Hi, I’m Tom from O’Rourke. Today, I would like to answer the question as to why hotels should consider using conversational marketing as part of their overall marketing strategy.

What I’ve done here is put together a graphic to help articulate this point of view so that it will make a lot more sense.

Let’s start by looking at transportation and how people would use a taxi. You have to hail a cab or get to an area where taxis line up to get your ride. Today, you simply open the Uber app, let them know where you are, and they pick you up. So, what’s the difference between getting a taxi versus using the Uber app? The user is in control.

Let’s look at video shopping. To watch a movie before, you would go to the video store, rent a movie, then bring it back when you’re finished. Today, you simply open the Netflix app, watch the film, and move on. Again, the user is in control.

Retail shopping is a similar situation. You used to go to the store or a shopping mall to buy something. Today, you open your Amazon Prime app, order what you want, and have it delivered the following day. Again, the user is in control.

Finally, let’s look at the wedding shopping experience today. Unfortunately, the wedding shopping experience has not changed at all. Today, the user is not in control. So, what do we mean by that? Let’s look at what the wedding shopper does now.

Today, they visit a hotel website, go to a wedding page, read through the information, possibly watch a video, and fill out a form. The hotel is in control here because they’re dictating to the website visitor; once you fill out this form, somebody may get back to you in the next couple of days to discuss your needs and if the venue is the right spot for you.

With Conversational Marketing, the game changes. When the visitor comes to the website, it’s real-time, and the conversation begins. Questions are served up, and answers are quickly put in place. It could even calculate a wedding cost estimate in real-time. And at the end of the conversation, they can book a site tour on a live calendar.

So, what’s the difference between what’s happening today and what would happen if hotels adopted conversational marketing? The difference is that the user would be in control like every other industry we talked about, from transportation to movie shopping to retail shopping.

We are in the era where the consumer or the shopper is in control, and by adopting conversational marketing, we’ll put hotels in the same area as where everybody else has been for quite some time.

If you’d like some more information on conversational marketing, please head over to www.orourkehospitality.com, click on the Insights link and choose the topic, Conversational Marketing. Thank you very much for your time.