It’s important not to underestimate the power of strong hotel branding. Creating a memorable brand identity helps gain trust and forge lasting impressions with your target audience.
When customers encounter your brand, whether it’s through an advert, directly on your hotel website or in person, they must remember you for all the right reasons.
This article will explain the importance of hotel branding, what it means in hospitality, and how you can create your unique hotel brand.
What is hotel branding?
Hotel branding is everything that your hotel is and represents. The branding of your hotel should capture personality, values, notions, and experiences.
Branding helps to create lasting impressions on your target audience and gain a trustworthy reputation. Consumers should understand your hotel’s identity through purposeful branding and be able to recognise your brand from competitors.
A hotel’s brand focuses on what makes your hotel unique and can be portrayed through brand philosophy, personality, design, name, and target audience.
Why is hotel branding important?
Hotel branding is important to establish your hotel’s identity, build trust and loyalty with customers, and influence your target audience to connect positively with the brand.
Branding across the hotel, physically and virtually, should be consistent for consumers to understand what to expect from your hotel. Consistency allows consumers to feel safe, trust your brand, and feel a positive connection.
In hospitality, branding is about much more than fonts, logos, and colour palettes; it should focus on promoting a positive brand image and perception in the mind of its customers.
What does branding mean in hospitality?
Hotel branding in the hospitality industry aims to build a credible, reliable and consistent reputation that encourages your target audience to engage with the brand.
Hospitality branding considers many elements that together portray and encompass the hotel brand’s values, personality, and experience.
Strong hotel branding is an important part of attracting and retaining guest relationships and providing guests with a valid reason to consider your brand over competitors.
How do I make my own hotel brand?
Whether you’re launching a brand new hotel or reconsidering your current marketing strategy, hotel branding is a powerful tool that can help your brand stand out online.
Here are three components to consider when creating your hotel brand:
Layout your brand values
Brand values give the consumer a simple understanding of who your brand is and what your brand represents. Consumers love to engage with brands who share their personal values creating a powerful advantage over competitors.
Your hotel values should represent the brand’s identity and personality, highlighting to the target audience the unique experiences they can share when visiting your hotel.
Values help consumers to distinguish your brand from the competition and gain customer trust. Values could include going the extra mile for your guests, embracing diversity or offering unique experiences.
Target your audience
The target audience is the niche group of customers you wish to attract to your hotel and the market of people who are most likely to be interested in your services.
Common target markets include tourists, business travellers, conference groups, and workers.
Each target market category will be attracted to hotels that offer a service catered to their individual needs.
For example, tourists are more likely to be interested in hotels with central locations where they can see the sights and shop for souvenirs, whereas business people making trips for work will have a higher need for a quiet stay and additional help with transport services and maybe conference rooms.
You can determine your target audience by considering your hotel location, competitors, restrictions and plans for the future.
Once you have decided on your target audience, be sure to market your brand toward their needs to appeal.
Analyse competitors
In areas surrounded by competition, hotel branding is an increasingly important marketing strategy.
Analyse the competition to see what other hotels offer to customers and use hotel branding to highlight what makes your brand unique and different to other hotels nearby.
Explain to the customer how your hotel experience is incomparable to any other stay and gain their trust via powerful branding.
If you are a hotel in an area with a high amount of competition, where similar hotels are offering similar services, identifying the niche of your brand is a great way to gain a competitive edge and appeal to your audience.
If you are considering buying your own hotel, get in touch with our team who are always on hand to answer any questions about your mortgage for a bed and breakfast business.
