Identify the Strengths and Weaknesses of Competing Hotel Brands
Instead of copying other hotels, build a standout brand based on competitor analysis.
All around the globe, hotel marketing teams tend to copy marketing practices from one another. Embracing proven strategies is one thing, but blindly copying anything that seems like a good idea is not a smart move.
The Maldives is an excellent example. Most hotel photos and hotel websites look nearly identical. A recent survey demonstrated that 8 out of 10 first-time Maldives visitors could not find any differences between a $400 ADR resort and a $2,000 ADR one, as the photos and videos looked similar.
The same story in Vietnam. Most hotel Facebook and resort Instagram accounts look eerily similar. Regardless of the style of the property, all look very similar. A few exceptions are 5-star luxury properties with unique architecture or a super-professional marketing team.
Copying other hotels will not make your brand stand out
Copying what other hotels do has significant risks. Let's see a few.
You might copy a technique that looks good but does not work. You may end up portraying your property in the wrong ways, making it unattractive for guests who would have been genuinely interested.
Your hotel will eventually end up like any average hotel, losing the core differentiation values of the original concept. Anyone can do better than that.
Understanding what guests see positively and negatively about other hotels is easier than ever. More and more hotels use Competitor Analyzer to find out about the strengths and weaknesses of their competitors.
Why and how to do a competitor brand analysis?
As mentioned, Competitor Analyzer is a tool that got popular among hoteliers in the past few months. In a nutshell, the solution launches market research campaigns about your select competitors.
A competitor analysis can reveal important insights, including
- Brand awareness of your competitors
- Brand acceptance of your competitors
- Perceptual map with two selectable values (eg. price/value)
- Brand perceptions of your competitors
The tool is suitable for professional competitor brand analysis projects fast and cost-effectively. All you need to do is input up to 3 competitors with website URLs, specify the audience where you seek opinions from, set your research budget, and start the research.
This report makes it easy to understand the brand strengths and weaknesses of hotels in your compset, enabling you to develop a brand strategy that answers the untapped needs of your target guests.
If you still want to copy techniques from other hotels, Competitor Analyzer can help to identify practices that work.
Learn the weaknesses of other hotels and make yours look better
A report from Competitor Analyzer will reveal any weaknesses of a hotel brand. In most cases, hotels have low brand awareness, low brand acceptance, and brand perceptions are quite different from what they want to portray.
This indicates wrong positioning and has a very negative impact on both brand acceptance and brand perceptions. Should a competitor get a poor brand acceptance score, you might want to refrain from copying anything from them.
Connecting the competitor market analysis results with related points in their hotel marketing implementation will indicate how well their marketing works.
By looking at the shortcomings, you will see which practices work out for the particular hotel and which don't.
Find out what people love about other hotels and embrace those qualities.
Similar to how one can identify shortcomings in hotel brand management, Competitor Analyzer can help to find good practices that work for your competitors.
Connecting positive results with related hotel marketing implementations will make it easy to find successful concepts. In most cases, hotels with high brand acceptance and mostly positive customer perceptions have their marketing communications right.
High brand awareness can indicate that they enjoy increased demand - suggesting that they utilize their marketing resources well.
Should you invest in competitor analysis for your hotel?
Yes, you should. Unless you have sufficient business intelligence that enables confident decision-making, investing in a competitor analysis is always a good idea.
The good news is that Competitor Analyzer is a low-cost and fast research tool designed to be accessible for any company of any size. You can start a competitor analysis from $50 (USD). The cost of analysis depends on the number of insights you order, targeting criteria, and the number of respondents you want to participate in the survey research.
