Capturing travelers’ attention will become even more important in 2024. With restrictions to third-party data and new AI tools, lodging operators must familiarize themselves with the different hotel market trends and strategies to stand out from the crowd.
NB: This is an article from Cloudbeds, one of our Expert Partners
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Here, we look at how the travel landscape is evolving and the latest trends to shape your marketing strategies this year.
2024 hospitality marketing trends
1. Google Adwords GA4: A fundamental shift in advertising
Google Adwords GA4 is the latest evolution in Google’s advertising and analytics platform. It’s more than just an update: it’s a fundamental shift in the digital advertising landscape. This new version is built to meet the dynamic needs of businesses in industries such as hospitality that rely on personalized experiences and extended nurturing campaigns.
GA4’s core strength lies in advanced analytics and data tracking. It has a more comprehensive view of the guest journey, integrating various touchpoints across apps and websites to collect deeper insights about behavior, preferences, and engagement.
What hoteliers and hosts can do to prepare.
To prepare for this powerful marketing tool, lodging operators should familiarize themselves with the update to understand how it impacts their data interpretation and decision-making. Since data collection is more event-based with GA4 than session-based, you must adjust your data collection strategies to capture the most relevant data points.
At Cloudbeds, we’ve taken measures to include GA4 in our booking engine and digital advertising processes to ensure proper results for our customers.
2. AI for streamlining marketing activities
The explosion of artificial intelligence (AI) was monumental in 2023. While it hasn’t made as big of a splash as predicted, it has proven beneficial in the automation of specific tasks, especially around digital marketing. Under the supervision of your team, AI can significantly reduce time spent generating creative or repetitive content on your website, channel pages, social profiles, and more.
What hoteliers and hosts can do to prepare.
Don’t shy away from using AI in 2024. Utilize tools to craft engaging content for your hotel in real-time (but remember to always fact-check, proofread, and edit content before posting). Some great use cases for AI include:
- Writing social media captions
- Writing website copy
- Writing OTA channel descriptions
- Writing ad copy
- Creating images for social media
- Writing SEO-optimized blogs (do section by section vs. the whole article at once for best results)
3. Generative search experience
Announced in May 2023 and gradually released for testing in different countries, Google’s new generative AI experience in search (SGE) aimed to enhance the search process by incorporating artificial intelligence and conversational functionality into Google’s search results. Besides providing a snippet of text describing the property, image link cards from various sources, and the Google Business Profile, SGE will also allow travelers to ask AI follow-up questions.
