Hotel Marketing
Whether you are a small guesthouse with only a few rooms, to a grand hundred-room complex with different styles of room and facilities, it is important that you focus on how exactly you will advertise your premises. Hotel marketing is critical within the industry and making sure that you are actively promoting not just the hotel itself, but also your hotel’s brand is essential for continued growth and success.
With the change, however, comes uncertainty and many hotel owners are still very much behind with the times when it comes to finding and attracting new customers. Many still rely on car and foot traffic alone to secure on-the-spot bookings from passing travelers. While this strategy does work, the potential to expand your network of customers has never been greater or easier to exploit.
How do I perform Hotel Marketing?
The truth is that, in this day and age, there are countless different avenues that can be exploited by hotels and guesthouses to attract new customers. While you may think that these avenues are exclusively online, offline modes of advertising still remain viable for certain businesses. However, it cannot be denied that in order to stand out from the competition and fully exploit your full potential customer base, you will need to venture out into the digital sphere. However as online advertising platforms have developed, they have become easier to use and operate efficiently, so do not let this put you off.
What avenues of Hotel Marketing should I explore?
Finding what kind of marketing and which specific advertising platforms and methods will work for your hotel is the first step to constructing a comprehensive strategy. Digital marketing adds a whole extra dimension to your marketing plans as it allows you to promote and advertise in ways you may not have been aware of even existed. It also allows you to discover and target a whole range of potential guests who have never heard of you and may be interested in visiting. So let us look at some of the most popular ways Hotels advertise themselves online:
1. Instagram
Instagram has risen from its humble beginnings as a simple photo and video sharing platform used by individuals and celebrities to connect with their friends and fans, it has quickly expanded into a multi-billion dollar a year generating social media platform through its advertising platforms. For hotels, leveraging influencer marketing to expose popular users' fan base to their facilities and rooms and how good they are can be a powerful way of drawing both new attention from that audience and helping to establish your brand’s credibility and prestige.
2.Online Travel Agents
Anybody who has been in the industry in the past 10 years will most likely understand the importance of Online Travel Agents (or OTA’s) to the modern temporary accommodation industry. Sites like Tripadvisor and Agoda provide a platform for hotels and guesthouses of all kinds to advertise their rooms and facilities to people actively looking for a place to stay that fits their requirements (be that location, facilities, or budget).
Anybody who has been in the industry in the past 10 years will most likely understand the importance of Online Travel Agents (or OTA’s) to the modern temporary accommodation industry. Sites like Tripadvisor and Agoda provide a platform for hotels and guesthouses of all kinds to advertise their rooms and facilities to people actively looking for a place to stay that fits their requirements (be that location, facilities, or budget).
3. Google AdWords
Most business owners will at least have a vague understanding of what Google AdWords is and how it works, and while many may disregard SEM marketing as viable for hotels, it can be an extremely effective way of generating bookings. For hotels with an extremely niche target audience or facilities (hotels that provide cars for example) that are looking to target extremely competitive keywords on Google’s search engine can find that a PPC campaign can bring a healthy return on investment, particularly from those looking to avoid OTA’s and deal directly with hotels.
4. Facebook Marketing
Facebook is the world’s most popular social media platform by far, with millions of people logging in and consuming content shared either by their friends or by relevant groups on Facebook. However, Facebook has also become a hotbed for reaching massive amounts of people from specific demographics of people who may be interested in staying in your hotel. Essentially Facebook Marketing allows hotels to target those of specific ages, income levels, professionals, and interests, allowing them to advertise to extremely niche and specific audiences who are most likely to make a booking.
When making a decision about a specific platform it is always important to think about how that particular avenue or medium will benefit your business both in the long and short term. Some strategies are built with your business’s long-term goals in mind, whereas others are designed to be a stop-gap to acquire new business while more long-term strategies are implemented. Often different strategies work best in conjunction with other strategies that make up for their shortcomings.
Stay ahead of the Competition with TBS Marketing
The past decade hasn’t been easy for hotel businesses and the travel industry as a whole. This is especially true for small and medium-sized hotels that have been dealing with hard competition from industry leaders. High competition as well as growing marketing costs have made it almost impossible for smaller parties to obtain customers.
On the bright side, more and more business travelers and vacationers use search engines such as Yahoo, Google, and Bing to plan their trips instead of turning to travel agencies for help. And they usually go whatever they find on the first page of the search engine results. So, this means that your business can thrive if you manage to place your hotel’s website in front of the travelers right at the top of the search engine results. But unfortunately, it’s not as easy as it sounds.
Our experts at TBS Marketing will position you right in front of the traveler’s eyes from the first moment they start the search. We will create and implement a customized, highly effective marketing strategy for your business that will drive lots of potential clients, convert and deliver a positive return on ROI.
To get started reach out today for further details.