COVID-19 and the resulting downturn in travel is causing a fundamental shift in how hoteliers will fill rooms. In the past hotel marketers have had a relatively easy job due to the huge demand for travel resulting in strategies revolving around “harvesting intent.” Now, when there’s more rooms than travelers, hoteliers have to take a much more aggressive strategy in wooing the interested travelers as well as finding entirely new guests.
This brings us to the topic today, how can a hotelier evolve to be an alpha hunter of new guests? The answer lies in two steps, known to all successful hunters. First you must create an environment for your hunt to be successful. Second, you actually get out in the field and start hunting.
STEP #1: CREATING A TARGET-RICH ENVIRONMENT
Anyone who has ever done any hunting, particularly those who constantly harvest game, will tell you the most important part is creating an environment your prey will want to visit. For a hunter this means putting out food, eliminating natural predators, providing safe places for your prey to live, and creating clear hunting paths (aka: conversion funnels). A great hunter will easily spend ten times the amount of effort getting the environment right compared to the amount of time they’re actually hunting.
Hoteliers who decide to get away from the gatherer strategies of the past, which are becoming less and less effective, and move toward the hunter mindset will do well to learn from our orange-vest and plaid-hat friends. They will begin by cultivating their hunting grounds by making sure you have these fundamentals in place. Only then, once they have created an environment where potential guests will want to spend time, will they start the actual hunt. We won’t go into great detail on creating that environment here, but you can find more by browsing the rest of our hotel marketing news and tips here.
Before you go into the field, you will want to make sure you have created an ideal environment for your guests (aka prey) to learn about your property and decide to visit. You will also want to make sure you are still setup to do a bit of “gathering” while you’re hunting or more elusive guests. Just because you’ve adopted a hunter mindset, you should not give up on the tried and true ways of being a gatherer.
Before your hunt, answer these questions so you can be sure you’re ready… when you find your trophy guests.
- Is your website an amazing, mobile-first, experience that will give your guests the information they need to overcome any objection?
- Is your conversion funnel and booking engine as efficient as possible?
- Have you created great content that your guests can enjoy after you’ve brought them in to the site?
- Is your hotel’s search engine campaign running well and driving people to your site?
- Are your local listings designed to engage your guests?
- Are you running effective paid search campaigns on your brand?
- Do you have your analytics systems in place to help you understand where you should be hunting and how you can improve your strategies?
Answering these questions will make finding these new guests much easier because when you become a hunter hotelier your goal is to first create the desire to and then ensure you can fulfill their travel needs.
STEP #2: STRATEGIES TO TRANSITION TO A HUNTER HOTELIER
Your transition from a gatherer to a hunter is happening. You have created a great environment that spurs engagement & conversion and you are working your existing “gathering” avenues. Now, it’s time to begin getting in the field and taking proactive steps to drive demand and guest engagement.
Proactively driving guests can be more expensive, because you are both creating the demand and fulfilling the demand. This means you will want to ensure your analytics systems are working well, you are tracking, and most importantly… testing. All five of these strategies can work in tandem to help you multiply your success.
