Marketing is a key part of the hotel and leisure industry. Marketing bridges the gap between hotels and customers. Any person, not just a tourist, can require hotels for a temporary or extended stay. Through various marketing channels, a person can find the hotel best suited for their needs such as budget, amenities provided, view, proximity, etc.
With the correct marketing efforts, a hotel can exponentially increase customer flow and increase overall revenue. In this article, we’ll discuss how to do marketing in the hotel industry and some helpful tips.
How to Do Marketing in the Hotel Industry
Marketing in the hotel industry is a challenging task due to the massive competition and dominance of household names. Choosing the right marketing strategies is important to wave off the competition and get hold of customers. As the owner, you have to be involved in the proper functioning of the hotel. So, you cannot be involved regularly in the marketing efforts. That’s where a marketing agency comes in to help you implement those marketing strategies on a day-to-day basis.
The hotel itself should also be capable of providing quality services to its customers so that word-of-mouth marketing is also organically going ahead. The hotel should be able to provide a unique and memorable experience that sets them apart from the competitors.
These efforts combined with proper marketing open the door for the significant progress of a hotel.
Marketing Strategies for Hotels
1. Social Media Advertising
Social Media Ad is a proven and effective marketing strategy to reach potential customers. The increasing popularity of social media and the availability of detailed targeting parameters make this a valiant choice for hotel marketing.
Along with increased leads and bookings, social media advertising gives you data to improve your future campaigns on social media. Various other integrations also enable retargeting and remarketing possibilities. They help reach people who interact with channels you’re active on. Such people are more likely to book your hotel when they need your services.
2. Hotels Directories Management
There are many hotel directories that people refer to when looking for hotels. One of the most popular ones is Booking.
These directories have a plethora of hotels already listed and getting new customers every day. Getting listed in them can get you more customers. But you need to respond to them in a timely manner before they get stolen by another hotel. In addition to communication, managing your hotel’s profile, availability, prices, and amenities included is a daunting but rewarding task.
3. Local SEO
Google and Google Maps is increasing in popularity as a competitor to the aforementioned hotel directories. Google is the world’s most-used search engine while various features in Google Maps make it easy to search for listings in various niches among which hotel and leisure is a leading niche.
Additionally, Google shows the maps packs ahead of the hotel directories when a user is searching for hotels. This shows Google is pushing its own platforms for hotel and leisure-related searches.
4. Search Engine PPC
Search Engine Marketing is undoubtedly one of the most popular marketing channels in the hotel industry. The PPC ad displays on top of the organic results increasing chances of getting clicks and attention of the customers as opposed to the ones not doing search engine PPC ads. It is an expensive but quicker and effective method to increase customers to your hotel.
5. Influencer Marketing
Influencer Marketing is without a doubt at an all-time peak in 2024. With an abundance of social media platforms to use, there are countless influencers in the travel and leisure niche. These influencers can impact their followers’ choices and help you get more customers to your hotel. You can invite them to stay at your hotel and the experience of which they will share on the said social media platforms.
6. Affiliate Marketing
Affiliate is a major source of clients for many businesses and industries worldwide. Be it as major as travel and ticketing or as minor niches, affiliate marketing has its importance. There’s no doubt it can do well for your hotel business. There are many structures for affiliate marketing from which you can choose which one suits your needs. Mostly, hotels prefer a target system where payment is made after a certain target number of leads or bookings is reached.
7. Content Marketing
Content Marketing is an organic method of marketing in which useful interactive content is posted on various channels such as video posting sites, social media sites, podcasts, etc. It is an approach focused on creating and distributing interactive valuable content relevant to the audience. Content can include a range of infographics such as customer images, team photos, aesthetics, how-to-reach videos, testimonials, etc. It is important to plan this content thoroughly beforehand.
8. Email Marketing
Email marketing is a relatively less popular method of marketing in Nepal where emails are not dominantly used. However, emails are still a great way of communicating about your hotel and the various features it provides. Email marketing is fairly technical and requires proper structuring to pass the spam filter. One of the merits of this marketing technique is that the leads from this technique are mostly genuine and are highly likely to convert into customers.
9. YouTube Marketing
YouTube is the most used video platform in the world. There is no denying the marketing opportunities it can provide to the hotel industry. In fact, it is delivering customers to many hotels around the world. However, you will have to apply some research and create compelling ad videos to get them. With proper target audience research and an understanding of buyer persona, one can leverage YouTube to increase customer flow in their hotels.
Hotel Digital Marketing Tips
1. Analyze Target Audience
Before initiating any marketing campaigns, analyzing the target market and audience should be one of the first tasks. Having data about your target audience can help you create better marketing strategies and increase your success rate. Grouping your target audience based on some distinct features can help you target and interact with them better.
2. Market and Competitor Research
It is important to keep track of what your competitors are doing to increase their business. Researching their marketing channels, changes in prices, quality, etc. is always important to shape your strategies and campaigns. You should constantly analyze competitors to find unique selling points (USPs) that the competitors have not figured out. Additionally, you should keep track of your competitors to provide everything they provide and add to it.
3. Market Needs and Wants
Another important tip in hotel marketing is to understand what the market is demanding. People’s tastes change often due to many factors and it is important to update your services and marketing efforts to cater to those demands. You can apply this to your target audience research and come up with the ideal services list and marketing campaigns to get the best results.
4. Brand Guidelines and Consistency
Brand Guideline is another important thing to take care of before proceeding with a marketing campaign. It is important to maintain consistency with brand guidelines to positively hit a potential customer’s psychology to impact their purchasing behavior. Logo, Font, Color Patterns, Icons used, etc. are some key aspects of brand guidelines that you should take into account.
5. KPIs Setting
As you analyze all the data, market, and trends, it is also important to set Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to determine the performance of the campaign. Analyzing these KPIs helps you find out what went right and what didn’t during the campaign. With this data, you can make necessary changes to the running campaign or plan better for future campaigns.
Challenges in Hotel Marketing in Nepal
Hotel Marketing is not easy in Nepal due to tough competition from household names. Such household names have a higher marketing budget and loyal customers which you won’t be able to get hold of so easily. While we have suggested travel directories in this very article, such travel directories and agencies increase their commission charges often.
Marketing budgets are also a major issue to tackle in Nepal. Budgets allocated for marketing efforts are often insufficient to reach the goals. Finding a balance between goals and budgets is a difficult task for any marketer.
