Two bits of advice for hotels and resorts.

We’re all looking forward to an eventual break in this crisis. But there are a couple of useful things you can do right now.

1) Don’t wait to plan, and 2) be aggressively creative.

To the first point: Too often we find ourselves with a marketing problem to deal with and not enough time to do it. Or not enough time to really do it right. You have plenty of time now, time to put together a plan you can launch quickly. Time to keep at it until you develop something innovative.

Something aggressively creative. Which brings us to our second point.

Now is not the time to be passive or to keep on with the same kinds of offers and specials everybody else is probably doing. It’s not the time now and it’s not going to be the time for quite a while.

So resist the usual. Maybe scare yourself a little. Don’t just think “out of the box,” think way out of the box. Maybe even bring somebody on board to help who does that sort of thing for a living.

The market is smaller. A lot of people are going to be fighting for that same remaining slice of pie. Those who can demand attention are going to be the ones getting the most to eat.

And bright colors will always attract more attention than dull ones.

The more you can do now, the better positioned you're going to be to succeed when this health crisis-induced recession eases. That’s a fact. You can look it up.

Seems like everything about the hospitality market sucks these days, but it’s not going to suck forever. How well you plan and how aggressively you respond is going to have a whole lot to do with whether and how quickly you bounce back.

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