Establishing a consistent brand voice across guest communications for your hotel takes continuous work and careful thought. Establishing language guidelines will help maintain consistency across touchpoints such as emails sent before and after guest stays.
Establishing buyer personas is also essential to creating messaging that resonates with guests. Employing traits like outgoing, trendy and fun helps you connect with them on an intimate level.
1. Keep it simple
Brand voice is an essential element of hotel branding strategies. It represents how hotels convey their personality to target audiences and create relationships with them, so as to influence guest decisions about whether to stay at their property based on tone of voice used. By having clear brand voice guidelines in place, staff can communicate consistently for maximum effect and create lasting memories with guests.
Establishing a cohesive brand voice for hotels goes far beyond mere aesthetics; it encapsulates their core values. Stay true to yourself and avoid copying competitors; also keep in mind your customer profile and what type of experience you are trying to sell; for instance if your clientele is budget conscious it would make more sense to focus on ethos and pathos over a casual tone of voice.
If you need help in defining the voice of your hotel, there are numerous resources online that can assist in this task. LAIRE provides an in-depth questionnaire designed to reveal brand identities. Once your tone of voice has been identified, keep it top of mind when creating marketing material and communicating with customers.
Successful brands possess an easily recognisable voice. Patagonia stands out with their dedication to environmentalism and Apple with their innovations and modernization – this voice represents their identity and values and sets them apart from competitors.
To identify your brand voice, examine any interactions you have with existing and prospective clients, noting any similarities in how they speak and assign characteristics accordingly. This will enable you to assess what voice exists currently as well as ways it could be improved upon.
One effective way of maintaining brand consistency across channels is through setting clear guidelines and training for everyone involved in content creation and messaging with guests. If your digital guest welcome book tool comes equipped with templates for email messages after bookings, these can easily be tailored to match the tone and brand voice that best represents you.
2. Make it personal
Your brand’s voice should reflect the desired personality you wish to project as a company. Whether it is an individual or larger corporation, its inclusion should be part of every customer interaction and touchpoint. By providing clear guidelines to employees and marketers on behalf of your brand, this ensures all publications or statements made represent its intended tone and feel consistent with what has been established for its voice.
Finding out about your audience is the cornerstone of developing the right voice and tone for your brand. Utilizing buyer personas and market research can make this process simpler; tailoring messaging specifically for various audiences such as connecting with older guests may require using different tactics than targeting Gen Zs.
Once you’ve identified your audiences, it is also vitally important to gain an understanding of the language and tone employed by your competitors in order to stand out as an authentic brand and differentiate yourself. There are various sources for competitor data – social media sites as well as search engines should provide this insight.
Once you’ve identified your competitors, explore how they communicate with their guests and what makes them successful in the hospitality industry. Implement these strategies into your own business to create an appealing brand voice and set yourself apart from competitors.
Building trust with customers and providing them with an enjoyable hotel booking experience are paramount to creating lasting relationships and encouraging repeat visits. By using Touch Stay Memo’s digital guest welcome book solution, your unique brand voice can easily and engagingly apply across all communications, from pre-stay emails to post-trip reminders – get started now with your free trial!
3. Make it relevant
Your hotel’s brand voice should be present across its website, social media pages, email marketing campaigns, and advertising efforts to allow potential guests to quickly understand who and what your hotel represents upon first encountering it.
Your email list is one of your greatest digital assets; but without consistent communication between now and when something new or your hotel reopens (particularly during times like COVID), they could forget all about you by the time they need something from you or it comes time for their reopening (especially if in COVID times). To maximize its use, create content that’s both relevant and engaging to ensure maximum return from it.
Personalizing emails leads to increased engagement and conversions; to do this effectively, use dynamically generated content to target guests based on location, booking history, and behavior – this allows you to include offers in pre-arrival, post-stay and newsletter-style emails.
Personalizing hotel email marketing with personalized content will enhance guest satisfaction and loyalty while driving additional revenue. For example, receiving pre-arrival emails offering room upgrades or special services increases likelihood that those products or services will be purchased – an average 8.23% upsell conversion is seen from such emails.
Make sure your hotel offer is clear and compelling by including clear and relevant subject lines in all communications with guests. Your subject lines should entice them and increase open rates by asking a question, creating urgency or using persuasive language.
Your guests want to feel that their experience at your hotel matters to you, so to demonstrate this you should encourage them to share their travel tales through an email marketing campaign. Once submitted, select guest stories can then be featured in newsletters and on your hotel website in order to build trust, generate brand awareness and generate leads for your business.
4. Make it memorable
Your brand voice is a critical aspect of your hotel’s identity – and an effective means for connecting with guests. From friendly and casual to professional and businesslike or quirky and off the wall, your brand voice sets your brand apart and ensures guests remember you!
Establishing a strong and consistent brand voice can be challenging. To begin, identify your core values that define your brand and the personality that you wish to portray. After this step is completed, think of adjectives or vocabulary words that best reflect these values, then select your grammar style; common options include the AP Stylebook or Chicago Manual of Style as guides.
Once your brand voice has been defined, it’s time to put it into action. First, create guidelines to govern the language, tone and style used by employees across your company – this will ensure consistency even if different departments are responsible for message production. Next, ensure every team member understands these guidelines and understands your company’s distinct voice.
Finalize the testing of your brand voice in the market by comparing similar brands. This will give you a clearer idea of industry trends, making targeted campaigns simpler. However, remember that brand voices shouldn’t reflect passing trends or individual whims; rather they should reflect values and characters your target audience can identify with, reflecting your brand’s true character and identity.
Once your brand voice is established, it’s important to use it consistently across digital guest communication channels. From follow up messaging and subscription drip to digital guidebooks and loyalty programs – keeping everything consistent across channels will build trust with guests while increasing brand loyalty.