Niching down is the secret for SUCCESS in the FUTURE of hospitality especially for BOUTIQUE HOTELS

Yes, this is really about niching down in hospitality. Maybe it's not a secret but it's not talked about a lot and it's super important concept for the future of boutique hotels.

Niching down is the easiest way to position and stand out in the market. Decide on your concept, story and delivery vehicle and target appropriate so called ideal guests.

This is not about demographics. It's about what you are AUTHENTIC TO and who you SERVE THE BEST.

There are three layers which need to align: hotel's identity, guests' needs & wants and specific experience.

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Video Transcript:

Hello everyone. Welcome to Remarkable Boutique Hotels where we talk about outstanding experiences and everything that leads to them.

You’ve probably heard of phrase to niche down, advice like focus on niche markets, you must niche down, the riches are in the niches, that’s what marketing experts are saying all around the world. It’s mostly used in online businesses, but how about hotels, could niching down be a good strategy to differentiate? We’ll see. Let’s dive in.

Niching down, means knowing who your ideal target customer is and aligning your marketing to match, meaning speaking their language so they can notice you easier in a crowd of other offers on market. Not literary their language, I mean that too, but using the words and phrases they would use to describe a problem they have. The real essence of this strategy is knowing customer’s needs, how they articulate them and if those are really real, like you know that saying – sell them what they want give them what they need, anyway, the more specific you get, the better. So, let’s translate this into hotel industry.

Identifying your ideal guest is much more then knowing their demographic information like age, gender, ethnicity, employment etc. But, before discovering your guests interests and needs and going creative, you should first start with your hotel’s concept. So, before, imagining all those cool groups of people you wish to make your market segment, think about if your hotel has what it needs to deserve their attention. The idea is to be the hotel, your ideal guest really aspires to stay in and looks forward to the next visit. So instead of chasing them by ads and influencers, not going into costs by the way, be the hotel they want to be part of, the one they’ll proudly recommend to their friends and family. Are you that hotel and what should you do to become such? That’s the question. So, it’s first about you and then about guests. You want to be good match for each other, both you and your guests. And that match doesn’t start with marketing and right messaging.

In marketing, you don’t want to persuade someone to come but to create a desire which means you are already a good match, no need to persuade. There’s difference in an intention and long term effect. It’s like don’t just sell someone on something but find out what is that one benefit they really need and create an honest relationship for future. When you’re persuading someone you tend to follow trends and exaggerate the real thing, when instead you should put an effort to inspire them to stay with you by finding ways to present the real experience as if they can feel it. And you want to target only those guests whose interests match your hotel’s concept because hospitality is not about mere accommodation anymore but providing experiences and when their needs match your concept it’s so much easier to create outstanding experiences and fulfil their wants.

So, we already see three main layers here which are your hotel’s identity, your guests needs and wants and experience you provide and they get. Niching down is having these three aligned, meaning being recognised for providing specific experience among specific groups of people. And the result will be many loyal guests having outstanding experiences spreading the word about your hotel.

So, the first question is what is the concept of your hotel? What values do you promote? Can you be more specific like you might have main topic such as sport, art, fashion, minimalism, maximalism, animals, but also what particular qualities in that area you want to bring in your hotel’s identity and how can you do that using sounds, textures, smells, visuals? What is some passion of yours that can be inspiration for interior, food offer, services, communication style, the way you go above and beyond for a guest?

These principles are what will differentiate you. Again, it works in layers, like you will have one main idea and interest to build around but then this will give you direction for the development of some special services and offers or the way you create whole guest journey, how you build relationship, and so on. I did one great video only on this topic with the whole process, so make sure you watch that one too.

So we said layers are hotel’s identity, guests needs and wants and experience you provide.

So, next, it’s the time to think about your ideal guests. It should feel like a natural continuation of your hotel’s identity because remember, you are aiming for that match-match situation for both your hotel and guests. And this is where you identify the group of people that will be your ideal guest profile. You can start describing them by broadening demographics, thinking about their needs and wants, especially the ones that fit your hotel’s identity. I know I stress this so many times but it’s really foundational moment. So, you can first say it’s families or couples, business people etc. but then go deeper like families who own their business or couples on a honeymoon or bleisure millennials, bleisure stands for business and leisure if you didn’t know already, it’s like a rise of new hybrid travel model.

Anyways, after this, go even deeper, it can be busy mums who are entrepreneurs and who look for peaceful place to do a launch for their online program or to relax after just finishing one, it can be solo traveler looking to engage in local activities as an experience, or families who follow special programs for their children development so you’ll have appropriate toys in rooms for example. Those are just random examples of narrowing down. And a really big thing here is to continue and brainstorm all the different ways for how to implement this practically in all business areas, which obviously I can’t just talk in general, there’s a whole process of how to do applied storytelling and differentiation when positioning a boutique hotel in the market.

But, being specific here is what leads you to creating your unique hospitality methodology. Part of it is creating experiences such as curate services, even space and thinking ahead of your guests in order to accommodate their routines and purpose of coming and make their stay easier and nicer as no one ever did. Listen, outstanding experiences are not that difficult to create, it’s not about bringing camels to lobby so that someone can tag you on socials, it’s more about many small special moments where you show you’ve been thinking about someone. And you do that in a scope of the niche you picked and worked on, developed through concept and experiences, because that way it’s sustainable, you don’t want to hustle but to create easy to run systems in order to provide that feeling of being taken care of and able to rely on you for your guests.

So, as you see, who you are and who your guests are and what is the experience you promise should all be tightly connected, but niching down is not the only reason. This will also lead to much higher ROI, return on investment. So, with this approach, you’ll create that Bingo effect where you and your guests genuinely match, this will help you serve them in an outstanding way without too much effort and they will be beyond happy. Bingo! Now you only need to use right messaging in marketing or to do rebranding to come to those guests which shouldn’t be that difficult, because niching down makes your marketing more impactful. Still, don’t give over the whole process to marketing experts without involving yourself unless you have a detailed brand book with applied philosophy of your hotel explained in it.

If there is one secret for scalable success in coming future of hospitality, especially with everything happening with technology and big chain hotels’ programs but also more and more small hotels, I would say it’s this one. Be specific and create your hotel superpowers. Be outstanding for your ideal guests.

If you want to see more examples of how to successfully niche down follow us on socials where we share concrete hotel stories or have us work on your specific case. Until next occasion, have a beautiful experiences my friends.

Thank you for listening. Here at Remarkable Boutique Hotels, we want your hotel to be worth every penny and every second of your guests. Schedule a discovery call to find more about our remarkable methodology which is unique in the whole hospitality industry. I would love to hear your hotel story. See you there.