The crowd of hotels, bars and pubs is increasing every year. And that puts up competitive stress for start-up hoteliers.
NB: This is an article from AxisRooms
It is because the already-established hoteliers in the hospitality sector have a strong customer base. And it will be difficult for beginners to do business around them with just traditional marketing. It is a competitive sector, and every brand needs to market its services and offerings to keep up with the business flow.
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For beginners, they must pick a smart hotel marketing strategy and implement it to stay in the game and bag more profits.
Marketing strategies for hotels are not just important for beginners but also for established hoteliers.
The needs of customers change over time, and their expectations from hotels vary. Therefore, over time the established hotels need to adapt to the trends and market the same to their customers as well.
Hence, modern strategies can come in handy!
Irrespective of whether you are just entering the hospitality business or are well established in the sector, this article brings the smartest hotel marketing strategies. It will evidently help you increase the customer base and foot traffic in your hotels.
5 Hotel Marketing Strategies for You to Adapt
The prime challenge of being in the hotel industry is the competition that you have to face. The scope of competitiveness rises when popular platforms such as Airbnb become the first priority of customers.
It becomes difficult for the smaller and less popular hotel brands to get adequate bookings to meet their revenue targets.
So, here are the best five strategies for you to enhance your hotel marketing skills!
1. Make Your Hotel Searchable Online
The days of hiring travel agents to find a perfect and cheap room to stay on vacations are over.
Today, travelers prefer to do their comparative analysis for a comfy stay on their vacations, even before booking their tickets. So, it is best suggested to be findable online!
Google states that there has been a 30% increase year over year in recorded queries for hotels over smartphones. So, you need to impose SEO over the website content to make your hotel more findable.
You can try using the popular keywords across your hotel website content and make the site responsive.
2. Keep on Remarketing Your Hotel Business
The abandonment rate at the travel websites is around 75%. It means that travelers check out the website and most of them do not complete their bookings.
Three out of four people start their booking process over a travel website but leave the website due to distractions. Irrespective of the reason for distraction, the hotel marketer needs to overcome this issue.
Therefore, remarketing is ideal for hotel marketers to ensure that they do not get deviated from your offers and bookings.
Remarketing will reduce the abandonment rate, as you will be showing relevant ads to people who just left their booking on your website.
When people leave your website in the middle of a booking, they need to see you again through flash ads, push notifications, or promotional emails to get back to your website.
Putting up some offers or bonuses might just strengthen your remarketing approach. It will lead them to book their rooms with you over your competitors.
3. Find the Right Targeting Audience
You need to plan whether you are targeting the high-profile guests at your hotel or those looking for budgeted options. You can go for both, but not at the point when you are starting your hotel business.
There are local accommodation providers who have dormitories for big groups of people at cheaper rates. At the same time, 5-star and 7-star hotels charge a fortune for just two guests to stay in their suites.
You need to decide on your target audience by comparing the facilities and perks you have to offer to the guests.
Follow the reviews of other competitor hotels and the premium ones to know where you stand.
If you are offering both suites and affordable rooms, then make sure you are targeting the audience based on their income level and lifestyle choices.
Run the marketing campaigns to send the right message to the right audience at the right time.
You cannot just send an affordable hotel ad or mail it to a guest who prefers to live in a 7-star hotel.
4. Keep Flexibility in Cancellation Policies
Amidst the COVID pandemic, many reservations and bookings got cancelled at the hotels. Some of the hotel owners kept a cancellation cut, while some didn’t refund the money.
Hence, to avoid a negative reputation for your brand among the customers, have flexible cancellation policies irrespective of whether there is a COVID situation.
The guests need to be convinced of the fact that they will get full compensation for their bookings if they have to cancel the trip.
Such convenience and flexibility allow the customers to put trust in your hotel brand.
You need to mention this unique selling point (USP) in your marketing campaigns, online listings, and other booking sites.
5. Offer Value to the Customers
Give emphasis on this perfect hotel marketing strategy as a priority.
For a certain group of guests or customers, you do not have to always cut prices to attract them. Instead, you can just focus on offering value for the money that you charge.
Mention everything that you plan on offering to your guests during their stay or time at your hotel. It might be the ocean view from the window, happy drinking hours, free food, pool access, and everything else.
When the customers get an idea of what to expect, they will readily pay the amount worth it. The only point of concern for you would be to deliver everything as promised. And you will eventually retain the customer for their next trip.
Verdict
These five marketing strategies in hospitality industry are not just directed towards online marketing but also the basic ideologies that hoteliers need to adopt.
Some of the basic ideas, such as having a great website, unique content, having recommendations, and signing up with travel agencies, are pretty obvious.
After you are done with all of these basic marketing tactics, the above methods will help you take a profitable leap. The customers will find themselves connecting more with your brand, and the booking rates will increase.
The key to adopting these marketing strategies is to make your hotel more appealing over others. So, make sure you follow them to raise the profit bars of your hotel!
