they tell you rather than you having to ask “what’s going on at the hotel”.

Ah.. enough from me now… definitely stuff for another blog later !

http://maryportas.com/index.php?option=com_k2&view=item&id=69:captain-manoli

So, so true. That’s why I think the traditional marketing agency model is dead in many ways. We need to empower people on-property to tell the story.