Digital Marketing for Hotel Industry: Top 7 Strategies You Need to Know!

Hotel Marketing falls under the category of Hospitality Marketing. In simple terms, it is letting people know about your Hotel, and the services it offers so that you can increase footfall and bookings of your establishment. 

When we talk about Hotel Digital Marketing, it the same concept applied to digital marketing platforms. But in this way, you can reach a larger and highly targeted segment of people to attract them towards your Hotel. 

Using digital channels to grow and promote your Hotel is much faster, better, and cost-effective than traditional marketing methods. But why should one need digital marketing for their Hotel?

To help bring in more bookings, increase reach, and build a good reputation for your hotel. While these remain the primary goals, digital marketing comes with a lot of advantages, which we shall discuss in the next section. 

5 Advantages of Digital Marketing for the Hotel Industry

1. Build Brand Awareness

Hotel digital marketing helps build awareness and increase reach through various channels and ways. It helps the audience get to know your Hotel, services, and the experience it offers. 

2. Increase Brand Reputation

When it comes to digital marketing, you can control your brand’s image so that your customers perceive you better. Showcasing great reviews, testimonials, awards, etc about your hotel, builds trust, and credibility around your brand. 

3. Increase Bookings

Promoting offers, discounts and other sales tactics can help increase your bookings. Apart from this, you can also influence potential customers to book a stay at your hotel by showcasing reviews, and testimonials.

4. Build Better Customer Relationships

Digital marketing can be a great way to stay connected and increase your loyal customer base through social media and email marketing. Sharing user-generated content through your social media handles can promote as well as build relationships with your customers.

5. Stand Apart from Competition

There is a cut-throat competition that exists within the Hospitality industry. Every hotel now offers great rooms and hospitality services, and most of them are situated in great locations too. But, how will you stand out and make an impression? This is why you need hotel digital marketing to create a unique voice and personality around your brand image. 

Top 7 Strategies for Hotel Industry

When it comes to digital marketing, there are several aspects that come together to form an effective digital strategy. Right from a search engine, to your social media channels and emails, everything is planned, regulated, and executed to help grow and promote your Hotel. 

Listed below are the top 5 strategies that the Hotel industry needs to implement to grow and increase bookings via digital channels.

1. Website Marketing of Your Hotel

More than half of customers who book a hotel; review the website first. When we say more than half, we mean 65% of them. You do not want to lose your potential customers due to a bad website experience, low-quality content or pictures, or even slow loading speed. 

A good website experience, along with attractive design and catchy content is a must for every website. And when it comes to Hotel Industry websites, it is necessary to take this up a notch. Why?

Because the website is the first impression people get about your Hotel. You need to ensure that you showcase the beauty, amenities, luxury, and comfort your Hotel offers. Not just this, let your audience know more about the services and experience your hotel can offer and why they should book it right away! 

Apart from this, make it easy for people to navigate, find information, and smoothen the booking process. Keep a check on the technical aspects and update your website from time to time. Showcase your latest launches, events, services, and discounts to attract more customers. This will result in better bookings for your Hotel. 

2. Social Media Marketing 

For millennials especially, a stay in a beautiful Hotel means a noteworthy picture for an Instagram post. 

But who can blame? The Hotel Industry itself is highly visual. The beauty of your property can serve as a USP for attracting visitors. And what better showcase the hotel’s elegance and luxury than social media pictures?

This is why Social Media Marketing is a powerful tool in increasing reach, visitors, and bringing in more bookings to a Hotel. Think about this, when booking a hotel, you are sure to check out its social media handles to learn more about it. This is what most people do. 

Social media platforms like Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest can be leveraged to showcase and share informative, entertaining, and engaging content and images about your Hotel and the services it offers. This is why you sell your audience a promise of an unforgettable experience. 

Apart from this, you can also encourage your visitors to share their experience of their stay on social media channels to help attract more audience towards your Hotel. Keep your channels up-to-date with engaging and interactive content to grow and promote your establishment. 

3. Content Marketing

Hotel Industry needs good content. Yes, we said it!

Content is as important as your images. Good content must be present right from your website to your social media. While people are drooling over your Hotel’s pictures, your content must be catchy enough to influence them to take an action. 

Along with this, Content marketing is not just limited to writing and creating content. It also involves a strategic way of using content to increase awareness, reach, and visibility of your Hotel. This is where the SEO part jumps in. 

SEO or Search Engine Marketing helps your Hotel’s site rank higher in the SERPs, thus, offering more chances of getting noticed. This is done by using highly targeted keywords in your content. Failing to do this, there are high chances of you losing a majority of your prospects. 

This is why, optimizing your content, your website as well as your social media channels for your SEO, is important if you want to grow and increase your Hotel brand’s reach. 

4. Hotel Email Marketing

Gone are the times, when you had to print flyers, posters, and add banners to attract customers for your Hotels. Your prospects have gone digital, so be present there!

Traditional marketing methods offer very little knowledge of what happened after reaching customers. Or did it even reach your customer? There are so many aspects that are not tracked, monitored, and analyzed which leaves all the money spent on printing and distributing go to waste. 

Hotel Email Marketing is fairly the right solution to all these problems. Email Marketing for Hotels helps keep prospects informed, engaged, and attracted to your hotel. Emails are a cost-effective method to inform prospects about the latest offers, discounts, and gift vouchers regarding the Hotel. 

Apart from this, informational content can also be shared to keep them engaged with the brand. Email marketing provides accurate and useful data about potential customers and also builds a meaningful relationship with them. This helps to repeat customers, conversions, and better ROI. 

5. Online Travel Agencies

Don’t shy away from commissions and lose your potential customers!

Your potential customers while traveling are sure to look at online travel agencies and portals like Airbnb, Expedia, TripAdvisor, and more for recommendations of places to visit, eat, and stay. 

And in such cases, if you are not present to showcase your Hotel and its services, it can be devastating for your business. These portals can showcase your Hotel, its rooms, and amenities along with reviews and ratings which can influence your prospect’s buying decisions. This can help bring in bookings and also increase traffic and awareness towards your Hotel Brand.

6. Online Reputation Management

This is often an underestimated yet a very powerful aspect of the Hotel Industry. While focusing on your website, social media channels, and other aspects are important to build a brand image, Hoteliers must pay close attention to their reputation and how they are perceived by their customers. 

Potential customers before booking their stay in your Hotel, almost always check the reviews. More often than not, many negative reviews of a Hotel are not responded to or rectified. Reviews can make or break your reputation as a Business.  

While you might praise and claim an unforgettable experience of your property, prospects will go and check the previous customers’ experience to validate the credibility and quality of your Hotel. And if they don’t match, this would leave a bad impression about your Hotel and influences your prospect’s decision as well.

Encourage your customers to share reviews, images, and their experience of the Hotel to boost positive reviews and enhance your reputation. While it is not possible to always get a positive review, the key to still maintain a good reputation lies in responding to them cordially.

7. Hotel Digital Branding 

Sometimes, your Hotel can have everything and still not bring the bookings it has the potential to bring. You might be situated in the perfect location, have elegant and well-maintained rooms, staff and offer impeccable services, but still, you find that there is something missing that is preventing you from increasing your bookings. What is this?

This is when you are probably missing the Branding aspect of your Hotel. Yes, you might have a logo, a website and showcase some pictures over social media platforms, but if your Hotel Brand, lacks personality, it cannot grow up to its potential. 

Branding is important. Why? Because it differentiates you, from the competition, and offers an edge. To stand out, you need to recognize, but how is this possible, if you don’t give your Hotel a unique voice?

Strong digital branding helps your prospects understand who you are, what are your Brand values, and how different are you from the rest. This way, you can grow and promote your Hotel to its maximum potential, and increase your bookings. 

Showcasing your brand identity, values, and ideals on your website as well as your social media platforms helps increase traffic and engagement and target the right audience. 

Digital Marketing is thus, now a prominent aspect in the Hotel industry to help grow and promote their business. The sooner you start marketing digital, the faster and longer you will establish your hold in the market. 

Are you looking for the perfect recipe to grow your Hotel and increase your bookings, and ultimately your revenue?

We can help you with that!

Veara Digital Marketing Agency is here to create customized digital marketing strategies that help:

• Increase your reach
• Develop a Strong Online Presence
• Grow your Business
• Increase your Sales
• Increase your Revenue

Interested? Contact us TODAY!