Hotel Brochures: The Magic of Image and Content

Every major commercial establishment needs to advertise its services and market itself to prospective customers. Whether it is through print ads, brochures, and pamphlets or even business cards and stationery – everything that carries the logo can be an effective platform to market the organisation. A hotel brochure is one such platform that the hospitality industry uses to maximise their business reach. It is specifically designed to highlight the amenities and benefits that the hotel provides to its customers. Offers, promotions, discounts, room rates, dining experiences, comments from guests, and landscape pictures are all a part of this marketing document.

Making a hotel brochure is not a difficult process, although it needs to be well thought out. One of the best ways to approach this is to put all this on a document called the marketing or creative brief. Preparing the right brief can make the job much easier. The brief is a document that maps out the task to be accomplished, the facts that need to go into the final product and its execution style. If the hotel brochure is the end result required, defining the objective is the starting point.

While a generic objective like “to make people aware of the hotel” is fine, it does not help focus the issue. Ideally, the objective should be something that is specific, something that highlights an issue or a problem that the hotel brochure can address. A great example of an objective in the brief would be “to highlight the new rooms and modern amenities for guests.”

Once the objective has been established, the next step is to identify the target audience and map their perceptions. Is the hotel seeking vacationers or business travellers? What is the duration of the average stay of the guests? Asking questions is an important part of the creative process. By asking questions and keeping a record of the information professed, one can gain the insights that will make the task of putting the brochure content together easier.

The next step in the creative brief is to understand the perceptions that potential clients have about the hotel and what the perception needs to change to, after the client has read the hotel brochure. This will give a clear direction on what the brochure needs to say. It will also make the creative process much more effective.

The final phase is about writing the relevant content in an engaging manner, getting all the pictures and information, and putting it all together in a design. While there are many firms who offer to do this for a fee and even independent contractors who can put it together, making the brochure is not a specialist’s job. It can be done easily and with minimal fuss, if it goes with the overall flow of the brand guidelines of the hotel or franchise.