Most people love hotel experiences where they don’t think about what to cook in the evening, don’t bother with cleaning, and get service while resting. Some people choose a warmer destination while winter holiday lovers search for the best ski routes, and their top priority is the hotels they will stay in. On the other hand, companies may spend hours in search engines to find the most suitable hotel for their business travelers. For this reason, hotel advertising is of great importance. Even though people are becoming more and more careful about their spending, 50% of travelers say that spending money on vacation is still their top priority. Thus, it is essential for them that they find the best destination as well as the hotel to have a pleasant time.
It is entirely up to your hotel marketing strategy whether your potential customers stay in your hotel and benefit from your ancillary services, and ultimately choose to come back and recommend them to people. In this article, we focused on exactly that. We would like to share with you the inspiring hotel marketing strategies to maximize your reservations. Keep reading!
What is Hotel Marketing?
Hotel marketing refers to the process of promoting and advertising hotels, resorts, or other lodging establishments to potential guests or customers. This involves a range of activities, including identifying target audiences, developing branding and messaging, creating advertising campaigns in accordance with your marketing budget, managing online and offline channels, and measuring performance and ROI.
The ultimate goal of hotel marketing is to increase awareness, interest, and bookings for a hotel or resort, as well as to foster positive guest experiences and customer loyalty. As the hospitality industry is highly competitive, a hotel marketing strategy requires a deep understanding of the competitive landscape, consumer behavior, and market trends, as well as the ability to adapt to changing customer needs and preferences. However, consulting with hospitality marketing agencies may be the best course of action to stay competitive.
How to Promote Your Hotel to Increase Bookings
Hotels can skyrocket their bookings by implementing effective digital marketing strategies. When developing a hotel marketing strategy; however, it’s important to consider the target audience, prioritize personalization and customer engagement, and leverage different digital marketing channels to reach and attract customers. It is also worth mentioning that you can always partner with travel and tourism marketing agencies to enhance your business value. Below we’ve listed the top inspiring hotel marketing strategies to increase your bookings!
Have a Strong Online Presence
Let’s start with the basics and the most obvious ones. To promote your hotel in the way it deserves, you should have a strong online presence where your customers can easily reach out while understanding what you have to offer. Your hotel has to be easily accessible with an easy to use interface supported with high quality images of your hotel’s indoors and outdoors, making sure the customers are satisfied with the opportunities.
Marriott is a world-wide known hotel chain that has successfully used content marketing to attract customers. The company launched a travel content platform called Marriott Traveler, which features articles, guides, and travel tips for different destinations around the world. Supported with high-quality and engaging images and detailed guides, Marriott Traveler convinces potential customers to travel to these destinations and list for them the potential activities that they can experience throughout their vacation.
Offer Special Promotions and Packages
Another important strategy we’d like to mention is offering special promotions and packages to your beloved customers. To best market your hotel, you can create attractive promotions and packages that provide added value for guests and encourage them to book directly with your hotel. You can offer your customers exclusive deals and discounts when they book directly through your website or reservation system.
For instance, a hotel could offer a “book 3 nights, get the 4th-night free” promotion for direct bookings. By offering similar types of promotions or packages, hotels can incentivize customers to book directly, rather than through third-party booking channels. This not only increases revenue for the hotel but also allows for a more direct relationship with the customer, which can lead to increased loyalty and repeat business if they’re satisfied with your service.
Use Online Travel Agencies (OTA’s)
Most hotels are now using online travel agencies to make sure they’re reaching out to the people who search for the location or the service they provide. Thus, hotels use OTAs to promote themselves by listing their properties on these websites. But why is this an important factor on promoting your hotel? Because when a hotel lists its property on an OTA, it gains acces to a wider audience of potential guests who may not have found the hotel through its own website or marketing efforts. Therefore, partnering with popular OTAs such as Booking.com, Expedia and TripAdvisor is a great opportunity to increase your hotel’s exposure.
Develop s Strong Social Media Presence
Your potential customers are not only looking for your website to have an idea of your hotel, they also search for social media to gain ideas about past clients’ experiences as well as try to find more candid photos and videos of your property to have a realistic view. In order to interact with clients, it is therefore highly advised for hotels to be active on social media. Yes, you can start by sharing visually engaging content and garnering a loyal audience. However, you can also encourage guests to share their experiences at your hotel by tagging the hotel in their posts and using your branded hashtags. This will definitely help increase your reach and build social proof through user-generated content. (People love this more, too!)
Waldorf Astoria is a luxury hotel brand of Hilton Worldwide. On Hilton’s YouTube page, the company posted an entertaining video where the Senior Director of Spa and Retail at Arizona Biltmore, a Waldorf Astoria Resort, Becky Lauluai gives her tips and tricks on self-care while traveling. The video is not only entertaining, but also promotes the Arizona Biltmore’s Spa in the best way possible. She also mentions a fun fact on how much she likes Halo Therapy which can only be found at Arizona Biltmore.
Utilize Influencer Marketing
Influencer marketing is a very popular marketing strategy which many brands in various industries benefit from. For hotel marketing, it’s no different. Partnering with the right influencers can help hotels reach a wider audience of potential guests who may not have heard of the hotel -or even destination- before. Since they have a dedicated following who trust their recommendations, influencers have the influence (duh) in people to book a stay at the hotel if an influencer is promoting the location. When considering an influencer partnership, hotels should carefully vet potential influencers to ensure that they align with the hotel’s brand values and target audience. Though, remember that it is crucial for brands and hotels to be transparent about the partnership and disclose any sponsored content to comply with advertising regulations.
Four Seasons, a luxury hotel brand, has successfully used this strategy many times brilliantly. They partnered with social media influencers such as Jessica Stein of Tuula Vintage, who has 2M followers on its Instagram account, and Chris Burkard to showcase their properties and unique experiences to their followers.
Create a Loyalty Program
As customers, we appreciate loyalty programs the most! Because of this, as a hotel owner or manager, you should consider creating a loyalty program that rewards frequent visitors and encourages them to make direct reservations at your hotel. Hotels can use this marketing technique to thank loyal customers and persuade them to make further reservations. Typically, loyalty programs reward customers for their ongoing business with discounts, complimentary nights, and special benefits.
Host Events and Promotions
What is better than bringing people together? We say nothing. Events are one of the beneficial and informative options available to us as people, and we enjoy taking part in them. And without question, when a brand or business wants to host an event, hotels are the first places that come to mind.
Food and beverage festivals, or wellness retreats that appeal to your target audience are great ways to bring people to your hotel and give you the opportunity for your guests to experience your hotel.
You can host culinary events such as wine tastings,-yum-, cooking classes, or food festivals (yes!) These events can help hotels showcase their dining options and attract foodies and wine enthusiasts. You can also host yoga retreats or other wellness events. These can help hotels appeal to health-conscious travelers and attract guests who are looking for a relaxing and rejuvenating getaway.
Leverage Customer Reviews
And last but not least, we must point out one of the most crucial steps you can take if you want to promote your hotel to a wider audience: customer reviews. They are highly important for your business as they can significantly influence potential guests’ booking decisions, build trust through authenticity, provide feedback for improvement, help reputation management and so much more. In fact, positive reviews can help hotels gain more reservations, while negative reviews harm your business’ reputation. That is why you should encourage satisfied guests to leave positive reviews on popular review sites such as TripAdvisor and Yelp and use them as social proof to attract new customers.
Check Out
Overall, there are various strategies that you can use to boost your hotel’s online visibility, increase your bookings and attract visitors. You can either use all of them or perhaps optimize a few to help you gain more reservations. Either way, hotels must adapt to the changing landscape to remain competitive in today’s digital marketing for the hospitality industry. of digital marketing to stay competitive in today’s hospitality industry.
You should constantly evaluate your marketing and advertising strategies and adjust accordingly to stay relevant and most importantly appealing to your target audience. If all seems a bit overwhelming and you don’t know where to start your hotel marketing journey, you can consider consulting digital marketing companies in the USA to help you become successful in this journey. Ultimately, by staying on top of the latest trends and implementing effective marketing strategies, hotels can attract more guests, increase booking and drive revenue growth.
