Hotel Marketing Tips You Simply Can’t Ignore

As businesses across the globe start to recognize the importance of social media marketing in order to help their business find more success, the same must be said of hotel businesses looking to spread their brand and promote their business. Here are some crucial tips for making the best of your hotel marketing strategies and seeing some real difference in the number of bookings.

Focus On The (Positive) Reviews

Most consumers rely heavily on online reviews when they’re deciding whether or not they want to spend money on something.  Specifically, 84% of online shoppers trust the reviews that they read online, whether it’s for products, services, or any number of things they spend their hard-earned money on. This means it’s worth your time not only to encourage current guests to take the time to write positive reviews about your hotel following their stay, but it also means taking the time to respond and provide ‘thank you’ messages following these reviews.  When potential customers see these reviews, and more importantly, your gratitude and patience at responding to these reviews, they’ll appreciate your attention to detail.  They’ll assume this appreciation and gratitude extends to all aspects of your business, and they’ll be more likely to book a stay!

Focus Just As Much On The Less-Than-Flattering Ones, Too

By the same token, we have to acknowledge that not all reviews are going to be positive. According to Digital Authority Partners, businesses are given an opportunity to apologize and improve, as well as ease the concerns of any future guests, when these negative reviews are responded to in the right way. Being able to manage the positive and negative reviews helps establish a reputation for your hotel that consumers are going to respect.

Use Facebook Bookings

Facebook is the largest and most widely-used social media platform on the internet.  It’s net of connectivity and ever-expanding platforms means it’s adjusting to the needs of both consumers and businesses.  In its business section, it allows for reviews, ratings, hours, contacts, and most recently, bookings.  Customers can book a hotel room directly through a Facebook page, making for an even more immediate purchase than a random search online, a scroll through some travel websites, and the hope that eventually, they’ll land on your website. The more access you can provide internet consumers with, the more they’ll be able to find and book with your hotel. They’ll read reviews, and then right after reading about your incredible service, they’ll find a convenient button allowing them to immediately book a room.

Keep Your Content Fresh

Frequently updating your content and putting out new material for consumers to read has become a highly successful method of improving visibility.  It helps your site be recognized as updated and relevant, so that you’re more likely to appear high in Google’s search rankings, or other search engines.

Follow The Trends

The modern travelers and vacationers are looking for certain aesthetics, certain luxuries, certain conveniences, and certain experiences.  Researching what is trending with these consumers and what type of hotel stay or vacation they’re interested in will present you with the opportunity to target them based on their needs.  Market your hotel as having exactly what they’re looking for makes them more likely to book with you.

Have An Attention To Detail

This is a little bit embedded under #4, but people love any attention to detail.  The details are what make a hotel room share worthy on social media. It signifies effort has been put into each and every component of their stay.  Share these details on social media platforms so that it encourages potential visitors to want to choose your hotel to see it for themselves.

Utilize Affiliate Marketing And Instagram Influencers

Harnessing the power of influencers means you’re going to find potentially effective ways to advertise for your own business.  Influencers are often willing to advertise your hotel for a fee (often directly correlated to the number of followers they have) or even free stays at the hotel, that they then document and post to their own platforms. There are hundreds of articles out there instructing influencers exactly how to make a buck of hotel affiliate marketing. With affiliates, social media users can post unique links to book your hotel and receive a percentage only based off of how successful their link is in getting people to book a stay.

Run Targeted Marketing Promotions

There are plenty of sites that help take all the traffic coming in to your website, collate the data, and provide analytics to you breaking down that data in an attempt to figure out what works and what doesn’t work on your site, and what people are and are not interested in on your site. Using this data, you can implement marketing plans that are targeted to produce the best results. Advertising for certain promotions, focusing on specific benefits, geared toward a key demographic, is the best means of getting potential customers to click that ‘book my trip’ button.

Focus On B2B Reach-Out

Business-to-business relationships are a great way to build connections and partnerships that bring benefits to multiple parties.  By promoting your hotel and it’s services and all it has to offer to travel companies, booking agencies, transportation services, excursion and adventure business, you’re more likely to find that you’re ability to reach even more potential customers has been increased. If a book agency or a travel site believes in your hotel and the quality of a guests stay there, they’re more likely to suggest you to their own clients. Promote yourself, brag about your services, put energy and effort into a establishing a connection that’s going to bring more people in to you.

Incentivize Potential Customers To Book Sooner Rather Than Later

Offer deals or special services or other incentives that are hard to resist.  When a customer is on your site, you want them to book immediately, before they leave the page, wander off, and discover other websites offering very similar services.  Build these incentives into your sites and on your booking pages.