Every hotel has the dreaded and unavoidable period where bookings slow down and revenue drops. This low booking period varies depending on the hotel.
NB: This is an article from Blue Magnet
Every hotel, though, has a slow season to contend with. One effective way to boost bookings and drive revenue during your hotel’s dry spell is to run paid social media campaigns.
You may be wondering how effective social media advertising can be towards reaching your hotel’s revenue goals. Blue Magnet recently helped two hotels during their summertime slow down by running strategic paid Facebook campaigns.
Before we dive in, here is a brief refresher on what the key metrics we outline in these two case studies mean:
- Link Clicks – The number of clicks on links to select destinations or experiences, i.e. clicks on an image or call-to-action button within an ad.
- Landing Page View – The number of people who land on an ad’s destination URL after clicking a link in the ad.
- Reach – The number of people who saw your ads at least once.
- Check-Rate Completions – The number of times someone checked room rates from an ad campaign.
Paid Social Media Campaigns: Case Study #1
A hotel in Las Vegas struggled to put heads in beds for the summer. It is no secret Las Vegas’ scorching summers are not appealing for some travelers. The goal was to entice travelers to getaway to Las Vegas and revive their low booking period. With this in mind, Blue Magnet created a Facebook campaign with a $300 budget promoting the hotel’s water park package (which includes accommodations, complimentary breakfast, and passes to a nearby water park).
For this campaign, Blue Magnet strategically selected this package to promote due to the hotel’s family-friendly nature and the location’s warm climate during this time of year. We targeted potential guests in the United States who are parents, engaged shoppers and frequent travelers with interests such as Las Vegas Strip, Visit Las Vegas, summer vacation, water parks, hotels, Expedia.com, TripAdvisor, and Travel + Leisure.
Our team chose three different images, paired each with two sets of copy, for a total of six ads. This allowed us to A/B test what resonated best with our target audience and yielded the best results for our client.
Blue Magnet monitored the metrics closely and turned off the underperforming during the course of the campaign to get the most out of our budget. To track the results of this campaign, we added parameters to the landing page, this way, we could pull stats from Google Analytics in addition to Facebook’s reporting in Ads Manager.
Here is what happened:
- Link Clicks: 629
- Reach: 44,064
- Check-Rate Completions: 148
Based on these stats, and the assumption that a third of the people who checked-rate booked a 2-night stay at the lowest ADR ($114)… the return on investment is:
$36 : $1
Paid Social Media Campaigns: Case Study #2
Blue Magnet worked with another hotel that was experiencing a similar slow down in bookings. This hotel had a goal to increase bookings during late spring and the beginning of summer. Blue Magnet created a $500 Facebook campaign promoting this Southern California hotel’s modern amenities and close proximity to an international airport.
For this campaign, Blue Magnet chose to direct traffic to the hotel’s rooms page to encourage direct bookings. We targeted users in the United States, ages 25-50, who are frequent travelers with interests such as Los Angeles, Visit California, boutique hotels, LAX International Airport, and several airlines.
This campaign had eight ads in total, four different hotel images with two sets of copy, in order to A/B test which would perform the best. Similar to Case Study #1, over the course of the campaign’s run, we monitored the results closely and turned off all ads that were underperforming. We also added tracking to the URL in order to get as much data as possible.
Check out these stats:
- Landing Page Views: 374
- Reach: 46,590
- Check-Rate Completions: 48
Based on these results and the assumption that if a third of the people who checked-rate booked a 2-night stay at the lowest ADR ($149), the return on investment is:
$8.50 : $1
Paid Social Media Campaigns Are the Solution
The results from these two campaigns aided these hotels during their summertime slow down. We know that low booking periods are a difficult time for all hotels and that money can be tight when it comes to your hotel’s digital marketing budget. Paid social media campaigns are the perfect solution to this slump because they can effectively and significantly increase bookings during your slow season for a low cost.
