Companies are increasingly recognizing the value of establishing close customer engagement strategies. These strategies lead to better marketing to achieve healthier business relationships. Take the hotel, travel, hospitality and leisure industries as an example. In the past, the hotel industry has gained rapid growth and, at times, over-expansion of tourism industries. Currently, the hotel industry destinations have to address and overcome the challenges and threats resulting in market developments and business environmental changes.
Marketing in the fields of tourism, travel, hospitality and leisure industries is one of cutting edge and most challenging trend of recent years. Within the framework of “Experience Economy” in the overall business environment and consumer behavior, in particular, the task of offering unforgettable tourism experiences to visitors and guests is the most critical priority for all tourism-related businesses and destination marketers.
The key challenges marketing professionals face for customer engagement in the Hotel Industry are:
- Customers are increasingly distracted: Customer distraction is the first major challenge that the hotel industry is repeatedly facing to convey the value of their business. The primary strategy to meet the challenge of customer distraction is persuasion and simplicity. You can achieve simplicity by focusing your efforts on the customers’ scarcest resource. For example, one customer segment might be time, for another, it may be a mental effort. Individuals tend to find things simple that they do over and over again if the marketer can ally an already existing customer routine the chances are they are more likely to engage them.
- Customers are focusing on new models of authority: To build trust in old forms of authority, such as politicians, academics, businesses, scientists, among others, have continued to deterioration and in their place, new models of power have risen. Encyclopedias are replaced by Wikipedia; Bank Managers are replaced by Money saving Experts and Travel Agents are replaced by Trip Advisors. The common element in many of these new authorities is building the relationship and trust to offer long-term value.
- Increased expectations of Customers: If improved quality and new offers are not provided, nowadays the likelihood is that their customers will quickly find someone else. Switching goods and providers has never been so easy for the customers. Although the importance of post-sales support is growing dramatically as the ability to augment discontent is now just one click and a Facebook group away. So, meeting customers expectation is a real task for marketers. Here is where personalized video marketing plays an important role: Companies that contextualize their messages to each person will win the attention span battle.
- Establishment of new Communities: Through the new sources of authority come new ways of connecting. The challenge for marketers in customer engagement is how to join the discussions within these communities without approaching across as outsiders coveting to disrupt the conversation. The language of customer-to-customer exchange is frequently challenging to learn and tough to meet business needs through.
