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.
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.
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.
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.
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:
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.
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.
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
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
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.
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.