To be effective, your luxury hotel marketing strategy must tell a story that shows your customers what sets you apart and makes the experiences you offer unique. Importantly, you must actively target a distinct group of customers and ensure your messages appear in all the right places.
NB: This is an article from EHL
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In this article, we’ll explore the innovative marketing strategies luxury hotels can use to differentiate their brands and drive customer engagement and loyalty.
1. Harness the power of storytelling
In a luxury market where everyone offers fantastic service and incredible facilities, how do you communicate in a way that sets your hotel apart? The first thing many people think about when they think about luxury hotels is the price, but the art of storytelling and content marketing shift the focus away from the cost and onto the experience.
Storytelling goes beyond merely providing your customers with information. It enables you to create a deeper, more emotional connection between your brand and customers. An effective way to tell a story is to think about what makes your hotel unique. It may be a historically significant building or a spa that has an interesting history all its own. Telling its origin story can set your hotel apart and start creating that deeper connection.
Aspirational narratives are also compelling for the customers you want to target. As a luxury hotel, you’re not just selling a comfortable room in a building. You are inviting customers into a world where they can achieve their dreams and desires. You can drive that narrative by focusing on the prestige and excellence of the hotel. You can also collaborate with successful influencers to co-create content that resonates with your audience and reflects their aspirations.
You should also think about who you’re telling your story to. People tend to associate an older demographic with luxury hotels, and while that may have been the case some years ago, now 25-44-year-olds account for 64% of the luxury goods market. These people use social media, see beautiful images and videos online, follow travel bloggers (influencer marketing), and want to have the same experiences. They want to hear your story.
2. Guest experience is everything
Anyone who books a luxury hotel pays far more than necessary for a comfortable bed. But they’re not interested in price; they care about value. They want to know how your hotel will make them feel and what experiences they’ll have, and that’s where experiential marketing comes in.
Experiential marketing allows you to showcase your value. Experiences are critical drivers behind the decisions of luxury travelers. They want to have exceptional and wonderful experiences, and it’s your job to showcase how your hotel will make them feel that. Consumer-generated content can play a big part in painting that picture. A 2019 study found that 60% of consumers were influenced by content created by consumers when making travel plans, compared with just 19% who were influenced by professional brand images.
You can harness the power of consumer-generated content by curating your Instagram feed to showcase your guests’ experiences and incorporating it seamlessly into your website. Luxury travelers are also highly active on social media, with 55% of luxury travelers believing that creating social media content increases their ability to have meaningful experiences. Hence the importance of a solid social media strategy.
