Hotel Tips: 5 Ways to Generate More Bookings from Facebook

A Facebook Page should be a vital channel for hotels in order to promote their business, reach out to global audiences and engage with their fans. With Facebook, the hotel should not only focus on showcasing the hotel services but also do a lot of things while promoting the hotel business. 

Why Facebook? 

  1. Facebook has 2.9 billion monthly active users according to Statista
  2. Facebook is the top social media platform that has been widely used globally 
  3. Facebook has special algorithms, that know what you have searched over time to predict your preferences and show ads you may be interested in. You are searching for a handbag, then you immediately see an ad on your Facebook feed. 
  4. Facebook allows users to get a lot of information from Facebook Insights where you can monitor the performance of your Facebook post, the number of likes, post engagement, etc. 

 

5 Ways to Generate More Bookings from Facebook

Hotel Tips: 5 Ways to Generate More Bookings from Facebook


1. Facebook CTA Button 


Facebook enables the CTA button to encourage your visitors to do something specific to your desire. So if your hotel business goal is to increase direct booking, perhaps having a CTA Button that directly to your booking engine will be helpful. 

Imagine if someone noticed your Facebook, then go and scroll through your page but can’t seem to find any booking button where they wanted to make a reservation. Hence, they will then make a phone call just to reserve the room. What if you have more than 30 phone calls every day? 

Putting it simply, having a CTA button like "Book Now" will reduce a lot of manual workload from your front desk staff and at the same time keep your guests’ reservations secure. If you are not sure how to add or edit your Facebook CTA button, perhaps this infographic will help you.

Hotel Tips: 5 Ways to Generate More Bookings from Facebook

2. Facebook Review 

Have you ever shopped at e-commerce platforms like Shopee and Lazada? Once you have found the item that you are looking for, what is the next thing you check before you add them to your cart? Based on the research, 95% of the consumers will read the reviews and feedback before proceeding to checkout. And, I am one of that 95%. 

Having said that, a hotel business should make use of Facebook Review tools to boost the confidence of potential guests. If you can’t see the Reviews on Tab, you may select on the drop-down menu. Drag it up to the top 4 positions to ensure that people can see the Reviews tab whenever they reach your Facebook page.

Hotel Tips: 5 Ways to Generate More Bookings from Facebook 

There are a few ways to prompt Facebook users to give you reviews. One of them is by encouraging your guests to check in to your location on Facebook after they collect their room key card. Facebook will send an automated message asking them to write a review. Having more positive reviews indirectly boosts the chances of generating more bookings. 

3. Facebook Contest or Giveaway


Running a Facebook Contest can be the simplest way to gain more followers and increase the number of engagements. However, before deciding to create a Facebook contest, ask yourself what is your goal. Is it to increase the number of followers, increase the number of likes, or increase the number of bookings? Then, the idea of a contest will follow. Here are some of the ideas that you may want to consider: 

  1. Idea 1: Take the best photo of you at our hotel surroundings and #hotelname
  2. Idea 2: Help us to design our new hotel logo and win (the prize) 
  3. Idea 3: Have you been to (your location)? Share with us your best memory here! 

The normal contest will get the contestant to follow, like, and tag a few friends to be qualified for the contest. You may do the same too thus increasing your followers. The prize doesn’t have to be in a large amount but it should be something attractive for example, 2D1N free vouchers at your hotel. 

4. Facebook Group


Other than a Facebook page, Facebook also allows you to create a Facebook Group. It's kind of a community group where you can mingle with other people and stay connected. But here, I am not suggesting you create a new Facebook Group, but join as a member of the Facebook Group instead. You may find a lot of groups where people talk about hotel promotions, hotel reviews, and hotel tips. Some of the groups are also mixed with hotel guests and hotel owners. 

Hotel Tips: 5 Ways to Generate More Bookings from Facebook

Take the advantage of the group that you join. If the group talks about promotions, do share your hotel promotions too when you are running it. This will increase the exposure of your hotel to other people in the group too. While you are trying to engage or build a connection with the community, here are 3 tips that you may take note of

  1. Do not spam. Do not create the same content regularly. It is annoying. 
  2. Engaged. Participate if there are any polls, surveys, and challenges. Write a relevant comment to someone's post too
  3. Share your good content or offers with a great image to attract viewers. It will be good if you can provide a link to redirect them to your website, hence increasing traffic. But again, read my first point. Do not spam. 

5. Facebook Ads 

Hotel Tips: 5 Ways to Generate More Bookings from Facebook

If you have an additional budget for your marketing, why not consider Facebook Ads where you can spend some amount of money within your budget to advertise your hotel business, your hotel Facebook page, or the current promotions to a specific target audience? 

There are three key elements on Facebook ads for you to take note of before starting to create an ad

  1. Objective and budget. The objective helps you to clarify your goals for that campaign whether you want to grab people's attention, get them to engage in your post, or get them to act on your post. While the budget is the next one where you have to set the amount of budget and Facebook will run it within the ads budget that you have set. You can set it by daily or lifetime budget.

  2. Target Audience. The audience is referring to whom you like to show your ads. Doing Facebook Ads without knowing who you want to target is actually wasted and you won’t get the results you want. And this is a common mistake done by many businesses. They go for bigger audiences and thought it will give them more results but in reality, what matters is showing your ads to the relevant customers.

    On Facebook ads, you may target by demographics, locations, interests as well as personal information. They are also more options like custom audiences (where you can do the retargeting campaign to people who had visited your hotel website), and lookalike audiences (where Facebook will help to find customers whose interests and demographics are similar to your existing customers) 

  3. Type of ads. There are multiple types of ads that you can choose from including images, carousels, videos, slideshow, collections and etc. Each of them will have a different format which can also affect the ads placement like Facebook Stories, Instant Experience, News Feed and etc. To learn more about the type of Facebook ads, click here.

Once you have set all of the above and started to run your own Facebook ads, you will need to have a time frame for when you would like to start monitoring the performance and measuring the result so that you can identify the areas of improvement. Till you get the result that you want, then repeat the same cycle. 

Here’s how you can get started with Facebook Ads. 

Check out the Video

 

Conclusion 

Facebook is never the old social media platform. It can be the second platform to generate online bookings of your hotel after your official website. Not only that, by using a suitable link on your Facebook post or Ads, you can guide Facebook users to your website, hence increasing your website traffic. 

I hope the above 5 ways that you can use to generate more bookings from Facebook will give you more ideas for marketing thus helping to increase your hotel’s revenue. I believe that Facebook will continue to benefit hotel businesses for years to come. 

Let’s share in the comment section below how you use Facebook as a marketing tool for your hotel business. 

You're reading a blog compiled by Softinn. We're a hotel-technology company with the mission to make hotelier work easier. Do subscribe if you enjoy reading our blog or you may interact with us on our Facebook Page.

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