The USP and power of one

Josiah’s note: Mihir Nayak, owner of the Mitaroy Goa Hotel, has been a big supporter of this blog, and I’ve enjoyed getting to know him over the past few months. For the next few weeks, he will be posting a few guest posts on lessons he learned from running his hotel. Today, he discusses the ‘power of one.‘

Although it is a term that is thrown about a lot these days, the USP or Unique Selling Proposition is the most important weapon in any hotelier’s arsenal.

Last week I was sitting with a hotelier friend of mine while he and his team were designing their latest advertising brochure.

It was really amazing to see how his team of hotel marketers, who had surely studied the concept of the USP, were throwing everything and the kitchen sink onto their brochure.

Talk about our comfortable rooms, said one. Talk about our French chef, said another. Don’t forget our spa area, said the third. And on it went for the next hour or so.

They ended up with 4 slogans, 1 long title, 3 subtitles, 14 unique selling propositions and 8 different photos. As a result, the size of the hotel name had to be reduced so that it was barely visible and the website was in a font too small and tucked away in the right hand corner to be visible at all. Oh, and there was absolutely no call to action whatsoever!

At the end of it all, I was totally confused.

Research shows that guests are bombarded with so much advertising they find it hard to concentrate. If they want to even concentrate on advertisements at all. And in the hotel industry, the case is the same.

As I said earlier, the solution is to have a USP (there shouldn’t even be a plural) that sticks in peoples minds.

A wonderful book called the 22 Immutable Laws of Marketing dips into this concept. The authors say that as a hotelier, you should try and own one attribute in your customer’s mind. And that one attribute should have great importance for your guests.

Four Seasons is associated with luxury. Marriott is associated with standards. And W Hotel is associated with design.

I sat down and did the same exercise myself. What single word was special to my Goa Hotel? What attribute could I own?

And then it hit me.

Space.

Unlike other hotels in Goa or indeed the rest of the world that offered guests rooms of only 20 sq mts, my Suites at the Mitaroy Goa Hotel were a spacious 100 sq mts or 5 times the size of my competitors.

That was what was unique about my Goa Hotel and why guests would choose my Goa Hotel over the other hotels in Goa.

And I went about telling changing all my marketing to bring the point home.

• My website said “Stay at our spacious Suites!”
• My advertising said “Stay at our spacious Suites!”
• And my business card said “Stay at our spacious Suites!”

(See what I am trying to do here?)

I also stripped away all my other attributes from my marketing materials, concentrating on my spacious Suites – how they are 5 times larger than my competitors and why space is so important.

When concentrating on one attribute, you will be forced to sacrifice all the other attributes you may want to be associated with. But this has its advantages. Not only do you own an attribute in your guests’ minds but your advertising also becomes much clearer. And the best thing is that research shows that if your guests rate you highly on one attribute, they also rate you highly on all the other attributes that are important to them.

So, as a hotelier, you need to sit down and ask yourself what one attribute do you want to own. What is the single reason why guests should choose your hotel and not your competitors. In short, what is your USP?

Let me know what you come up with…