During a great vacation in Italy over the past few weeks, I had an opportunity to experience a lot of travel marketing and operations initiatives in one of the world’s top tourism destinations. From loyalty programs to booking operations and social media outreach efforts, I enjoyed sampling the local twists on travel and tourism marketing. Along the way, I splurged for our nicest hotel in the city of Bologna, culinary capital of northern Italy. Needless to say, expectations were high.
The five-star hotel in the heart of historical Bologna featured an amazing room – traditionally appointed with original art, beautiful antiques and plenty of space. Every detail was nicely attended to. To complement the room, the service was professionally efficient if not friendly, and the included breakfast was excellent. Overall we were pleased even though I set a record for room rate paid.
So all was going well until the night before checkout when a small card was placed on my pillow announcing the hotel’s charity support including a children’s charity in Africa. This was a nice touch… until I read further that 1 Euro would be added to my bill for each day’s stay to support the charity… huh? I could request removal of the charge upon checkout (awkward!), but otherwise the details had been arranged and the hotel decided I could afford the extra Euro per day to support their philanthropic affinity program. True enough, I can afford the extra charge. What I can’t figure out, though, is why the hotel wouldn’t take 1 Euro of the hefty daily rate we paid and give it to the charity as their own contribution. I’d feel a lot better about that than being boxed into a program that is supposed to put a halo on their brand at my expense.
In short, the logic behind this program baffles me. I can just imagine myself as the consultant in the marketing meeting talking this over with the client. Never in my dreams would I suggest this approach. Further, I’d mount an effort to modify the approach. If my campaign to modify the approach failed, however, I’d at least fix the sampling of typos and grammatical errors on the card.
Ciao.
