Hospitality and Sensory Marketing

Hospitality is an industry made up of different organisations including hotels, restaurants, food service management, fast food, coffee shops and pubs, bars and nightclubs. It contains a selection of job roles from waitressing to event coordination, and management positions too. It’s an industry that offers an exceptional working environment, and as it is public facing it offers a friendly and self-motivated working life.

Most of the times when people hear the word Hospitality the first thing that comes to their minds is food (mine does) but hospitality is more than that. It’s also about the relationship between a guest and a host and how they both present themselves to each other. In the Hospitality industry they use Sensory Marketing to attract their target market because our senses dictate what appeals to each one of us and this can happen in different ways.

First, Visions- colour influences emotions (Bryant 1999) in Hospitality colours are important and red stimulates appetite; in many Food advertisement they always use res because it’s associated with hunger and most Chefs tend to add more colour in their food to make it more interesting. Same principle, when there is wider variety of food choices, we associate this will a horizontal offering and feel it is acceptable to eat more because we think there isn’t that much available (Khan and Wanswick 2004). Long plate and horizontal positioning of food gives the impression that there is less food than there actually is. Consumers are then more likely to be ‘surprised’ in a positive way. Drinking – research has shown that bars over pour drinks in taller glasses because we perceive vertical size as being ‘more’ (Raghubir and Krishna 1999).

Secondly, Smell- Mitchel et al (2005) found that consumers who were exposed to visuals of flowers and chocolate who also experienced the scent of these items processed them for longer and formed more favourable perceptions. This is one of the most important ones for example some companies are associated with a certain scent for example when you smell coffee in the morning you think Starbucks and breakfast.

Thirdly, Touch- Research has shown that when consumers touch a product, they then have a higher level of attachment to the product. Consumer researchers are studying the role that haptic sense (touch) plays in consumer behaviour. Like sometimes when buying clothes you have to touch them to be satisfied with the quality than just buying online.

Fourth, Hearing- Research has shown sound and music can influence people’s mood, speed, responsiveness, direction, and propensity to consume. This also works in the tourism industry because a word of mouth counts. For example when booking a holiday sometime you go online to see the reviews of the resort before you book the holiday.