Welcome to TheHospitalityGeek!

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As an internet-marketer-turned-hotel-manager, I’m witnessing so many things that need to be changed.  Too many hospitality companies are missing out on great internet advertising and marketing opportunities.  Many other hospitality companies are being taken advantage of by a few internet companies charging exorbitant fees or services that are normally cheap, or even free.

I created TheHospitalityGeek.com toeducate the hospitality industry and help hotels and restaurants be more success and effective by using social media and internet advertising.  I also want to help small and medium web developers connect with hotels and restaurants, creating more honest competition for the large companies that currently take advantage of the hospitality industry.

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I’ve been a bunch of things in my life. Click here to read more…

Seth Godin, Linchpin and the Hospitality Industry

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I just finished reading a book by Seth Godin called Linchpin. Godin is a superhero in the world internet marketing and new business in general. While his new book, Linchpin, is not directly related to the hospitality industry, it taps into the core of what makes our industry really work – passion.

Godin argues that we are all born artists and that society re-trains us to be factory workers. When the world really needed factories this might have been OK, but today we don’t need factory workers.  Nevertheless, society cranks out factory workers like crazy.

Think about your hospitality business – some front-line employees treat their job like it a factory job, following a checklist and never straying from their job description.  Others, however, are pure artists, going far above and beyond the call of duty.

I highly recommend the book, but not unless you are willing to rethink everything you do, and the reasons behind your actions.  Check out the book at Amazon:

TheHospitalityGeek Recommends Linchpin

The Secret to Social Media Success

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Let me start off by apologizing for the title of this blog post – the things that I am about to write are painfully obvious and simply require a shift in your thought process.

My first job in the hospitality industry was with a leading extended-stay hotel chain, and the lessons I learned there have stuck with me over the past fifteen years.  This particular brand was very well managed, and brand managers communicated the mission and vision throughout the brand extremely well.  In fact, hotel managers for this brand Continue reading →

Affiliate marketing and why you should care

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OK hospitality managers, I think it’s important that anyone doing any business on the internet understand affiliate marketing and how it affects your hotel or restaurant (or any other business for that matter).  The web contains all sorts of information ranging from helpful to just plain garbage and everything in between.  Affiliate marketing on the internet can be helpful, but is often misunderstood and often abused.

So what is affiliate marketing? Continue reading →

Two location-based social media apps that could change hotels and restaurants

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It seems like everywhere you turn someone is talking about location-based social media.  Maybe you’ve bumped into it by a different name, or maybe you haven’t really thought about what it means for your hotel or restaurant, but it could be a huge game-changer for the hospitality industry.  Here are a few apps specifically dedicated to location services: Continue reading →

The corporate brand is dead. Long live the individual brand.

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In a previous post I wrote about how hotel and restaurant brands don’t mean what they used to.  To summarize, hotels, restaurants and consumers used to rely on corporate brand identity to predict the quality their visit.  In a world of franchisees, franchisors, brand managers, brand bibles, and brand standards, many hospitality companies have long given up the idea of running hotels and restaurants in favor of selling franchises.  In my own experience I worked for a hotel chain that had no less than 16 different hotel brands for consumers (and franchisees) to choose from, and that was many years ago before they added a couple.

Hospitality companies have Continue reading →

Why Social Media Matters for Hotels and Restaurants

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Ok, I’ll admit it.  I’ve been a little bit slow to jump on the social media bandwagon.  After all Twitter, one of the most successful social media sites of all time, seems like a total waste of time at first glance.  Even as an internet marketer I’ve struggled myself to find the value in social media in a marketing plan, let alone advise others.  Recently, however, it all became so obvious.

For hotels and restaurants to successfully leverage the power of social media they must Continue reading →

Internet Advertising 101 for the Hospitality Industry

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Internet Advertising Overview

Internet advertising is a straight forward idea that becomes more complicated because of the many ways the advertising is delivered and monetized.  Simply stated, internet advertising is paying for placement on an online destination.  Just as a hotel or restaurant might choose to “buy a spot” in the Sunday paper or a bridal publication, that same hotel or restaurant could spend that money buying a spot on the internet.  As I mentioned, the delivery and payment of these ads can become complicated.  To illustrate several different mainstream options I need to step into internet consultant mode for a minute to relay some internet advertising basics.

Internet ads Continue reading →