We’ve all heard ad nauseam over the past year that “hospitality was one of the hardest hit industries by COVID-19.” Sadly, the ubiquity of the refrain doesn’t make it any less true.

As we tentatively turn the corner, vaccines and lessened restrictions in hand, hotels are rebuilding and planning for a post-pandemic future. Every department will need to rethink systems, processes, strategies and the resources required to be successful. Flexibility and efficiency will be paramount.

In the marketing department, likely significantly reduced in size because of COVID-19, the pressure will be on to drive heads in beds and manage a thoughtful narrative to welcome guests back safely at a time when competition will be fierce. Instead of trying to staff up quickly, force existing team members to wear multiple hats or bury junior staff with responsibilities beyond their skill set, consider an outsourced full-service marketing solution.

You don’t think twice about outsourcing IT, accounting or HR support. So why not marketing?

Outsourced marketing is an easy decision when you consider the multitude of benefits for your team.

After the financial losses of 2020 wrought by the impact of COVID-19 on tourism and travel, most hospitality companies are thinking conservatively about budgets. Strategic marketing initiatives will be the main drivers of growth, so investing in marketing will be critical. Instead of adding the expense of several full-time marketing employees, use outsourced marketing to stretch your dollar significantly further by investing in a team of specialized experts for the same cost as one senior-level salary.

Outsourcing your hotel’s marketing to an agency allows you to tap into a wide variety of services and skills. Instead of a single subject-matter expert, you have at your disposal a dynamic group of career-marketing professionals with a range of experience and expertise, including social media, digital advertising, email marketing, loyalty initiatives, media and influencer relations, PR and everything in between. An agency can develop a complete end-to-end marketing program using resources entirely within their group — something that would be nearly impossible to find in one internal hire.

Marketing agencies are focused exclusively on doing marketing well and have access to the latest technology, trends and innovations in the hospitality industry — keeping you a step ahead of your competition.

Because marketing agencies work across various industries and accounts, they have a unique view of the latest business trends and potential threats to your hotel’s strategic positioning. They can help a hospitality group carve out its niche within the competitive landscape, stay on top of important industry developments and discern which trends have staying power and which ones will fade away. Agencies can also bring innovative ideas to the table through their immersion across businesses and industries. They often can see opportunities to create new value well before a hotelier does because of their wider view of the overall market and agnostic approach to the business.

As we all learned from the year of the “pivot,” businesses need to be nimble and flexible. With outsourced marketing, your marketing department can adapt quickly to strategic pivots. Services can scale up or down with an agency’s larger marketing team and resources at your disposal. You don’t need to worry about spreading your internal team too thin or over-hiring for a specific program or campaign.

Recruiting, hiring and training new employees is costly and time consuming. Outsourcing your marketing department is an efficient and effective way to “staff up” without the human resources headache. With the addition of an agency partner, you can substitute hiring needs at various levels, reduce onboarding time and eliminate turnover. An outsourced marketing department works collaboratively to integrate within your infrastructure while also functioning autonomously to reduce the strain on your internal team and resources.

Despite the end of the pandemic in sight, 2021 will still present a host of new challenges for the hospitality industry. Being strategic about priorities and allocation of resources will be top of mind. The savvy hotelier will understand the value of finding smart partners to help rebuild, strengthen and grow their business.

Marlo Fogelman is an attorney licensed in New York and Massachusetts, and the founder and CEO of Marlo Marketing.

The opinions expressed in this column do not necessarily reflect the opinions of Hotel News Now or CoStar Group and its affiliated companies. Bloggers published on this site are given the freedom to express views that may be controversial, but our goal is to provoke thought and constructive discussion within our reader community. Please feel free to contact an editor with any questions or concern.