It is imperative to tell a consistent story about your hotel across all channels.
NB: This is an article from Cogwheel Marketing, one of our Expert Partners
Storytelling can be told through content and images, but it is also about ensuring accurate amenities and offerings across all channels. To ensure higher guest satisfaction and higher conversion rates online, you should regularly audit your local listings as a part of auditing your hotel’s entire online presence.
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Here are the top local listings you should regularly audit. We suggest quarterly reviews of:
- Yext/Rio SEO – While most large brands (Marriott, Hilton and IHG) partner with Yext or Rio SEO to distribute content and images to local listings, it is not an exact science. If you have audited your local listings for some information that is incorrect and it keeps popping back up, Yext or Rio SEO is most likely the culprit. Each local listing has a series of relevant questions for your hotel and Yext or Rio SEO may not cover all of the information a listing is looking for.
- Google My Business – All of the information on your hotel’s Knowledge Panel from a Google search comes from the information you provide within Google My Business. New features, amenities and policies are added frequently.
Pro Tip: Search for your hotel on Google and find your knowledge panel. Under the Q&A section, put in your top 5 most asked questions and answer them.
- TripAdvisor – TripAdvisor listings allow you to respond to reviews (duh!), update your hotel description, amenities and policies, add images and select a favorite image or a set of images to display on the listings front page, and create a storyboard of images and reviews. Read more about what TripAdvisor platform is right for your hotel if its not already included from your brand.
For Branded Hotels: Hilton and Marriott pay for a business listing for each hotel. IHG, no longer provides this for you so your hotel must pay out of pocket.
- Bing Places – Bing has stepped up their game over the last year. Not only can you manage a listing by adding a hotel description, hours of operation, and connect your Facebook, Twitter, Yelp and TripAdvisor listings, it also allows you to add up to 100 photos and tag them! You can even add a special offer.
- Yelp – A free yelp listing allows you to add images, respond to reviews, share a hotel description, add a call to action, notate if you are a pet friendly hotel, create a check-in offer and include your hotels restaurant menu listing if available.
- Apple Maps- Apple maps offers the opportunity to update its pin placement incase you have guests that tell you the maps take them to the wrong place (this happens a lot with new hotels), the hotels URL, name, phone number and address (UNAP), hours of operation
Once these are all updated, your hotel can now share a consistent story helping all potential travelers know exactly what to expect from check-in to check-out at your hotel.
