From Pens to Plush: How to Serve the Hotel and Motel Industry

With travelers on the move again, the lodging industry offers lots of opportunity to sell promotional products, from inexpensive keepsakes to luxurious towels and robes.
Sept 4, 2007

By Liz Aull

If you grab for the first pen and scrap of paper on your desk, what do you come up with? There’s a good chance it will be a reminder of your last trip — a promotional item from the hotel where you stayed. Despite the price of gas and safety concerns, people are traveling more than ever, making it an excellent time to focus your selling efforts on the lodging industry.

Hotel and motel room demand has increased by 2% and room revenue by 7.8% within the past year, according to the Travel Industry Association (TIA). In addition, lodging employment has increased by 1.2%.

Given the TIA’s projected total room revenue of $9.3 billion nationally, there’s a lot of profit potential available to you, if you know where to go. A hotel can be a family-run, 20-room building, or it can be a huge enterprise, encompassing thousands of rooms (See Market Data: Five Basic Types of Hotels and Motels). Each represents a great opportunity.

Different Strokes
Promotional products for hotels and motels cover a wide variety of items, as well as recipients. The hotel guests are the most obvious target, but the businesses also need promotional items for trade shows, travel agents and the surrounding community. With different targets, there is also definitely a need for different types of products.

“Pens and pads of paper never go away. They’re here to stay,” says Rick Marshall, president of Proforma California, West Covina, Calif. “Supplying pens and paper also helps you get your foot in the door for other things.”

According to Marshall, Proforma California sells guest checks, menus and menu covers to several hotels, and much of the company’s business with those items stemmed from initial low-price-point orders of pens and paper. “We offer a generic guest check for companies that don’t need a huge amount, and then we often create a custom-branded one later. The custom checks help improve the hotel’s image,” he says.

A primary focus for hotels and motels is making sure that guests feel comfortable and at-home. While fluffy towels and Wi-Fi definitely help, promotional products are an integral part of making the lodging experience memorable.

“Making guests feel at home is one of the main goals of promotional products,” says Mark Yokoyama, director of marketing for ePromos, New York “Hotels can achieve this by offering guests nice robes and other items.” He notes that hotels have to find something that fits their personality. “For example, one of the neatest things I’ve seen was an Etch-A-Sketch that the W Hotels gave guests,” he says.



Different Folks
Another goal of promotional products for the lodging industry is branding to establish a connection with the clientele, Yokoyama explains. This is especially important considering how many choices a traveler has regarding where to stay. In this case, determining the target client is essential. Does the motel cater to families? The business traveler? Someone just passing through on the way to another destination? That target determines what sort of promotional product will be successful.

“Portable DVD players are a great idea for high-volume travelers,” says Yokoyama. Suggestions for families include wearables and tote bags. “One of our hotel clients has a tennis complex, and we do a lot of wearables focusing on that,” says Alan Rubel, president of Proforma Vision of Success, Barre, Vt.

While all hotels and motels offer some sort of promotional products to their guests, the establishments with extra amenities such as a spa have both the need for additional items and often the money for more — and more expensive — products. “We work with a few large hotels (over 100 rooms) that have a large cash flow and spend more,” says Marshall. “We’ve done special packages for the spas, such as really unique triangle-shaped ‘bag boxes’ that were sold to guests. Opportunities like that actually started with supplying Bic pens to the hotel.”

Multiple Buyers
To target a hotel or motel, you need to figure out who does the buying, which can be a challenge. “With a smaller hotel, it’s often the owner,” says Rubel. “In a larger hotel, you might work with a purchasing agent or sales manager, or the manager of a specific department, such as the spa or restaurant.”

“You might also work with the human resources department,” adds Marshall. “You could actually spend an entire day calling on different buyers in one large hotel.” It’s possible to work with the marketing department or even the hotel’s advertising agency on the idea for a new promotional product or campaign, then work with the purchasing department on specific orders, says Yokoyama.

“To be successful in working with a lodging client, you’ll need to be cost-effective and able to handle large-volume orders,” he says. Budgets are tight, and the key is to get the clients what they want at the quantity and budget they require.

Marshall says he asks his clients for the budget they have available. “I’m not trying to get every penny, but I’m trying to get them the most for what they can spend,” he says. “They might be looking at $.99 per item for something that’s OK, but they could have something great for $1.03.” He also quotes three quantities — the one the client originally requested and the next two higher — so they can see how much they could save.

A surprising challenge for hotels and motels is often lack of storage for promotional products, even if the building is large. They sometimes have only a single closet. Marshall offers free warehousing to his clients, just applying a shipping charge to stored orders. “That helps my clients out a lot, and it’s something people don’t realize. The size of the building doesn’t necessarily mean there’s a lot of room.”

Targeting the lodging industry can be a lucrative investment for your company, and it’s easy to start small — for instance, supplying pens — and work your way up to expensive gifts for frequent travelers. Not only will your clients appreciate your efforts, but you’ll sleep easier next time you go out of town.

Liz Aull is a freelance writer in Atlanta and a contributor to Impressions magazine. She can be reached at liz@aull-image.com.