Digital Marketing Strategy For Hotel Business
No matter in which industry you are working in or what your business is about, digital marketing is a must. Well, in Hotel businesses, it is of utmost importance. Here you need to reach the audience in the right manner and for this you need a proper digital marketing strategy.
It’s difficult to do digital marketing for hotels and the hospitality sector in general. The ongoing rivalry from online travel agents (OTAs) and new hotels presents difficulties for hotel digital marketers aiming to increase direct reservations in coming 2024.
Here are the fresh strategies and techniques that we think will provide hotels a significant advantage in 2024 and help them become less dependent on OTAs over time.
- Social media organic reach is obsolete; those days are gone.
Mark Zuckerberg made it known that Facebook users will now see far less commercial material and more postings from friends and family in an effort to stop it from taking over their news feeds. Hotels have to reconsider how they post on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram.
It is not necessary to put content online every day on social media sites like Facebook and Instagram because fewer people will likely see it. Rather of focusing just on producing low-quality content, hotel digital marketers can also think about producing sponsored content to increase their reach and garner a clear return on investment from their target customers.
- The secret to success is allocating your funds properly in digital marketing.
The distribution of marketing funds for reaching the audience and promotion is a dynamic process. The majority of hotels have moved a significant portion of their spending from offline, non-measurable channels like print and radio to more quantifiable internet channels throughout the past ten years. Nonetheless, a new difficulty has emerged due to the abundance of hotel digital marketing choices currently accessible to marketers.
Main hotel digital marketing alternatives currently available are social media marketing on Twitter, LinkedIn, Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat, email marketing using databases, both private and public, Search Engine Marketing (display networks or Google Adwords), Publisher Networks (Direct marketing initiatives), Programmatic networks (targeting travelers with user-intent and contextual marketing).
Budget allocation across digital channels is a genuine concern for most hotel digital marketers nowadays, unless their business has enormous, endless resources. When a marketer tries to deploy modest amounts of funding over a large number of channels instead of greater, more impactful budgets across carefully chosen channels, this is known as budget dilution. As digital marketing platforms for hotels proliferate, marketers will have to exercise extraordinary discipline in their budget allocation going forward.
- When utilized properly, email marketing has the potential to be a very potent tool.
Hotel digital marketers hold the false belief that email marketing is a useless marketing tactic, but the truth is much different. Email has been a frequently overused marketing tool for a long time. Marketers have exploited it by mass marketing through spamming strategies. Email open rates are dropping as a result of this and will keep dropping.
However, this does not mean that hotel marketers may no longer utilize emails in an effective and efficient manner. After all, email is a communication tool that we all use for both personal and professional purposes. We are spending more and definitely not less time in our inboxes. For this reason, it’s critical that marketing emails are expertly crafted, formatted, and distributed with information that is specifically tailored to each receiver.
- Beat the OTAs at their own game and foster a sense of loyalty in the process.
Every hotel we deal with wants to see more direct reservations and less reliance on online travel agents (OTAs). Ultimately, direct reservations bring in more money for the hotels. Because most hotels lack the OTAs’ resources, budgets, and online marketing know-how, companies are able to continue growing their revenue at the expense of hotels that must pay a commission to guarantee that their rooms are occupied.
- Hotels still fail to understand that content is king. Don’t make mistakes in this part.
Content is king is no more a joke. But oddly, most hotels we talk to still don’t seem to get it. We believe we finally understand why hotels still don’t seem to grasp it. The phrase ‘content’ is just too wide to be meaningfully understood, which is the reason. These days, content includes text from websites, photos, videos, Facebook posts, Instagram photos, tales, and more. However, material has to be properly categorized and understood so that businesses, like hotels, can prioritize the kinds of information that will work best for them.
When we start with the hotel room booking process, what alternatives are often shown to us when you or a prospective visitor visit a hotel website? Typically, the following are the options we get: “Make a reservation or verify availability today”, “Watch a film or browse the hotel’s photo collection”, “Take out a newsletter subscription”, and many more.
Most hotel websites just provide the information shown above to a visitor. What benefit does a hotel website provide to visitors, other than the ability to make a reservation, given that they have no desire to sign up for a newsletter that they’ll likely never receive? There is nothing. Here most of the hotels make major mistakes.
Instead, hotels must aim to establish a rapport with each and every person that visits their website. Majority of consumers will not make a reservation on their first visit to a website, as seen in figures 2, 3, and 4. This covers websites for hotels as well as OTAs. The bulk of today’s guests will look for further information (such as reviews sites) before committing since they are well-informed and powerful. In essence, guests who aren’t ready to make a reservation on their first visit are ignored by the hotel website as it is right now.
- In digital marketing, nature always prevails!
“Is the scientific, cultural, and philosophical debate about whether human culture, behavior, and personality are caused primarily by nature or nurture” is the definition of the age-old nature vs. nurture controversy. If you believe what you want, yet nature is often seen as the victor. However, in the realm of digital marketing, we may leverage nurturing processes to affect decisions and behaviors using technology.
Nurturing is the procedure that enables a hotel to stay in touch with a prospective client (hotel visitor) throughout the precise phases from the first inquiry/search to the last reservation. There are a number of steps that a guest usually takes before making a reservation for a hotel. However, how can a hotel normally sway a decision during this process? In actuality, most hotels don’t usually take on too much.
- Contextual marketing is necessary.
Over the past three years, programmatic advertising channels have grown in popularity, giving hotels new ways to target their customers. While several major hotels and hotel chains have had significant success with this, many hotels have not yet fully explored its advantages. Hotels ought to make an attempt to explore contextual programmatic advertising in 2024 in order to connect with prospective visitors.
- Don’t forget, data is king here.
Data is a recurring subject in several of the previously mentioned aspects. Since we all live in the digital era, we have greater access to data and information than we had in the past – both as clients and as business associates. It’s crucial that hoteliers realize this and begin marketing their establishments in a contemporary, data-driven way.
Sadly, a lot of hotels continue to advertise their establishments in the same manner as they did ten or fifteen years ago, despite the fact that opportunities and times have changed. Since many of the hotels in your competitive set are probably still utilizing more conventional marketing techniques, there’s a good chance that you’ll find greater chances for your hotel at a cheaper cost by adopting these old marketing techniques.
- Assert your familiarity with the guests.
The distinction between the real and online worlds is becoming increasingly hazy and narrower as technology advances, and hotels need to acknowledge this. Today’s visitors invest a significant quantity of time in the online Hotels are the only establishments in the offline world that genuinely grasp the art of greeting and making customers feel special. Any hotel with serious digital aspirations should aim to achieve this, as in a perfect world, it should be duplicated online.
- Don’t miss on trying Influencer Marketing.
Depending on who you ask, influencer marketing is either rapidly increasing or decreasing. This poses a problem for hotels as they try to figure out whether influencer marketing will raise their hotel’s profile and awareness and how this will translate into higher revenue and sales. It is challenging to forecast future trends in influencer marketing because social media companies, like Facebook, frequently release new theories about how algorithm updates will affect influencer content. This is especially true for influencers who have built their entire following on a platform over which they have no control.
Conclusion
These are some of the common tactics which Hotel businesses can try to reach better growth. No doubt, there are plenty of ways with which you can do digital marketing but you have to be particular with your budget allocation and your business strong point. On the basis of this, make the right decision. Don’t forget the data and content you will be puting online will determine the success of your hard work in digital marketing.
