Digital Marketing Tips to Make Your Hotel Stand Out

Smaller independent and boutique hotels, however, can make their unique businesses stand out without investing too much in marketing. Here are some of the best digital marketing strategies gathered from different travel industry blogs that can make your hotel stand out, no matter how big or small it is:

Stand out from the crowd

Get personal and tell a story. Hotels have a lot of stories behind them. Even a simple fifteen-room motel by the highway can tell a great story.

Put your website to good use

Your site should always be kept up to date and should be accessible through all devices – desktops, tablets or smartphones. The site should highlight what makes the hotel unique and should have professional content along with engaging blogs and impressive photo galleries. This will increase the number of direct bookings.

Focus on your specialization

What makes your hotel special? You need to understand that and make your hotel more visible in distribution channels that are relevant to your market segment. For instance, Tablet Hotels is a great place to get listed if you own a boutique hotel.

Provide a customized guest experience

Provide additional options for those who make bookings. You can create partnerships with local restaurants, attractions, and tours and offer those as add-ons for the customers who have booked your hotel.

Give loyalty rewards to improve guest conversions

You can reward returning guests a 10 percent discount on the booking if they book directly through your website. You can offer a discount code to any returning customer. This is much lower than the commission that you have to pay to the OTAs.

Provide different booking packages

Just like product offers, you can provide offers on different room types for customers who make a booking. This is something that would be exclusively available through direct bookings. For instance, you can have a package that includes a day at the local spa with a room booking.

Make bookings simpler

Make the booking procedure as simple as possible. If people can check room availability and book a room from whatever device they are using, you will lose fewer potential customers.

Leverage social media marketing

You can increase your online presence by being active on the popular social media platforms. It opens up new communication channels, and you can get in touch with customers in a much more informal manner. You can get to know your customers more and use that information to create better marketing campaigns. Social media can drastically improve brand awareness and help build long-term customer relationships.

Make targeted marketing campaigns

To provide a better experience and relevant offers, you need to understand who your target market is, what they do, and what they seek. You can use online reviews, surveys, marketing tools such as Google Analytics, Insights on Facebook and Twitter and so on. As you sift through the analytics data, you can get a good idea of what kind of people look up your websites or social media profiles, and what exactly they are looking for. By understanding their behavior, you can better target the right audience for your marketing campaigns.

Build a mobile website

People often use their smartphones while doing some background research or booking hotels. Make sure your site is built to be mobile-friendly and responsive if you don’t want to miss out on that part of the market.

Make a digital marketing strategy

A part of knowing your customers means understanding the tools that they use. For instance, what service they use to plan a trip, what social media platforms they are active in, the sites and platforms where they read reviews, and so on. You can then tune your marketing campaigns accordingly and your hotels will pop up more in searches and social media channels. This will give you more exposure throughout the entire process from the initial planning stage to the post-stay reviews.

The Bottom Line

For any size and type of hotel, it is crucial to market your hotel correctly, no matter what channel you use. Stand out from the crowd by emphasizing on the specialties of the hotel, offer your customers benefits, and make sure you focus on building a long-lasting relationship with them.

Web Connection Asia provides digital marketing solutions for hotels – get in touch today to see how we can help!

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