Hotels spend enormous amounts of money persuading people to walk through their doors.
They advertise. They pay commissions to online travel agencies. They invest in websites, social media, loyalty programmes, search marketing and increasingly sophisticated booking technology.
Then something rather strange happens.
The guest checks out.
And, remarkably often, the conversation ends.
That traveller may have spent several nights at the property. They may have eaten in its restaurants, used its pool, spoken with its staff, explored the surrounding destination and returned home with photographs and memories.
The hotel has already done the difficult part.
It has acquired the customer.
Yet months can pass without that former guest hearing anything meaningful from the property again.
When communication does arrive, it is frequently predictable:
Book now.
Save 20%.
Special weekend offer.
Limited-time promotion.
There is nothing inherently wrong with any of those messages. Hotels need to sell rooms.
But perhaps hotels are overlooking something considerably more powerful.
What if they stopped treating every email as an advertisement?
The Guest Relationship Shouldn't End at Checkout
A hotel guest is different from somebody who merely visited a website.
They've experienced the product.
They know what breakfast tastes like. They remember the view from the balcony. They know the walk from the lobby to the beach. They may remember the bartender who made their favorite cocktail or the receptionist who helped arrange an excursion.
There is already a relationship.
For years, hotels have talked about guest loyalty. Entire programmes have been constructed around points, status levels, complimentary upgrades and discounted future stays.
But loyalty is not created only through transactions.
It is also created through connection.
And one of the simplest ways of maintaining that connection is surprisingly old-fashioned:
Give people something interesting to read.
What If Hotels Became Publishers?
Imagine returning home from a holiday in Seychelles.
Three months later, instead of receiving an email announcing 15% OFF SELECTED DATES, you receive:
The Extraordinary Story of the Seychelles Islands That Once Sheltered Pirates
You might open that.
A former guest of a Cape Town hotel might be interested in:
What Is Changing on Cape Town's Waterfront This Summer?
Someone who stayed in Malindi might click:
Why This Small Kenyan Coastal Town Has Fascinated Travellers for Centuries
A guest returning from Mauritius might enjoy a story about the island's food, history, music or hidden corners.
None of these emails needs to begin by selling a room.
They do something subtler.
They return the destination to the traveller's imagination.
And once somebody starts imagining the destination again, something commercially interesting can happen.
They start thinking about returning.
Hotels Already Own Something Valuable
Customer acquisition is expensive.
A hotel may pay an OTA commission to acquire a booking. It may spend money advertising through Google or social media. It may employ sales teams, attend travel exhibitions, or negotiate with tour operators.
But after the stay, the property potentially possesses something extremely valuable:
a relationship with somebody who has already chosen it once.
Naturally, any ongoing marketing communication must respect applicable privacy laws, consent requirements, and the guest's communication preferences.
But where that relationship can legitimately continue, hotels have an opportunity that deserves more imagination.
The email database shouldn't merely be regarded as a list of people to whom another room offer can be sent.
It can become an audience.
And there is an important difference between a database and an audience.
A database contains addresses.
An audience contains people who actually want to hear from you.
Stop Selling for a Moment
Modern consumers are surrounded by offers.
Airlines want them to book.
Hotels want them to book.
Credit-card companies want them to spend.
Travel websites announce flash sales, member prices, secret deals and disappearing discounts.
Eventually it becomes noise.
Editorial content operates differently.
A genuinely interesting story asks for nothing except attention.
Consider a hotel located near an extraordinary historical site. Why shouldn't that hotel occasionally tell the site's story?
If a new restaurant district is emerging nearby, why not introduce it?
If whales arrive offshore during a particular season, tell former guests about them.
If a local musician becomes internationally famous, explain the connection.
If a remarkable festival is approaching, tell its history.
If the hotel itself has an unusual past, dig into it.
The destination is producing stories every day.
Hotels are sitting in the middle of them.
The Hotel Doesn't Always Have to Be the Story
This may be the biggest conceptual shift.
Traditional hotel marketing naturally concentrates on the property:
Our rooms.
Our spa.
Our restaurant.
Our pool.
Our offer.
Our award.
But travellers rarely choose destinations because they desperately want to sleep in Room 407.
They travel because they want experiences.
The hotel is part of that experience.
So sometimes the smartest hotel communication might barely mention the hotel at all.
Tell me about the island.
Tell me about the neighborhood.
Tell me why that mountain has that strange shape.
Tell me about the old building across the road.
Tell me where locals eat.
Tell me why the sea changes color at a particular time of year.
Make me miss the place.
The booking opportunity can come later.
From Customer Database to Travel Community
There is another benefit to communicating this way.
Not every former guest is ready to travel again immediately.
Someone who stayed last month probably doesn't need another hotel room today.
But six months from now?
A year?
Two years?
Circumstances change.
The hotel's challenge is to stay in that person's mind without becoming irritating.
Useful editorial communication provides a reason to stay there.
A monthly destination story is not simply asking:
Will you buy from us again?
It is saying:
Remember this place? Here's something you probably didn't know about it.
That's a very different relationship.
The Irony of Modern Hospitality
Hotels have become extraordinarily sophisticated at finding strangers.
They can reach somebody thousands of kilometers away through search engines, booking platforms, social advertising, and global distribution systems.
Yet the person who already slept in the building can sometimes disappear from the conversation almost immediately after checkout.
Perhaps the next great opportunity in hotel marketing isn't another advertising platform.
Perhaps it is learning how to communicate differently with the people hotels have already met.
Not constantly.
Not intrusively.
And certainly not with another discount every Tuesday morning.
But occasionally, intelligently and with something worth opening.
Because somewhere in London, Johannesburg, Nairobi, Dubai, New York or Berlin is a former guest who isn't currently thinking about your hotel.
They aren't searching for flights.
They aren't comparing room prices.
They aren't planning another holiday.
Then an interesting story arrives.
They open it.
They read it.
They remember the beach.
They remember breakfast overlooking the ocean.
They remember that extraordinary little restaurant around the corner.
And suddenly, without anybody telling them to—
they start thinking about coming back.
— Blockbuster Articles
Recommended next read: Why Hotel Prices Can Be Different for the Same Room on the Same Night
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