Part 2 – Luxury Hotel White Paper                                                 “Tapping Your Best Commodity”  By Jim Harenchar I’ve Got My Data, Now What? Consumers have access to an unprecedented number of options to shop and book hotels, with new choices continually emerging. Not only does the popularity of different channels vary due to technology enhancements, but it is increasingly difficult to treat the channels as unified booking sources. Phocuswright research indicates a recent inverse relationship between OTA and supplier-direct website booking trends. But the environment is more complex, with metasearch impacting OTA share and hotel call volume impacted by mobile device use. As channels become more complex and layered with nuance, traditional market segmentation and demographics are insufficient when considered in isolation. Instead, leading hospitality digital marketers are focusing on behaviors and signals indicating intended behavior. “Market segments don’t stay in hotels– people do” Marketing Vice President | Luxury Hotel Group Demographics are not as helpful to travel marketers as in other industries. Age, education, ethnicity, family size, gender, income, race and religion categories stay the same for a traveler. But a guest’s specific interests for their last trip may be radically different from their next one. Personas are aggregated representations of [...]

Marketing firm spreads out with Seattle acquisition, Florida office: Two years into its latest iteration, a recently rebooted local marketing firm with roots dating back three decades is extending its national reach with a West Coast acquisition and a new office in The Sunshine State. Response Marketing Group, led by principals and longtime collaborators Stuart Holt and Jim Harenchar, has acquired MOR Direct, a three-person marketing firm based in Seattle, and opened a Florida office in St. Pete Beach. Read full article in the Richmond BizSense by clicking here.

RICHMOND, VA (JULY 31, 2017)  Response Marketing Group (RMG), headquartered in Richmond, Va., is pleased to announce the opening of two new offices – Seattle WA and St. Pete Beach, FL. The expansion in to Seattle comes as a result of a recent acquisition made by RMG of MOR-Direct in Kirkland. MOR Direct is lead by agency president Mark Magula, who will now be responsible for business development and client relationships as Vice President, Western Operations for RMG. MOR-Direct is a full-service agency specializing in direct mail, email, web, print, DRTV and radio. RMG founder Stuart Holt had worked with Magula in the past and felt the agency represented a growth opportunity for Richmond-based RMG to expand their offerings as well as geographic market area. MOR-Direct has had wonderful success serving clients such as Mutual of Omaha, Comcast, University of Phoenix, Brooks Brothers and Microsoft. Holt felt the SmarTest™ Blueprint created and offered by MOR-Direct as a testing and rollout strategy to define best performing packages for marketers, was a compliment to existing RMG services. “We believe strongly that measurement is critical in evaluating success and MOR-Direct and SmarTest™ allow marketers to increase response rates, lower cost per acquisition and [...]

Response Marketing Group's President & CEO Jim Harenchar, presents at the Kindred Resort & Hotels First Annual Director of Sales and Marketing Conference in West Palm Beach, July 19th. Harenchar’s focus is helping resorts improve understanding of individual channel and marketing performance, thereby driving a deeper understanding of conversion, engagement, and marketing ROI. Below you will find an abbreviated version of Mr. Harenchar's presentation. RHA pres deck short 7.28.17 To get more details, or a copy of the full presentation, please contact:  jharenchar@rmg-usa.com ###

Hoteliers - You May Be Spending Too Much Of Your Precious Marketing Budget On Unmeasureable Channels! Ten years ago, I got to know the owner of a local car wash, and I remember him saying, “one thing great about the car wash business… the internet cannot provide car washes!” Of course, he was right, but what he did not anticipate was competition and how the internet would provide at one’s finger tips the location of all his competitors and their pricing. This would in turn change his margins and profits. And it did. This is not new news to you as a hotelier. The hotel and tourism business is experiencing change just like many industries thanks to the internet. The internet is providing buyers with information in lightning speed and in a depth never imagined. What may be viewed as great opportunity may also feel like a curse. For airlines, hotels, golf tee times, and other similar businesses it seemed like a godsend when the ability to sell off unused inventory was instantly provided. The variable cost was minimum to the revenue gain. Or at least that is what everyone felt was the gain. But low and behold, now years of training consumers [...]

Another great post from our friends at McKinsey. We see the challenge of getting the CEO to embrace marketing measurement and analytics as an ongoing struggle within many of our clients and peer organizations. This article provides wonderful recommendations for senior marketers struggling with the same challenges within their companies. Good advice from one of the industry's thought leaders.   http://bit.ly/2sdG6b2  

I was speaking at a conference recently and attending another session during the day. I heard a fantastic quote and then received further confirmation from the MarTech conference in San Francisco this week. The quote was "If you're buying technology to solve your marketing problems, then you don't understand the technology and probably don't understand your problems".  Confirmation comes in the form of the newest MarTech 5000. Need I say more??marketing_technology_landscape_2017

You've read our posts on the impact of disruption, so here's a great article by Jacques Bughin from McKinsey regarding the impact of digital disruption. McKinsey on Digital Disruption  

Southeast Tourism Keynote