Hospitality & Hotel Digital Marketing Strategies

In the hotel industry you deal with people who can be very complicated. At the same time, you try to accommodate and compromise, you deal with guests, manage rooms. You make sure the availability of your services. You run campaigns and give your customers new offers. All the time you consider the competition. In the era of competition, you must have strategies for the marketing of your hospitality business. Here comes digital marketing.

What is Hotel Digital Marketing’?

 The presence of the hotel on social media platforms such as Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is called Hotel digital marketing. In addition it is widely believed that having a hotel website strengthen the online business.

Digital marketing for hotels is constantly growing trend. The important thing is that you need to be patient and you must have well plan. You need to create a plan for you hotel marketing at digital platforms.

Apparently, you must accept the fact that hotel digital marketing will sooner or later provide you with more reservations, better visibility and of course a stable brand on the online-market.

For digital marketing it is most important to find right technology partner. The right partner means which have most audience. Which can help reduce the cost of inventory distribution in the hotel. In addition you need the right ways to reach the audience through the media, such as e-mails, Facebook, Instagram and twitter.

And because you have to start preparing for 2019, here are 6 ways in which digital hotel marketing can help you get more reservations in this year.

Hotel & Hospitality Digital Marketing Strategies

1 – Situation analysis?

Think about your image about the market. You must think what you want to convey to your customers. For this purpose you have to ask the question who, why, how?

You should look at market trends. This helps to create the right hotel marketing strategy and be one step ahead. Analyze your competitors and decide to use different platforms.

Look also at your resources and keep your goals in mind. See how you can improve your capabilities and strategies. Remember to create the right digital marketing strategy in your hotel so that you get success.

2 – Correct budget allocation

The allocation of marketing budget to hotels is a constantly changing animal. Over the last decade (most) hotels have made large budget shifts from offline channels such as print and radio to online marketing channels. However, the huge number of digital marketing options are currently available to marketers.

The main marketing options available today are listed below:

• Marketing in social media (Facebook, Instagram, Snap chat, Twitter, LinkedIn)
• E-mail marketing (own and third-party database)
• Search engine marketing (e.g., Google Ad words or advertising networks)
• Publisher networks (e.g. Direct ad campaigns on certain websites)
• Programming networks (using intentional and contextual marketing addressed to travelers)
• Browse the websites: (e.g., Sponsored content and banner ads on platforms such as Trip Advisor)

Today, the challenge for most marketers is to dilute budget in digital channels. If your hotel does not have huge unlimited budgets then it becomes a real problem. Dilution of the budget may occur when the marketer tries to use small budget amounts in many channels instead of carefully selected channels. With the growing number of available digital marketing platforms, marketers need to be extremely disciplined when it comes to budget allocation. Marketers must also carefully consider building assets such as customer email databases or blogs that can generate a large and loyal follow-up for them.

3 – Email Marketing

There is a widespread misconception of many marketers that e-mail marketing is an ineffective marketing tool. But the reality is completely different. For many years, e-mail was a frequently used marketing channel, abused by many (bad) marketers who used spamming techniques on the mass market. But that does not mean that e-mail campaign cannot be used in an efficient and effective way for the hotel marketing. In the end, we all rely on e-mails as a way to communicate in both business and personal life. Time spent in our mailboxes grows, and certainly does not diminish. Therefore it is important that marketing e-mails are professionally written, designed and broadcast with very important content for each recipient.

Currently, Customers only want to receive e-mail messages that are relevant to them and their needs. They expect that companies will be able to understand the relevant content to them. And they will not receive content that does not relevant. Hotels must therefore make greater efforts to

(a) – understand their clients’ needs and

(b) – be able to categorize them. And categories the data so that they can be used for marketing purposes.

Best Email marketing strategy involved the implementation of a CRM and tracking system that combined all digital touch points for guests. The direct result of this, is the improvement of online marketing activities, increasing the amount of customer data collected and the possibility of creating a straight line between marketing activities and direct revenues from this activity.

4 – User Friendly Website

One of the first things to do for your digital hotel marketing strategy is website design. Your website must be user-friendly and mobile-friendly. Because web is the best platform to show who and why you are.

Make sure that your content is easy to use and accessible through mobile devices. Check that the designer “scales” your hotel website for tablet and desktop screens so that the content is forced to fit into every screen.

Creating a mobile-friendly website is a must for the development of the hotel industry. As more and more people use mobile phones to initially search for several different hotels. At the same time they book their stay online. The importance of the available website via a mobile phone is clear and must.

According to the ABTA report “Holiday Habits 2017”, mobile device reservations increased from 13% to 20% in 12 months, while PC reservations fell from 92% to 85%. These figures clearly show the importance of business website.

Your site should be accessible to as many users as possible to increase potential reservations, regardless of the device they use. Your site should not only be available for all devices, but the quality of the page on all devices should be the same. This prevents users from avoiding booking a hotel stay because the site is not of excellent quality.

4 – Social media

With 42 million active social media users in the United Kingdom in 2017 (According to Statist). Online presence in social media is very important for the hotel industry. We should thanks to social media industry for having millions customers. It can really target the huge audience which will you to increase your reservations. It can help to create brand awareness and allow targeting new audiences. There are many different social media channels for example Facebook, Twitter, Snap-chat and many more.  You do not need to be present on all platforms but it is beneficial to have several different options.

Keep an eye on the trends and you should have good relationships with customers by providing them feedback, regardless of whether it is a positive or negative opinion. On the internet it is really easy to provide or get some ones feedback. You should be up to date about how people really think about your business.

Keep in mind that your competitors are already at social media platforms. And you need to be one step ahead and be noticed among the traffic. You can advertise your business by paid social advertising. It makes sure that your offer is reached to the right audience on the right time. Social media is an amazing medium to build more and start talking with clients. You can also send coupons and offers to followers easily via posts.

Facebook – is an important medium for building the audience and a stable image of the company. Experiment with Facebook “Live” exhibits the atmosphere from the hotel so that customers can feel what their experience will look like. It is important to maintain consistency to create an effective digital marketing strategy in a hotel.

Twitter – this is a platform that you do not really use, but it’s worth a look if you want to reach a wider audience. You can use it as a platform from which customers can easily book reservations or place orders.

Instagram – now you cannot go wrong with this. It’s a great medium with which you can simply take some great photos in your hotel / resort and show how beautiful your hotel is. Increase your image by Instagram Stories as it is very good way to share photos.

5 – Content is most important thing. 

It is a creative content that generates movement literally to your hotel website. Your content must include

• Meaningful content , Easy to understand
• Your contact details
• Target advertising campaigns (using specific keywords)

Regardless of the strategy in social media, make sure that you publish high-quality content and respond to the requests of your followers. It’s about building a community – it’s about people who talk and those who listen to us.

“Always update your content because Content is fire and Social Media is fuel”.

6 – Run Ads Everywhere

The best way to advertise your online business is to use Meta search. There are many search engines that really bring audience for example Google hotel ads, Trip Advisor and Trivago. Believe it or not, placing a Meta search on these engines will not only increase visibility, but also improve the value of the brand.

Although access to the Meta search, you must be open to receiving direct reservations. The more direct reservations you receive, the more you will be transferred to the industry. So if you are not yet listed on any Meta search engine, now is the right time to do it.

Instant exposure always has its benefits, but it also has a good deal, unless your ads are properly managed and optimized. Run dedicated advertising campaigns on Google and Facebook (along with Instagram). There are many benefits to participating in such campaigns. In addition, they make sure that your hotel is visible and that information about your worthy services goes to the right people.

By the way, ads on Facebook are the cheapest way to attract more visitors. Thanks to this, you can easily get more reservations through the platform while remaining within budget. In the same way, even remarketing ads give an incredible opportunity to expose your hotel business, targeting people who have already visited the site. Therefore, there is a greater chance that they will visit your site to make a reservation with you.

Conclusion

Today we are living in online world. Today’s guests have higher expectations for the brands they work with than ever before. So it is important for the hotel to consider when planning communication strategies in the digital world. The days of sending personalized Dear Guest emails have come to an end. Guests want to be properly recognized and addressed, but also want their content to be relevant. Hotel management should know the needs and desires of customers from the brand. Remember, it is important that the degree of personalization is taken into account for all hotels in the customer contact points.

Marketing, in particular digital hotel marketing, plays a significant role in generating revenues for hotels. There are more and more numerous and better players becoming contenders. And respectively guests are demanding more and more personalization. Today, guests want to have friendly websites. They become extremely technologically advanced and do not want to sacrifice the quality of hoteliers’ offers both in terms of services and ease of access. With the help of hotel digital marketing it is necessary to ensure that all channels are used to get the maximum benefit. And there is no chance of generating income that will not be realized.

To sum up, make 2019 a year with more reservations, improved your operations, get positive reviews. Try these ways to make your hotel digital marketing that bring more reservations this year. Go a step further in the industry beyond competition. Have the best business year!

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