First of all, I'm going to give you a quick introduction so you understand segmentation and its importance. Then I'll introduce you to the most important segments in the hospitality industry, followed by an exercise to help you effectively segment your targets according to your property. By asking yourself the right questions. Then it's time to create your personas, a concept which I'll explain in a bit.

I'll show you some examples of different personas in my fictitious hotel. The hotels have clubs which should give you the know how to do it for your own place. And finally, we will learn how to understand the needs and concerns of the different personas that we create. All right. Let's go. So what is segmentation? Segmentation is about dividing the market into definable, exploitable and profitable parts with growth potential.

But let's be honest, that's a bit of a boring definition. And since I'm not a boring person, at least I hope not. Let me give you a color definition. In your property you have many different types of people coming to visit you. Some people are older than others. Some people come as a couple and others as a family.

Two adults, two children. Some people come to attend a conference and maybe some others come to see a concert or a wrestling match or whatever you like. You get the point. So that's what segmentation is all about. All these different people are ultimately your different segments. It's not rocket science. That's why I can do it. But it is very important to remember that even though segmentation is not complicated, it is fundamental to revenue management.

And remember that's our engine. Okay. So if you're all aboard my fun educational train, you know you're going to want to drive it eventually all the way to Money Town. All right. So now that we know what it is and we're all good on that point, we can cross that out and we can move on to the second point, the main segments in the hotel industry.

We're getting to the core of the issue now. So strap in, cause I'll be giving you the wheel soon. So in the hotel industry, groups are generally divided into four major segments leisure tourists, business travelers, group travelers, and all the rest. Now, that's obviously a picture painted with very broad strokes. Think of it as the first coat on the canvas, colors and shapes, and not a lot else.

The real work starts when we begin to apply details, the faces and the trees. If we're going to persist with my metaphor, I suppose there are so many different criteria with which to adjust and distill the major segments you can subdivide by taking into account the age of the visitors, the country, or the region they come from. The average money they spent, the platform that they booked their room through, the services they use, such as breakfast, spa, transport.

You could fill books with potential useful subdivisions of segments. So let's zoom in on a couple ourselves. So we've taken a look at the important segments. We're getting a little closer to the target by refining the segmentation, so we can cross out that second part and move on to the third part. Learning to segment. To carry out a good segmentation in your establishment, you will need to ask yourself the right question.

So start by dividing your visitors over a calendar year into four segments. The ones we've just seen, leisure, business groups, and other. Of course, those segments must be adapted to your establishment. So, for example, if you have no business tourism at all in your hotel, forget the business segment and create another one that better represents your visitors and your hotel.

And now this first division will give you segments, but they will still have a lot of people in them. So we may have to double down a little bit more. By which I mean now we need to tackle the subdivision. Okay. So to do this ask yourself the following questions. From which channel did my customers book? Was it direct Airbnb booking Expedia?

What was their acquisition cost? Was it commission advertising budget? How much did they spend? Did they get a discount a promotion? Did they get any additional services? What was the purpose of their stay? A concert, a conference, a sports event. What was their booking period? Christmas holidays. Long weekend. Easter. They're booking cycle. How far in advance of the trip did they book?

Was it last minute or several months in advance? Length of stay one night, three days or less. One week more than a week. Loyalty. They are regular. Customer. Was that their first time? Their second time, etc. as a general rule, it is advised to create a specific segment in your establishment. If a group of visitors generates between 8% and 15% of your turnover.

So, for example, if you have a lot of business visitors from London, you can create a Business London segment, right? And if this segment is still very important, it can be divided into subsets. Immense business London 20 to 30 business London 30 to 40 business London 40 to 50 business London 50 plus. You get the idea. Now that you have all these details in mind, take a pen and a paper and let's go through the exercise.

Okay. So take the document that we have created for you with the four segments. And feel free to replace the segment according to your establishment, or to add lines and indicate in each of these segments, the people who booked with you last year. And feel free to pause me in the meantime. Now that you have the four segments more or less filled in, you can refine the segmentation by answering the questions we saw just a little earlier.

So take the first segment, leisure to start with and answer the questions for each of the reservations that are present. If you find that only 2% of your customers have booked via Airbnb, that won't be a big enough segment to target. So let it go. But if you have, for example, 30% of visitors who have booked with booking, that will be very interesting for you.

And you can subdivide that by adding a question like the age or the location of that particular customer. So why don't you pause this video again to do the exercise and get back to me when you have finished and you have your four segments subdivided and ready to go. Hello again. So exercise one in the bag. Outstanding. Let's move on with your segments at the ready.

Oh, and now that we finished segmenting the market we can cross this step off our list.

Now it's time to move on to another important step which many of you have probably already done creating personas. Let's start with a little definition that I've summarized to make it more hotel friendly and understandable. Personas are fictional characters created by you on the basis of research and data, to represent the different types of travelers likely to visit your establishment.

The creation of personas will help you to understand the needs and behaviors and inclinations of your visitors. You can use personas for revenue management, but also for many other things like creating content on social networks, for example. So let me say it again and say it plain. This is not an exercise to be taken lightly or for granted.

I had a lot of fun creating my fictional hotel to easily present examples. It is the Hotel ace of clubs or as people would likely abbreviate it to, the hotel clubs. Get it? Hotel. Hotel. Club. Club. Order. Genius. Comedy. Genius. So anyway, let's get down to business. Okay. In our hotel, the club. We have a large proportion of couples who come for 2 or 3 days at the weekend.

There are also quite a few families who come for 1 or 2 weeks to spend the holidays. And finally, another big part of our visitors are business travelers. So it's logical, therefore, for a hotel club to create three personas, which will be the couple, the family and the businessman. Now our couple, let's say they're 27 and 28 years old from Stamford.

They're a civil servant and a nurse. They earn 1,800 pounds and 1,400 pounds respectively. They are sociable and adventurous. They enjoy romantic meals, cinema, music, tend to use Facebook and Instagram. Then we've got our family. Our family are 41 years old and 35 years old. They got a 14 year old kid and an eight year old kid. They're from a London suburb.

One's an accountant. One's a store manager. One earns 3201, earns 2900. They are relaxed, curious people. They enjoy outdoor activities, sightseeing in the cities. They use Facebook, Instagram and TikTok amongst a group of them. Then our typical businessman is 47 years old. He might be from Chelsea, might be a sales agent earning 3600 a month. He's sociable, but he's demanding.

He enjoys new technology, architecture and gastronomy, and his most used social networks are surprise, surprise. LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Instagram. Now you give it a go. Taking into account the different groups of people who stay with you, build 2 or 3 personas. I have kindly provided you with a document. You just need to replace persona one, persona two, and persona three with the ones you create.

You know the method. Let's take a break. Don't worry. I am at heart an introvert, and I appreciate being paused occasionally. Okay, so, see you back here when you're done. So, personas. All good. Good. Great. Let's cross that one out. So let's move on to the last point, which is in a way a continuation of the creation of personas.

We're going to look at the needs and concerns of each of these personas. So using my three personas from before, I simply add a few lines to my chart indicating the purpose of the trip. Expectations. While in the hotel, and general frustrations and concerns that they bring onto the property with them. Okay, so as you can see, I've sketched out some basic ideas here.

The couple, they want to go away on a romantic break and free themselves up from their regular routines. They want to make a connection and have a good time, a relaxing time, not worry about anything, right? But they come to us frustrated from their isolation during Covid. And also they had to cancel their anniversary trip, for example.

They're frustrated, concerned and however, about their decreased salaries, which they are worried will put limitations on their trip and has changed the way that they used to be able to travel. Meanwhile, the family, they just want to make new family memories. They want to, you know, the hotel to provide a range of activities, some for kids and for the whole families.

But also with a mind to to their security, you know, during the pandemic. Okay. They come to us frustrated from having spent so much time working from home that the kids are also doing school from home, which is a very difficult family balance to maintain. They come to us concerned about Covid, of course, but also concerned about the future, about the economy, about their jobs.

They don't want to go broke. Our businessman, however, he just pees in town because of work. He wants the hotel to respect Covid protocols while not interfering with his trip. You know, hand sanitizer, contactless technologies, the whole shebang. He comes frustrated, though, because he's finding it difficult to work from home. There's a lack of socialization that he was not used to in his life before the pandemic.

And he doesn't see any improvement coming in future. And this too frustrates him. And he's also he's concerned he doesn't want to be at risk during the trip, and he's concerned about the level of contamination in his destination. Again, now that you have the technique, you can do the exercise yourself. Take the chart I created with, the four extra points I mentioned.

Press pause on me and, restart me when you're finished, okay?

Each of your rooms possesses its very own unique set of charms. How do you connect what's charming to those willing and able to be charmed? Have your customer segments at the ready, because today we're going to put them to use.

I'll give you a quick preview of what we're going to see in this video. To begin with, we'll learn together how to categorize the different rooms that are for sale in your property and assign them to different personas that you created in the first module. Then we have four points that are all related. Knowing which room to sell, who to sell the room to, at what price, to sell this room for, and when to sell this room.

For the last two points, it's a little bit of a tease because they will be discussed in the next chapters, actually. So everyone, all aboard for the education train again. Mind the gap. So firstly, how do you categorize the different rooms you offer for sale, no matter the size of your property, from a small three bedroom B&B to a large 40 bedroom hotel, you all have at least a few rooms to sell.

And I'm sure you agree that not all the rooms are the same. Even for large hotels, there will be some identical rooms, but again, not all of the rooms will be exactly the same. There are always rooms that are bigger than others, rooms that have a single bed or a double bed or two single beds. Rooms that have a bathtub and rooms there.

Just have a shower. So you see where I'm going with all this? All the rooms have different characteristics. Well, depending on the different characteristics of the rooms, travelers will be more inclined to certain rooms than others. That's why it's important to categorize the rooms so you know which room category will be interesting for which customer segment or persona.

So the first exercise in this video is pretty easy, because you probably already did it when you created the pages of your website, but it's important to do it again. We're going to list the categories of rooms in our properties. So for example, for my hotel, our hotel, the the Ace of Clubs Hotel, the categories are as follows.

Standard room with double bed. Standard room with two single beds. Suite room, deluxe suite room and family room. So now take a sheet of paper and list all the categories of rooms or apartments you have for sale. The list of categories will, of course, depend on your establishment and the rooms that you sell. Once you have the list of categories, I want you to indicate which persona is interested in which room category.

So you need to use the 2 or 3 personas that you created in the previous video. So for example, for the Ace of clubs, hotel, clubs, hotel, hotel clubs, it looks like this standard room with double bed tends to be for a couple standard room with two single beds. Business suite room couple or business deluxe suite room couple.

Family room. Family. Now I want you to go ahead and pause the video for a few minutes so that you can do the exercise. So outline the categories of rooms and link them to the personas that you established in the last module. Okay. And only resume the video when you're good to go again. All right. You're done.

You done the exercise. Great. So we can cross out the first point in the video and move on to the other four points, which are all related. Again, which room to sell, who to sell the room to, at what price to sell the room and when to sell the room. And all definition of revenue management, which is still incredibly useful, is the following.

The right PPC so the right product at the right price, at the right time for the right customer. And it is precisely to be able to answer these four questions that the work of segmentation and categorization of rooms is useful. So let's take the first question which room to sell. Now from the first exercise in this video, you should have the answer since you have a list of several rooms categories.

So you know very well what types of rooms you can sell. So let's cross that issue off our list. Next up is who to sell to. And again, with the first exercise in the bag you should be able to answer the second question. Basically you know which persona is interested in which type of room. So you know who to sell the room to.

Now that you understand room categorization, you can showcase the unique attributes of each room and strategically attract the optimum customer segments for you. By optimizing your room inventory and offering tailored experiences, you've made yourself ready to enhance your guest experiences and reap the extra revenue that it yields you. See you next time.

Based on that, then we will proceed from there to figure out the minimum price at which you can sell each of your rooms. Finally, we'll look at the bar best available rate, and I will explain a little of what it is and how it works. And now that you're clear on where we're headed, let's hit the road. So how do you define the minimum price of a room?

First of all, it is important to understand the worst thing a hotelier can do is to lower their prices, since this implies a decrease in the quality of services and therefore unwittingly gives one a lower rating compared to one's competition, which is obviously far from ideal. Put simply, the price has an important impact on the brand image of the hotel, so don't meddle with it lightly.

A good comparison would be with low cost airlines. You will for sure find very low prices with Ryanair and or Easyjet for example. But you also know very well that the quality is much lower than with British Airways. For example, one is a race to the bottom and the other finds its finish line on top. And you know which race you'd rather be in.

Studies on traveler behavior show that they tend to keep a certain price in their head as a reference, based on their previous experiences. This reference price therefore indicates to travelers what is reasonable to pay and what is not. So logically it follows from that that if this reference price is too low, you will have all the difficulties in the world to make it go up again afterwards.

So that's the minimum price defined and explained. And now let's get down to something more tangible and find out what the minimum price you can sell for is to do this. Go back to the exercise you did in the previous video, where you listed the different categories of your rooms and assign them to your personas. Thanks to this, you can now know more or less how much each of your personas is willing to pay, so you can link this amount to the room category.

I will demonstrate this with the Ace of Clubs hotel. Our standard double room category is mainly for couples. Now I know that for the persona couple, the salary is not necessarily very high. So I will list this room at 75 pounds. Standard room with double bed. Couple 75 pounds. Job done. Lovely job. Our standard two single bedroom category is aimed at business customers with a higher salary, so I list this room at 90 pounds.

Standard room with single beds, business 90 pounds money in the bank and so on. In the end I have standard room, double bed couples, 75 pounds, standard room with two single beds, business 90 pounds. Suite room, couple business 100 pounds, deluxe suite room couple 120 pounds and family room for families 150 pounds. All right, folks, you know the drill.

It's time to pause the video and do the exercise yourself based on your own property room categories and personas. I'm going to run ten kilometers and meditate. I'll see you when you're done. Hello again. The stopover at Exercise Town is over. Please resume your seats aboard the Fun Learning Express. We'll be departing this instant. Now let's go ahead and cross out the second point.

As you know, the minimum price for your rooms by now. Or you should at least for the third and last point, we tackle the bar. Not that bar, of course. And anyone doing this in a bar? You're only cheating yourself, buddy. And you're also my hero. But that's neither here nor there. Bar for those who don't remember, is an acronym that stands for Best Available Rate.

To put it in boring official terms, it is the lowest rate for a given period guaranteed by the hotelier and available to the general public for a single night or a multi night stay. It's simply the best price you can offer your customers. In short, you guarantee them that they won't find a better price elsewhere. With bar, you can get more direct bookings by guaranteeing your visitors that the best rate is on your website, but that's another subject for another day and another video.

I'm tired. Your tired. Let's let's get through this and go hit a real bar. All right. Each room price you set and adjust according to the best available rate will bring you closer to your dual goals of financial success and guest satisfaction. So get started on that and we'll see you next time.

Then we'll go on to discover how to choose which channels to use according to the segments and personas. And finally, to conclude the module, I will talk about direct bookings because they should always be prioritized, especially when using an integrated reservation system and a PMS. You'll see why. Anyway, we're good. We're ready to go. Let's go. So what are the most important distribution channels in the hotel industry?

In order to get the basics, I'm going to quickly tell you what it is that we call distribution in the hotel industry. So the dictionary definition would be a set of operations and circuits that make a product available to buyers. So it's not very complicated. It's simply the means and places through which you sell your rooms. I mean, I don't think there would be any big surprises to anybody when I tell you that these are the biggest distribution channels there are, they have such a huge weight because of their insanely massive budgets that you just see them everywhere.

I'm obviously talking about Expedia booking Airbnb. Any of these guys ring a bell? Like booking alone accounts for 70% of worldwide bookings. Let that sink in, all right? The group also owns big names like Booking.com, kayak, Agoda, Expedia represents 16% of the market shares and the group is just as powerful like it also has Hotels.com or Trivago to name just two.

Airbnb is a little different because they don't list hotels, but they are the undisputed kings of non hotel accommodation, apartments, villas, etc.. And then there's other big names. They include hotel beds, H.R. s weekend desk. There's plenty. And of course social networks are important channels to, you know, generation Z are fast becoming just part of the tourism industry and market.

So bookings made via mobile are constantly increasing and booking made via mobile are bookings made via social media channels such as Facebook, Instagram, TikTok, LinkedIn? Finally, I'd like to finish this last point with a distribution channel that is admittedly losing weight, but it's still important. I'm talking about offline reservations, and by this I mean reservation that you make by phone, by email, or directly at the reception.

Receptions like this might be considered a little old fashioned, but I mean small structures such as B&Bs or guest houses, well, they would still use them a lot. So now that we know which channels are the most important, we can cross our first point off the list. But we must ask ourselves the question of how to choose which channels to go to according to the segments and the personas, so we attack the second point, which will be in the form of an exercise.

As usual, we take the results of the previous exercises to continue. This time you're going to need your list of personas and the different segments that you created in the first module. As for our own hotel, the club, which is starting to become quite well known, quite successful, I'm happy to announce we know that our personas are the following.

The couple in their 20s using Facebook and Instagram, the family in their 40s, 30s, teens and pre-teens using Facebook, Instagram and TikTok, and the business man in his late 40s using LinkedIn, WhatsApp and Instagram. Now with this information, I can attach one or more distribution channels to each of my personas. For example, the couple that uses Facebook and Instagram.

It makes sense for me to tie those two social networks together and walk them on to a bunch of distribution channels, where I'll also put my rooms designed for the couples. Same with the family's choices and same with the business. Man's choices will tie them all together. And as you'll see here, we can refine the results and do the same with the leisure travelers from the countryside, the leisure travelers from the city, the businessmen over 40 and the businessmen under 40, the groups that stay for three nights and the groups that stay for one week.

And the Saint Valentine's Day crowd, the Adele fans and the people who are coming from France for the first time in their lives. So now it's exercise time. And of course, to get the most out of the exercises, I would suggest that you pause the video, do them in full, and come back to me with a sense of accomplishment.

I promise I will be here waiting for you when you get back. Excellent. So you finish the exercises. We can cross out point number two. Now, I didn't mention it in the first point because I don't know, I like surprises, but the most important of all the distribution channels is the one you have the easiest access to, namely direct bookings, especially via your website.

This brings us to the third and final point. Always, always, always prioritized direct bookings with an integrated reservation system and PMS to retrieve the data. Now, in telling you this, I'm clearly not reinventing the wheel because you know it already. But it is ultra important to always prioritize direct bookings simply because it allows you to increase your revenue.

Since you no longer have to lose a share of sales to unfair OTA commissions. And then another important point of direct bookings is the data you can collect by priori. Enticing bookings for an integrated reservation system on your website. Coupled with a PMS, a property management system, you can collect a lot of data about your customers and this will help you greatly in segmentation and forecasting, which we will see later in chapter three.

And finally, the booking engine on your website is a distribution channel that can be linked to any persona or segment. The customer will be able to book whenever he wants and wherever he is. A well thought out distribution strategy is super important in this business. By applying what you've learned, you'll take a significant step towards increasing your hotel's visibility, gaining more bookings, and ultimately enhancing your bottom line.

As per the usual crack, I've got a short summary ready to go so we don't get lost along the way. The focus today is going to be on benchmarking, and once again, we'll be treading the most effective route of theory practice. Rinse and repeat. We'll start at the beginning because I'm not insane. And the beginning will feature a nice, succinct explanation of what the H marketing is and what the flip we use it for.

Then we'll veer into how to understand the market by identifying the properties that exist alongside you in your section of the marketplace or competitors. In other words. Thirdly, we'll look at the different aspects of a property worth further investigation. So price product location, value proposition and a few others. Finally, we'll put it into practice. Tone world will be up to you to make a comparative table of your competition.

You excited? I'm excited. All right, let's go. So we'll begin at the beginning as promised. And that happens to be the answer to the question what is benchmarking and what is it for the textbook definition run something like this. Benchmarking is the process of comparing your property to the competitors. To be able to establish one, you'll need to access not only your own data, but also that of your competitors.

Simply put, benchmarking is a comparative analysis. Man, I love putting things simply. It's so much more suited to my brainpower. One of the primary benefits of benchmarking is it allows you to more easily identify gaps in the market and opportunities for improving, especially in your pricing, which, as anyone paying attention in chapter one will know well, is a bit of a minefield unless you know what you're doing.

Luckily for you, you have me. And luckily for me, I've taken care of it and will get into it properly in chapter four. For now, benchmarking. So let's cross out number one and proceed to item number two, which is how to understand the market you're in potential competitors and identifying properties in the same market segment as yourself to identify your competitors.

There are several methods, but I'm going to focus on the ones that don't involve you in a bush somewhere with binoculars and a notebook. You can. Drumroll, please Google it. Give it a Goog. As the kids are saying a searching the criteria that would be identical to your establishments same location, same services, same price, that kind of thing.

You could also use the market research you must have done before opening. Now, far be it from me to retroactively assign new homework, but if you did this right, you should have a list of competitors already. Beyond those two, you could always just surf the socials looking at hashtags for tourism or local businesses in your area. Beware mind.

Competitors can materialize in an unpredictable variety of segments. For example, you might have competition in a hotel that's not even close to you. Okay, let's say let's, imagine, there will be an American blues, bluegrass, bluegrass fuzed with techno group, let's say, that's in England for only two days. They go from Birmingham to Newcastle and then they're gone.

Right. In this scenario, you're from Birmingham, by the way. What puts you in competition with the Geordies, you ask? Well, simply put, not all the audiences will be from the cities the band are playing in. You know, some will travel and they'll travel either to Newcastle or to Birmingham. Guess which you'd rather they get tickets to?

And guess what might be a factor in their choice? I'll give you a clue. It begins with H and it rhymes. Which motel? So as a little exercise, I want you to go back to the segments you created in the previous chapter, which you should be starting to see the value of. Now. Okay, for each segment, I want you to go ahead and ID two competitors and remember your competitors like you can feature in different segments just as easily.

All that said, put me on pause and get to work. I could use a break and you could use a means to crush your competition. Win win. So you when you're done, you're done. Wow. Well, like a good farmer, aren't you? Just out standing in a field done with point two and on to 0.3. We go. So now that we have our list of competitors, what are we going to look at specifically in order to figure out how to get the best out of them?

When you are benchmarking, maybe the most important thing to ask is how customers would compare your hotel with others. I mean, you know, it's your business, but just a stated plain. The most crucial factors for consideration are price, rooms, level of service, location, distribution channels, and value proposition. Now you see that last one. You know what that is?

Well, neither did I until a little while ago and it's worth dwelling on. So I'm going to do exactly that. The value proposition is the promise that you make in order to convince a guest to throw caution to the wind and to sleep the night in one of your rooms, it must, on a very basic level, answer the following questions that a guest asks simply by glancing at your property whether they realize it or not.

How does the hotel meet my needs and expectations? What services interest me? Why this hotel and not the one down the street? Or the one in Newcastle for that matter? So the idea is to create a value proposition on the basis of a persona. Remember those guys? So if we take for an example the renowned marble tiled splendor of the hotel, the clubs, we need to think about value propositions for our old friends, couple, family and Mr. Big Shot businessman.

So firstly, for the couple, we might say something like a few nights away just the two of you catch up on moments you've been missing with one another in a unique, affordable and memorable setting with a full breakfast, see here. We've addressed their expectations to have a romantic getaway and their concerns over budget boom for the fam. We might say hit the road less traveled safely.

Make some family memories to last a lifetime. Relax, discover, unwind all in beautiful surroundings in full compliance with the latest health regulations. If you fly back to the last chapter, module one, you'll see we've ticked a bunch of boxes for the family here with this value proposition. Okay? And then we go to Mr. Big Shot Businessman. He wants no nonsense and he wants it safely back to business.

Zoom is out and presents is in between. You and whoever you've dealings with will be there if you need us, but you won't notice a thing. Okay. I'm sure you can figure out yourself where this is going. Like my cardiologist keeps saying to me, it's time for some exercise. You're going to write out a value proposition for each of your personas.

Okay, pause. Work, play. See you in a bit. Okay. That's three done. Four. Here we go. This next bit is super practical. You're going to wait for it. Make a comparative table of your competitors. You should have your list at the ready if you've been doing the work. If you haven't, congratulations. You've just been to a steakhouse for lunch and eaten nothing but carrots and hummus.

Seriously though, if you don't have it done, pause now and do it. It's important. Still here? Solid. All right, let's get down to it. So take your list and create a table where you fill up each segment according to what your competitors are offering in order to fill it out. And this is the closest to bushes in binoculars.

I'm going to take you, I promise. Switch to incognito mode and go to the websites of your competitors. Call them if you need. Use a different phone from that of your business. Find their prices on different OTAs, their descriptions. Remember, understanding is about carving out a unique space for your hotel in the market, and that much more than undercutting or copying them is what understanding the competition is all about.

The first we'll be doing is learning that thing I just mentioned how to understand what the personas think about the hotel and how they perceive it. And for the second bit, I'm going to give you examples with the personas of my hotel, the jewel of the Isle of Man and the Hotel Ace of Clubs. And I choose not to comment on whether or not our hotel is on the Isle of Man for tax reasons.

So how do we find out what the personas we created in the first chapter? Think about the hotel and why on earth does that matter at all? Well, to get to the bottom of that a little conundrum, you have to do a little mentalist work and put yourself in the shoes of the personas to self judge your own property.

So you're like Clarice Starling visiting Hannibal Lecter in order to find out what he thinks of your hotel. Okay. Got it. Now, being honest, this isn't the easiest thing to be doing, but it is necessary if you want to understand how your hotel is perceived by the customers. You know, armed with this kind of knowledge, you will have an easier time adjusting your image and your price to be sure to provide them with an offer and a service that is completely adapted to what they are looking for.

And like an offense, is a good defense. The key to successful introspection is to get outside and look in as if you were visiting your own hotel and thinking of it, as a place you're discovering for the first time. Okay, so you're Marlon Brando in the 1960s peak of your powers and you've just got the rule of a lifetime, which is your own persona.

So you're going to get into their shoes, learn their character, like I'm about to yell action! So into the nitty gritty of it, the kind of questions you need to ask yourself when you visit your hotel in the role of one of your personas could be any or all of the following. Is this, luxury or a budget hotel?

Will my children have fun here? Is this romantic enough for a romantic weekend? Will I, Mr. Big Shot businessman, find the services I need here? High speed Wi-Fi, early breakfast, presentation rooms, Scotch. In order to make my stay as productive as humanly possible. Does the whole tell me standards and reassure me from a Covid perspective, etc., etc., etc..

Whatever other questions you think you personas might ask, the best way to figure it out for sure is walking a mile in their shoes and taking notes. As you do so. You might also find a little help with this task from friends or family, or mere acquaintances who may not be very familiar with your property because, you know it takes an outsider.

You know, that's why Paul was such a good detective. He was always on the move. He was always new in town, seeing something with first time eyes grants all kinds of new perspective. So let's just, pop some lines through point number one and move on to point number two. So I'm now going to move on to point two by showing you examples with the three personas of my own hotel with, complimentary martini and hot stone massage for all returning patrons, the Ace of Clubs Hotel.

You can do the exercises, afterwards. Just, to take your cues from me as well. I mean, it's no one else here, and it's why I'm here, but. Yeah. So in our hotel, if you remember correctly, and Lord knows I do, I have to see them every day. We have the following three personas couple, business and family.

And just to remind you for a second, our hotel has these exemplary characteristics that you see before you here in this slide. So I'll start with the couple. I'm a person close to 30 living with my girlfriend for a good five years. I come from a small town in the country and make a reasonable salary. I go out and I like spending time with my girlfriend at the weekend so that maybe she won't make such a big deal of it when I attend my brother's stag in Las Vegas next year.

Okay, now that I'm in character, I'm going straight to the Ace of Clubs hotel and I'm expecting them to have the place drenched in romance. Since it's a hotel and the big city with with a somewhat fancy décor and good services, it's got spa, in-room breakfast, petals everywhere, perfume, towels. I'm. I'm pretty impressed. So as a couple, man, I'd like to thank the academy.

I see the hotel as a place where I can spend some quality time with my lady friend, where we'll both enjoy a nice unwinding. And besides that, the hotel even offers a romantic breakfast, which everybody knows is the most delicious kind of breakfast. According to the persona I've been channeling for the last few minutes. And who you will see next, see on Broadway and is on one man show.

And I'm sure the hotel clubs is, ace altogether. Let's see what I did there. And next I okay, so let's move on to Mister Business. Big shot persona, suit tie, cufflinks, coffee. I'm just under 50 years old. I have a places to go and people to see. I come from the big city and I make a good living.

But I work hard for it. Damn it. Work is important to me. And when I go to a hotel on business, I need everything to be perfect. Okay. That'll do. It's business time. So I arrive at the hotel ace of clubs. And I like the chic decoration and friendly staff, but what grabs me most is, I notice that it's clean and quiet and a good place to work in.

I ask when breakfast is, and they tell me from 8:30 a.m.. Oh, no, so late. That's a negative point for the club. I want to start the day early because I have work to do. I love work in the room. I see that there's a spacious desk and a lot of electric plugs, so I can have my computer, printer, mobile phone and lava lamp all working at once.

This is good. The only drawback is that when I want to connect to Wi-Fi, I have to register, which sees me fuming for at least 45 seconds. But the speed is is good enough to make HD video calls, which I happen to do a lot of, so kind of balances it out. Maybe. So I perceive the hotel as a pleasant place, favorable to intense working sessions, but some points of service could definitely be improved upon, namely an earlier breakfast and an internet connection that doesn't make me register.

So I am semi satisfied for sure. I could be happier, but no one's going to get fired out of my frustration for having to register on the internet, for example. So here we see the usual flawless presentation of hotel. The clubs, has in fact blundered the ball here. Mr. Big Shot businessman is not quite satisfied. Luckily, it's nothing we can fix and we won't find ourselves too far out of pocket.

Last persona, the family. This time I'm going to be a mother in her 40s who has been married for 15 years. I have two children, one of whom is in his teens and hates me at the moment, but he'll get over it eventually. I come from the London suburbs. I spend a lot of time in the city during the week.

My financial situation is comfortable and I love spending time with my family, making beautiful memories that we relive in conversations over our meals while my son looks at TikTok and action, I arrive at the hotel of clubs easily from the airport because a shuttle bus was sent to collect us. Awesome. We're right in the center, so there's plenty to see and to visit.

The check in goes very well and we are shown to our spacious rooms. We look around but can see no leaflets of things to do in the city. I mean, it's true, we could use our phones, but you never get as good recommendations as when the hotel puts in the effort, and it's a nice personal touch. Besides pity, we wanted to take a stroll around and see some sights.

But we are all reassured, however, by the, need Covid protocols and feel super safe. So that's nice. So I perceive the hotel positively because the location is ideal, but I am disappointed that I have no help on what to do. All doubts about health and safety have been cleared up immediately. So according to this person's perception, the hotel is missing just a few leaflets stopping the guest from leaving a very favorable review by training staff to give some tips on things to do in the city.

With the family, the hotel can ensure that everyone is happy. A QR code in the room that leads to a website of iconic sites and things to do would be a nice touch and requires very little effort. So now that you understand what you're up to, it's time to get into character and get going with your own personas.

Today, with any luck, you've taken a look at your hotel through the eyes of the kinds of people you want staying there. Well done. See you next time.

Today we're going to talk about the most effective strategies we know of to keep abreast of your competition. And there's no time like the present. So let's dive right in.

Okay. So first I'll explain what the chart is, which I'm sure you'll find very helpful. Then I'll show you how to monitor your competitors from afar. Before we move on to the third and final point, which will be about what it is we stand to gain from all this competitive intelligence. Okay. Let's proceed. So first and foremost, let's define competitive intelligence.

It is a technique used for benchmarking that involves continuously monitoring a specific competitor in order to understand the price and product evolutions of this competitor. It's not what you'd call a very complicated concept, but it is hard work because if you're not consistent, it's nothing but a waste of your time. Ideally, you should check in on your competitors and take some notes daily or weekly, depending on the size of your establishment and the number of competitors you're digging into.

In order to get the most fruitful results. So that's the work done. Let's move on to the how. So how to monitor your competitors. So in order to set up this kind of thing, you have to look for a reasonable amount of data. Here are some points. It's a good idea to monitor. In whichever of your competitors you decide to open up tabs on.

Right. So periods when they're hotels are full periods when the price is high. Periods when the price is low. The kind of marketing and advertising they use, opening and closing dates, periods of construction, evolutions of service. So if they're launching any new activities or menus or areas of the hotel, etc., all these points to consider are simply means to attain the information you're after.

But the work doesn't stop there. Once you've got the information collected, it's got to be filtered so you can get rid of anything irrelevant. Then it's got to be formatted in such a way that it's legible. So like put it in a spreadsheet or something like that. And then when you're done, it's time to sit back with a nice cup of coffee and analyze your data.

Now, just this once, I'm not going to ask you to pause the video in order to practice because as I mentioned, competitive intelligence is a regular task that it's best to do on a daily basis. I will give you an exercise, but it won't take you more than a couple of seconds. I want you to right now, setting an alarm on your calendar, phone or computer, whichever is more likely to get your attention.

That will repeat daily or weekly. To remind you that you need to collect data for competitive intelligence, it will be better for you to pick a time when you're less likely to be busy, because remember, the exact time is not of the essence here, but how consistent you are is paramount. And you should note the first couple of times you do this might take you a little longer, but keep it up.

Like anything else, you'll find a rhythm and before you know it, you'll be able to do it with your eyes closed. Don't do that though. It's better with the eyes open for sure. So that's lens through the what and the how. And at last we reached the Y and he with a decent why can bear any how they say.

Let's have a look. So in a phrase what is the purpose of competitive intelligence. So this particular benchmarking technique can give you several options to work with. You can. First of all, you can adapt your pricing to sell rooms more efficiently. Something we'll talk more about in chapter four. You'll, better be able to anticipate offers and price changes from competitors.

You can propose offers more effectively yourself on your side, which again, we'll cover in chapter four. You can anticipate the evolution of your section of the market, and you can adapt your image to suit what your targets might expect. Now, all of these little tidbits contain the power to effect your establishment, so they should be monitored frequently and carefully.

Imagine for instance, that you noted in the competitive intelligence of a rival hotel that they're having construction done over a few weeks in May. Then you know that if you tweak your marketing right, you stand a chance of getting their potential customers for that period. In the end, it's all chess or checkers. In my case, whatever your game.

Keeping up with competitive intelligence will put you a few moves ahead of the rest. And that brings us to the end of our course on becoming an unbeatable establishment. By putting these strategies into play, you will gain the edge on your competition and gain new footing in the industry. Congratulations and thanks for following this course through to the end.

See you next time.