2025 MARKETING STRATEGY
What do we do next?
As we approach having the foundation of our communication channels complete— our websites, GMS transactional communications, Canary process—it’s now our job to build an ongoing conversation between the content (the representation of us), our team, and the guest to create a relationship. That relationship is ultimately our brand.
The Thought Process
It’s been our practice to choose partners and team members who look a lot like us, who feel like us, and it should be our charge to create that familiar reciprocity with our guests too. To our guests, we’re like a friend, always just a text message or a direct message away, a favor that’s there for the asking, a friendly ear that’s there for confirmation and support. It’s creating comfort in brevity and the fluency of the language we share. By creating this friendship, we’re laying the expectations of how we treat one another.
Our relationship cannot be a one-way street. We don’t just lecture and tell. There’s a give-and-take and grace. We ask, we commiserate, we think about one another even when we’re not in a conversation. Our communication with each other is multidimensional. Sometimes it’s brief and on the surface, other times it’s more serious. But it’s always relevant. We respect one another’s time.
Building from the premise of the MCH expansion’s thought process, we create the picture of our ideal outcome…. how the guest will feel, how we’ll feel, really understand and embrace that, and then reverse engineer the steps that will lead to that gratitude.
Key Factors
Our evolving revenue strategy is going to inform much of our messaging which in turn will focus on adding value, telling our story, and creating a relationship with our team and our guests.
Ultimately, the nickels and dimes among friends don’t mean as much, because true relationships have value. They’re not simply transactional. When your once-in-awhile acquaintance Marriot wants $30 more a night, you owe him nothing. But when your friend Ian says he’s a bit more expensive, you know where your money is going, and your confident it’s well spent. And you want people like Ian to prosper because he’s always been so good to you. Every dollar you spend is a vote for the kind of world you want to live in, and that applies to us as well.
The Messaging
Although the tone will differ slightly between our properties, we are in fact one family and of one heart and mind. Our core values, our infrastructure and our approach are the same. Our appeal is consistent. They have integrity. Key tenets include: sophistication, friendliness, simplicity, thoughtfulness, politeness, discernment, worldly values, and locally investment.
The Messengers Our Team.
Our message is only as effective as our ability to articulate it. That means we all—from the executive team to hotel management, to guest services, to engineers—everyone must essentially understand and communicate our values and value.
The Messengers
Social Media
Even as social media was a component of marketing plans several years back, today it continues to gain ground as a vital prong of the conversation we’re creating. Building off the relationship we’ve cultivated with Tiffany Rose and Chris Norberg in Maui, it’s imperative that we cultivate a similar relationship in both Seattle and Portland. Building upon the approach we’ve taken thus far, our strategy can be improved with more conversation—give and take—and encouragement for our team and guests to participate in the dialogue. Influencers help drive the engagement: they’re trusted, revered, and can largely be the public mouthpiece of the hotel.
Building Portland and Seattle’s presence includes adding Jordan Curtis, the founder of LineLeader Media, a digital marketing agency based in Portland, Oregon which has more than 15 years of experience supporting global and boutique agencies, and now contracting as sole proprietors. It offers digital marketing services for small businesses, big brands and everyone in between. Their core expertise is focused on organic and paid social media, influencer campaigns, digital strategy, analytics and integrated campaigns. LineLeader counts literally millions of followers and engagements and has the hundreds of millions of annual impressions. They are going to help us disseminate our messaging and we’re hitching our wagon to theirs. They bring an energy to our brand and message that will change its visibility. Their experience in working with brands and agencies across the Pacific Northwest has provided us with a fantastic network.
The Messengers
TripAdvisor (+ Review & Rating Sites)
If we genuinely want our team and guests to understand our value—why we’re worth a more robust ADR—we must perform and then ensure that the perception of our value is consistently reported and trumpeted. This is going to involve earning the sentiment and then “asking for the sale”. Customers love to participate in the success of brands that like. Each touch point we have with our guests needs to be funneling them toward joining the conversation with and about us.
Tripadvisor is certainly a powerhouse in the hospitality industry with approximately a billion users worldwide. Its travel research platform aggregates reviews and opinions of members about destinations, accommodations restaurants and activities throughout the world through its flagship brand.
Positive things we gain from working with TripAdvisor include driving commission-free direct bookings, showcasing special offers with premium placement above all channel partners, and capturing the attention of potential guests with reputation tools. We can then leverage its data to help measure performance, stay informed on our position in the market and gain insight into our guests.
(We’ll also be boosting our impact by supplementing our listing with sponsored placements and targeted display ads.)
Loyalty /STASH
Loyalty to our brand is encompassed by loyalty to the independent hotel concept. Thus far, we’ve earned some business by leveraging our participation with Stash, but we haven’t yet truly committed to the organism as a whole, and we’re shortchanging ourselves. Moving forward, it’s key to use its tools, including adding Stash to our current sales process and group website to attract meeting planners and enrolling OTA guests on-property and adding a Stash enrollment link to win-back emails.
There are more than 200 participating Stash hotels across the US, Canada and the Caribbean and the platform has more than 1 million participants. In addition to being part of its network, By creating an ongoing program that sends featured emails to its members with special incentives and offers as well as display ads throughout Stash’s website to stay in front of its members. A primary reason for partnering with Stash is that it helps steer customers away from OTAs which can take commissions of up to 20%. Conversely, Stash members can book a “fenced off” lowest guaranteed member-only rate that costs us just $65 per $1000 in revenue, or 6.5% in comparison.
Lastly, in order to create buy-in from our team, and to reward them, it seems intuitive to participate in Stash’s employee program that provides inexpensive stays at member hotels to our employees and to other member hotels’ teams with us. This dovetails with creating a conversation among a likeminded community.
Topaz
Topaz has been a key partner in providing call center support to the hotel. Its team of technicians are thoroughly educated on our property’s benefits and amenities and are experts at moving callers through the purchasing process and booking their direct reservations. Our ongoing education with its team includes sending them engaging update videos. Rewarding Topaz team members with stays at our hotels seems an intuitive way to add to the conversation.
The Digital Journey
One of things we’ve focused on in our marketing reboot, is to focus on the guest’s digital journey. By curating our touchpoints—by both email and text message—and by crafting pre and post stay surveys, not only do we have a better picture of our guest, we may then also retarget and re-market to that guest in an exceptionally targeted and relevant way.
By mapping out their experience from the moment the make a reservation, we can better orchestrate their stay and respond more professionally and efficiently from an operational standpoint too.
Guests can now reach us in the most streamlined way – through text messaging. Whether they need a fresh set of towels or have a question for guest services, our guests now have a direct channel for their communications.
The guest journey also includes pre and post stay surveys that will help us with operations, exceptional service and remarketing. Another exceptional feature we’ve added is that guest can leave tips for room attendants and bellmen without handling cash, which incentivizes our team on site to be of superb service.
Email Communication
Closely related to the guests’ digital journey is email communication. Over the past year we’ve been increasingly in touch with our past guests via email—for the most to offer a discount generally associated with a holiday. But as our strategy and goals evolve moving forward, our communication needs to also shift toward creating a relationship and adding value. The division between emails being transactional versus promotional needs to dissipate. No one likes to get a message just because someone wants something, and we need to respect that. We instead need to provide information and inspiration, guiding the guest toward creating the experience.