Hotel Redux

Greetings loyal readers,

In my last post, I mentioned that I was going to write a bit about selling to the hotel industry this week. Larry Wilhelm, president and owner of Custom HBC, gave me a ton of information that I wasn't able to use for my March travel feature, but I thought was interesting and useful and I don't want to let it slip by. What follows is Wilhelm explaining different ways distributors can target the hotel industry with health-care promotions, more or less directly from our interview, edited only for length and clarity.

Larry Wilhelm: "We'll start with the in room amenities. Those are typically purchased by the housekeeping department within the hotel complex. They're looked as an expense item, and most hotels will have a budget that they're willing to spend per room, [per] night on amenities.

*Mike's note: Wilhelm added that hotels usually have a cache of items not typically stocked in the room, available at the customer's request, like toothpaste and combs.

LW: "The second opportunity is honor-bar amenities for sale. A lot of hotels will have liqueur and chocolates and other beverages in an honor bar ... and our idea is for let's say a foot soap or an exfoliating scrub or a very nice facial moisturizer, things that allow the customer to treat themselves a little bit in the hotel. They're probably items that they wouldn't normally carry with them, because of the difficulty of packing along for travel, but they'd be willing to spend five or 10 bucks on that item once they're at the hotel. And, in general, selling one of those items per room, will about equally offset the expense of the items that are stocked in the room, so then it becomes a break even, or possibly even a profit-center for housekeeping, and they're usually very interested in that.