Effective Restaurant Marketing

Restaurateurs (for the most part) know full well the challenges inherent with opening any type of eatery, particularly when it comes to restaurant marketing.  The mortality rate of restaurants is well documented, surpassed in recent times only by the construction business.  Yet savvy restaurant owners will always find innovative ways to prevail.

One of the most powerful sources of referral business for restaurants has always been local hotels, namely the Concierges and Front Desk staff working therein.  If a restaurant is fortunate enough to be located within a few miles of one or more hotels, and their restaurant’s reputation is solid, they are excellent candidates for receiving some of those hotels’ guests for dinner.

Grabbing the ear of these hoteliers isn’t always easy, though.  In congested markets, hotel lobby staff members are inundated with options from all the popular types of cuisine, so getting heard above the noise can be challenging.  Most forward-thinking restaurateurs spend considerable expense prior to their grand opening printing and distributing marketing materials to local hotel staff.  Some go the extra step of paying for advertisements within the individual hotel’s Guest Service Directories.

Even with this considerable effort and expense, the challenge of staying on Concierges’ and Front Desk agents’ minds, day-in and day-out, is a formidable one.  The most likely scenario is that any collateral left behind at the Concierge desk will be stacked with countless others – perhaps to be addressed again at some point in the future, perhaps not.  Restaurants are not going to maximize their potential from these resources through one week of hand shaking and brochure-dropping.  Staying on their minds is key.

Recently there has been an interesting product introduced to the hospitality industry that is showing great promise with regards to these very challenges of restaurant marketing.  It is called Out The Lobby (www.OutTheLobby.com) , and it allows restaurants and other service providers (golf courses, florists, limo companies, etc.) to directly interface with a software application that hoteliers use daily to do their jobs.  Once registered, a restaurant (for instance) would be listed in the very program that Concierges and Front Desk personnel use to refer their guests to local businesses.  Out The Lobby service providers are simply clicked by the hotelier, and their address, map, driving directions, and other information print automatically on a confirmation for the guest.  This greatly speeds of the referral process for the Concierge, making a normally time-consuming activity quite painless.  Hotels still have to call the service providers to confirm availability (there is not “OpenTable”-like interface), but I imagine this is why the program is so inexpensive for both hotels and restaurant members alike.