The hospitality sector is highly competitive and crowded, with numerous hotels and Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) vying for visibility. The multitude of channels through which business flows complicates budget allocation and focus, demanding a strategic approach to resource distribution. The challenge extends beyond attracting new guests; it involves engaging potential guests who seek out your hotel directly. Thus, balancing immediate objectives and long-term strategies is critical in preparing your infrastructure to weather difficult periods or capitalize on emerging opportunities.
Marketing within the hotel industry is complex and resource-constrained. It is unfeasible to pursue every available marketing channel. Instead, it is advisable to master fundamental marketing principles before exploring more complicated tactics. This approach establishes a solid foundation, setting the stage for implementing more advanced strategies.
Post-COVID-19, the industry faces ongoing recovery challenges marked by erratic data and fluctuating trends. The shift to Google Analytics 4 has introduced additional complexity to data analysis, exacerbating the difficulties of navigating an unpredictable landscape.
Before launching any marketing initiatives, ensuring that all data points are correctly configured and actively gathering information is paramount. Reliable data collection is essential. With it, articulating reasons for increases and declines in direct booking revenue to stakeholders, collaborating with revenue management teams, and identifying specific issues becomes significantly easier. The inability to accurately diagnose problems can lead to detrimental decisions, risking damage to or the closure of lucrative revenue streams.
Mastering Hotel Marketing
Mastering the basics of hotel marketing is crucial for any property looking to enhance its visibility and attract more guests. This article is structured into four distinct sections, each designed to give you a deep dive into the fundamental aspects of hotel marketing:
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Must-Have Tools & Software: Discover the essential technologies that can streamline your operations and amplify your marketing efforts. These tools are vital for enhancing efficiency and driving guest engagement.
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Marketing Channels: Explore the various channels through which you can promote your hotel, from digital platforms to traditional media. Understanding how to use these channels effectively is key to reaching your target audience.
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Reporting: Dive into the importance of tracking and analyzing your marketing activities. Effective reporting allows you to measure success, make informed decisions, and optimize your strategies based on data-driven insights.
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Marketing Strategies: Learn about the strategies critical for marketing success. This section covers the foundational tactics that should be part of every hotel's marketing plan.
Each section builds your understanding and provides practical insights on implementing effective marketing techniques in your hotel operations.
Must-Have Tools & Softwares
Leveraging the right tools is crucial for effective hotel marketing. It streamlines operations, engages potential guests, and optimizes marketing efforts. Here are the must-have marketing tools every hotel should consider integrating into its strategy.
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Marketing Automation Platform
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Social Media Management Tools
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Reputation Management Software
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Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
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Content Management System (CMS)
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Web Analytics Tools
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Email Marketing Software
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Digital Advertising Platforms
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Customer Relationship Management (CRM) / Sales Software
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Channel Manager
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Revenue Management Software
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Property Management System (PMS)
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Reporting Tools
1. Marketing Automation Platform
Marketing automation platforms enable hotels to automate repetitive tasks like email marketing, social media posts, and ad campaigns. These tools can segment audiences, personalize messages, and schedule communications to enhance engagement.
2. Social Media Management Tools
Tools like Hootsuite or Buffer allow hotels to manage multiple social media profiles from one dashboard, schedule posts, monitor mentions, and analyze social media traffic.
3. Reputation Management Software
Managing online reviews and guest feedback is crucial for maintaining a hotel's image. Reputation management software helps monitor reviews across platforms and respond promptly to maintain a positive reputation.
4. Search Engine Optimization (SEO) Tools
SEO tools like Moz, SEMrush, or Google Analytics help analyze website traffic, optimize content, and improve search engine rankings to attract more direct bookings.
5. Content Management System (CMS)
A good CMS like WordPress or HubSpot CMS enables easy hotel management of a hotel's website content, allowing for quick updates, blog posts, and the creation of new pages, all while ensuring the site remains SEO-friendly.
6. Web Analytics Tools
Google Analytics and similar tools provide insights into website visitor behavior, allowing hotels to optimize their website and hotel marketing strategies based on real data about what visitors are looking for and how they interact with the site.
7. Email Marketing Software
Email marketing platforms like Mailchimp or Campaign Monitor offer features to create, send, and analyze email campaigns. They are crucial for guest retention, offering special deals, and keeping past guests engaged with the brand.
8. Digital Advertising Platforms
Platforms like Google Ads and Facebook Ads Manager are essential for running paid advertising campaigns targeted at specific audiences, helping hotels increase visibility and drive hotel bookings during need periods.
9. Customer Relationship Management (CRM) / Sales Software
CRM software helps hotels manage guest relationships more effectively by tracking all interactions, personalizing communications, and identifying sales opportunities. It is vital for maintaining guest loyalty and increasing repeat hotel bookings.
TIP While there are numerous hotel-focused sales and CRM tools available, we particularly recommend HubSpot for its unparalleled ability to connect marketing and sales teams in ways the hotel industry has rarely seen. Especially effective when integrated with your booking engine or PMS system through OpenAPI, HubSpot enables all essential marketing channels and sales efforts to be managed from one place. This seamless connectivity ensures that every guest interaction is informed by a unified strategy that enhances both guest satisfaction and business efficiency.
10. Channel Manager
A channel manager oversees various booking channels, such as OTAs, GDS, and direct bookings, to prevent overbookings and ensure consistent pricing. It updates inventory across all platforms automatically and in real time.
11. Revenue Management Software
This tool analyzes market data, demand, and other factors to optimize pricing strategies. Revenue management software is crucial for maximizing profitability by adjusting rates based on demand forecasts.
12. Property Management System (PMS)
A PMS collects and stores a wealth of guest data, including demographics, preferences, past bookings, and spending patterns. Marketers can use this data to segment their audience and tailor more personalized and effective hotel marketing campaigns.
TIP A robust PMS system equipped with an Open API is ideal, as it facilitates seamless integration with other tools, particularly marketing and sales-focused CRMs like HubSpot.
13. Reporting Tools
Numerous reporting tools exist for various hotel departments, but until now, none specifically catered to marketing like Hotel Metrics. This tool monitors every step from the initial interaction to the booking, capturing guest behavior directly within the booking engine. It integrates marketing metrics with hotel metrics, providing insights such as booking windows and lengths of stay, and allows you to filter data down to your paid campaigns, which is unprecedented.
Hotel Metrics offers a calendar view showing guest search dates, forecasting demand, and tracking booking abandonment with a heat map to identify lost bookings and improve conversion rates.
A standout feature is the detailed monthly report, which displays revenue figures based on the month bookings were made, along with demand details. They have even reverse-engineered the data to show monthly revenue numbers, highlighting past contributions with all relevant metrics.
Marketing Channels
In today's competitive hospitality industry, effectively promoting your hotel requires a strategic approach that leverages a variety of marketing channels. Here, we explore the key digital channels you can utilize, highlighting their importance and offering tips on how to maximize their potential.
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Social Media Platforms
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Search Engines
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Meta Search Advertising
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Google Hotel Finder (Local SEO)
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Email Marketing
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Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)
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Traditional Media (Print, Radio, TV)
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Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
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Hotel Website
1. Social Media Platforms
Instagram remains the leading platform, with Facebook maintaining some interest, and hotels are increasingly exploring TikTok. Although social media advertising is the most costly and tracking its revenue can be challenging, retargeting on these platforms is essential.
2. Search Engines
Google continues to lead the market. Many hotels are not investing enough in SEO, allowing OTAs to control search engine results for category-related queries. The few hotels that concentrate on the top of the funnel are the true winners.
TIP Consider using Explore+, a tool that generates Digital Travel Guidelines for Hotel websites with content tailored to nearby attractions. This will enhance your hotel's authority in Google's view and could help feature your hotel when potential guests start planning their trips.
3. Meta Search Advertising
Google Hotel Finder is expanding its market presence, with other Meta Search channels attempting to keep pace by imitating its advertising strategies and encouraging hotels to increase spending by restricting booking links to OTAs.
TIP Google Hotel Finder relies heavily on SEO and Local SEO. Without a robust, ongoing strategy, your visibility in organic category searches will be restricted, and your advertising impressions will be limited as well.
4. Google Hotel Finder (Local SEO)
Google Hotel Finder is rapidly expanding, while other Meta Search channels collaborate with OTAs to curb its growth. Google offers free bookings via Meta Search Advertising, making it essential to link your booking engine to Google Hotel Finder. Failing to do so means that when a guest searches for your brand and lands on your Google Business Profile, they will see OTA pricing and be redirected to them, which could result in substantial revenue loss.
TIP To enhance your GHF visibility, one of the simplest strategies is citation building. This involves creating new directory listings or updating existing ones, ensuring that your hotel name, address, phone number, category, and website URL are consistent, as Google prioritizes this consistency in their rankings.
5. Email Marketing
Email marketing is crucial in the hospitality industry, driving revenue by maintaining direct communication with guests. Its strength lies in consistent, personalized engagement, fostering relationships, repeat bookings, and loyalty. By segmenting audiences and tailoring messages, hotels ensure emails remain relevant and effective.
6. Online Travel Agencies (OTAs)
Online Travel Agencies (OTAs) dominate the hospitality market, aggressively using services like exclusive deals and loyalty programs to attract customers. They leverage technology to enhance booking and customer satisfaction, influencing hotel marketing and distribution strategies.
Despite the universal desire among hotels to boost direct bookings, the reality is that OTAs play an indispensable role in the industry. They provide unparalleled reach and exposure, especially for smaller or less well-known properties. During periods of low occupancy or when launching new properties, hotels may find it beneficial to advertise on OTA platforms to increase their visibility and attract a broader audience.
TIP Each time our clients launched advertising campaigns on Expedia, we observed a notable increase in their Google Ads' impression share for our brand keywords. This boost in visibility often led to heightened brand awareness and engagement. Additionally, we occasionally encountered price parity issues within Google Hotel Finder. This situation arose when the prices displayed on Google Hotel Finder did not align with those on Expedia, potentially causing confusion among potential guests and impacting their booking decisions. Addressing these discrepancies is crucial to maintaining a consistent pricing strategy across all platforms and ensuring a seamless customer experience.
7. Traditional Media (Print, Radio, TV):
Conventional advertising channels that include newspapers, magazines, radio, and television. These are used to reach a broad audience and create brand awareness. It is not as common channel for hotels.
TIP Certain print media outlets maintain a strong online presence, allowing for targeted display advertising on their websites. Some even have their own display ad systems. Additionally, we enjoy sponsoring articles that we believe potential guests might read.
8. Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC)
Pay-Per-Click Advertising (PPC) remains a crucial channel for hotels to allocate their marketing budgets, not primarily for the purpose of building brand awareness or attracting new guests who are actively searching for accommodations, but rather due to the intense competition posed by Online Travel Agencies (OTAs).
These companies invest heavily in advertising on brand-specific keywords, often outbidding hotels for their own brand terms. This aggressive strategy by OTAs can divert potential direct bookings away from hotel websites, making it imperative for hotels to engage in PPC campaigns to protect their brand presence in search results. This approach not only helps in safeguarding direct booking channels but also in maintaining a competitive edge in the digital marketplace.
TIP We recommend avoiding the use of Google's Performance Max (PMax). Our initial research indicates that PMax campaigns fail to deliver strong revenue results without brand keywords, raising concerns about the keywords they target. Additionally, the AI-generated ads from PMax often appear unattractive and frequently convey incorrect messaging.
9. Hotel Website
The hotel website is the cornerstone of your entire marketing strategy, serving as the central hub where all your promotional efforts converge. It is the primary platform where potential guests will form their first impressions of your property, explore your offerings, and ultimately make their booking decisions.
The journey doesn't end once visitors land on your site. An inadequately managed website or poor user experience can sabotage all your marketing efforts, resulting in a loss of potential direct bookings.
TIP Our tests with hundreds of hotel websites revealed that using "Check Availability" as a call-to-action instead of "Book Now" increases engagement with your booking engine and boosts bookings.
10. Booking Engine
This is the final stage of your marketing efforts, primarily managed by the Revenue teams. However, marketing can still play a crucial role by developing strategies and crafting personalized messages similar to display ads to boost conversion rates and persuade potential guests to make a booking.
TIP Our tests revealed that reducing the number of fields in the checkout / booking process increases bookings.
Reporting
Reporting poses a significant challenge for marketing in the hotel industry. The abundance of channels and reports often fails to translate effectively into hotel metrics. We rely heavily on historical data and lack actionable real-time insights. This situation complicates communication with other departments or ownership.
Hotel Metrics resolves these challenges by integrating all channels, providing a comprehensive view of the marketing funnel and detailed insights into guest behavior. This is why it is our preferred tool.
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Hotel Metrics
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Lightroom (OTAInsights)
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Google Analytics
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Google Business Profile (Google Hotel Finder)
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Google Ads
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Google Search Console
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Microsoft Clarity
1. Hotel Metrics
Hotel Metrics is an innovative tool that thoroughly tracks customer behavior from their initial interaction with a hotel's digital presence to the final booking. This extensive tracking ability gives hotels valuable insights into the entire customer journey, helping them understand not only the actions of potential guests but also the motivations and decision-making processes behind those actions.
By collecting data at every interaction point, Hotel Metrics provides a fresh perspective on hotel marketing strategies, allowing hotels to tailor their approaches more effectively to meet the needs and preferences of their guests. This tool enables hotel marketers to identify trends, optimize conversion rates, and enhance the overall guest experience, ultimately leading to increased bookings and improved customer satisfaction.
2. Lightroom (OTAInsights)
Lighthouse, formerly known as OTA Insight, provides advanced hotel revenue management solutions designed to simplify complex processes. Their services include actionable insights, business intelligence, and pricing solutions that help hotels maximize revenue and drive growth.
3. Google Analytics
Google Analytics is a powerful web analytics service offered by Google that tracks and reports website traffic. It provides insights into user behavior, helping hotels understand how guests interact with their site. With features like real-time data, audience segmentation, and conversion tracking, Google Analytics enables users to optimize their online presence and improve hotel marketing strategies.
TIP Hotel Metrics consolidates data from Google Analytics, Google My Business, Google Ads, and the Booking Engine, offering a detailed funnel report.
4. Google Business Profile (Google Hotel Finder)
Google Business Profile reporting provides valuable insights into how customers find and interact with your business online. It includes data on search queries that lead users to your profile, the number of views your profile receives, and actions taken by customers, such as visiting your website or requesting directions.
5. Google Ads
Google Ads reporting provides insights into the performance of your advertising campaigns. It includes metrics such as impressions, clicks, click-through rates, and conversions, helping you understand how well your ads are reaching and engaging your target audience.
6. Google Search Console
Google Search Console provides insights into how your hotel site appears in search, including data on search queries, click-through rates, and indexing status. By using this tool, you can identify issues affecting your site's visibility, submit sitemaps, and receive alerts about potential problems, enabling you to improve your site's SEO and overall user experience.
7. Google Search Console
Google Search Console provides insights into how your hotel site appears in search, including data on search queries, click-through rates, and indexing status. By using this tool, hoteliers can identify issues affecting their site's visibility, submit sitemaps, and receive alerts about potential problems, enabling you to improve your site's SEO and overall user experience.
8. Microsoft Clarity
Microsoft Clarity offers robust reporting capabilities that include heatmaps and session recordings, allowing hoteliers to visualize guest interactions on their hotel website. Heatmaps show where users click, scroll, and move their mouse, helping you understand engagement patterns. Session recordings provide playback of individual user sessions, enabling you to observe user behavior and identify potential issues or areas for improvement. These insights can help optimize your website's design, functionality and user experience.
Marketing Strategies
Digital marketing today is centered around a multi-channel approach, with strategies ranging from Content Marketing to Social Media Marketing. Relying solely on PPC or SEO won't make a substantial difference for your hotel; the crucial factor is how these channels work together towards a unified objective.
Additionally, regardless of the strategy hoteliers choose, the technical aspects of marketing channels present challenges. They are interconnected and influence each other in various ways.
For instance, your SEO and content strategy affects your Google Ads performance. If you bid on a keyword but have limited content related to it, the cost for that keyword will be significantly higher.
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Inbound Marketing
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Omnichannel Marketing
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Growth Marketing
1. Inbound Marketing
At Gourmet Marketing, we are big fan of inbound marketing which focuses on attracting customers by providing valuable, relevant, and helpful content that meets their needs and solves their problems. It’s about pulling customers to your brand organically, rather than pushing messages to them.
For example, our Explore+ is a customizable digital travel guide for hotels, serving as an SEO powerhouse that boosts our clients' visibility at the top of the funnel and expands our advertising opportunities.
2. Omnichannel Marketing
Typically, major hotel brands or OTAs concentrate on an omnichannel marketing strategy that aims to deliver a seamless, integrated customer experience across various channels and touchpoints. This approach ensures that customers engage with your brand in a consistent and cohesive manner, regardless of whether they interact online, in-person, or through a mix of platforms.
3. Growth Marketing
The most common marketing strategy for independent hotels is a data-driven approach that optimizes every stage of the customer lifecycle to achieve scalable and sustainable growth. Unlike traditional marketing, which usually focuses on the top of the funnel (awareness and acquisition), growth marketing aims to improve performance across the entire funnel, from acquisition to retention and beyond.