Guide Books

There is a proliferation of guidebooks and over the years both their ownership and their editorial policy seems to have changed. But do your customers and guest still use them to guide them on where to eat or to stay? No one knows the answer, but I suspect that some of your prospects do take notice of these guides. Hopefully your local market will have no need to take any notice of whether you are in or out since you will have done such a good promotional job.

It is easy to get very upset if you are left out of a particular guide and your inferior colleague down the road is included. Remember, however, that any assessment is usually only on one occasion and maybe you had a bad day when the inspector called. My view is that an entry in a guide might be useful but it is probably not worth putting any real effort into being included.

Be particularly wary of guides that ask you for payment for inclusion. The best guides are good enough to be supported by the readers. Your entry may lead to a marginal increase in covers or room nights but you shouldn’t have any marketing plan that relies on there being any benefit. In other words, entries are the icing on the cake but your sales job is about making the cake in the first place.

Agency Or Diy

There is a lot to be said for handing over the whole task to an agency. For a start they already have the contacts and they can hit the ground running. Fees, however, are often prohibitive for most independent hotels – monthly fees of around £ 1,500–2,000 are the norm. For most independent hotels this is not an option. More appropriate might be a project fee paid to a freelance PR consultant. Here fees are from £ 250 per day.

It really depends on how important PR is in your overall marketing mix and what sort of resources you are willing to allocate to do the job well. If you use all the techniques here you can do it yourself and see whether you benefit or not. You can then always go to an agency knowing exactly how it works.

Agency Contract/Expectation

If you do contract an agency you will need to set down the terms of business. These should cover:

• exclusivity
• contract term and cancellation
• fees
• billing procedures
• disbursements and expenses
• agency in-house costs
• payment terms
• approvals and authority
• copyright
• confidential information
• insurance
• applicable law.

 

The agency will also need to provide you with an outline of the agreed objectives and exactly what they are going to do to achieve these objectives:

• background
• objectives
• communication strategy
• key audiences

• messages
• implementation plan
• evaluation.

 

Measuring Results

This is usually where most agency relationships founder and where you wonder whether it is worth the effort. A great public profile doesn’t help if your hotel or restaurant is empty. Press clippings are not a great alternative to cash in the till.

Your media strategy needs to be part of your overall marketing plan, since if you just do PR the outcome is unlikely to be successful or the benefits sustained. Set your return on investment goals as realistically as possible and then be very strict about measuring whether or not these have been achieved. For instance, if you were launching a new restaurant, it would be reasonable to have a number of PR objectives such as:

All these objectives can be easily measured because you have specified those aspects that can be influenced by your agency or your own team if you have the resources.

Key Points

• Exposure in the media is great but is usually the result of a lot of sustained effort.

• Journalists don’t care about your business; they are in the business of publicising things that are of interest to their readers. Meet their needs and they will meet yours.
• Whatever your product, you can find an opportunity that will be of interest to a local or national audience. Brainstorm with your team and be creative.
• Don’t neglect the electronic media potential.
• Even though it is difficult, you must somehow try to measure the results of your media efforts.