The hotel brochure is not dead, Hotel Marketing Association debate decides
Only one person out of a gathering of nearly 60 hoteliers and marketers voted against the motion: "Has social media marketing finally killed off the hotel brochure?"
A lively and well-spirited debate saw Rob Walk of the Digitial Innovation Group and Sarah Duncan of Sleeping Lion, a social media marketing agency, argue the case for the motion against Martin Evans, managing partner of the Tourism Business, and Peter Hancock, chief executive of Pride of Britain.
Walk kicked off proceedings by telling the audience that the internet had totally changed the sales and promotion industry over the past 15 years, with the awareness of products and comparisons - via sites such as TripAdvisor - taking place.
"Websites have replaced hotel brochures," he said, before going on to illustrate how his company had helped transfer the information published by InterContinental Hotels in its Insider brochure - which outlines events taking place in and around a property - on to a digital platform.
Walk explained that the result was the Global Concierge, which achieved a click-through rate of 48.3%, compared with the average of 23.7%.
Duncan agreed with Walk that the hotel brochure was "effectively dead" and related her experience of working as a sales executive for Claridge's during the late 1980s.
"It was my job to deal with enquiries and send out brochures," she explained. "I had a lot of power as it was down to my discretion as to who got sent the all-singing, all-dancing expensive sales pack and who received the beautiful, but meagre, book of rooms. I wonder now how often I misjudged it?
"Brochures then were our primary sales tool. Now, if anyone is interested in Claridge's, they can go to the website where they will find all the information they could possibly need to make their buying decision, with everything bang up-to-date. In this context a brochure is completely redundant."
However, Duncan admitted that she loved hotel brochures, especially ones that were "super exquisite" and might end up on her coffee table.
"The only reason I would recommend a hotel to invest in a printed brochure is if they have a huge budget and can make it brilliant," she said. "If not, then don't do it. If you have a small budget, a flexible website with an application for mobile devices is the way forward."
In response, Evans highlighted several recent news stories which indicated that digital marketing should not be relied on in place of brochures - the £4b sales achieved in-store by John Lewis against £1b online, the hacking of Twitter and the crashing of the Wowcher website caused by a discounted offer for a swingers' weekend.
"Brochures are still very much alive and create a very strong impression," he said. "People like receiving brochures in the post and there are now a number of new postal services, which makes the sending of them very cost-effective.
"In-house brochures allow for cross-selling and upselling as well as being something guests can take away and share with friends and family."
Meanwhile, Hancock said that he agreed with a lot of what Duncan and Walk had said and explained that 10 times the number of telephone bookings for the 45 Pride of Britain hotels were now taken online, with a large slice of the consortium's marketing budget now being spent on website development and social media.
"But a great deal of our business also comes from printed PR in newspapers and magazines," he explained. "Our members like brochures and we get phone calls every day asking for them. As a result, we spend over £100,000 on the printing and delivery of them every year."
Comments from the audience indicated that most hoteliers believe that there is still a place for the brochures - particularly ones of high quality, as an add-on to a property's online presence. As a result, the motion was defeated.
