Hotel Redux

*Mike's note: I personally think this is a really good idea. I'm pretty resistant to paying high prices for drinks or sweets, especially when I'm already likely being bled dry by travel costs, but an unusual luxury item that I'd normally never think of might hook me in.

LW: Within the hotel, there's usually a gift shop ... and within that gift shop they sell health and beauty items. And there's an opportunity to sell custom-imprinted items to the gift shop, for resale. So now we're essentially talking about private-label items. It could be lip balms, impulse counter items, or basics or outdoor protection if it's an outdoor-oriented property, like sunscreen, after-sun products and so on.

LW: The fourth opportunity is the marketing department itself, where they're trying to promote their group sales efforts and so forth, and they like to have items that they can pass out to customers or prospects. Health and beauty items make a nice giveaway product in that arena as well.

LW: The fifth is, if the property has a spa in it, and many of the nice properties do ... we can configure a private-label line for the spa, for their front-end, for the gift shop, as well as back-bar items they use in the services that they provide. So, for example, if they offer a mud wrap treatment as one of their services, we can provide the bulk dead-sea mud for that treatment, in addition for having a little retail-sized version of that product for take home.

So that ends Wilhelm's advice on selling to the hotel industry. Pretty interesting, huh? I imagine many end-buyers break down in similarly compartmental fashions, like colleges, sports teams or maybe banks. Apply this information, dear readers, and target different fragments of large institutions!

TEASER FOR NEXT WEEK: I'm not at all sure what I'm going to write about. I have some more old tech and travel interviews I'd like to come back to, but maybe I'll talk about our upcoming Top 50 Distributors list or some of the new stuff Charlie and I are working on for the Web. Hold on to your seats! And your exclamation points!