Video is a powerful communications tool, but hotels need to have a clear reason for posting videos on social media, a hospitality industry marketing and communications specialist has said.
Film-maker, producer and videographer Greg Manahan told Micheline Corr of The Firm, that some videos featuring animals in hotel lobbies and employees cycling indoors, did not convey a positive brand image for the hotels that posted them.
He was this week’s guest on The Firm Optimist discussion series.
‘Before a hotel posts a video, management need to have a mission objective for doing so. It must reinforce the core brand message of how the customer views the hotel’, he said.
Hotels, he said, are complex products from a brand perspective and hoteliers need to be careful about the messages they convey’.
Covid 19, he said, will change how consumers see hotels, with brand perceptions in the future likely to put more emphasis on safety and hygiene’.
‘But guests will also want a great hotel experience and the challenge for hoteliers is to balance these attributes in their offering’.
The local environment is also a key to the brand proposition of many hotels’, he said. ‘Hotels need to work with their local community, their town, village or high street to offer a complete experience- just as Killarney and Westport have done so successfully’.
He urged participants in Zoom meetings to learn the basics of good presentation, including camera position, (focus on the eyes’), lighting (‘in front of the participant and behind the camera’) and sound (‘buy a microphone’)
His three pieces of advice to hospitality businesses are to offer reassurance to customers and staff that they will be safe and comfortable, offer high speed broadband and commission high quality video which uses a story to convey the new brand proposition.
your restaurant while keeping everyone safe. 
launch the IFSA and Chef Network Catering Business Covid-19 Operating Guidelines and Procedures document. 
