Think about the nature of human connections for a minute. We build friendships by relating with other people – by finding common ground, or interesting anecdotes that endear us to them.
And one of the most common ways we build these connections is through storytelling.
We can apply the same concept to how we tell the story of a particular brand. How would you translate a day in the life of your hotel to people online?
“Stories are deeply and fundamentally engaging to consumers, and because people can relate to stories, creating content with this in mind on your most important social platforms creates the basis for authentic conversations,” says Darlene Rondeau, vice president of best practices at Leonardo.
Considering that about 75% of people don’t trust traditional forms of marketing, and the fact that we’re exposed to thousands of marketing messages on a daily basis, you need to find a way to cut through the clutter in a meaningful way.
“People don’t buy what you do, they buy why you do it and how it makes them feel, and the measured results of visual storytelling to respond to these two reality checks is why we’ve seen a marketing shift across all industries, and more recently in hospitality,” says Rondeau.
A common misconception around the storytelling approach is that you need a massive budget to execute effectively. No matter how much money you’re working with, there are hundreds of ways to adopt storytelling in your marketing efforts.
Storytelling in hotel marketing
By using a storytelling approach in your hotel marketing strategy, you can relate valuable content without actually ‘selling’ your hotel to guests. Rather, you’re showing them why they should choose you over your competitors in an engaging, authentic way.
According to HotelRez, “Good hotel storytellers online are moving away from the huge chunks of boring, standardised text and descriptions of amenities, towards the use of big, beautiful, bold images with captivating narratives and compelling bite-sized videos, more fitting to today’s multi-device, multi-channel universe.”
