Hotel Marketing Strategies to Double Your Bookings

Are  you a hotelier and looking forward to growing your business?

No worries here you will find many effective strategies to turn your visitors into your customers.

In 2018, there were 66.7% direct website bookings, 9.1% marketplace bookings, and 24.3% third-party service bookings.

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From the above data, you can estimate the importance of using digital mediums to connect with your potential customers especially through your website.

These numbers are growing day by day as more and more people are shifting towards technology.

In this article, we will discuss many hotel marketing strategies that can be adopted by hotels to attract customers and stand among their competitors in the growing tough competition of the hotel industry.

Hotel marketing strategy includes various marketing strategies and techniques to accelerate their business and have a positive impact on their customers.

Hotel marketing strategy ranges from launching a hotel, increasing the number of bookings, building brand awareness, maintaining the trust among the customers, and managing reputation.

These strategies are adopted to attract more and more customers and stand ahead of your competitors.

In the present scenario of a digital world, the best way to do hotel marketing is through search engines, social media platforms, email, and a variety of other channels.

Do Your Research

Your marketing strategy determines the type of guests you get, people choose their journey or book a hotel depending on their budget, interest, or need.

Research about your prospects is very important, it helps you to know and target your audience well. By doing this you can be aware of the interest and requirements of your customers.

Targeting an audience has always proved to be an effective market strategy where you can categorize your audience depending on similar needs.

In marketing, the strategy of targeting an audience brings a large market into smaller groups to focus on a specific group of customers. Instead of focusing on the entire market, you can put your effort into connecting with specific and desired groups and try to reach their demand.

Finding customers is good for the growth of your business but finding the right customer is essential. The right customers are the real customers who will remain with you for long, share their experience on social media, refer you to their friends, and write reviews of your business. Their feedback helps you to process your business to the best.

As a marketer, it is most important to know your target audience. If you succeed in satisfying your target audience your business will definitely reach great success.

Knowing the target audience helps you to determine what methods are used to attract more customers and how to add value for retaining loyal customers. Targeting audiences on the basis of their income budget often proves helpful in the hotel industry.

Focus On Your Online Presence

Showing an online presence is a necessity for all businesses in the present digital world. Businesses like hotels cannot afford to ignore different digital platforms.

SEO proves as an effective strategy to optimize and improve the ranking of your hotel websites on different search engines like Google, Yahoo, and others.

This brings traffic to your website and strengthens your online presence which ultimately accelerates your hotel’s booking good SEO of your website assures you to keep yourself ahead of your competitors.

Researchers prove that users search for their query and get a list of results. They ultimately click on the webpage which ranks first, some of them click on the second-ranking webpage but hardly move to the third or fourth webpage.

The reason behind this is they believe to get answers to all their questions on the very first webpage if they want to know something more then they move to the second one.

Here are the important SEO tips for hotels, let’s discuss how can they be effective for you :

Write Small and Unique Web Page Title and Description

The basic and the most important way to improve your website is to provide a unique title to your webpage and meta description that provides people an idea of what your page is about.

Unique title and meta description on each page tells your visitors what your particular page is about, what information each page contains and why they should visit your site, and in what way you are better than your competitors.

You can also use targeted keywords to rank better in search engines. 

Target the Keywords and Phrases Associated With Your Hotel

Spend your time doing research and choose keywords and phrases wisely which will help search engines to locate your website. Use these keywords and phrases at least once on your website.

Using the right keywords is the crucial component of SEO. Search engines like Google rank a website determining the use of keywords rightly.

Until and unless your page content reflects the keyword searched by the user your website will not be shown in the search result.

Research and target all the words and phrases people might use to find the hotel in your area. It can be a little tough but once you get on to the right path it can be extremely beneficial to you and can accelerate your business.

Make Sure Your Page Load Quickly

Design your website keeping in mind the interest of your visitors, no one wants to visit a site that takes time to get loaded.

Don’t overcrowd your website with irrelevant things, your website should be quick to load and contain only those things which are of your visitor’s interest and for what they have come to your site.

Upload only necessary photos, like the photos of the rooms, your amenities, and your location are very crucial but don’t upload too many photos as this may cause your website to load slowly and can affect your SEO.

Your website ranking depends on the fact how quickly your page gets loaded.

Leverage PPC or Page Per Click

When you do a Google search you must have noticed several ads popping up, these ads are to grab the attention of the visitors.

The hotel industry these days has become very competitive to attract the customers they use the strategy of Pay Per Click or PPC.

PPC is a type of marketing strategy where the advertisers pay a fee each time an Ad is clicked which results in bringing a new visitor to their website.

It is an effective way to generate more bookings for your hotel through your website. This strategy should be effectively implemented to increase the number of visitors to your site.

Under the strategy of PPC, the hotel targets a keyword to promote their website’s online ranking. You must research your target audience and their online search interest and then select a keyword for PPC.

Your keyword must be relevant to your brand and specific to your targeted audience who intended to book with you. The number of clicks on the link determines the amount that is paid by the advertiser. It is a cost-effective strategy to bring traffic to your hotel website.

If you are using the PPC or Pay Per Click method of marketing but you are not successful in converting your visitors to customers then you must add an exclusive deal such as a discount or promotional code. This will give your visitors do quick booking and get the direct benefit.

Be Social

Your presence on social media increases trust among your guests and future customers.

Social media can be used as a platform by the hotel industry to have to communicate with customers and clients and identify their needs.

Hoteliers can share content and run campaigns about their service, special offers on social media to grow their business.

Related: SEO vs Social Media

Let’s have a look at how hotels can use social media to grow their business:

Social media can be used to monitor audience behavior

By using various social media platforms hoteliers can stay in touch with their audience. Hoteliers can post the review of their customers about their good service and hospitality.

Hoteliers can target their audience by gathering information about them from these social media platforms. They can categorize them depending on their age, hobbies, language is spoken, location, travelogue, etc.

Social media to evaluate customer relationship

Social media platforms are not only to be used to collect customer’s information. It is a transparent platform to put customer’s responses and tackle them effectively.

Hoteliers must update their products and services wisely depending upon customer’s feedback. Undoubtedly, the hotel industry has stiff competition and social media can only be effective to hold you among and ahead of your competitors.

Increasing brand awareness

Social media not only generates immediate booking but also make your strong customer base. Don’t forget your present visitor can be your future customer, you can connect with your target audience by sending them the appropriate content.

People will find what you offer and if matches with their interests, then they will definitely be inclined to book your hotel.

Target Local Audience

To target your local audience it is essential to update your profile on Google My Business (GMB).

Researches show that GMB profile can bring over 50% of organic traffic to a hotel website and result in accelerating your room booking.

Setting up a profile on Google My Business is completely free and easy, you just need to verify your business by sending out a postcard containing a pin code to your business address. It helps you to promote your business locally to get more customers.

Once you verify your hotel’s Google My Business account, you need to make sure that your contact details are up to date. You also need to check your access to the page (as owner or manager) and ensure that the website link points back to your hotel’s website.

Here are the ways to improve your business local ranking on Google:

Enter Complete Data

Make sure you have entered complete business information in Google My Business, so users may know what you do, where you are, and when they can visit you.

You must provide information like-

• Physical Address
• Phone Number
• Category
• Attributes
• Your location
• Your working hours

You must update your business hours regularly, when do you open and close, special hours of holidays and events. Verify your business location so they can be shown in the local search results across Google products like Maps and search.

Importance of Customer Service

A satisfied customer is a key to any business’s success. But when we talk about the hotel industry the satisfaction of the customers is vital to growing your business.

When your guests book you they look forward to your staff making their stay relaxing and comfortable, great customer care service directly adds up to economic growth.

Loyalty Programs

Under the marketing strategy, hotels run loyalty programs to attract customers and to hold on to their business.

A loyalty program for hotels usually is run by big hotel groups. These days loyalty programs have become the heart and soul of the hotel industry.

Loyalty program in the hotel industry works in more or less similar ways as frequent flyer mile rewards in the airline’s industry. Guests in the hotel receive free awards for making repeated stays in the hotel.

Measure Efforts

Measuring and optimizing efforts is essential in the hotel industry to evaluate proper operation and profitability.

Hotel KPI or Hotel Key Performance Indicator set a standard measure to rate the success of the hotel business.

Hoteliers closely monitor their KPIs in order to optimize their operation and enhance their profit.

Let’s discuss the Key Performance Indicators or KPI in the hotel industry Which can help you to grow your hotel business:

• Total Available Rooms
• Average Daily Rate or ADR
• Revenue per Available Room or RevPAR
• Occupancy Rate
• Online Review
• Average Length of Stay or ALOS
• Market Penetration Index or MPI

Importance of Email Marketing

Email marketing is one of the best hotel marketing strategies because it helps to acquire new customers.

Grow the list of your subscribers and always send them useful content that is of their need, send useful information and pre-arrival reminders.

After a stay, you can collect their feedback via mail and send them thanks for visiting you. You can invite them to your loyalty programs. These little efforts generate major results.

Thus, hotel industries can adopt these marketing strategies to grow their business and make a unique identity in the competitive market of the hospitality industry.

The hospitality industry is the most dynamic sector in the world. it keeps its customers at the heart of its operation and works to deliver the best possible experience.