Episode XI Studios Blog

As a meeting planner and a frequent business traveler I can honestly say that booking a hotel can be a bit of a daunting task. I have had mixed luck with choosing hotels over the years. Usually for the typical few nights stay there is no site visit beforehand, so you must rely on pictures of the hotel provided on their website, or the reputation of their brand name. As we all know photos can be very misleading, and even though the hotel has a brand name, they are usually privately owned franchises, so not all of the quality levels are consistent throughout the chain. A prime example of these inconsistencies is the Holiday Inn. Some of the hotels in this chain are almost 4-star, and others could barely earn a single star.

When planning a meeting, the endless exhausting site visits are one of the worst parts of the process. One thing I’ve noticed is that if you contact a hotel to discuss having a meeting there, they will send you pictures of the meeting space looking it’s best, but very few photos of the rooms or the rest of the hotel. When you tour the hotel on your site visit you find that while the meeting space may be sufficient the rest of the hotel doesn’t measure up. If only there was a way to narrow down the list of possibilities even more before the site visit trip.

The best way to showcase a hotel is with video. It’s much harder to doctor up a video than a still picture and it also gives you a “feel” for the ambience in addition to a clearer visual of the space. Most videos are filmed with actual guests in the background. You can see if they are enjoying themselves!

Hoteliers should consider video marketing. How many times during the initial RFP phase have I heard a hotel sales rep say, “If you could just see this place, I know you choose our hotel!” Well, give me a professionally produced video tour, and you’ve already enticed me to see more, even if typically something else would have taken the hotel off my consideration list earlier.

On one occasion I received an RFP and decided that the room rates of a certain hotel were too expensive, but after seeing a video showing how beautifully well appointed the hotel was, the restaurant and all the extra amenities, I decided to add that hotel to my site visit list after all. I reconsidered spending the extra bucks and cut back elsewhere in the budget so that we could host the meeting at that location. In the end the video made the sale, and the hotel got my meeting bringing in a group of 400 people for 5 nights.

Everyone was happy! It’s a win/win situation.