# Business development
Best marketing tips for hotels in 2024
Red Rocket teamAug 21, 20246 min read
Hotel owners should always be ready for updates because trends change regularly, just like the desires of visitors. Despite the fact that hotels are businesses that offer exclusively offline services, promotions are done through the Internet and various platforms. As you may already know, marketing is a set of tricks, strategies and clear steps that aim to attract customers. Hotels are no exception and the best marketers have their own secrets for promoting hotels online.
It may sound surprising to some, the revenue of the hotel industry is growing year after year. At the same time, most of the bookings today are made by customers through websites or apps. These trends should be a clear signal to business owners to put online marketing on their list of must-have tasks. Do you want to know more about hotel marketing strategies? This article will tell you how to market a hotel to attract as many guests as possible.
Tip 1. Creating an Attractive Website
Certainly, the first point on our list of hotel marketing tips is to create a website for the company. Recent statistics show that more than 70% of companies around the world now have their own website. The period when this number started to grow rapidly was during the Covid-19 pandemic. What kind of website should you have? When we talk about a website for hotels, we mean functionality such as:
- Gallery
- Detailed information about accommodation conditions, number of rooms, available entertainment, and more.
- Contacts for communication
- Possibility of online booking
- Rating and reviews
You might think that all travelers book accommodation through aggregators. However, this is not entirely true. By having your own website, you can make more profit without giving part of your profits to the aggregator platform.
Tip 2.Reaching the Target Audience with SMM Services
Today, every hotel should have an SMM specialist on its staff list. Hotel social media marketing covers popular platforms to promote the company's services online. Creating pages on popular social media platforms such as Instagram, Facebook and X (ex. Twitter) is a great solution to reach more of your target audience online. These platforms have hundreds of millions of users, some of whom could be your potential customers. Use SMM services to populate your social media feeds with informative posts, useful information and even contests.
Tip 3. Developing a Recognizable Logo and Style
This is an important branding element of a hotel as is a logo and a consistent use of the brand style in all its marketing collaterals. Just like how effort and creativity should be placed in the logo, the hotel should make sure that the logo is distinct and meaningful in conveying its vision.
Look at your current hotel logo (if you have one) and answer the question of how attractive it is. Consider whether this logo is well remembered by customers. You should think about your unique style and logo that will reflect your values, mission and vision. Perhaps you have signature colors or symbols that can be used more often in branding. For example, think of one of the most popular hotel chains, Hilton. Their style is characterized by restraint, blue and white.
Tip 4. Implementation of the Customer Loyalty System
Nothing can be more effective in marketing than a return customer who is satisfied with the company’s services. The guest loyalty strategy is an effective way to maintain the customers and get more bookings by offering rebates from repeated visits and word-of-mouth recommendation. Elements such as tiered reward, discount coupons, free nights, spa/food credit and birthday/anniversary offers, earning points may enhance the loyalty programs.
The best way to see if a loyalty system really works is to look at how successful hotel chains around the world operate. All of them have implemented a loyalty program that has tiers. Customers' personal level increases when they book more days at a hotel.
Tip 5. Implementation of AI Assistant
Do you know how often customers have additional questions at the stage of choosing the right room and making a reservation? Almost every second visitor needs more information, so users call the number of your support team. Sometimes this will help overload that department and keep other potential guests waiting.
What is the solution? Having an artificially intelligent virtual assistant is a major plus for the hotel when it is presented on the hotel website. AI chatbots may engage customers in real-time to explain the varieties of rooms available, their prices, the services offered, and other questions. This relieves the burden on human employees and delivers satisfaction to the customers while offering fast service.
Tip 6. Creating a Useful Travel Blog
What are some SEO tips for hotels to rank higher on Google? First of all, search engine robots analyze the content on your website and keywords to provide information to users. The more travel related content you have on your website, the more likely your hotel will get more organic traffic.
Successful hotel travel blog posts provide valuable, and interesting information to readers, which will encourage people to visit your hotel. Recommend specific attractions that tourists might not otherwise discover on their own. Remember that you should not only provide useful content, but you should also create it with search engine optimization in mind. Analyze your competitors and see how they do it and what keywords they use. There are many opportunities to improve the blog for SEO, and these changes will bring relevant visitors who are searching for a hotel stay in your area.
Tip 7. Optimizing Website Speed
Getting a hotel website loaded quickly and provide a positive user experience is crucial to meeting the new generation internet users expectations. A recent study has revealed that the speed of websites is directly proportional to internet sales, bookings, etc. The ideal time for a hotel website page to load is 2-3 seconds.
Reduce the number of links on a single page and delete unneeded plugins. Minimize the use of large animations or complex graphics – let design elements remain lightweight. Monitor the speed of the test site frequently and look at scripts or functionality that slow it down.
Tip 8. Investing in Mobile App
We want to mention right away that a mobile app for a hotel is necessary when you have quite a large flow of customers. For hotels with a limited budget that have recently opened their doors to guests, it is not the best solution. Generally, a mobile app will be in demand if you own an entire hotel chain. It will allow potential customers to check room availability, order additional services, and book hotel days even more easily. When creating a mobile app for hotels, you can add innovative features such as virtual reality room viewing or artificial intelligence.
Tip 9. Custom Software
Procuring custom hotel management software that already has embedded marketing automation solutions is worth the investment. Such software assists in accumulating data from the various channels the guest visited in order to build guest profiles. It then allows you to
send out newsletters, promotion, offers or a survey through emails and text messages.
The benefit of custom hotel marketing automation software is that you choose the functionality yourself. For example, if your employees have difficulties with collecting information about guests, you can implement automation of this process with the help of the program.
Tip 10. Providing Omnichannel for Booking
Typically, the target audience of hotels is wide, especially if your hotel is located in a large and touristy city. However, potential guests may use different platforms and so you need to have a presence in each of them. You should ensure omnichannel for bookings. Here's what we mean:
.
- Booking via website and app.
- Booking by calling an operator.
- Booking via email.
- Booking using social networks.
This way it will be easier for your customers to make reservations, and you'll have a better chance of a user converting into a real guest.
Tip 11. Using Email in Marketing
Email marketing proves to be influential and relevant even today for hotels. Include hotel email marketing promoting new products and services currently available to increase sales. Utilize and incorporate the use of email autoresponders and send pre-stay emails to guests with information on check-in time, post-stay follow-up emails to get feedback, special offers inviting guests to revisit, etc.
Tip 12. Partnering with Other Niche Companies
Another strategic marketing initiative general for hotels is that they should align themselves with other players in the tourism and travel industry. For example, engaging with local destination management companies, tour operators, museums, event venues, etc. This strategy puts your hotel brand before the direct market since people transacting with these establishments are often already interested in the travel and tourism industry. One important idea that you may consider is that you can give your partners a special rate, package or even an incentive to their customers as well as to them.
Tip 13. Use Local Directories
Among the best hotel marketing tactics for small hotels we can highlight the use of local directories. In simple words, these are popular web resources where the user can find companies from the area of interest. Fortunately, there are highly specialized directories. Most of them provide an opportunity to add information about your hotel for free and leave a link to the site.
You've probably already heard of directories like TripAdvisor, Expedia, and VirtualTourist. These resources are geared towards travelers looking for the best accommodations. If you have a presence on these local online directories, you can get more leads. As practice shows, this is a great tip for budget hotel marketing.
Tip 14. Make More Videos
These days, video content is very powerful when it comes to branding and it can also effectively convert customers. All hotels should be regularly posting good content videos on TikTok, Instagram and YouTube. Provide the viewers with the videos that capture your rooms, facilities, the dining place and anything that you want to expose in your property. Furthermore, record interesting areas around the hotel and create curiosity about them.
Tip 15. Paid Advertising Setup
Though having organic traffic is useful, PPC advertising for HoReCa enables you to extend your coverage to a wider audience at once. Search and display ads, social media, and native ads let you promote something with a precise message to the right audience. To make such marketing campaigns successful, you must accurately determine in advance your hotel's target audience, GEO, user characteristics, and the channels through which you want to show potential guests ads.
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Final Thoughts
The preferences and desires of travelers are constantly changing. Today, they desire a comfortable experience that includes easy online booking, quick communication with the support team, and much more. To ensure that your hotel is highly effective, you must pay enough attention to digital marketing. Remember, promoting a hotel in 2024 is more of a requirement than just a recommendation. The one who has better Google rankings and high brand awareness, that hotel attracts more customers.
We, the experts at Red Rocket Software are well aware of what visitors are demanding from hotels today and what marketing tricks work effectively. Website development, SMM marketing services, brand awareness and much more are the steps we can help you implement in your hotel business so that you can attract more guests.
Frequently asked questions
What are some of the best budget strategies for hotels?
Small hotels usually do not have the same promotional opportunities and funds as large hotel chains. That is why they choose budget strategies that include social media, blogging on the website, email marketing and online catalogs.
How to use social media to promote a hotel?
Today, social media is a powerful tool for promoting any kind of business, including hotels. You can use Instagram and Facebook to create useful informational posts about the hotel, the area, and additional services. TikTok and YouTube allow you to publish videos that can capture the attention of guests.
What’s the future for the hotel industry?
The hotel industry continues to grow rapidly every year. A trend worth noting is that the majority of bookings are made through websites. It is expected that in the future, almost every booking will be made online through a website or mobile app.
