Hotel Marketing Strategies

Hotel marketing strategies encompass various techniques hotels use to promote their services, facilities, and unique selling points to potential customers. These strategies are crucial for increasing visibility, attracting guests, and fostering loyalty. Effective marketing can significantly impact a hotel’s occupancy rates and profitability, making it a vital aspect of hotel management and business growth.

Key Takeaways

  • Leveraging Social Media: Utilizing platforms like Instagram and Facebook for targeted advertising.
  • Online Reputation Management: Actively managing online reviews and ratings to enhance the hotel’s image.
  • Personalized Email Marketing: Implementing tailored email campaigns to reach potential customers.
  • Optimizing Website for Direct Bookings: Enhancing the hotel’s website for user-friendliness and ease of direct booking.
  • Search Engine Optimization (SEO): Implementing SEO strategies to increase the hotel’s visibility.
  • Partnerships and Collaborations: Forming strategic partnerships with travel agencies and online platforms.
  • Content Marketing: Creating engaging, informative content to attract potential guests.
  • Mobile Optimization: Ensuring the hotel’s online presence is mobile-friendly, catering to the growing number of mobile users.
  • Utilizing Data Analytics: Employing data analytics to understand customer preferences.

Table of Contents:

Introduction

The importance of having the right hotel marketing strategies is difficult to overstate, as it is a key part of launching a hotel, optimizing the number of bookings you generate, building brand awareness, and managing your reputation. In this article, you will learn more about some of the essential strategies to adopt at all times.

15 Essential Hotel Marketing Strategies

Adopting the right hotel marketing strategy in the right situation is crucial, but some strategies are applicable at all times too. Below, you will see a breakdown of some “all-time” hotel marketing strategies and strategies that respond to the coronavirus pandemic and associated changes to consumer behavior.

1. Bring Your Hotel Website Into 2024

In addition to having an appealing and functional website, one of the most critical hotel marketing strategies is ensuring your website is in keeping with modern user expectations. In particular, you need to ensure your website loads quickly and is responsive across all devices, including computers, smartphones, and tablets. Prioritize accessibility, too, which could include using a color blind-friendly palette and ensuring text can all be read aloud using a screen reader.

Your website should be user-friendly, easy to understand and navigate, and should use up-to-date security features. Support multiple payment options and try to make the entire user experience as friction-free as possible. The article Tips To Gain More Bookings With Your Hotel Website describes more tips about creating a perfect hotel website.

Video: Hotel Website Design

2. Add a Direct Booking Channel to Your Website

Many of the best hotel marketing strategies are designed to generate direct bookings because these are much more profitable than bookings made through third parties, including OTAs. For this reason, it is essential to add a direct booking channel to your website and design the booking system to be easy to use.

Avoiding commission fees associated with OTAs is one of the reasons direct bookings are more profitable, but adding a direct booking channel to your website also gives you access to more customer data. This can then be used for upselling and cross-selling between the booking and the guest’s arrival. That said, you should also add upselling components to the booking process itself, so you can maximize revenue per customer.

3. Follow The SEO Staples

There’s no point in having a website if it’s difficult for potential customers to find via their preferred search engine. Ensure you follow SEO (Search Engine Optimization) online marketing basics, such as ensuring your content is rich and relevant, with strong keywords and keyword combinations that give your website the best chance of being clicked. Consider likely search terms when planning your hotel marketing SEO campaigns. According to the State of Marketing Report by HubSpot, 88% of marketers already using SEO plan to continue using SEO strategies with similar or increased budgets.

Don’t forget to combine your main keywords with strong secondary ones, like the name of your local neighborhood or district. The article SEO Tips for Hotels to Improve your Ranking in Google describes more tips about how to rank your website higher in Google.

Hotel Marketing Strategies - Quote Benjamin Franklin

4. Implement a Hotel Chatbot on Your Website

Customer service forms a fundamental part of modern hotel marketing strategies, and customer expectations in this area are through the roof. Customers want rapid answers to questions at all times of the day, which is not always possible using human customer service agents. So why not implement a hotel chatbot on your website?

AI-powered chatbots can provide swift, automated, and natural-sounding answers to questions, can help to guide users through a booking experience, and can assist with price comparisons and other common queries. As a result, you can potentially improve resolution speeds and increase the amount of bookings you generate from your website.

5. Let Potential Guests & B2B Clients Experience Your Hotel From a Distance

After COVID-19, many travelers need to be convinced that their visit will be worthwhile, and virtual reality tours for hotels provide the ultimate way to experience a hotel or restaurant during the decision-making phase. This allows potential leisure, wedding, or event customers to understand the facilities from afar.

Accessibility to virtual reality tours has greatly improved recently, and most modern VR videos are web-based. They can be viewed on any device with a web browser, including computers, mobiles, and tablets. Of course, the experience and overall immersion can be enhanced further through a VR headset. According to the Virtual Reality Market Research by Fact.MR, the global virtual reality market size is projected to grow at a CAGR of 26% until 2033. Read “Reasons Why Every Hotel Should Have a Virtual Reality Video” for more information.

6. Differentiate Yourself From The Rest

To really contend with the competition, your hotel needs to offer something unique and distinctly different to entice potential guests. Your hotel marketing campaign needs to be equally individual. Quality customer care must be at the core of everything in the hotel and hospitality industry.

Going that extra mile for your guests can yield massive returns. Ensure you’re doing something different, from providing customers with a little treat at check-in to nabbing local press and PR connections to shine a light on hotel marketing events.

7. Get Savvy With Social Media

Start now if you’re not utilizing social media in your online hotel marketing campaign. It’s free to create accounts with the likes of Facebook, Twitter, FourSquare, Instagram, and YouTube, and it’s never been easier to create dynamic social media pages in moments. However, there’s no point in launching a social media presence if you don’t mean to maintain it.

Ensure you have at least one person appointed to keep your hotel marketing social media message live and engaging. Fresh content is pivotal, so ensure you have a content delivery schedule. If you’re strapped for time to create new content, consider launching a hotel blog you can link back to from your social pages regularly. More social media tips about how to promote your hotel can be read in the article “Social Media Marketing Tips to Promote Your Hotel”.

8. Get Recommended by Real Authority

One surefire way of securing new customers is to get your hotel listed with local tourist offices. Whether it’s a printed flyer in bricks and mortar office or a prominent link on a local tourism website, you can take premier listing over many rival competitors.

If you want to appeal to business travelers, nearby convention and exhibition centers are also great places to promote your hotel. It’s also worth talking to local marketing and event companies in the region. Many of these may only offer part-package deals to their customers, meaning you can cover the accommodation needs and bolster your bookings in quieter seasons.

9. Promote Yourself With Online Travel Agencies

In the modern digital age, no hotel can secure regular business without capitalizing on online travel agencies and travel brokers. A simple listing can generate thousands of bookings in the long term, but it’s worth remembering that a commission will be applied each time a booking is generated through such an agency.

Never rely solely on online travel agencies when it comes to your hotel marketing efforts, ensuring such websites are used to generate additional sales, rather replace your direct sales efforts entirely. Find more detailed information about online distribution channels in the articles “The Most Important Online Distribution Channels for Hotels” and “Hotel Distribution Channel Manager: What Are the Advantages?”.

10. Global Distribution Systems

A GDS system (Global Distribution System) is a network that enables automated transactions between travel service providers (airlines, hotels, cruises, and car rental) and travel agencies. When connecting your hotel to a GDS provider, your hotel can be booked via hundreds of travel agencies worldwide.

You can also use such systems to target specific travelers, including those venturing from home turf on business. More detailed information about GDS systems and what the benefits are for hotels, you can be read in the article “Global Distribution System (GDS): What Are the Benefits for Hotels?”.

Hotel Marketing Strategies - Quote Roger Martin

11. Make Sure to Know Your OTAs Inside-Out

Most modern hotel marketing strategies will try to get the most from online travel agents, with two of the biggest examples being Booking.com and Expedia. However, hotel marketers must take the necessary steps to optimize their online listings regardless of the OTAs being used.

You can learn more about Booking.com, the Booking Extranet, and how to get the most from that particular platform by reading the “Booking Extranet: Strategies to Increase Your Revenue on Booking.com“ article.

Meanwhile, you can learn more about Expedia and its in-built management platform, the Expedia Extranet, by checking out the article “Tips & Strategies to Use the Expedia Extranet to Get More Bookings”.

12. Appoint a Sales Rep and Reap The Rewards

When it comes to hotel marketing strategies, you should always take the best practices in hospitality out into the field when promoting your business. If a local business regularly recommends you to potential customers, ensure you maintain a mutually beneficial relationship with strong incentives.

Appointing a dedicated sales representative is worth considering for hotel businesses looking to expand. Any good rep should be taking stock of potential companies in the area worth connecting with, while ongoing procurement efforts to lock down new partnerships should be at the forefront of any hotel marketing effort.

13. Keep an Eye on Reviews and Recommendations

A great review can earn you a new customer. A poor review can cost you hundreds. Encourage better reviews and recommendations from previous guests by engaging them after checking out. Your hotel could feature dozens, if not hundreds, of times on review websites, so you must ensure that each page has positive reviews and complimentary content.

Monitor reviews on the most popular sites, note any bad reviews, and engage dissatisfied guests with helpful and constructive feedback. Neutralise negative feedback wherever you can. Find more detailed information about managing online reviews in the article “Tips to Manage Online Hotel Reviews”.

14. Personalization Marketing

For hotel owners and others operating in the hospitality industry, finding ways to stand out from rivals and appeal to potential customers is essential. One of the best ways to do this is to deliver tailored, individual marketing messages.

In the article “Ways Personalization Marketing Can Benefit the Hospitality”, you will learn more about how to achieve this through personalization marketing and learn about how this concept can improve marketing efforts and revenue generation.

15. Invest More During High Season

One of the most important hotel marketing strategies to capitalize on can be summarised by the saying ‘make hay while the sun shines. Through historic and on-the-books data, hotels should be able to determine precisely when their peak season is and when customers are most likely actually to book hotels for that peak season.

For example, it may be that the peak season is at the height of summer, and the majority of those bookings are made in early spring. Regardless, it is important to invest more in ad spending and other marketing strategies according to when bookings are most likely to be made, as this helps you maximize your peak season earnings.

The Latest Hotel Marketing Trends in The Hotel Industry

For marketers operating in the hotel industry, there is a wide range of hotel marketing strategies to turn to. In the article “Hotel Marketing; The Latest Trends in the Hotel Industry”, you will learn more about the latest hotel marketing trends.

Hotel Marketing Strategies FAQs

Hotels use a variety of marketing strategies including digital marketing (SEO, email campaigns, social media), content marketing, loyalty programs, partnerships with travel agencies, influencer collaborations, targeted advertising, and promotional offers to attract and retain guests.

Hotel marketing analysis involves evaluating the hotel’s marketing strategies, market trends, competition, customer preferences, and performance metrics to identify opportunities for improvement and inform future marketing decisions to increase bookings and revenue.

Hotel marketing segmentation involves dividing the market into distinct groups of guests with similar characteristics or preferences, such as business travelers, families, or luxury seekers, to tailor marketing strategies and offers to each specific segment.

Hotels market themselves by showcasing their unique features and services, engaging with customers through social media, optimizing their websites for search engines, offering special packages or promotions, collecting and leveraging positive reviews, and utilizing email marketing to reach past and potential guests.

Marketing helps hotels increase visibility, attract more guests, enhance brand reputation, and ultimately boost revenue. Effective marketing strategies can lead to higher occupancy rates, increased direct bookings, and improved guest loyalty and satisfaction.

Hotel marketing strategies are key ways hotels can reach out to potential guests and explain why they should visit. Many of these strategies can be used at all times. Still, it is also important to respect the disruption that coronavirus has caused and implement some specific COVID-related strategies too.

Want to Learn More About Hotel Marketing Strategies?

Marketing plays a crucial role in helping hotels maximize bookings and revenue. It is the main way in which those in the hotel industry can reach out to potential customers, conveying their unique selling proposition and brand values. In the following articles, you will find more essential hotel marketing strategies to boost your revenue:

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Revfine.com is a knowledge platform for the hospitality & travel industry. Professionals use our insights, strategies and actionable tips to get inspired, optimise revenue, innovate processes and improve customer experience. You can find all hotel & hospitality tips in the categories Revenue Management, Marketing & Distribution, Hotel Operations, Staffing & Career, Technology and Software.

This article is written by:

Hi, I am Martijn Barten, founder of Revfine.com. I am specialized in optimizing revenue by combining revenue management with marketing strategies. I have over 15 years of experience developing, implementing, and managing revenue management and marketing strategies and processes for individual properties and multi-properties.