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.
As a hotelier, you may have been already practicing some promotion strategies, but as guest expectations keep changing and the hotel industry keeps evolving, the way to promote your hotel needs to grow too. Here we list some of the ways on how you can better promote your hotel.
Create a captivating web experience
One of the most important promotion platforms of your hotel is your website. That first impression of your website will make on your guest is crucial in getting a direct booking from your guest. Make sure your website loads fast, and ensure navigation of your website is easy. You will need to also upload quality images of your hotel and its amenities that will naturally sell your hotel.
Make use of OTAs
Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) help your hotel by giving the extra exposure your hotel needs to fill the hotel room and increase the hotel revenue. Before choosing an OTA make sure you already have done your research to understand you’re okay with the commission percentage they offer.
Different OTAs charge different commission percentages. Not just that, choosing an OTA should also be based on your target customers. If your target customers are tourists from China, do your research on which OTA is being used the most in the country.
Get involved with Social Media Marketing
Creating and maintaining social media pages are crucial. Use these platforms to upload images of your guests and their experience staying at your hotel. Uploading some videos of your guest experience is also important. Make sure you interact with your social media audience and reply to their questions.
You can also boost your posts to get more views. Ideally, you can also optimize your social media to get more website traffic and direct booking by integrating your booking engine with your social media e.g. Facebook.
Implement basic SEO strategies
Having a beautiful website and still, your guest can’t find you on the first page in the search engine is not a good sign. Without investing money, there are some basic SEO strategies that you can do to push your hotel website to the front pages of the search engines. These include having rich and relevant content, using the right keywords (meta description tag), and making sure your site loads fast.
Invest in advertisements
Having some budget to invest in online advertisement is not a bad idea. You can promote your hotel in Google AdWords, Facebook Ads, Instagram Ads, YouTube Ads, and more. Make sure any advertisement you engage in is within your budget. You may not advertise on all the platforms. You can just choose one or two platforms and focus on them according to your needs.
In conclusion, having a promotion and marketing strategy is very important if you want to fill your hotel rooms. Try to put more effort into those promotions that will result to direct booking as that will ensure you keep most of your profits. Also, focus on getting, managing, and responding to reviews of your hotel because reviews help guests in making booking decisions.
