How to Become a Good Hotel Marketer and Stay Ahead
Do you want to become a top hotel marketer and stay ahead of competitors in the hospitality industry? Well, hotel marketing covers a wide range of ideas, activities, and techniques.
Surely you want to excel in optimizing the profitability of your hotel business and attracting as many visitors as possible. In that case, you must also be mindful of and master those requirements as a hotel marketer.
An effective hotel marketing strategy will impact potential visitors, regardless of where and how they choose to research, organize, and make reservations for their vacation.
In this article, you will learn how to market hotel business with top hotel marketing strategies.
But before we jump ahead to that, let’s understand how marketing works in the hotel industry.
What is Marketing in Hotel Industry and Why Is It Important?
Hotel marketing refers to the many marketing strategies used by a hotel marketer to promote their business and create a positive and lasting impact on guests.
Among several aspects to strengthen and scale up your brand, hotel marketing entails:
- Developing strategies to attract visitors
- Organizing promotional campaigns
- Planning and budgeting for high and low seasons
In this era of digital, marketing your hotel happens both online and offline, and either system has its advantages. However, it is imperative to realize the rise of digital marketing in the hotel industry.
Travelers these days are looking for quick and convenient ways to learn about your region, your hotel and its services. Therefore, hoteliers must optimize their visibility through several online channels such as website traffic, social networking sites, email marketing, etc.
One of the most challenging problems that small-sized hotels face in the hospitality industry is competitiveness. Hotel marketing is important since it enables a hotel marketer to:
- Advertise the property of their hotel
- Showcase its special features
- Make their hotel stand out among competitors
- Define the advantages of making their reservations there
Finally, keeping tabs on the newest hotel marketing trends and connecting with customers through marketing can aid a hotel marketer in increasing the amount of booking reservations they receive and the revenue they can make.
Why Adopting Different Hotel Marketing Strategies Is Important?
It is always a good time to step back to reflect on and re-evaluate your hospitality marketing strategy, whether you own a small hotel or have a chain of hotels. Demand in every industry shifts constantly, and new innovative hospitality marketing products are frequently developed to assist hoteliers in meeting those requirements.
Amid a financial meltdown, marketing tactics for hotels are weakening, leaving hoteliers unsure of the best way to proceed. Therefore, understanding your customers is the first step in developing a hotel marketing strategy as a hotel marketer.
What kind of guests are you seeking to attract?
Attracting international visitors necessitates a different approach than catching the attention of locals. Understanding who you're trying to market to can help you define a more specific goal to increase hotel profitability.
Top 5 Hotel Marketing Strategies
Here are five strategies for marketing in the hospitality industry to help you become a good hotel marketer:
1. Use technologies to optimize hotel guest marketing
Regardless of the type of hotel you operate, potential visitors will research your hotel online before making a reservation with you. Therefore, one of the most efficient techniques is to use the technologies at your disposal to highlight all features of your hotel.
Consider giving customers a virtual tour of your hotel and its rooms so they can get a better understanding of what level of comfort and convenience they'd like to reserve.
2. Social media marketing for hotels
Hotel digital marketing is one of the most effective methods for increasing booking reservations and revenue sales. Scrolling through major social media platforms such as Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn, and Twitter has become an everyday part of people's lives, regardless of wherever they are or whatever they are doing.
Of course, not all content will engage them, but interesting travel-related content is more likely to do so because it sparks your guests' imaginations. When created well, social media travel content can transport audiences and inspire them to plan their vacations and itineraries.
When relevant, post promotional offers or discounts for local events, or take the opportunity to highlight your hotel's outstanding features or particularly industrious members of your team. The more you can pique visitors' interests, the more likely you will convert them.
3. Provide memorable guest experience
Good customer service is paramount in the hospitality industry; thus, creating offers with your customers in mind is essential. Ensure that you provide visitors with genuine value for their money and enjoyable experiences.
Furthermore, if a crisis happens while a guest is staying at the hotel, you must go all out to provide a solution. Once you are aware of the grievance, the visitor should not leave with their issue unresolved.
Also, if you notice a lot of familiar faces visiting your hotel, you might want to think about offering special incentives to your guests. It could include free or inexpensive accommodation, meal vouchers or coupons from nearby cafes, etc.
Depending on where your hotel is situated, this hotel marketing effort can reach many people, which will help you and your guests build great relationships.
This promotional activity is also an excellent way to influence regular customers to refer your hotel to their friends, relatives, or colleagues that need to visit the location your hotel is in. Ultimately, promoting via guest satisfaction is a marketing tactic for hotels striving to boost their brand reputation and relationships with their customers.
4. Efficient and strategic email marketing to entice guests
One of the most reliable and cost-effective techniques for reaching guests and driving direct reservation sales is email marketing. It's a useful tool in your inventory of hotel online marketing techniques.
After staying, getting visitors to post a review helps increase your review traffic, and potential visitors can see recent reviews when researching your hotel. Many visitors or tourists read reviews to judge what previous guests have experienced when visiting your hotel; therefore, word of mouth is important in the hospitality industry.
You can also use email marketing campaigns to send newsletters about forthcoming events or promotional offers. This hotel internet marketing technique would certainly impact visitors that have signed up for a customer loyalty program at your hotel.
You can send personalised emails tailored to your guests' specific requirements and tastes. Keep in mind their time zone when sending emails and send them when they're most likely to respond.
Use simple, short, direct subject lines with potential benefits to make your emails appealing and engaging. It will tempt potential customers to open your email and read what's ahead.
Also, don't be shy about using stunning photos of your hotel and region to capture their interest. It will increase traffic and get customers to pay attention to your content.
5. Use hotel industry tools to your advantage
Hotel marketing statistics are significant in the hotel industry. Metrics help you understand where your money is going, where you should be investing more or less, and when you need to make changes.
What To Do Next?
Use AxisRooms' channel manager and booking system tools to generate reports and assist you in evaluating certain metrics.
Furthermore, there is no such thing as being overprepared. Keep an eye out for growing trends and industries, and check with AxisRooms' revenue management system frequently to ensure that the plans you're developing are worth implementing. Planning ahead of time will help reveal any potential or impending shortcomings.
AxisRooms Editorial Desk
AxisRooms, a software suite provider for the hospitality industry, is committed to aiding your business growth, not just with our state-of-the-art products and services, but also with the latest updates from the travel and hospitality industry. Got something to say? Write to us at: [email protected]
