By now, we're hoping all of our hospitality partners in Wake County are aware of our Destination Brand Promise:

Visitors to Raleigh will depart feeling enriched by what they have experienced in this Southern capital city, thanks to Raleigh's smart and passionate residents who are shaping the growth of the historic city's emerging creative businesses, innovative festivals and food establishments, passionate music and sports scenes and modern cultural experiences.

But how can individual hotels put this brand concept into practice with their guests?

Though your industry is designed to serve only half of Raleigh/Wake County's 15+ million annual visitors (the overnight portion), you can reap the most rewards, as 88% of visitor spending comes from overnight visitors to Raleigh. GRCVB is also enacting marketing strategies to increase hotel bookings by those visitors coming to Raleigh for friends-and-family visits.

Hotels control critical touch points for the destination brand with overnight visitors who spend hours and hours on property in sleeping rooms or in meeting rooms. Though you likely have your own hotel's brand/chain strategy to implement, helping to enact the destination brand strategy as well can maximize guest/client spending, build preference for both your property and the Raleigh area and increase returns through visitors expressing loyalty to the destination brand and its overall experiences.

Top Considerations for Getting Started:

• Study your own unique selling proposition (USP) to guests/clients, and contemplate your hotel positioning strategy in the greater context of Raleigh, N.C. Is yours compelling and competitive with the 148 other hotels in our destination? Does the CVB know your USP, in order to help you sell rooms?
• Review the destination's new target audiences found in the Raleigh, N.C., Marketing Blueprint. Compare and contrast these to the types of guests/clients that you want to attract and retain. Are there additional ways you want to cooperatively advertise or sell alongside GRCVB to reach these audiences who will have an affinity for Raleigh, N.C.'s brand?
• Consider how your brand/chain strategy for customer experience and customer service does or doesn't mesh well with the destination brand promise above and brand elements found in the Raleigh, N.C., Destination Brand Strategy Manual. Are there ways to realign any of your guest/client touch points for more effectiveness, more spending and increased guest/visitor satisfaction on as well as off property?
• Review how your hotel/chain is currently describing the destination on your website, in guest-room books, in sales and marketing materials or at the front desk/concierge. Can you implement keywords and brand elements in these verbal descriptions so that we're all telling the same stories? Should your staff participate in CVB-offered tours and trainings to learn to relate the destination brand firsthand?