Hotel Marketing

What Is Hotel Marketing?

Many hotel owners and workers assume marketing is simply selling at a bigger scale such as by selling on various social media platforms. While that is a part of marketing, marketing is so much more, marketing involves the process of designing, conveying information, distributing content, offering and delivering services, and advertising to say the least.

There are many different topics associated with marketing such as content marketing, trend analysis, social media marketing, and advertising. These are just some of the topics that hoteliers might want to learn more about to run a successful hotel business. We will do our best to make this article as content-rich and comprehensive as possible.

Read also: 5 tips on hotel digital marketing a must know for hoteliers

Why It's Important And What To Consider When Implementing?

Competition in the hotel market is fierce. That is why hotel brands need to maximize their presence through website traffic, social media, email, and a variety of other channels. Make your hotel stand out from your competitors.

There are two key factors to consider when you designing a marketing strategy:

1. Your brand image
2. Your target market

These 2 points are linked and should complement each other. For example, if you want to attract families with kids, your hotel concept and design should be family-friendly.

It's important that you know your target market and cater to your brand image and compliment it. Not sure about who your target market is? You might want to ask yourself these questions to identify your target market:

• Where do your guests come from?
• Why should your guests choose your hotel?
• Who are they? (family, traveler, student)
• How many pax? (Solo, couples, small and large group)

For example, beach resort hotel guests are most commonly middle-income couples seeking romantic trips or families looking for a holiday getaway with their kids. So your hotel marketing plan should involve advertising your hotel near to the beach with the perfect facilities that cater to these two target markets. Once you are done setting up these 2 points, you can start planning your marketing strategy to target the right target market while building a suitable brand image.

Hotel Marketing Trends

People nowadays manage their lives and have a majority of social interactions through smartphone apps or websites on the internet. While one might initially think that as many as possible is a good approach in terms of audience, it is often better and more efficient to tailor your strategy to your specific target to see better marketing results. It's also important for hotels to keep up in terms of marketing trends to remain competitive.

Below are some trends that will work throughout the hotel industry.

• Customers experience marketing

• • Selling unique hotel experiences and facilities rather than rooms and services to your guests.

• Influencer Marketing

• • Marketing endorsement with an influencer who has an audience demographic that matches the hotel's target market.

• Personalization Marketing

• • Use targeted marketing promotional content, personalized email, product recommendation to individual guests based on their browsing activity.

• Video Marketing

• • A video is a popular option for social media. Whether live streams of hotel activities, promotional videos highlighting hotel features, or customers sharing their experiences through interviews, the options are endless.

• Remarketing

• • Reaching out again to those potential guests that didn’t finish their booking purchases by reminding them or sending targeted advertisements to make them remember your hotel.

• Direct Booking
  • Getting guests to book directly from your booking engine and offering them incentives to keep them interested. There are a lot of benefits of direct booking you might need to check out. Remember to choose a booking engine that caters to guests' preferences. 

Check also: The next big thing in marketing

Bonus: Trends during Covid-19

• Hygiene

• • Because of the current pandemic, it is important to assure your guests that your hotel practices SOP and maintains proper hygiene to combat Covid-19.

• Domestic travel

• • Many individuals and families were very disappointed when they had to cancel their annual getaway and will most likely opt for domestic options since international travel is no longer an option. Hotels should target this audience, they are usually small families, couples, or a group of friends.

• Flexible cancellation policy

• Guests could suddenly face new restrictions, or even test positive for the virus. Displaying an understanding through a flexible cancellation policy and offering some cash vouchers can help your cash flow. Try to avoid no show from guests as it might impact your hotel performance.

Content Marketing

Contents such as videos, blogs, and social media posts nurture the interest of guests and increase the likelihood of them booking with you in the future. In short, content marketing strategy involves building a strong relationship with your target audience by feeding them high-quality content on your website, blog, social media that they want consistently. 

Types and example of content marketing :

• Infographic
• Blog post
• PDF
• Video
• Image

We have listed some marketing tools here that we recommend helping you create more content faster and efficiently. Also, enhance your copywriting skills to publish easy-to-read blog posts to keep your guest invested in you.

Another point that is important to enhance content marketing results is Search Engine Optimization (SEO). SEO is basically optimizing your content to allow it to rank higher on search engine results thus increasing the visibility of your website.

The next step is for you to analyze and measure the results of your content marketing campaign so that you can determine the success of your content. Check here for some guidelines we list out to help you analyze the result and make necessary adjustments on the next project for a better result.

Promotion 

Promotion is really great and effective in increasing hotel occupancy in the short term. You can be very flexible and offer what is in season and what your guests want, and often they’ll grab the opportunity and tell their friends too.

Here are some ideas you can implement for your hotel:

• Seasonal promotion

• Step up your promotion game by using more eye-catching promotion and promotion code when they directly book with you. Pair them up with creative hotel packages and promote them to increase guests as much as possible.

• Early Bird Promotion

• Offer these to encourage guests to book early and enjoy more discounts with promotion codes. If they change their mind after booking, offering cash vouchers for a different date will encourage them to stay with you at a later date instead of canceling.

• Loyalty Programs

• Reward your loyal guests for their support. Guests will feel appreciated and more than happy to continue supporting your hotel business. Check these for more loyalty promotion ideas. 

Bonus : Level up your  rooms or services

In recent events when everything is unpredictable, maybe you can consider ancillary revenue as your safety net when rooms are not your biggest revenue anymore.

Not sure what to sell?  You should consider selling these and generating revenue through events entertainment. For example, some hotels offer wedding events and follow all covid-19 prevention rules set up by the country at affordable prices and offer flexible modification dates. If your hotel is currently providing event spaces, you might want to consider these as tools to make your hotel events stand out more.

Read also : Hotel upselling strategies every hotelier should know

Types of marketing

Now were we to distribute all that content? There are two types of marketing, offline and online. Both of them play an important part while also supporting each other. Even though we know the majority of guests (you and me also) spend their time on digital screens. Incorporating offline marketing can strengthen online marketing, thus affecting customers and their behaviors in their online journey. Below are the list of marketing types and their brief explanation.

Offline Marketing

• Billboard ads

• • Usually placed in high traffic areas and tend to have the highest number of views and impressions compared to other marketing methods making it effective for broadcasting your business and increasing brand awareness.

• Direct mail

• • The physical promotional letter you send to customers in the hopes of getting them to use your services.

• Print Ads

• • Like what its name suggests, it is a physically printed media used to advertise brands and services.

Online Marketing

• Email

• • The use of email to promote your hotels and services to guests and subscribers. Email can also be used to offer specialized offers for loyal guests.

• Video Marketing

• • Simple and easy-to-understand information with endless possibilities, use it to advertise to target audiences and keep them engaged.

• Blogging

• • Advertises a website, hotel, brand, or service via a high-quality content blog.
  • Check here for blog ideas for your hotel. 

• Social Media

• • Create and distribute social media posts like image ads, videos with a good description on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, etc. There are certain things you need to consider before running your Facebook ads like target ads to your target audience to maximize the result.

Read also : 5 doable social media strategies 

Marketing Strategies

The next step isn’t repeating everything you’re doing. It’s improving in creative ways. Below, we’re preparing some strategy ideas you can use.

• Hotel Marketing Strategy 2021

  We know a lot of you are affected by the recent pandemic. Read hotel marketing strategies 2021 to get tips on how to kickstart your recovery and sustain your hotel business.

• Revenue

Hotel revenue is the income we get from booking and additional services hotels serve. It is important to have a frequent income to add up to your revenue. Look at these strategies to increase hotel revenue and additional revenue boosting strategies.

• Group sales strategies

Group sales (corporate and group booking) are highly beneficial to hotels. This is because they are heavy spenders when it comes to hotel bookings. Read the hotel group sales strategies that hoteliers can use to attract corporate and group bookings.

• Resort 

Are you a resort owner? Then this resort marketing strategy might be worth a look. We understand creating awareness for your hotel can be an uphill task. But if you implement the correct strategy, guests won't be shy about spending their money for the unique experience offered at your hotel.

• Learn from other big players

Ever wonder how other big names in the hotel industry sustain their name and revenue? Check out our Marriott marketing strategy and learn from them.

Conclusion

In the competitive hotel industry, you need to mix and match certain content with certain strategies. Learn and use the above suggestion in your hotel marketing plan to increase direct bookings, increase your reputation, and improve the overall guest experience so that more booking will come.