Affluent consumers frequently demand customization and personalization—sometimes identified as the new luxury experience—with products and services tailored to their individual needs. From Millennials and Boomers to fitness fanatics and those who simply want to relax, clubs have always catered to their members’ needs. Today, marketing these services has become crucial to prevent target demographics from looking elsewhere for other competitors offering a more personalized experience.
Relationships and Sharing
Relationships are at the center of many fulfilling experiences. Many hospitality brands, in particular clubs, look to offer positive relationships and interaction among guests, and guests and staff, says Sean Handerhan, managing director at Marketing@Now, a business development and communications firm specializing in the hospitality industry. He believes a major role of the hospitality industry will be as a facilitator for creating connections. For instance, layouts to optimize social interaction are trending in restaurant and hotel designs, such as communal dining halls featuring large tables where guests can sit, eat and interact with one another.
Even when alone, many individuals enjoy being “alone together,” says Micah Solomon, customer service consultant and bestselling author. This oxymoron, popularized by Starbucks, has become a big trend among Millennials, but is also seen in members of Generation X and Boomers. Though seated privately, these “alone together” individuals enjoy visually sharing an experience. Hotel designer, David Rockwell, comments that these individuals want the option to socialize or sit undisturbed, and “don’t want what they do to be predetermined by (inflexible) architecture.”
As globalization and social media become the way of the world, opportunities for networking becoming even more central to people. Social media now plays a greater role in connecting travelers with friends and other like-minded people through Facebook and Foursquare, a mobile app that provides local “search and discovery” features. Trendy hotels also are offering custom “guest-only apps” that connect fellow guests to explore the area with others.
Marketing for Demographics
The services and amenities that attract one age group over the other can be, at times, very similar. In fact, it may be more about how the message or brand is marketed that connects with a particular audience. While there seems to be a push to attract the Millennials, there are still plenty of Boomers looking for customized experiences.
Baby Boomers
Baby Boomers represent the core club demographic today and will still play a significant role at clubs in years to come. Collectively, they own 70 percent of the nation’s disposable income and will inherit an additional $13 trillion in the next two decades, says Neilson.
Each day 10,000 Boomers retire, reports Pew Research, but many don’t want the “senior” label. Instead of their age, focus on what they may still achieve. Cater to their “bucket lists” says Ann Fishman, founder of Generational Targeted Marketing. They still have plenty more they want to accomplish and do not want to be relegated to life’s sidelines.
AARP offers a good example of how to market to Boomers says Fishman. Phrases like, “life re-imagined,” “real possibilities,” and “you’ve still got it,” appeal to the potential that lies ahead for this demographic. Its TEK program (technology, education, knowledge) employs bold colors and easy-to-use tutorials to help older adults learn how to navigate technology.
Boomers are the original “Me generation,” adds Fishman. Terms like “self-fulfillment” resonate with them. Unlike other, younger demographics, Boomers are still very loyal to brands. Appeal to nostalgia, says marketing columnist Mark Ward, and remember to keep promises to maintain trust.
Millennials
Millennials are the focal point of many demographic discussions. They are trendsetters and create a “trickle up effect,” says Sarah Sladek, CEO of XYZ University, a generations marketing consulting agency. They are constantly sharing information, collaborating and want choices, says U.S. News & World Report. Also, their brand consciousness is low, and they are not afraid to switch products.
Millennials enjoy intuitive, streamlined architectural design with vibrant colors, modular furniture and open closets. They favor an open communal setting more than a closed off traditional environment. In response, some hotels have removed their traditional front desk style lobby and replaced them with a more open and social lobby, reports U.S. News & World Report.
Like Boomers, Millennials want authenticity and are “me” oriented. Millennials want to be spoken with (not to) and to feel like their voices matter. They want to believe they are a part of something bigger than themselves, indicates Marketplace Business. They are diverse, tolerant and open-minded—and companies are trying to develop conversations with this generation to keep them as customers.
Operational Marketing
Operational marketing refers to how hospitality organizations use their own programs and services to market themselves. These offerings focus on minimizing business expenses while employing a customer-centric focus, says Handerhan.
He notes that one tactic many organizations use is event marketing—creating a themed event that gives the organization an opportunity to “test” new ideas on a small scale with low risk. For instance, an ethnic banquet or tastings with dishes from a variety of countries can give management new information about types of menu items the clientele prefers. Event marketing can isolate demographic preferences and also provide member attendees with exciting and fresh experiences.
Customizing the Guest Experience
The lodging industry has paved the way for innovative and effective marketing best practices that cater to guests’ expectations. No matter their demographic, guests want an experience to remember, which helps personalize the time they spent at the hotel. Often, this means connecting to emotions, creating memories and helping guests feel at home—all of which can be directly applied to a club setting.
Hospitality Marketing offers tips on how to enhance the member or guest experience:
● Share an authentic story that portrays the club’s personality.
● Connect with people’s emotions by using language in your marketing materials that make guests feel excited, informed and interested.
● Consider your competition’s approach.
● Be transparent and consistent across all channels. Know the experience that you offer and deliver it accordingly. With honesty, people will find you.
Travelers do not want any problems to greet them at check-in. Gallup indicates that guests value a worry-free environment and want hotels (and clubs) to anticipate their needs. Gen Xers in particular want reliable services, and both Gen X and Y highly value Internet access. When considering whether they would return to a hotel or not, all generations emphasized the hotel’s ability to solve problems.
Many hotels collect data about each guest to create a profile based on the guest’s behaviors and preferences to offer them a personalized and effortless experience. This data can be gathered when they book online to when they are at the hotel and participating in various activities such as spa treatments, dining, exercising and others, says SAS, a business intelligence market vendor.
Using this data, hotel staff can identify guests by sight as soon as they arrive, directing the traveler to his or her room and proceeding with check-in in the hotel room. Others customize the room based on a guest’s personal tastes. Perhaps he or she enjoys a glass of whiskey at night or a favorite snack, or even a particular type of mattress—the hotel will have the items ready in the room when the guest arrives.
Clubs have a unique advantage over hotels in customization because members are usually well known by club staff and clubs have had opportunities to collect and use a variety of data on members’ food and beverage preferences, as well as the types of activities and programs in which they participate. This information can be used to help engage different groups of members within the club and encourage them to “cross pollinate” with other related groups in order to increase socializing and engagement. One such example is a spa treatment offering that targets regular gym goers, says Handerhan.
Restaurants: Catering to You
Restaurant Hospitality indicates that restaurants are capitalizing on buzzwords to bring in Millennial diners. Customized, authentic, fresh and local are hot concepts helping to brand offerings to core customers—providing a clear and relevant point of view to strengthen the restaurant brand.
As a larger segment of the population becomes increasingly aware of the impact health and fitness has on their lives, more restaurants have offered healthy alternatives to typical menus to attract wider demographics.
Across the board, all demographics want to eat healthier. Younger adults are more willing than other age groups to spend extra money on nutritious food, indicates research from Neilson’s Global Health and Wellness Survey. Forty-one percent of young adults under age 20 said they would pay more for healthier menu items. The same can be said for 32 percent of Millennials and 21 percent of Baby Boomers.
The same Neilson research reveals that 80 percent of respondents use food to prevent medical conditions, such as diabetes and high cholesterol. “All natural” food sales have risen 24 percent in the last two years and organic food sales have risen 28 percent during that same period as Americans continue to focus on their health.
Children’s menus are one area where research shows that offering healthy, child-friendly menus can be a pull for their parents and increase restaurant revenues. At the Silver Diner, a Maryland based restaurant chain, sales went up after transitioning to healthier offerings on the kid’s menu, reports Tufts University’s ChildObesity180 research. Overall, transitioning to a healthy food menu was “good for business,” reports the study.
And, for many parents, a healthy, nutritious option may be enough incentive to pick one restaurant over another, or to dine out at all. Since 2008, families have gone to restaurants 1.2 billion fewer times, reports NPD Group. Millennial families cited a lack of child-friendly menus, home cooking preferences and the economy. Their number one suggestion for the children’s menu was to make it healthier.
Because you Watched … (Online Services)
Today, many online services encourage users to create profiles that track and store personal data from purchases and “wish list” items—and products they clicked on—to help offer recommendations for additional purchases. Amazon uses this data to create several lists of products for its users, such as “Inspired by Your Shopping Trends,” “Recommendations for You” and covers a range of categories from grocery items to electronics: “Related to Items You’ve Viewed,” “New for You” and others.
Netflix, the popular online streaming service, offers recommendations based on titles users previously watched. The service compiles the recommendations into various genres of TV and film, and delivers them in a list called “Because You Watched …”. Netflix also lets users create subcategories of membership from a shared account. For instance a family may have several personal accounts under a shared primary account to separate parents’ and children’s recommendations.
These and other websites also give users the option to store personal data like purchase history, credit card information and shipping addresses to customize their shopping experience as well as to avoid re-entering this data during each checkout.
Newsletters, e-mails, websites and other club communications can be customized in a similar way. Members can be given options for the type of information they would like to receive—news about golf events, tennis, wine tastings and other activities—and analytics can tell club staff which links and articles members click on the most as well as which e-mails they open and click to register for events, etc.
Conclusion
Today’s trends toward personalization deepen a club’s obligation to learn about and understand its membership. What one member wants may differ entirely from the next, yet both come to the same club for an enjoyable experience. Therefore it is critical to invest the time and resources to understand members’ motivations, desires and behaviors to deliver customized programming that suits their needs and keeps them returning to the club.
Club Trends Summer 2015