Upscale hospitality marketers would be well-advised to forever delete the catchphrase "all the comforts of home" from their marketing communications. The reason? A fast-growing in-room catalog and e-commerce service called Hotels at Home.Launched in 2000, Hotels at Home today services almost 3,000 hotels — including the Hilton, Sheraton and Westin brands — and 750,000 hotel rooms worldwide. As a free extension (yes, you read correctly, free) of the client hotel's marketing program, Hotels at Home creates an integrated marketing program that includes branded-to-client catalog, website and other components. Products for purchase can include virtually anything the hotel wishes to offer — from traditional bathrobes and coffee mugs, to mattresses, blankets, furniture, even artwork. Hotels at Home purchases these items from the client's vendors, stocks them and ships them, all for a percentage of sales. So all the comforts of home would, in theory, be the comforts of the hotel. Get it?
While Hotels at Home may not generate a significant revenue stream for upscale properties, NOISE believes the branding cache that the service provides, in delivering a perception of extreme quality that's packaged to your unique brand (and did we mention, it's free?), is well worth investigating. Learn more at hotelsathome.com.
SOURCE: Marketing News, NOISE
Reported by: John Sprecher
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