Tackling Intangibility of Hospitality Marketing: Is it Possible to Market an Experience?

How do you sell the feeling of a good night’s rest, safety, and comfort? How do you get a consumer to put their faith in something you cannot show them?

It’s something that the travel and tourism sector have to consistently tackle when it comes to marketing. When your product is intangible as one night’s stay and something that they’ll never be able to keep or get back – it’s a high risk for customers to reach the purchase point and actually click to book.  

It requires a lot of skill and a thorough strategy to help successfully market a hospitality brand and secure longevity and sustainability. Especially once you’ve expanded your target audience and are looking to improve your reach.  

When you have to win over a whole new market and convince them that your experience is worth the cost, then it’s time to get serious about your approach.  

The big issue with hospitality marketing

Intangibility. The inability to be perceived by the sense of touch. In a marketing context it means services that don’t have a tangible product people can purchase; Think mobile apps, accounting services, even health insurance.  

It’s not like an ordinary product. You don’t have a product line you can wrap up and gift. You’re not even marketing the building itself and it’s perfectly picked decor.  

Instead, you’re marketing an experience. It’s the whole deal – whether it’s the meal and service, or the comfort and pleasure of a night’s stay.  

To add to the difficulty of marketing your hospitality business, there is also perishability to consider. A hotel room cannot be stored for sale later if it’s not been booked that night. Once the night ends, the bedroom doesn’t sell and so the business loses out possible income. In hotels, restaurants, even competitive socialising venues, the experience is perishable. The window of opportunity before it becomes worthless is so small that it’s incredibly important for marketing to be strategic, versatile, and responsive.

Why is intangibility a problem to navigate in hospitality marketing?

With a single tangible product like a hairbrush, there will be mass production, quality checks, and an almost guarantee for the consumer that they’re receiving what they expect. There’s little variation with products like this, leading to faith from the audience in what they’re buying, oftentimes making it easier for them to complete the buyer’s journey.  

However, with something like a hotel stay, there’s huge variation that the provider (the hotel company or brand) cannot control. This is partially due to the inseparability of the hospitality industry. Aspects like the quality of the room furnishings become inseparable from the service of the staff purchased, meaning it all contributes to the overall attitude towards the stay. You need to reinforce your value proposition with high quality service.   

So, you’re not just marketing one individual product in essence and you cannot guarantee consistency in what you’re marketing. It’s more complicated than that. 

Why is tangibility important for hotel marketing?

Of course, marketing isn’t about just selling a product or advertising offers and deals. At its core, it’s about emotion. If you can get the audience to feel an emotion, you can create connections, forge loyalty, and spur action. This action then drives the sales, meaning you carry out your goal. But sales deal with selling. Marketing is about the brand – the story. It’s why you need both aspects. 

With hospitality marketing, brands must be more strategic when it comes to fostering consumer loyalty.  

It’s not impossible but it does require some different tactics.  

Consumer loyalty leads to brand advocates. These brand advocates will help provide tangible reviews and endorsements that solidify your selling points and confirm your claims. It provides a more tangible aspect to intangible marketing. While you can claim that your guests are treated like royalty, without actual stellar customer reviews across your marketing, it’s not believable. Reward your community and nurture it.

Start growing your revenue

You might also be interested in

Performative activism hospitality blog header
Performative Activism: Why Marketers Should Steer Clear
Performative activism is when a person or brand appears to support a cause to gain attention or support, rather than making a difference for the cause. It can be easy for brands to get caught up with showing support for a cause, but are they actually making a difference? Let’s compare some genuine brands and...
Hospitality social community blog header
Why Building a Community is Crucial on Social Media
Let’s be honest: social media is a lot. It’s constantly changing, there’s a never-ending stream of content, and it surrounds us wherever we go. It’s so easy to get lost in the pursuit of likes and shares. We admit, these metrics do give you a little insight into your online influence, but they don’t capture...