Public Relations and Publicity -IMC Unit 6

Public Relations – It is the process of communicating favourable information about the hotel property to the public in order to create a positive impression about the products and services. The purpose of public relations is to create a good image and a favourable public perception of the property. Public Relations include all the activities that a hospitality and travel organization uses to maintain and improve its relationship with other organizations and individuals.

Public Relation Plan

For any public relation efforts to be successful, it must start with objectives and plan of action. To be effective, a public relation plan should integrated into overall marketing plan and targeted towards important market segments like youth, business class, family, female individual traveler etc. A public relations plan should be kept simple and should integrate six major factors:

Goals – Should be specific and well defined.

Audience – Should target specific target market segments

Media – Identify media that can best reach the target audience.

Message – To determine what information would appeal through that medium and its audience while attaining the hotel property’s goals.

Role of Public Relations

There are three important roles of public relations in tourism and hospitality. These are –

·         Maintaining a Positive Public Presence

·         Handling Negative Publicity

·         Enhancing the Effectiveness of Promotional Mix Elements (It includes Advertising, Sales Promotion, Merchandising and Personal Selling)

Maintaining a Positive Public Presence – The major function of PR is to guarantee a continuing, positive relationship with individuals and groups with which an organization deals directly(Example – Customers, Employees, other hospitality and travel organizations) and indirectly (Example – the media, educational institutions, local business and community organizations etc.)

Handling Negative Publicity – Service organizations are especially vulnerable to the side effects of negative publicity because of importance of word of mouth

information sources. Infact, there are two sides of Public Relations – Reactive and Proactive. On the Proactive PR side, steps are taken to generate positive PR. Reactive PR or vulnerability relations is how negative PR is handled. The key to reactive PR is to have a system for dealing with these undesirable situations and to have thought through some potential ways of handling them.

Thus, PR is an image building exercise, carried out through various channels in a way that can effectively promote the hotel property and build the brand among its current and future clients.

Functions of Public Relations

The functions of PR department are:

Establishing the Corporate Identity

Improving Government Relations

Handling difficult situations by Crisis Management

Improving Internal Communications

Establishing the Corporate Identity - PR works to create an image of the brand with consistency, reliability and professionalism. Apart from making and building contacts, PR also needs to extremely aware of the timing of these events.

Improving Government Relations - Since the govt. laws are an important part of overall functioning of any hotel. PR should be extremely sensitive of the same. Any change in law or policy of government should be handled with utmost care, so that the revenues are not affected. The PR’s responsibility is to also inform politicians about the impact of their decisions on the overall functioning of the hospitality sector. The PR should associate the organization with associations like FHRAI, IATA, HRACC etc.

Handling difficult situations by Crisis Management - Further, when a serious incident occurs in the hotel, it is the PR’S responsibility to take appropriate action and handle media inquiries, effectively. The organization needs to be seen to be acting swiftly, efficiently and responsibly to deal with the problem and must have a crisis management in place before an incident occurs.

Improving Internal Communications - Since Staff plays an important role in creating the image of the company and the quality of customer’s experience, it is important that they are made to feel as part of the team. The PR’s function in this case includes building communication channels like news letters, celebrating birthdays, developing incentive programs etc.

Selecting PR Staff

A professional public relations officer or an executive should be employed permanently and on company’s rolls. An in-house staff may have responsibilities like developing local promotions, contracting the media with press releases, writing promotional literature, sending thank you notes to past guests etc. Since maintaining good relations with media is important, one member should meet the member of media every week. Another way to get the PR image in a positive sense is to have a weekly column for local publications. A PR agency can also be hired to look into building the image for the property.

One can use the points, we have already discussed for hiring sales people in your semester V syllabus, here.

Public Relation Techniques

Some of the famous PR techniques are mentioned below. These are:

Press Release and Press Conferences

Travel Exhibitions and Road shows

Hosting & Sponsoring Events

Publications

Celebrity Events

Product Placement

Personal Calling

Press Release and Press Conferences - A press release or a news release is a short article about an organization or an event that is written in an attempt to attract media attention, which will then hopefully lead to media coverage. To be effective, the release must be carefully targeted on an advertising media schedule.

Travel Exhibitions and Road shows - We all know what exhibitions like Auto Expo and Pragati Maidan have done for the automobile sector and hospitality sector. So, similarly, participating in Travel Exhibitions and Road shows typically help the organizations to improve their Public Relations with suppliers, carriers, customers etc. Use of Direct Mail, brochures, business cards and personal selling efforts is prominent during these shows and exhibitions.

Hosting & Sponsoring Events - Event sponsorship is the financial support of an event by a sponsor in return for the advertising privileges associated with the event. Sponsorships are mainly divided into three areas – sports, entertainment and cultural events.

Publications - Companies rely extensively on communication materials to reach and influence their target markets. Publications such as annual reports, brochures, newsletters and magazines can draw attention to a company and its products and can draw attention to a company and its products and can help build the company’s image and convey important news to target markets.

Celebrity Events - Encouraging celebrities to use tourism and hospitality products can result in considerable media coverage and can therefore, help to promote that product.

Product Placement - It is the insertion of brand logos or brand merchandise into movies and TV shows to generate publicity. For example, using the movies or reality shows to place and promote the brand.

Personal Selling - It is a personalized form of communication in which a seller presents the features and benefits of a product to a buyer for the purpose of making a sale.

Measuring PR Performance

It is important to measure the results of the public relations plan against the goals that we have set for the hotel property. PR performance can be measured in terms of ‘Media Spaces’ and ‘Value Equivalencies’.

Measuring media space can be done by keeping a log of publications that articles have appeared, the month of publication and the circulation of these publications.

Value Equivalency is determined by auditing the exact amount of space or airtime given to the property over a specified period of time, determining the value of exposure in terms of what it would have cost to purchase the space or airtime for that advertisement purposes (basically, it is a means of measuring the monetary value of the publicity received by our property). The management team should evaluate PR effects and review and revise plans and strategies to maximize their returns.

Publicity

Public relations and publicity are often considered as same but are actually two different activities. Publicity is one of the most effective free promotional tools available in the marketing world. It is part of public relations and can have a strong impact on public awareness of the hotel property and its program.

It is one of the public relation techniques, which includes non-paid communication of information about organization’s services. (For example – News Releases and Press Conferences)

Publicity is different from advertising. Publicity refers to the communication of any non-sponsored commercially significant information about a company or its product to the public through non-personal media without any financial charge to the company.

Publicity may be favourable or unfavourable to the company. When the publicity favourably reports about a product, it can positively influence the demand, for that product or services. On the other hand, unfavourable publicity may lead to reduced sale of the product or services.

In advertisement, the hotel buys media space or time and controls the message, while in publicity the media provides the space. In publicity, the media controls the message and not the property. This apparent ‘drawback’ is the real strength of publicity with advertising. A successful PR effort leads to good publicity and enhances the image of the hotel property in front of its future and existing clients.

Publicity planning –

Publicity is most valuable when it communicates a favourable message to people with whom the property wishes to communicate. A well developed plan can lead to favourable publicity which can attract new business, remind previous guests about the hotel’s initiatives and build its goodwill among the elite of the society.

The plan begins with knowing what the property has to offer – like facilities, services, staff, ambience, standards etc. Once the base is identified, the hunt for the right media should take place. Questions like, what are the most appropriate media outlet, who are the journalists and broadcasters who can assist and strengthen its image in the society and what is the right message that should be sent across to the people in general, etc should be developed in order to facilitate the publicity process.

Developing Promotional Methods

Brochures and Pamphlets are excellent promotional materials that will make the journalist’s job easier to write about the property. Newsletters can bring news about the hotel, its staff, events and services to the attention of the media as well as the public.

Promotional material, especially prepared for the media is:

^Ø  News Releases – A news release is a news story about the special event, celebrity guest, promotional program or other interesting item that is sent to the news media. It is done to generate articles, interviews, photographs and overall coverage of the event. For example – a news release for the Chef Competition is sent to all the newspaper from the institute before, during and after the event, to get complete coverage for the event. Before writing a news release, the marketing department or the PR office must know the media and their needs. More importantly, the news release should cover major language dailies and the target market segment for which the event could be useful.

Video News Release – In addition to writing news, releases, some hotel properties also produce short videos and send them to TV channels for airing them during news coverage. It can be considered as news rather than commercials and these videos, if telecasted work as publicity for the company. One must include some essential material that can be included as news coverage in this video magazine/CD.

Press Kits – Press Kits are designed to give journalists, a background material about the hotel property. It includes –

1.      Letter of Introduction

2.      Summary Sheet

3.      Property Fact Sheets

4.      Basic Hotel Property News Release

5.      Photographs of the event as well as about the property

6.      Past News Clippings and current event coverage being done by other news agencies, magazines and daily newspapers.

7.      Advertising Materials

8.      Gift for the journalists can be included also.

Travel Writers

One of the effective ways to encourage publicity of the hotel at low or reasonable cost is to invite travel writers to the property. Travel writers write about the following things in an effective manner like Hotel Accommodation, Modes of Transportation, Places of Interest, facilities for business as well as leisure tourist, Kind of cuisines being served, service standards, USP of the location, months of visit, individual as well as group facilities etc.

Selecting Travel writers – It is advisable to provide the guidelines to the writer to ensure that any travel writing is done with a purpose. Travel writers should be given discounts to stay at the property. They should be qualified journalists. Since travel writers vary in style, abilities and language, they must be properly briefed regarding the expectations from their writings.

Travel writers fall into two different categories like –

Staff Writers and Freelance Writers

Staff writers work according to specific publications and assignments. They can be contacted and hired from the editorial staff of a magazine or a newspaper.

On the other hand, Freelance writers belong to professional organizations as either active member or an associate member. They can be contacted through these associations only.

How to maximize a Travel Writer’s visit

Although travel writers are guests of your property, they are also obligated to present an impartial view of their story. The things we can do to create a favourable impression and enhance a travel writer’s visit are:

Preparation of the Writer – Both the writer and the hotel property manager should know what to expect during the visit. Things like, writer’s itinerary, what is complimentary, what is the management expectations for the publicity should be covered before the visit of the travel writer. The remuneration and the publications in which one can publish the articles should also be discussed to avoid confusion.

Inviting the Writer – It is very necessary to entertain and invite travel writers when the property’s schedule is relatively free.

Letter to the Writer – After the visit of the writer, a short note expressing the hope that the writer enjoyed his/her stay should be sent. After some time, the writer can be called to find out about the likeliness of the coverage of the property. We can also send , a thank you letter after reviewing the finished article, expecting his/her visit very soon at the hotel property.

Press Relations

It is easier to establish or maintain an effective public relations program if the property enjoys a good relationship with the press.

New Media Interests

To develop good media relations and get the most from media coverage, one should consider the following points:

a)      The hotel property PR Staff must understand media interests. Good PR Staff are aware of the elements required for a good news story. Press relations can be maintained by the following few guidelines.

i.      Prepare News Release properly – typing errors, facts, visuals, date of news release must be properly checked.

ii.      Avoid Duplication – Different stories to different media.

iii.      Be honest – Staff should be able to customer straight. Inquiries about the event should be handled promptly and in a logical manner. One must not give vague answers regarding the facts about the property.

iv.      Respect Deadline – Punctuality is trait respected by one and all. If you have to deliver, please send your news release and publicity material by the committed hour of publication. The magazines and newspapers work under strict timelines and they respect people who can work under these time limitations.