Marketing Strategies For Hotel Business
The hotel management business is very challenging as there is overwhelming competition, making it arduous to take your hotel from scratch to peak success. The competition increases with the popularity of websites like Airbnb, making it difficult for one business to stand out from the spark. It requires more time and effort to make a hotel popular. If you are running a hotel that is B&B, a rental place for vacations or a hostel, you need to take the right hotel marketing strategies and ideas to expose your company to your target audience.
You need to drive your hotel's best performance, which is possible with an effective marketing plan. In this article, you will read about different hotel marketing solutions that will help you capture a new audience, retain existing clients and increase brand revenue. It covers the ten most effective hotel marketing strategies most famous brands deploy to build strong reputations. Once you can drive these campaigns smoothly and attain your objectives efficiently, let's explore hotel marketing ideas to take your business up to the mark.
Utilize Review Sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp
Customer reviews play an essential role in the popularity of a business and especially when it is a hospitality business. It will help to get new clients as people first check the ratings and reviews of a company before booking any service. Reviews determine your online reputation, a core point for your hotel marketing strategy. So utilize different review sites like TripAdvisor and Yelp to get reviews from your potential customers.
So register your business on these sites and manage all positive or negative reviews. Pay gratitude to those who leave good reviews, respond to negative thoughts, and ensure you will come up with improvements during their next visit. You need to make sure your guests are satisfied then you are all set to improve your business listing. In this way, you will be able to get more loyal clients around your company.
Providing the Greatest Possible Service Will Encourage Customers to Become Passionate Brand Ambassadors
Customer service is essential to a hotel marketing plan as you work with challenging people, so customers should be your priority. Happy customers can make a hotel more popular, but having a poor customer service experience can damage the brand's reputation. Excellent customer service helps to get more loyal clients for the brand. Be sure to hire professional and trained staff according to customer requirements. They should be ready to tackle the customers' problems during their stay. It will return in increasing the bookings and higher brand revenues.
The customers will speak about your hotels, choose them for their next stay, and refer them to their friends and family who will visit the same station. In this way, your customers can be the best influencers and brand ambassadors. It would help if you asked them to post their picture from your hotel with the caption to increase hotel visibility. Offer them rewards like a one-night stay by spreading awareness about your brand and leaving testimonials and reviews on social media. It will be beneficial for the company as well as the clients. It will increase clients' interest, and they will remain loyal to the brand.
Use Your Business's Capacity to Host Small Gatherings, Unique Events, and Al Fresco Meals to Generate Additional Revenue
You should not only adopt hotel marketing ideas to attract more guests, but you can also use your capacity to make more revenue and gain more visibility. Small gatherings and hosting local events can help you get more people at your hotel. It truly benefits your business as it can build a strong community around your brand. Share the updates of the events on your social media channels to increase brand awareness and invite potential people to join you at the event by giving them a quick link to buy an entry pass.
You can also ask people to visit your hotel to taste the best food in the town. It will come with additional revenue and sets you apart from your competitors.
Don't Be Afraid to Try Out Different Bundling Methods and Discounts
Incentives always drive more traffic to a business, and one should be confident in giving some freebies to increase brand exposure and revenue for the company. It would help if you offered different packages to your guests and some complimentary services to build their trust in the brand. Offer extra gifts to those who directly book your services from your website; it will drive more traffic and boost company sales. Offer rewards to returning clients to make them feel they are unique to your company.
Introduce a complete economic and premium package to book a hotel for three or more days. Offer discounts on your services on special events like some international days, the anniversary, or your hotel. It will promote a sense of loyalty among clients and will also increase customer acquisition and retention.
Boost Your Hotel's Reservations and Inquiries by Using Google Hotel Ads
You should not only depend upon organic marketing to attract new customers and retain existing clients. Use some inorganic methods to improve your rankings on the search engine. Google hotel ads produce quick results than SEO. It shows your website above the organic search results. It helps to take your site up overnight, which drives more traffic and sales for the brand. It is a cost-effective hotel marketing strategy that you can use to increase brand revenues. Furthermore, it increases your hotel's brand visibility, originality and authenticity, and people will love to choose your hotel among plenty of available options.
It's Important To Upsell Additional Services To Maximize Revenue per Guest
You should always be ready to adopt marketing ideas to increase the brand's revenue. You should introduce additional services to generate incremental business for your hotel, like offering different packages to clients according to their interests. Introduce deals and discounts on getting a new service. Offer spa packages, shopping, special events at the hotel, bed-with-breakfast packages and many other seasonal packages to show the value of your hotel.
Check your competitors' services and offer complementary services by getting a specific package during your stay at your hotel. For example, you should provide free parking or late checkouts that make you different from others.
Get Your Social Media and Influencer Marketing Strategy Together
Travellers took social media to explore new destinations and share their experiences during their trips on their social media profiles. That is why you should use the power of social media to engage with a target audience. And it can be more productive when you merge your social media marketing with influencer marketing campaigns. On one side, social media help hotel owners share the highlights of their offers in the form of blogs, images, videos and advertisements. Conversely, influencers can help you increase brand visibility and quickly get more clients on your profiles.
Create creative and captivating content and encourage your guests, influencers and brand ambassadors to share it using the Hashtag. Share special deals and offers on social media if you are new and want people to choose your hotel, among others. It would help if you also asked the influencers to promote these offers to their fans and ask them to visit when they are on a trip to this location. These influencers can change the impression of your hotel among their fans and build a strong reputation for your hotel. Look for a travel blogger or someone who promotes travelling and engages them with your brand to strengthen your hotel marketing efforts.
Be sure to leverage different social media platforms and choose the right tools to gain much exposure for the brand. For example, you should use Instagram to post video clips and images from your hotel to let people know your brand's worth and keep your clients engaged and informed. Use Facebook to build a strong community around your company and post pictures on Pinterest as travellers check it to find the best destination to enjoy their vacations. Furthermore, ensure the content is produced according to user interests to encourage more bookings.
Provide a Courteous Greeting to Guests during Check-In
Guests always love to have an excellent welcome when their check-in in at a hotel. It makes them remind about the company. Now it's up to you how you will remain in their mind rather be in negative words or with a memorable greeting. Those who get a cold welcome at your hotel will prefer to choose another hotel over yours, but if you pay gratitude to each guest on their arrival, they will remember it and surely return on their next trip.
Give guests welcome gifts, like customized hats with your hotel name and logo, a pen or a small pouch. The guests will remember you whenever they use this gift and will indeed talk about your hotel. It will encourage them to book your hotel again. In this way, the brand value will increase, and you will be able to get more loyal customers.
Gatherings and Conferences Can Be Used To Increase Clientele
Gatherings and conferences can be a great way to earn more profits for your business. It attracts professionals to choose your property for their meetings. Create a space where different companies can organize their conferences and seminars. Connect with the local companies hosting some events and offer them to use your area at some discount or special package your competitors need to provide. It helps to build a strong relationship with people and increase brand exposure.
With the right services at your place during these gatherings, you can build a strong customer experience which encourages them to come again and again. You can use your meeting hall twice or twice a day by booking an event for particular hours, which means you can earn higher revenues with more bookings in a day. But stay on the service, as it can ruin all your marketing efforts. These gatherings allow you to create content for your website and social media profile to engage with prospects and gain more business.
Optimize Your Hotel's Website for Search Engines and Focus on Organic Ranking
More than 70% of travellers use search engines to look for hotels and resorts. It means most of your target clients search online for the best hotels during their stay at a particular station. It is why you should focus on the visibility of your website among these searches, which is possible by using search engine-optimized keywords while presenting your services. It helps to build organic traffic around your website and improve the ranking of the business on search engines. Use the tools that will help improve your website's SEO so your prospects can reach you easily.
First, you should search for the prolific keywords your target audience uses to find the best hotels in the town. Use the keywords that match your niche and deploy these keywords in your posts on the website to improve your site's exposure. Make your website mobile-friendly and fast because if your site is listed in the top search results but loses these two features, prospects will leave your site quickly. Put some effort into link building, as it helps to drive quick bookings and improve your company's position in the market by taking organic traffic around it.
Conclusion
An excellent hotel marketing plan is essential before starting your hotel management business. Without a complete marketing solution, you will not get leads and will end up with nothing. With the right hotel marketing tactics, you can attract your guests and encourage them to choose your hotel over the competitors. So understand your clients, provide them with excellent services, offer freebies, get reviews and engage them with the company as much as possible to build a strong brand reputation and boost sales.
A hotel marketing agency might help you go through the whole process if you need more expertise or want to avoid this headache. A consultant will help you introduce your brand to the broader market, increase brand authenticity and visibility, and increase sales.