Ms. Didi Lutz

I like to think all businesses regardless of industry learned lessons through this dreadful time. For public relations, it meant crafting clearer messages, being more proactive in responses rather than reactive, and having a comprehensive crisis strategy at hand that would include action plans for the most remote possibilities. One of the lessons learned in hotel public relations specifically, was how to manage and prepare for the worst: empty rooms that just won’t be filled.

It is now 2006, and things have completely changed once again. Hotels are flourishing, expanding, and new properties are being built, trying to grasp their piece of the pie. Also, Public Relations departments have started to become more creative by acting independently and a part of the hotel’s integrated marketing communications team (Sales and Marketing).

Whether announcing a new property, renovation, new management, or simply introducing new bedding, toiletries, or a new romance package, PR professionals are making everything news by targeting the right outlets. With more aggressive media relations, better targeted messages feeding the media beast, more organized press FAM trips, and effective cross promotional events to spread the word, hotel public relations is marking the beginning of a whole new era.

Today, more than ever, hotel public relations staff is challenged with new, innovative means of communication, including online tools such as e-newsletters, marketing e-blasts, and recently, managing the popular blog evolution. The role of public relations in blogs should be proactive, and monitoring them closely has become one more thing added in PR professionals’ daily or weekly to-do lists. With these growing challenges slowly being realized, public relations managers in the hotel industry must continue to make an ongoing effort in order to maintain a balance between crafting the key messages their properties need to communicate, and facilitating the way those messages are perceived and interpreted by the hotel’s publics.

In our global village of fast-galloping technology and continuous job turnover, public relations professionals find themselves constantly wrestling against time and fostering new media relationships as old ones dissolve. They struggle with public relations plans that become outdated too quickly, and their once new ideas are outgrown in a matter of months. Innovation is part of the future, and the hospitality industry has realized this probably better than any other.

Therefore, one the most important decisions you make for your hotel is choosing your staff. Your public relations professional will represent you in the inside your property and in outside world, by acting as its boundary spanner. When making this decision, you must consider many factors that will apply to your needs. Read my article this week in Hotel Business Review on "How to Create a Strategic Public Relations Plan" to help you navigate through any puzzling questions you might have when selecting the right professional for your property.

Finally, as hotel publicists, we know that no matter how hard we work to grow and maintain our hotel’s image and foster its relationships, and regardless of how many possibilities we can come up with to proactively outline crisis communications plans, there’s still one simple question no hi-tech innovation or human being can answer: "What will tomorrow bring?"

With Regards,

Didi Lutz
Travel Publicist
M.S. Corporate Public Relations
didi.lutz@gmail.com