-Last update on May 2023-

Marriott has successfully been at the forefront of the hospitality industry for a long time, and no doubt its marketing strategy is a heavy contributor to its success. The Marriott Marketing Strategy involves the Marriott Marketing Mix consisting of the 4Ps which are product, price, place, and promotions. 

The rapid rise of social media has made it very useful for the hotel industry. Social media like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn provides wonderful opportunities for hoteliers.

These days the hotel industry has become one of the competitive and challenging industries in the business sector. Every hotel wants to attract more guests to their hotel, and in the process to grow their business and make more profit.

There are a lot of competitions out there among hoteliers, coupled with the fact that most hotels have to depend on OTAs to fill up their rooms, therefore diminishing their profit. It is then normal for hoteliers to think about things they can upsell or cross-sell in their hotel to bring in more profit. 

There is a difference between cross-selling and upselling. When you cross-sell, you are selling a product or service that will complement the one that your guest already bought but when you upsell, you are selling a higher or better version of the product or service that your guest already bought.

Here are the common things that you can upsell at your establishment. 

As a part of a hotel’s revenue management strategy, overbooking has its pros and cons. While overbooking in the perspectives of a hotel industry aid in maximizing occupancy and revenue, it can also negatively ruin your brand causes a financial loss if it does not have a strategically planned. 

Early check-outs, no-shows, and cancellations contribute to hotel losses while walk-in guests and those who overstay increase its revenue. These are the reasons hotels overbook, to minimize losses and maximize revenue.

A hotel website traffic is a good indicator to gauge a hotel’s direct booking performance. If you know how many people search for your website in a month, you can easily find out how it impacts your direct booking revenue.

If the number of searches is high but there are only little sales from your direct booking source, you would know that you need to do something about your website. There must be a reason why guests did not proceed to book your room from your website.

Nowadays, there are many online tools that you can use to find out your website traffic volume. Not just that, if you know how to check for website traffic, you can also check your competitors’ performance to gauge the level of exposure that the hotel is getting.

The more direct website traffic a hotel gets the more it clearly shows that the hotel marketing department is doing a great job. 

In this digital age, the hotel experience that your hotel guests will have usually starts from your website. The typical guest journey starts from putting in keywords on a search engine, stumbling upon your website, and clicking on your URL to learn more about your hotel via your website. 

Once they are on your website, the guests will search for rooms, and they will proceed to book and make payment to confirm their booking. As every step is an experience for your guests,  as a hotelier your goal should be to provide an amazing experience for your guests at every touchpoint. For example, the speed of your website matters, and not just that, your website also needs to be user-friendly. 

Let’s look at some of the best practices for a hotel website.

Pressure is on hoteliers in finding ways to retain their existing customers and even to attract more customers to increase their revenue. Most hotel managers and owners are always asking these:  

• How do we increase our hotel revenue? 
• Which action will attract more customers to our property? 

Subsequently, we are going to share some tips on how to increase hotel revenue.

The importance of Facebook to hotels and homestay can’t be over-emphasized especially in this digital age. The number of daily users is too large for hotels and homestays to just ignore. Millions of people log into Facebook as soon as they wake up, we can easily assume that people of all ages are using Facebook. As a hotel or homestay owner, no matter who your target audience is, you should rest assured that you will find them on Facebook.

Making a profit is always a top priority for every business including hotels. For hotels to maximize their profit, they need to know the right pricing strategy to adopt. The ability to know when to increase the price of a room and when to lower it, which guest segment to offer a higher price etc are all the things that hoteliers need to think about. 

Let’s look at the commonly used pricing strategies in the hotel industry. You may choose to adopt one or combine some of these strategies for your hotel.