Month: November 2022

The luxury resort industry is one of the most competitive industries in the world. It’s important to focus on showing off your resort’s top features with a high-end resort marketing plan. Of course, creating a lucrative marketing plan can be difficult, leaving you wondering where you should start.

There are several crucial factors to consider when developing a resort marketing plan to stand out from other resorts. These factors include communicating the unique aspects of your resort to your guests, elevating your brand with unique and engaging content, and influencing potential customers much earlier in the marketing funnel.

To help you on your journey, we’re going to provide you with an in-depth guide to digital marketing strategies for luxury resorts. Continue reading to learn more!

What Is Resort Marketing?

Every single year, millions of people go on vacation, traveling to luxury resorts to enjoy the atmosphere and the many amenities that they provide. With so many competing resorts, however, resort managers must market their best amenities to show travelers that what they have to offer is better than the next resort.

A great resort marketing plan includes a variety of marketing strategies, including advertising, public relations, promotions, sales, and any events or activities that promote a luxury resort.

Benefits of Luxury Marketing

There are several benefits of luxury marketing, especially with the rise of travel interest in the past year post-COVID. One of the most important aspects of luxury marketing is that it increases brand recognition, and we all know how well having a solid brand can help you stand out from the competition.

With a high-end brand reputation, you can command premiums with your recognition and increase bookings.

Plus, having the right marketing strategies in place will help you to learn more about who your ideal guests are, what kinds of content work most for them, and more.

Let’s look at a few strategies that you can use to build brand awareness for your luxury resort and turn more leads into paying customers.

Luxury Resort Digital Marketing Strategy Ideas

1. Go Mobile

One of the first things you should consider is going mobile before anything else. While mobile-friendly websites used to be a great suggestion, now, they are a must. Mobile devices are how most customers are interacting with the internet these days, and even Google’s algorithm ranks its websites in a “mobile-first” manner.

It’s important that you are able to reach your guests where they go first, and most guests are looking at their phones roughly three hours per day. It’s equally crucial that your mobile site loads quickly because you can lose visitors if it takes longer than three seconds to load.

2. Value Experience and Emotions

Whenever you come across a story that touches your emotions, it sticks with you. The same goes for marketing your luxury resort.

When you make an emotional connection with potential customers, you can differentiate your property from others. To consider how valuable their experience might be, they should see the major positive difference between you and your competition.

When coming up with emotional marketing strategies, make sure to focus on your demographics.

3. Online Reviews Management

When you manage your online reviews, you manage your online reputation, which is crucial for any business. If you have a bad review or multiple bad reviews, you can drive potential visitors away.

Doing so can hurt your business for years to come.

When you proactively manage your luxury resort’s reputation, you hold more power. It’s important to stay on top of websites such as Yelp and TripAdvisor, though also crucial that you keep your eyes on less industry-specific sites such as Google Business Profile.

4. Social Media

You should ensure that your luxury resort uses at least a single social media platform to market your offerings. Social media is one of the most widespread forms of marketing in the world today.

Today, around seven in ten American uses social media, meaning you can’t afford to leave social media out of your plan.

If you want to market to younger consumers, you might consider heading over to Twitter or Instagram. Make sure your content is consistently updated and appeals to your customers.

Your strategy should revolve around user-generated content, wherein you share any content made by your visitors.

5. PPC Ads

PPC is another one of the most important strategies of luxury resorts. With PPC advertising, you directly advertise to customers and pay each time someone clicks on your ad. You can run PPC on multiple platforms, including social media platforms and search engines.

You can bid on the keywords that you want your ads to appear for. With a quality PPC ad strategy in place, you can elevate your online presence and gain more leads.

6. Advertising on Travel Metasearch Engines

A travel metasearch engine is a website that compares rates for different hotels using various internet sources, whether direct from hotels or from online travel agents. Note that these travel metasearch engines are platforms through which booking channels can make their services, not the actual booking channels themselves.

Travel metasearch engines are very similar to digital ad platforms, as they earn money through CPA (cost per acquisition), CPI (cost per impression), and CPC (cost per click.)

Consumers look at these search engines to make more informed decisions, which is why it is important for you to consider advertising on them. In fact, the metasearch sector has grown into a $6 billion advertising space, making up for a large chunk of the advertising pie.

7. Video Marketing

Hotels and luxury resorts find video marketing to be very effective. With this type of resort marketing, you don’t have to try and describe what your property looks like to your customers. Rather, you can just show them through high-quality video and video storytelling.

The beauty of videos is that you can repurpose them for multiple platforms.

For example, while you might have a long-form marketing video on YouTube, you could cut that same video into short clips for use in marketing emails or social media.

8. Content Marketing

Content marketing is a very strategic approach that resorts take by sharing relevant online material to attract guests, whether that is videos, social media posts, blogs, etc. With content marketing, you can stimulate interest in the services your luxury resort offers without explicitly selling it.

9. Email Marketing

Email marketing is still one of the most highly effective methods for maintaining existing customers and reaching out to new ones. With a good email marketing campaign, you can send out seasonal offers or give potential guests behind-the-scenes looks at upcoming events.

We recommend using email marketing to offer special discounts and deals during the off-season, as it can continuously remind us about the excitement that comes around during the on-season.

10. Differentiate from Competitors

The most innovative luxury resorts know exactly what it is that makes them different from other resorts. It’s important that you take the time to consider what separates you from your competition.

• Is it your location?
• How about your amenities?
• Is it the kind of service that your resort offers?

You need to let potential guests know why they should choose your resort over another resort, and the way to do that is by marketing what makes your resort so special.

11. Develop Your Brand

• What is your brand?
• How are people supposed to feel when they stay at your resort?
• Is it adventurous or serene?
• Is it about luxury and indulgence or relaxation and self-exploration?

As a luxury resort, you need a strong brand to compete. We wrote a whole piece on what makes brand identity so important in the world of hotels and why you should consider hiring a professional resort marketing team to optimize your branding efforts.

Hiring a Marketing Company for Resorts

While you can theoretically take on all of the marketing tasks above, your time is likely better spent worrying about the daily operations of your business and how you can continue to grow and evolve.

A strong marketing company can build you a high-converting website, post on your social media, manage your reputation, and create email marketing content that is effective.

Final Thoughts – Taking Resort Marketing to the Next Level

Here at Media Boom, we understand the challenges of the travel industry and the amount of work that goes into running a successful and well-branded resort. If you want to launch effective campaigns for your luxury resort, now might be the time to get in touch with an experienced agency that can give you the results you need. Contact us here today to find out more about what Media Boom can do for you.

Over time, all over the world, people continue to embrace social media platforms for different purposes. By extension, the use of different social media for hotels keeps growing every year. 

One report from Statista shows that as many as 4.59 billion people worldwide are users of social media platforms in 2022.

However, the reality for hotel marketers employing these social media platforms is different. If you get close to any of them, you will discover how tough a task it is for them to remain efficient. Connecting to previous, existing, and likely hotel visitors on social media can be a daunting task.

Therefore, the question is: what are the potential benefits your business can derive from social media marketing for hotels? Are the gains worth the pain?

How to use social media for hotels?

The function social media play in tourism and hospitality is precisely to engage and connect. Thanks to their vast range of users, these platforms provide firms with a massive shot at marketing growth. Now, hotel marketers can engage their audience seamlessly thanks to social media. Hotels can now push out their services and build a productive online presence on social media for themselves.

A fun fact is that 97% of hotel visitors share moments with their tips on social media platforms. Everyone does that! With this, hoteliers can easily promote their property and draw in more visitors.

Other Advantages of Social Media for Hotels

Guests Understand Visual Content Better

About 72% of consumers like to know about a commodity or service via video compared to text whenever they can. Guests spend more time on a website that features a video than one that features other kinds of content. In fact, they do so 88% of the time. Therefore, a good visual marketing output will improve their general opinion of your hotel. As a matter of fact, it is especially recommended in luxury hotel social media marketing.

Social Media Means More Brand Awareness

A consistent and effective social media presence can do a lot for your hotel. Certain casual activities from your guests can do your brand a lot of good. Activities like visits, clicks, likes, post re-shares, and tagging you in a picture can be all your hotel needs. 

So, be sure to make the most of it.

Better Chance At Reaching Your Ideal Client

Daily, an average social media user spends two-and-a-half hours online. Additionally, about 49% of the global population searches the internet often. 

Hence, you have a better chance to reach just who you must reach. Plus, with custom ads directed at particular demographics and regions, you can harness this potential.

In all, social media is an important aspect of your hotel marketing plan. Moreover, it is not enough to make irregular, one-off posts for your packages or services. 

You must ensure you develop a massive social media presence. That way, your brand stays in the hearts of tourists. Likewise, you can yield more income for your property.

Now, let’s look at the 6 best social media platforms for hotels – and how you can use them to your advantage.

1. Facebook

As the most visited social media platform, Facebook provides you with tons of openings to publicize your hotel services. This is in addition to the fact that Facebook is clearly an unavoidable social media marketing tool for your hotel.

Over time, Facebook enjoyed its fair dose of complaints and disputes. Some of these disputes include pressing privacy issues. This might explain the reason behind Facebook’s inability to win over the teenagers today. You will find a ton of adults aged 65 and more on Facebook today before you find one teenager. 

Regardless, Facebook remains a crucial social media platform to feature in your hotel marketing agenda.

Do not forget! The aim is for you to be where your clients are. Therefore, it suffices to say that with about 2.45 billion active users monthly,  your customers are still there.

For instance, in the United States, among those functional Facebook users, 74% of them are daily visitors on the site.

Realistically, present-day Facebook users avoid scrolling their newsfeeds. They simply prefer to chat with family and friends on Messenger. Also, they look out for nearby Events, involve in Groups, and stream live videos. There is a 400% chance that a Facebook user decides to watch live streams rather than pre-recorded videos.

Tips For Your Hotel To Get The Best From Facebook

• Recognize and take charge of customer questions via Facebook Messenger. Again, you can use a hotel chatbot for this.
• Develop and share Facebook Events for your hotel. With the Events tool, you can publicize fitness sessions, intriguing seminars or talks, brunch specials, spa promotions, etc. 
• Ensure you make use of a video header.
• Your team should personally take part in relevant groups. They can give helpful local guidance to tourists. Then, share content about your hotel’s destination. However, be sure they do not do too much as regards sales.
• Team up with your HR to develop a Facebook Group. That way, you can effectively engage your employees and communicate internally.
• Make the most of live videos! You can stream a walking tour of the property, a free cocktail session, a supervised meditation, etc.
• When you develop a marketing budget, pay attention to Facebook ads. 
• In your Facebook ads, include the “Book Now” button. 

2. Instagram

Instagram comes next after Facebook when considering the most visited social media platforms for everyday use. 

According to reports from Pew Research, 60% of Instagram users visit the platform at least once every day. Also, 21% visit at least once every week.

Also, Instagram users spend an average of 53 minutes every day surfing through the app. Without a doubt, users spend a lot of time on Instagram.

Over the years, Instagram continues to show why it is an influential discovery platform. This platform is instrumental, especially in the initial phases of a buyer’s purchasing journey.

• 81% of Instagram users confirm they employ this platform to research new products or services.
• 80% of Instagram users declare the app comes in handy for them when making buying conclusions.
• 83% of Instagram users find unique products and services on the platform daily.
• Also, influencers play a major role. 89% of marketers confirm how prolific Instagram is as a social media tool for influencer marketing.

Tips For Your Hotel To Get The Best From Instagram

• Make the most of new features like reels, stories, boomerangs, live videos, and advertisements. 
• Ensure you are known differently with your collection of sharp images and a detailed visual aesthetic.
• Do well to create uniform themes or a series. That way, you keep your followers expectant of new content.
• Consider a hashtag before using it. Ensure it tallies with your marketing strategy.
• Optimize your hotel’s Instagram content for the Explore section to reach a wider audience and attract potential guests. This involves strategic tagging, engaging captions, and captivating visuals that encourage users to explore your profile further and ultimately take action.
• Create captions that can get your followers to halt, go through your content, then take action.

3. YouTube

To be the world’s most prominent video-sharing platform is a different kind of brag. What you might not know is that YouTube is precisely the second-largest search engine after Google. Amazing!

All over the world, people watch 1 billion hours of video on YouTube daily. It is rather white interesting to find a different range of content on just one platform. 

If you need a video on how to solve a Rubik’s cube, YouTube will provide it. If you need one on how to troubleshoot a tech problem, you will find it on YouTube. Even a makeup tutorial of one hour or a witty political commentary is all on the YouTube platform. Most importantly, YouTube features travel inspirations as well.

Also, It’s not unusual to find YouTube videos featured at the very top of a random Google search results page.

Furthermore, it is crucial to add one more fact. Running an immensely thriving YouTube channel is a significant investment in money, audience-building, and time.

Rather than employing YouTube like a striving beauty specialist, there is a better way of doing it. For hotels, the approach should be different. Take on the platform as a strategic location to house and keep video content that can boost your business.

Tips For Your Hotel To Get The Best From YouTube

• Make recordings of virtual tours around your meeting and function areas. These recordings will be good exhibits for planners.
• Develop straightforward slideshows of prominent restaurants and other local attractions.
• Publicize your property with a private walking tour. This can be hosted by the GM or the concierge.

4. Twitter

On this platform, there is certainly a lot of noise. The platform averages about 6,000 tweets every second from users. Marketers confirm that Twitter now hosts 80% of total social customer service requests.

Therefore, when you consider Twitter for your hotel’s social media marketing, keep one thing in mind. View your online pedigree and strategy in the eye of Twitter as a customer care site first.

Tips For Your Hotel To Get The Best From Twitter 

• Consider Twitter to be a customer service and guest experience platform as against engagement
• Employ a social media supervision method to follow mentions of your services, username, brand hashtag. Then, ensure you respond to feedback instantly and expertly.
• In your crisis management strategy, take Twitter to be a vital communication channel. This is because 71% of users receive news and updates from this site.
• Attempt to convert extended lists or blogs into Twitter Threads.
• Join in on related Twitter chats.

5. LinkedIn

Note that LinkedIn caters to about 80% of B2B social media leads. Consequently, this is a perfect place for your hotel to affirm its professional influence. With that, you can grow your networks. At the same time, you continue to generate new leads for your hotel.

Tips For Your Hotel To Get The Best From Twitter 

• Motivate your senior managers and sales managers to engage on LinkedIn for professional networking
• Team up with HR to develop and circulate content touching on your business
• Engage with other hotel marketers on the platform

6. Pinterest

Out of every 2 millennials, 1 of them uses Pinterest monthly in the United States. That’s about 50%. Additionally, in 2022 Pinterest reached a peak of 433 million monthly active users globally.

Pinterest is more of a discovery place than a place for engagement. All you have to do is share and save important and related content. Easy!

Tips For Your Hotel To Get The Best From Pinterest 

• Increase traffic to the landing pages on your hotel site that feature destination content.
• Boost particular business areas that are prominent on Pinterest. Some of them are weddings, catering, events, etc.

Who Is Your Audience?

Before carrying out a marketing campaign for your brand through social media, you must know who your audience is.

40% of millennials get inspiration for their hotel and travel booking decisions from pictures on social media. This is a pointer that millennials won’t patronize your hotel without sufficient “social proof.”

Your pedigree as a brand on social media will be vital to your visitor’s decision. To achieve that, you must know who your audience is.

To understand your audience better, go through some previous data. From there, you can discover which type of guests your hotel mostly has. 

The two major divisions are:

• Millennials
• Everyone else may include families, couples, corporations, or groups.

When you find out who visits more often, then you proceed to who your next target will be. In that light, you may have to generate new hotel marketing plans to reach your new audience.

Paid Ads

From the long list of social media platforms, most of them provide paid ads. When you embark on social media marketing, especially for hotels, this can be all the help you need.

When you have a substantial budget, give advertising a shot. Advertise your hotel on various social media platforms.

This is not a recommendation to run ads for years at a go. Rather, give paid ads a try for a few months. Check the have and growth. Then, you can decide whether or not you should continue based on the outcomes.

Conclusion

Finally, social media marketing for hotels is now an integral part of the entire hospitality industry. All the tips provided are proven and well-tested to be legit. With them, you can easily plan your social media marketing strategy for your hotel. You can even do yours in a better fashion.

When executed perfectly and with the right planning, the result is endless.

Building a solid brand for your hotel is not entirely different from building close connections with clients. You will quickly lose friends if you bore them. Of course, it becomes a lot more complex than that. But hotel branding can build an excellent and enduring reputation by being interesting, reliable, genuine, and innovative.

The ultimate goal of developing a fantastic hotel brand is for tourists to feel instant affection and comfort when they hear about your hotel. You want visitors to not only remember your image and brand but also get a feeling of what a stay at your hotel is like and what they can expect.

Aside from selecting the best management, investing in hotel branding is undoubtedly one of the most critical decisions a hotel owner can make. So, let’s look at why it’s so crucial and how to create an efficient hotel branding plan.

What is Hotel Branding?

Hotel branding entails more than just selecting a name, logo, and primary value proposition in the industry. With the introduction, a comprehensive plan must now include storytelling not only to identify but also to express your values. You may develop a brand based on your value provision in this way.

Hotel branding also includes everything from your hotel’s personality and beliefs to your clients’ views, ideas, and experiences. It expresses who you are, everything you believe in, and how you prefer people to see you.

Moreover, in contrast to the brand identity, hotel brands frequently contain quality standards and specifications that each hotel part of the brand must follow. All of this leads to a more distinct brand identity.

Why Should You Have Great Hotel Branding?

Why is digital branding important to your hotel business, and what will be its consequences? In that regard, here are the four key benefits of having excellent hotel branding.

Creates New Revenue Channels

In a busier world than ever before, most people merely do not have the time or enthusiasm to consider your brand. As a result, your responsibility is to guarantee that your brand captures their attention, followed by enlightening them with your brand story in a clear and straightforward style.

Every hotel deserves a legitimate face, and hotel branding is frequently the face that attracts your target audience. Branding also excites people at each touchpoint of their experience and ultimately wins your trust. Creating a hotel brand identity is perhaps one of the most powerful ways to spread information about your company.

The more compelling your brand story, the more likely it will persuade your audience to stick with you and then return and stay over. Converting leads into guests into ambassadors is critical to the hotel business, and it is nearly hard to achieve without excellent branding.

Beat Out the Competition

According to research, people prefer to connect with companies with reliable, reputable companies rather than those who do not. With advances in offline and online technologies, the whole world has become your marketplace. However, to profit from this, your business must draw awareness and stand out from the crowd.

Half of the visitors (51%) click on the first two search results, and 92 percent click on the first page of the search results. About 5% of visitors reach the second page! On the other hand, most passengers are uncertain about the hotel brand to stay in (85%), and they prefer to arrange their trips using search engines (60%) over hotel websites (41 percent).

This suggests people use Google more than a particular hotel website or a comparison website. So, branding your hotel can increase your credibility, providing your clients with a reason to choose you over your competitors.

Build Consumer Trust

Whatever you feel about Starbucks, you can contest that they’re trustworthy. The Starbucks experience (and coffee) is essentially the same everywhere you travel in the world. It’s an offshoot of their identity. Hotels are everywhere. In reality, this is how bigger hotel chains build loyalty: they provide a consistent, dependable experience across several facilities.

Branding is also crucial for small and independent hotels. Consider that your hotel’s customer journey begins online. Creating a cohesive brand from pre-booking to post-stay can allow you to find the ideal guests — and transform them into returning clients.

The style in which you promote your hotel branding can either build or destroy your reputation. People have a high level of faith in OTAs. So even if you’re able to get that buyer onto your website, you still have to prove that you’re legitimate. A cohesive brand, social evidence reviews, and even live chat are all features that contribute to the trustworthiness of your hotel.

Turn Your Customers Into Ambassadors

According to Google Small Business, approximately 5% of word-of-mouth interactions occur online, while 82% occur in person. Therefore, good branding is the only method to impact your guests’ face-to-face interactions.

While not always simple to monitor, how can you expect your passionate supporters to tell your brand’s story if you don’t make it crisp and relatable? Investing in a captivating and clear brand experience will multiply the effect of your satisfied customers and provide you with a terrific ROI.

7 Steps to Create a Legendary Hotel Brand

Numerous things contribute to excellent hotel branding and lead revenues. Whether you’re dealing with a new or older business, expressing your brand concept to your customers is critical.

Here are seven insider tips for creating legendary hotel branding:

1. Consistency Counts

Understand what you believe in and stick to it: this is the first step of your hotel branding process. The ‘image’ of your company must be represented in everything related to your brand. It is thought that this comprises your name and logo, font, stationery, and meals, but go further than that. 

It also covers your music, accent and attitude, promotional campaign, and any social media or marketing emails to gain loyal customers. Each of these transmits a signal. Is that signal stating you’re a mediocre operator or that you have pride in your work? Think about it! 

When your hotel branding is consistent, more travelers will immediately recognize your marketing. The more people recognize you, the more powerful your brand reputation gets! Whether you’re selling an all-inclusive hotel or a cozy bed & breakfast, these advantages should be among your top priorities. To attain them, you must first establish a base of brand consistency.

2. Be True to What Your Hotel Is

Every human being has an inherent want to belong to and interact with a group. Hotels frequently forget that their consumers are people first and foremost before they are paying clients. The most successful hotels can display a relatable, sentient branding strategy that emotionally engages with customers.

According to Simon Gibson, brands must think and act like actual people instead of portraying accommodation as a functional utility.

Consider Airbnb. It was innovative not only because of the business concept but also because it gave customers the impression that they were receiving personalized experiences. For example, the places where visitors slept had history, charisma, and strange rugs.

Simon Gibson

Creating a relevant brand starts with a brand story because a hotel branding story will outlast any changes in employees or management changes.

3. Have a Niche

A niche is a specialty that targets a specific industry or group of customers. Finding a niche is critical for you if you want not only to generate consistent cash but also to build a reputation.

Benefits of Having a Niche. Let’s look at three solid reasons why having a niche in your hotel identity branding is essential.

• Low Competition: One of the primary advantages of a niche market is little or no competition. There are many fewer competitors offering the same item when you submit a small or particular target. But, there would be fewer customers searching for your products. As a result, you must focus on the correct clients.
• Less Spends on Advertising: Promotions are made much easier by niche marketing. In addition, marketing to a niche market is generally very targeted. Therefore, it is also expense-effective.
• More Revenue: Profit ratios in niche businesses are frequently massive. Customers’ particular needs are met by niche enterprises. Furthermore, buyers cannot obtain goods or services somewhere else. So, they are willing to pay extra for the services.
• Proficiency: When you provide a specific service to a niche market, you naturally assume the role of an expert in your industry. You are the ideal choice for obtaining the correct answers. It is challenging to be an expert in every topic. However, you can offer expertise in your own field. The ability to specialize in one field can help you attract more consumers by meeting their unique demands.

4. Create a Captivating Story

Given that around 75% of people do not trust conventional means of marketing. As we are bombarded with hundreds of marketing communications, you must find a way to break through the clutter genuinely.

A brand is more of a story than a sales pitch. It provides a story about what it’s like to stay at your hotel rather than merely presenting what it has to provide. The report should include the hotel’s past, philosophy, location, and esthetic. Moreover, the story also tells clients what the end-to-end journey feels and looks like both on and off the property.

According to HotelRez, “good hotel storytellers online are moving away from large portions of dull, normalized text and descriptions of amenities, and toward the use of large, stunning, bold pictures with fascinating narratives and convincing bite-sized videos, which are more suitable to today’s multi-device, multi-channel world.”

5. Sell a Breathtaking Experience

Apart from the basic facilities, such as the condition of the guestrooms, amenities, or service by well-trained workers, the best hotels should broaden their identity to include the essence of hospitality.

Hotels are in the industry of caring for people, and hotel workers should strive to provide guests with a revolutionary experience.

All great businesses start with a customer-centric mindset. Plus, experience mapping is a valuable tool for identifying and implementing universal touchpoints of hotel branding experience. Hospitality should leave clients with fond feelings, enrich their experiences, and become a part of their personal stories.

6. Provide Story-Worthy Services

Customer service is key to your hotel branding success. Because excellent customer services keep clients and derive more worth from them, give the guests something they’ll enjoy and remember you by. At the time, photo booths with ingeniously branded prints or branded biscuits, candles, wine bottles, or sweet goodies are popular options. 

On-site custom engraving or personalization of products can enhance the experience. Avoid providing “clutter” things, such as needles or magnets, typically thrown in the top of a cabinet or thrown out.

Hotel owners that provide excellent customer service recover their client acquisition costs and create a loyal audience. This audience refers to clients who act as case studies and gives feedback and testimonials.

To give a story-worthy service and value to all of your clients, you must be:

• Highly Responsive: Give response to arriving questions efficiently and quickly
• Accessible: Make sure everyone understands where they can get the details they want.
• Service-Orientated: Try to get feedback and deliver on requirements from guests.

7. Provide Unique Offerings

A unique offering means the unique advantage of a business, service, or item that empowers it to stand out from the competition. The characteristic that shows product benefits that are important to customers must be the unique selling proposition. It concentrates on explicit claims of innovation involving an outstanding verifiable quality.

A unique selling proposition is a crucial positioning signal a business or sales representative provides to prospects. Your unique selling point outlines why your service is more robust, better, or different from competitors. Unique offering also provides clear distinction, increased revenue, loyal customers, and easier selling in hotel branding.

Conclusion

To stand out in the hospitality market, you must always have a comparative advantage over your competition. According to statistics, the number of hotel reservations increased by 26% between 2005 and 2016.

It is a strong indication that the hotel industry is thriving. However, to guarantee that your hotel is among the many on-demand hotels, you must build a strong hotel branding.

You can also promote your hotel on social media. The global population of social media members has now topped three billion. As a result, it is a ripe industry.

Contact now Mediaboom to boost your hotel branding strategy.

Hotel advertising is one of the primary ways hotels generate leads, increase bookings, build and share brand messaging, and drive traffic to the website. The past few years have seen a massive shift toward digital media, and the hotel advertising industry must adapt to stay relevant. 

The collection of digital marketing techniques and strategies used to promote your hotel, its location, and its services all fall under the umbrella of hotel advertising. The purpose of advertising is to communicate information about your hotel to inspire action in the viewer, such as visiting the website to book a vacation.

Read on to learn more about hotel advertising and the eleven strategies for a successful digital marketing campaign. 

• The importance of advertising in the hotel industry
• Develop an online presence
• Identify the ideal target audience
• Establish and maintain brand consistency
• SEM—Search Engine Marketing 
• Social media advertising
• Video advertising
• Display advertising
• Native advertising
• Influencer marketing
• User-generated content
• Retargeting
• Luxury hotel advertising
• Hotel advertisement examples and ideas
• Hiring a hotel advertising agency

The importance of advertising in the hotel industry

Tourism experts said hotel bookings are expected to reach pre-pandemic levels this year, which makes digital marketing one of the most impactful steps you can take to boost your business. Advertising is one of the primary methods your hotel has to stand out from the competitors and communicate your unique selling points. A successful hotel advertising campaign will build brand awareness and encourage customer loyalty, whether you operate an international hotel chain or a single bed and breakfast. 

1. Develop an online presence

With more than 60 percent of hotel bookings occurring online, developing a robust online presence is the most important part of ensuring your advertising campaign’s success. The world has declared itself ready to travel as pandemic restrictions lift, but the way people travel has changed. Online advertising should be a cornerstone of your hotel advertising strategy, and all your digital marketing efforts should point your target audience to your hotel’s website. 

Ensure potential customers can easily find your hotel’s information with updated listing on Google Business Profile and accurate contact information. Register with review sites to make it easier for customers to leave online reviews for your hotel, and respond to those reviews, as engagement is one of the most significant deciding factors when consumers are choosing between companies.  

2. Identify the ideal target audience

Identifying your target audience, the group of consumers most likely to become your customers is a vital part of a digital marketing strategy. Worldwide, hotel and resort locations exceed 700,000, and it’s up to you to give people a reason to choose yours for their trip. Even the best hotel advertising is worthless if it doesn’t reach the right people. Learn about your target audience and target your marketing efforts toward them for the best results. 

Combining business trips with leisure travel exploded during the pandemic and continues as the world recovers, according to a report for the American Hotel & Lodging Association. Consider marketing toward the niche of travelers looking for easy entertainment while on business trips in addition to your other hotel advertising. 

3. Establish and maintain brand consistency

Your brand is everything consumers associate with your hotel. It extends beyond your color scheme, slogans, and logo to include anything the public uses to identify your brand. It is crucial to establish a clear brand message and ensure it remains consistent across all platforms. Maintaining your brand messaging in all your advertising lets customers know what to expect from your hotel. Once they book a stay, it’s up to you to provide the experience your advertising promises. Brand consistency inspires customer loyalty. 

4. SEM—Search Engine Marketing 

Use search engine marketing to secure the placement of paid hotel advertisements on search engine results pages. When using an online search engine, the first few results usually consist of paid advertisements, also called SEM.

You’ll bid on keywords searchers may use on sites like Google and Bing when looking for goods or services and pay for each person clicking on the ad. SEM lets you put your ad in front of motivated customers when they are searching for your industry, making your travel advertising more effective. 

5. Social media advertising

Social media advertising is one of your hotel’s most cost-effective hospitality and tourism marketing strategies. Online social networks, of one variety or another, is part of daily life for the vast majority of your hotel’s potential customers. If your digital marketing plan doesn’t include social media advertising, you aren’t taking advantage of all the tools at your disposal. A clever, engaging social media presence can do more for your hotel’s brand at a low cost than anything else on this list. 

Advertising on social media may be daunting for those not well-versed in the industry. Hiring a hotel marketing agency allows you to lean on the experts to boost engagement, increase bookings, and stay relevant on consumers’ radars. Social media pages also offer you a wealth of demographic information, which will help you identify your niche and tailor your efforts toward your target audience. 

Advertising via social media is most effective when combined with the other methods on this list and used as a platform to share your brand messaging. Running a successful campaign on social media takes time and effort, but the payoff should be more than worth it. 

6. Video advertising

Consumers take in more information online than ever before, with shorter attention spans. Short-form video advertising is an excellent hotel marketing technique. Short videos with a calculated visual appeal on apps like Instagram and TikTok will help you expand your target audience while driving traffic to your website and building brand awareness. 

Adding video advertising to your hospitality marketing strategy will assist with lead generation and highlight your location to viewers. Combining video marketing with social media and influencer advertising helps you maximize your budget and expand your target audience. 

7. Display advertising

Combining text, imagery, and a URL link is called display advertising. Use this method to guide consumers to your hotel’s website, where they can learn more about your location and services or book a room. Display advertising comes in many formats, from static images to video. Use imagery to your advantage and showcase your hotel’s spacious rooms or your region’s stunning vistas. 

You might consider publishing guides to local entertainment with links back to your site for convenient accommodations. Partnerships with local tourist attractions for discounts will additionally create legitimate backlinks leading to your website and adding to your site’s legitimacy with search engines. 

8. Native advertising

Paid media content designed to match the publishing source is native advertising. From paid video ads on YouTube to advertisements written as paid press releases on news sites, native advertising gives you a chance to connect with users in a format of their choice while searching for similar content.

The most effective native ads will use contextual relevance to produce higher click-through rates to your website. Matching the publication’s editorial content doesn’t disrupt the users’ interaction with the page like banner and display ads would. Native advertising doesn’t feel like advertising but still exposes readers to promotional content. 

9. Influencer marketing

Influencer marketing is another incredibly useful tool in your digital marketing toolbox. Influencers are called so because they influence trends and can put your hotel advertising in front of a massive audience. Short-form videos have exploded in popularity, particularly visually stimulating travel-related influencer videos on apps like TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, and Twitter. 

According to Shopify, influencer marketing is the fastest way to build brand awareness on social media. Influencers build their reputation around a specific niche, like travel, and cultivate an active audience within that niche. Collaborating with an influencer by providing a free or discounted stay at your hotel has a little tangible cost for you and can have an enormous effect on your social media presence as the influencer posts stunning images and talks about what a wonderful time they had.

10. User-generated content

Encourage guests to share pictures and videos of themselves enjoying their stay at your hotel. User-generated content from real people is a fantastic way to engage your target audience while showing your hotel is trustworthy, authentic, and a picture-worthy place to stay. 

Consider starting a page on your website specifically for user-generated content. For example, highlighting guests’ experiences, and taking advantage of free advertising for your hotel brand. Creating a social media hashtag and using it across all your advertising platforms will make it part of your brand identity. Getting guests to use the same hashtag will be easier. 

11. Retargeting

Employ a retargeting campaign to ensure your hotel digital marketing is as effective as possible. Reconnecting with consumers who previously interacted with your business but did not complete the reservation process helps put your paid advertising in front of people who are already interested in your hotel. You have three avenues for retargeting.

• Site Retargeting

Target prospective guests who previously visited your hotel’s website and tailor your display ads based on the content they viewed. You can give undecided guests the inspiration they need to make a reservation or leave booked guests out of display ad campaigns, so they aren’t overwhelmed. 

• Search Retargeting

Tailor your display ads on Google and other search engines specifically toward people searching for keywords related to your geographic region, like “Florida oceanfront hotel” or “Las Vegas weekend trip.” Search retargeting will also boost your hotel search engine optimization.

• Email Retargeting

You can focus your marketing efforts on consumers who’ve opened your messages with email retargeting. Adding a simple code to your emails makes it possible for guests who open them to see ads for your hotel on sites across the internet. Email retargeting is a subtle yet powerful way to share your brand messaging with interested consumers without overwhelming them with emails. 

Luxury hotel advertising – Additional Tips to Follow

Luxury travel is a thriving industry with consumers who demand a premier experience and won’t settle for anything less because they are willing to pay premium rates for the experience. Marketing your hotel as a luxury travel destination will help you attract these highly sought guests, though competition in the industry is fierce. Luxury travel marketing starkly contrasts mass marketing and should be considered an entirely separate hotel advertising campaign. 

Connect with your elite travelers using imagery like yachts, private jets, and exotic locations. You want them to visualize themselves in these environments and associate these images with your hotel’s brand. Luxury hotel advertising should include words inspiring thoughts of elegance, luxury, and exclusivity. 

Hotel advertisement examples and ideas

Marriott Bonvoy “Where can we take you?”

International hotel chain Marriott Bonvoy’s recent “Where can we take you?” campaign focuses on the experiences traveling provides as shifting exotic vistas fill the background. 

Hilton “Waitographer”

Leaning into the internet’s propensity for taking pictures of everything, Hilton brought in a professional photographer to teach its waiters to use cameras and take better photos. 

Four Seasons “Feel the Beat of the City with Four Seasons Hotel New Orleans”

Marketing focused on the tourist destinations near the Four Seasons Hotel highlights the many exciting sites in New Orleans while making the viewer feel like the hotel rests at the heart of it all.

Hiring a hotel advertising agency

Creating and implementing a hotel advertising strategy can be a harrowing experience if you aren’t well-versed in digital marketing. You might consider hiring a professional agency to handle your hotel’s marketing campaign. The experts will guide your business through building a sustainable brand and running a successful hotel advertising campaign. From designing a luxury hotel website to implementing a social media campaign, and everything in between, a hotel advertising agency will help you build brand awareness and increase bookings. 

Conclusion

Creating a successful hotel advertising strategy helps your business with lead generation, increases bookings, and expands your target audience to bring in new customers. Effective marketing builds brand loyalty and will make future promotions more fruitful. Connecting with your guests and providing their desired experiences can secure your hotel’s place in the market and ensure future business.

Get in touch now to prepare an outstanding hotel advertising strategy together!