Knowledge Paper 026 · Marketing science for Hospitality
The Science of Getting Booked
What marketing science and human evolution can teach hospitality businesses about growth.
The short answer
Hospitality marketing has a tendency to become romantic.
We talk about loyal guests.
Communities.
Experiences.
Storytelling.
Creating moments people will never forget.
All fluffy and lovely.
Unfortunately, none of those things explains particularly well why one restaurant is full on Wednesday night and another one is not.
Decades of empirical marketing research point towards something much less romantic.
Hospitality businesses tend to grow by:
Reaching more potential customers.
Being easier to remember.
Being easier to buy.
That applies whether you are selling toothpaste, whisky, hotel rooms or dinner for two.
And when we add evolutionary psychology to the picture, some of the supposedly frustrating things about customer behaviour start to make much more sense.
Because humans were never designed to be perfectly loyal consumers.
Growth is always about more people.
Hospitality businesses naturally pay enormous attention to regular customers.
They are visible.
You know their names.
You recognise the couple who eat with you every month or the business traveller who stays six times a year.
But marketing science tells us something important.
Businesses generally grow by increasing penetration - attracting more buyers - rather than somehow turning their existing customers into fanatics.
The biggest opportunity is therefore not the ten customers who visit every Friday.
It may be a thousand people who visit once this year.
And the huge market of people who've never visited (yet).
This matters particularly in hospitality, where buying is naturally infrequent.
Someone might stay at your hotel once every three years.
They might eat at your restaurant once for an anniversary.
They might book afternoon tea because their mother is visiting.
They may never describe themselves as a loyal customer.
They are still customers.
Collectively, these light buyers can represent an enormous proportion of the market.
Humans are repertoire animals.
Marketing people have spent decades wondering why consumers are not more loyal.
Evolutionary psychology suggests we are asking the wrong question.
For most of human history, relying exclusively on one source of food would have been a terrible survival strategy.
Fruit disappears.
Animals move.
Rivers dry up.
Seasons change.
The bush that fed you yesterday may have nothing on it tomorrow.
Successful foragers needed repertoires.
They returned to places that had rewarded them before, certainly.
But they also explored alternatives, remembered multiple sources and switched between them as circumstances changed.
This is sometimes described as the exploration–exploitation problem.
Exploit what you know works.
But continue exploring enough to discover other opportunities.
Modern shopping behaviour looks remarkably similar.
Most people do not really have one supermarket.
They have a repertoire.
The weekly shop might be Tesco.
Aldi might be good for particular things.
M&S comes into play because friends are coming over.
The Co-op wins tonight because it is closest.
Our ancestors did not have a favourite bush.
We do not really have a favourite supermarket either.
Restaurants are the same.
You can have a favourite Italian restaurant without deciding never to eat Indian food again.
Hotels are even more obvious.
Where you stay depends on where you are going, who you are with, the occasion, price, location, availability and what kind of trip you are having.
Marketing science observes repertoire buying.
Evolutionary psychology helps explain why we should expect it.
Which changes the question hospitality businesses should ask.
Not:
How do we make people loyal to us?
But:
How do we become one of the options that comes to mind often enough?
People do not walk around wanting your brand.
Nobody wakes up thinking:
“I really must interact with the Kildrummy Inn brand today.”
They think:
Where can we go for Sunday lunch?
Mum is coming up next weekend.
We need somewhere for our anniversary.
We are driving through Aberdeenshire.
I need somewhere impressive to take a client.
The kids are away.
We can't be arsed cooking.
These are what marketing science calls Category Entry Points: the situations, needs and occasions that cause someone to enter a buying category.
For hospitality businesses, they are hugely important.
A restaurant is not merely competing to be known as “a good restaurant”.
It needs to become mentally connected with multiple occasions.
- Sunday lunch → your restaurant
- Birthday → your restaurant
- Date night → your restaurant
- Visitors staying → your restaurant
- Business dinner → your restaurant
- Passing through → your restaurant
And because humans naturally maintain repertoires, winning does not necessarily mean replacing every other venue in someone’s head.
It means earning a place alongside them.
Mental availability matters.
This is the heart of marketing science.
People generally choose from brands that come readily to mind in a buying situation.
That means growth depends heavily on mental availability: the probability that your business will be noticed or thought of when someone has a relevant need.
You are not trying to make everyone think about your restaurant constantly.
That would be absurd.
You want the right memory to surface at the right moment.
“Where should we take Dad for his birthday?”
And somebody says your name.
That is marketing doing its job.
Which is why advertising does not always need to make people click, comment or engage immediately.
Sometimes its job is simply to leave behind a useful memory.
Reach beats engagement.
This is particularly important for small hospitality businesses.
Social media has trained businesses to celebrate the wrong numbers.
127 likes.
18 comments.
Six shares.
All nice.
But the more important number may be that 14,000 relevant people saw the thing.
Because most of them are not looking for a restaurant tonight.
They may need one next month.
Or six months from now.
Advertising can work by creating and refreshing memory structures long before somebody is ready to buy.
The objective is not always immediate action.
Sometimes it is simply making sure that when the occasion eventually arrives, you are already somewhere in memory.
Reach creates the possibility of future demand.
Be distinctive before you try to be different.
Hospitality is full of generic positioning.
Authentic.
Local.
Seasonal.
Exceptional.
Warm.
Memorable.
Unfortunately, every decent hotel or restaurant could make roughly the same claims.
Marketing science therefore places considerable value on Distinctive Brand Assets: recognisable cues that help people identify you quickly.
These might include:
- your name
- your logo
- a colour
- typography
- photography style
- exterior signage
- a building
- a distinctive dish
- a phrase
- a ritual
- a mascot
- even a particularly recognisable view
Your Georgian staircase may be a more valuable marketing asset than your mission statement.
Because if every hotel promises an unforgettable experience, being recognisable becomes considerably more useful than promising to be unique.
Be easy to buy.
Marketing science talks about two forms of availability.
Mental availability: do people think of you?
Physical availability: can they actually buy from you?
For hospitality, physical availability goes far beyond having a front door.
Can people find you on Google? Do you appear in AI searches?
Can they see your menu?
Can they understand your prices?
Can they check availability?
Can they book from their phone?
Can they see whether dogs are welcome? (THIS IS VERY IMPORTANT - Eaon note...)
Can they park?
Can they buy a voucher?
Can they see what the place actually looks like?
Can they book a table without phoning between 3pm and 5pm on a Wednesday?
A customer who wants to give you £300 but cannot work out how to book a room is not a branding problem.
It is an availability problem.
Loyalty is an outcome, not a strategy.
None of this means loyalty does not matter.
Repeat business is valuable.
Good experiences matter enormously.
You should look after customers.
But marketing science changes the hierarchy.
Rather than believing:
LOYALTY → GROWTH
It is often more useful to think:
REACH → ACQUISITION → REPEAT BEHAVIOUR → GROWTH
Larger brands generally have more customers, and those customers often buy them slightly more frequently too.
This is the Double Jeopardy Law.
Smaller brands suffer twice.
Fewer people buy them.
And those people tend to buy them a little less often.
The route out is therefore not simply trying to squeeze another visit from the people who already know you.
It is becoming known, remembered and buyable by more people.
The Hospitality Growth System.
Notice where loyalty appears: near the end of the system, not at the beginning.
The Hospitality Growth Test.
A useful way to diagnose a hospitality business is to ask seven questions.
Are enough potential customers exposed to us?
Do we understand the situations that cause people to need what we sell?
Are we associated with enough of those situations?
Can people recognise us quickly and easily?
Are we easy to find, understand, book and buy?
Are we marketing beyond the regular customers we already know?
Are we measuring growth in customers, bookings and revenue rather than social-media applause?
Common mistakes.
Obsessing over regular customers.
Your regulars matter.
But the much larger pool of occasional customers may matter even more.
Trying to manufacture loyalty.
People naturally maintain repertoires.
Being one of several acceptable choices can be enormously valuable.
Marketing the venue instead of the occasion.
Customers rarely wake up wanting a brand.
They experience a need, situation or occasion that creates the category.
Measuring engagement instead of reach.
Likes are visible.
Future buyers are not.
Looking identical to everyone else.
If every restaurant is local, seasonal, authentic and memorable, those words are not doing much identifying work.
Making booking unnecessarily difficult.
Every additional piece of friction gives someone another opportunity to choose somewhere else.
Expecting advertising to generate an immediate booking.
Much advertising works by creating memories that become useful later.
TheSignalWorks View
Hospitality likes to talk about creating unforgettable experiences.
And of course it should.
But before somebody can have an unforgettable experience, they first have to remember that you exist.
Humans have always survived by maintaining repertoires of useful options.
We explore.
We return.
We switch.
We choose according to circumstance.
Your customers are not behaving badly when they eat somewhere else.
They are behaving like humans.
The job of marketing is not to stop that behaviour.
It is to make sure that when the right occasion arrives, you are one of the places that comes to mind.
Get noticed. Get remembered. Get booked.
Key Takeaways
- Hospitality businesses grow primarily by attracting more customers, not merely by increasing loyalty among existing ones.
- Light and occasional buyers collectively represent a major growth opportunity.
- Repertoire behaviour is normal and may reflect ancient exploration–exploitation strategies.
- Category Entry Points help hospitality businesses connect themselves with more buying occasions.
- Mental availability increases the chance that your venue comes to mind when one of those occasions occurs.
- Reach is usually more important than social-media engagement.
- Distinctive assets help people recognise and remember you.
- Physical availability means making yourself exceptionally easy to find, understand, book and buy.
- Loyalty matters, but it is better understood as an outcome of acquisition and good experiences than as the primary engine of growth.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is mental availability in hospitality?
Mental availability is the probability that a hotel, restaurant or other hospitality business will come to mind when someone encounters a relevant buying situation.
What are Category Entry Points for a restaurant?
They are the occasions and needs that cause people to consider eating out, such as birthdays, Sunday lunch, date night, visiting friends, business dinners or simply not wanting to cook.
Why are light buyers important?
Because there are usually many more occasional customers than heavy customers. Even if each buys infrequently, collectively they can represent a substantial part of the market.
Does customer loyalty still matter?
Yes.
Repeat business is valuable. But businesses generally grow by attracting more customers as well as benefiting from repeat behaviour.
What is physical availability in hospitality?
It means being easy to find and buy: clear information, visible prices, convenient booking, good distribution across relevant booking platforms and minimal friction.
Why is social-media engagement not enough?
Because many potential customers who see your marketing are not currently ready to book. Reach helps create memories that may influence a purchase weeks or months later.
What is repertoire buying?
It describes the tendency for customers to buy from a range of brands rather than remaining exclusively loyal to one. In hospitality, people naturally use different restaurants and hotels for different occasions.
Further Reading
- Andrew Ehrenberg — research on repeat buying, penetration and brand growth
- Byron Sharp — How Brands Grow
- Jenni Romaniuk — Better Brand Health
- Jenni Romaniuk — work on Category Entry Points and Distinctive Brand Assets
- John Dawes — research on buyer behaviour and the 95–5 Rule
- Research on exploration–exploitation behaviour in behavioural ecology and evolutionary psychology
Related Knowledge
About TheSignalWorks
TheSignalWorks applies marketing science, psychology and creative thinking to the practical problem of growth.
Because hospitality marketing does not need more vague promises about creating unforgettable experiences.
It needs to understand how people actually choose.
Get noticed. Get remembered. Get booked.