There has been a lot of discussion from the beginning of the current global health crisis about what hoteliers need to do to weather the storm and keep revenue flowing – mostly through maintaining stable marketing efforts and managing their hotel’s online presence. However, many hoteliers are facing challenges at the property level due to a reduced staff, making the important task of managing a hotel’s reputation immeasurably more difficult. Even when short-staffed, it’s important to keep marketing to potential guests consistently. There are methods you can implement that help you efficiently and effectively manage your hospitality marketing strategies. Learning what your limits are and how to apply these strategies to help extend them or mitigate overwork is important, as it helps you prioritize your focus.

Utilizing Social Media

If you’re unfamiliar with the platforms, social media can take up a large amount of your time. The solution to mitigating excessive time spent on social platforms to advertise your property comes from a few different areas. First, you may want to consider using a program that allows you to post to all platforms at once. The less logging in and out of different websites you’re doing, the more time you have to develop snappy, effective content.

Alongside utilizing a single site for posting to all platforms, you should take time in advance to plan out posts for the month. Previously, we compiled ideas to get you started on how to raise brand awareness with different posts, but you can expand this to include revenue-generating content as well. You should plan for 4 posts per platform, per week, leaving some space for time-sensitive events or announcements to take precedence.

As you develop your content, speak with a clear brand voice that matches the energy you want your hotel business to have. We’ve discussed how brand awareness helps you maximize your ROI on every social post you make, and it remains one of the most important things for you to keep in mind as you marketing your property.

Travel Media Group’s OneView™ dashboard allows you to make single posts to all social platforms at once, and our dedicated social team can take this task off your plate completely and help create and publish relevant, engaging content for your audience. When staffing at your hotel is in flux, Travel Media Group can help ensure you never miss a social media post.

Monitoring Your Reputation

As you continue to host guests during the pandemic, it stands to reason that you need know how you’re doing – especially if you’re working with a limited staff. Checking in on your hotel’s reputation regularly can help you garner valuable insights or impressions guests are having about their visits at your property. Using a solution to notify you of every new review posted can help.

Every 5-star review is critical during a time when very few reviews are being published. Earning a positive review can increase your post-COVID-19 market share. You can make this process more efficient by sending emails to guests who have stayed with you, asking for their feedback. As more guests stay with your hotel during reopening phases, you may schedule a post-stay email to send automatically after checkout instead of a slower rolling bi-weekly communication.

Our OneView™ platform can help you manage this, as well as our Reputation Management program, which monitors how many emails you’ve sent along with a real-time measurement of what potential guests’ first impressions are based on your online presence. 

Delegating Operational Tasks 

For a hotelier with limited staff, some tasks may fall by the wayside in favor of operational necessities that demand your attention. To maximize your time spent on the property floor, it would be best to digitize your check-in process as much as possible. Not only does this save time for you as a hotelier, it reduces the face-to-face interaction that causes the spread of the coronavirus. Having hands-off front desk duties allows you more time to efficiently manage guest concerns that arise throughout their stay, like maintenance issues or supply needs.

Additionally, you can reduce the time taken on vital room checks by delegating them to a head of housekeeping. This individual should be someone on your staff that you trust to thoroughly inspect each room on the premises between guest visits to ensure any and all cleaning and maintenance procedures were performed to the standard you’re setting.

Managing Review Response

When you lose staff members, by far, the most frustrating task as a hotelier will be taking on the responsibility of review response. It is a time-consuming task that is imperative to your hotel’s online presence. No matter how hard it is to keep up, timely responses are vital to your hotel’s success. Guests feel secure staying at a property when they can tell the management is reading and responding to their feedback, as not receiving a response can make them feel ignored.

Responding to guests’ reviews online can take hours of your day, and on top of everything else, you may only have the chance to do it once a week – or only twice a month, which leaves your past guests hanging and future guests wondering whether issues raised have been addressed. We have a robust Respond & Resolve™ program that allows you to pass this responsibility entirely onto our team of expert writers, who can reduce your response time to be within 48 hours of the review’s posting date.

Additionally, TMG’s OneView™ feed allows you to easily sort, read, and respond to reviews from your various review sites all in one place. The time saved from only needing one login is immeasurable just as it is with logging in to different social media sites, and you can use the time gained back in your day to take care of other management concerns that demand your attention.

Travel Media Group is here and ready to provide you with the affordable helping hand that you need in order to get valuable minutes back. We’ll prioritize your marketing for you, whether it’s a single property or a group of hotels. Learn more about what we can do to help you manage your hospitality marketing efforts on our services page, and sign up for a consultation to get a full look at how we can set you up for success.