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Hospitality marketing trends

How to Leverage Hospitality Marketing for more Bookings 

Marketing

Are you a hotel owner and want more clients to book your property next season? You must know that just the stay does not impress your customers anymore. You need to give them more. 

Clients are inclining more towards their stay experience when booking a property or a restaurant. The all-time sold-out beach-facing rooms are an example of just that. So, if you want more bookings from your target group, highlight the experience in your marketing ideas.  

In this blog, we have discussed all the latest hospitality marketing strategies that if used properly will boost your bookings. Also, learn how Airbnb has more traffic because of its brilliant marketing. 

Top Hospitality Strategies to Boost Your Bookings  

The number of companies operating in the hospitality industry has experienced recent growth worldwide. It is crucial to ace the marketing game with such huge competition.  

Traditional TV ads or just social media postings do not cut a mark anymore. What your clients need has changed and so did the hospitality marketing concepts. We will discuss 7 hospitality marketing ideas that are relevant and give real results.  

1. Be Easy to Find

You might have the best website or great offers. But users are going to search their queries on browsers first. So, make sure that your SEO strategy is the best to be in the top few on the SERPs.  

There are several metasearch engines in the hospitality industry like Trivago. They place hotel ads along with relevant content. And the hotels pay for the ads as per cost per click (CPC) instead of a fixed amount. So, you produce according to your performance and per your demand.  

How do you do it? 

  • Keep your content SEO-optimized by using analytical tools plus your creativity. 
  • SERPs are heavily dominated by Google paid ads, so, use them abundantly but strategically. 
  • You must be on every possible search page but focus more on those where your client’s books often. 
  • Implement concierge strategy and EEAT approach selling user’s journey to your clients. 

To boost your bookings, viewers need to click on your link and get into your website. Your position in the top 3 on Google SERP will ensure that. According to A Backlinko report from 2023, the Top 3 results on Google get 54.4% of all the clicks. So, SEO-proof your hotel marketing strategy. 

2. Keep Nudging Em! 

What we mean by that is remarket yourselves. 91% of users reported abandoning their travel purchases when buying on their mobile devices. This might be due to general distractions like their phone ringing or an exciting notification on screen. Or they might want to check out other websites. Remarketing brings them back to your page so that they can finally decide on making the purchase. It’s like a reminder where you push your company to the clients for higher bookings in this case. 

How to do it? 

  • Trail your clients and place paid ads on the platforms they visit often. 
  • Talk to them directly like ‘Hey! You have a booking in process with us.’. 
  • Bring in more incentives to pull your client back from competitors as they might keep repurchasing in the future. 
  • Use Google Ads and social media platforms to configure your remarketing campaigns. 

3. Fine Tune Marketing Ideas

We are sure you already focus on your target audience, but this is the time to finetune your hotel digital marketing. Why? Because hotels, restaurants, or clubs now have different themes or vibes to it. Or the hospitals have different target markets based on the client’s budget. 

For example, some people prioritize sustainability and would like your eco-friendly retreat. Others might love luxury so they will prefer all premium utilities during their stay. 

There are many other kinds of travelers in your target market. So, you must fine-tune your hospitality marketing ideas. 

How do you do it? 

  • Segment your target market based on different choices. Try to create multiple buyer personas and targeted campaigns. 
  • Try tools like income target which categorizes your consumers based on their income and gives you insights accordingly. 
  • Focus on respective channels, you will not find bulk business bookings from Facebook often. 

4. Keep Updating for the Voice Search

More people are using platforms like Alexa, Siri, and Google Assistant for searching hospitality queries.   

Usually, these voice searches are lengthy and conversational. For example, people may search “What are the top holiday destinations in the U.S.?” instead of “Holiday destinations U.S..” Optimizing the business pages according to these voice searches. This helps to create a well-positioned page on search engines and increases brand visibility. 

How to do it? 

  • Refurbish your existing content based on user’s questions on voice assistants. 
  • Optimize the mobile applications for faster searches  
  • Using voice searches to offer a personalized experience (search hotels with filters) 
  • Also, include SEO strategies for local queries when you are focusing on voice searches. 

5. Market What Your Clients Say

User-generated content is a fool-proof part of hotel advertisement. Simply put, user-generated content is texts, videos, and posts created by users rather than brands.  

About 54% of clients agreed that online user reviews are the most important factor for hotel bookings.  

So, the new hotel marketing strategy would be to use that for your ads. The fact that they come from people’s experiences rather than brand CTAs or influencer posts builds trust among the target audience. Moreover, it makes the brand credible and helps lead to the purchasing decision. 

How do you do it? 

  • Make sure your user review content is right before or on the same page as booking. 
  • Push common-user generated content on social media with direct links to websites and bookings. 
  • Highlight user experience using videos from the users. 
  • Include influencer marketing in this segment by offering them incentives for reviewing your property. 
  • Provide an open channel of contact to users to increase your authority leading to more bookings. 

6. Market the Location and Not Just Your Property

Many from your target market are still indecisive if they are going to visit the location you are in. So, your brand-based hotel advertisement can use the boost of location marketing to increase bookings.  

Selling the location, some events, or the sites to see around can be a great option to draw enthusiasts. For example, W Chicago highlighted their local festivals and then mentioned their hotel as a stay option. 

How do you do it? 

  • Produce content answering why your location is worth the visit. 
  • Push experience-focused content based on locations. 
  • If you can intrigue your audience about your place and the nearest spots to visit, they might book you for the stay. 

7. Build Your Loyalty Program

The hospitality industry has a lot of their clients repeating their bookings. Because you provide experience-based services. Many busy cities have hotels that have recurring corporate bookings due to good services.  

You can create loyalty programs to ensure your customers end up repeating bookings and get something in return. In these loyalty programs, you will be offering exclusive benefits to these buyers.  

Send updates of new developments to your loyalty members. This could boost your bookings for festivities or special occasions. 

How do you do it? 

  • Create VIP services that offer something more than usual to the loyalty consumers. 
  • Create levels like gold, diamond, and platinum to distinguish the memberships. 
  • Use separate server systems to track and manage these buyers. 
  • Include customization in the services you offer. 
  • Make sure you check up on loyalty members before, during, and after the bookings. 

Airbnb’s Hospitality Campaign 

In the past decade, there have been stellar hospitality marketing campaigns. But Airbnb’s campaign stood out and is an example to get inspired with. 

The online vacation rental business marketplace Airbnb is a leading player in the hospitality marketing realm. It works on a two-sided model, which connects the hosts to the guests.  

Highlighted the Experience 

Airbnb released 15-second videos to highlight the experience it provides compared to hotels. For example, “If you’re taking a trip with your friends, why pay for four hotel rooms to stay apart from your friends? Get an Airbnb and stay together for less.” 

There were more of these videos which made the buyers crave the cozy, casual, and private experience. Many travelers have stated that they prefer Airbnb over hotels because it provides them with a unique experience of interacting with locals. It started getting bookings more because people wanted to have more casual stays. 

Invested Separately on the Brand 

In 2022, Airbnb’s marketing team removed brand marketing activities from the core marketing team. They allocated USD 771.9 million. They used this fund to again differentiate their place in the market of hotels and travel agents. 

Also, they modified their campaigns according to events and when they came up. This is a way to use marketing strategies to boost periodic bookings.  

They Marketed Diverse Experience   

Airbnb keeps up with its clients. They marketed a virtual trip during the pandemic to keep customer relationships alive. Another time they marketed a campaign saying ‘Don’t go there, live there’ to highlight the experience. 

This increased their bookings in various countries like Australia, the UK, Germany, and India.  

Bottom Line 

There are two ways you can boost your bookings in seasons or all year. One, you create a brilliant first impression on your clients, or two, you bring in your clients over.  

As discussed, for the first group you need to highlight and show them the experience and values. For the second, you need to come up to their eyes time and again or talk to them often. 

Whichever is your next strategy, you will need relatable, value-packed, and convincing content to market your brand. At WrittenlyHub, you get the content perfectly crafted as per your needs. Book a call with us to utilize our years of experience and latest research for innovative marketing strategies on all platforms. 

FAQs 

1. How to maintain after-sales relationships with hotel clients?

The after-sales relationship starts right at the time your guests are leaving. Try to make their exit as smooth as possible.  

Don’t keep long wait times. Offer them a loyalty program or an incentive for their next visit to your property. Also, communicate with your guests regularly via e-mails or WhatsApp contacts but do not bombard them with sales pitches. 

2. What are the best tools to get hospitality trend insights?

You can obtain your data or trends from surveys on your client base. You can use tools like SurveyMonkey, Typeform, or Qualitrics. You can use keyword tools like Google Keyword Planner.   

Or you can get all of this done for you by a digital agency like WrittenlyHub. These agencies do all the groundwork for you and bring you the best content pieces to publish. 

3. Can all hotels have the same marketing ideas?

Hotels might have some trends that are largely applicable across the hospitality industry. For example, discounts, metasearch engines, SEO, and voice search trends.   

Some marketing approaches should differ based on the type of target audience you have. For example, you should differentiate the marketing platforms based on your audience. 

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