The end of the year is the perfect time to look back and plan the year ahead. Technology for the hospitality industry in 2011 moved at the speed of light. Social, local, mobile (SOLOMO) is the hot topic of the year.

But as consumers tighten their purses and look for truly unique experiences, hotels will need to use 2012 as a pivot-year to becoming truly guest-centric in their digital marketing efforts.

Below are my top 5 predictions for hotel digital marketing in 2012:

1- Last minute will be back

As consumers brace for a not-so-good 2012 in many markets, especially in Europe, last minute booking is going to make the lives of hoteliers more difficult in 2012. Forecasting models will put price pressure on revenue managers to achieve decent RevPar performance.

Independent hotel managers will need to be more flexible in their digital marketing and adapt to changing market conditions in order to stop leaking revenue to OTAs. The direct channel will be the largest investment area and new opaque pricing products for mobile and social, as well as groups and meetings and conventions will play a bigger role in how larger hotels perform.

2- Mobile same night business will explode

Mobile is exploding and 2012 will be the year of hoteltonight.com. Major OTAs and specialized competitors will get into the business but hoteltonight.com will be able to maintain its lead.

In addition, hotels will start offering same and next day specials on their direct channel and these rebates will drive even more last minute buying behavior.

3- Pre-paid rates are going to be the norm

Pressure from consumers to lower prices will drive revenue managers to exchange cash-in-hand for higher ADR. Pre-paid rates, already prevalent at hotel chains will emerge as one of the growth areas for independent hotels in 2012.

Widespread adoption of pre-paid rates will drive massive adoption of payment gateways by independent properties and cash upfront will compensate for lower price points. Lastly, this trend of better rates on hotel websites will finally help start the drive of consumers away from an already too-powerful booking.com, especially in Europe.

4- The boutique segment and channels like Jetsetter.com will be the bright spots

Boutique offerings from jetsetter.com, tablethotels.com and mrandmrssmith.com will experience significant growth by offering unique experience-driven products. Expect ties to other niche offerings like lot18.com for wine-related travel, eartheasy.com for eco travel, etc.

Hence, we will see many hotels repositioning into experience brands and boutique offerings, redesigning their websites to be inline with a modern look and boutique-type consumers. Rich media and video will play a distinct role in communicating the boutique experience.

5- Buyer-driven marketplaces are going to emerge in 2012.

From basic social marketing, hotels will need to evolve to guest-centric marketing. Personalized marketing will be the key to a successful 2013 and beyond. Destination marketplaces where consumers can post their needs will emerge much like taskrabbit.com that has become the local bazaar that brings together consumer needs with willing service providers.

The challenge is that customer acquisition for hotels will need to be more personalized and expect tools that address the multi-channel market to gain importance in 2012.

An important note

In conclusion, what is important in 2012 is to not be intimidated by the apparent complexity of hotel digital marketing and to embrace the challenge. While the digital marketing space is indeed complex (with many time-sucking activities that do not improve brand positioning or bring in extra revenue), there are also an increasing number of digital marketing tools and specialized agencies that help hoteliers separate the wheat from the chaff.

Building in-destination differentiation with smart hotel digital marketing

Hotel distribution changes every 10 years. In the 1980s it was the GDS, in the 1990s the emergence of tour operators like TUI and Thomas Cook and in the 2000s the adoption of the Internet and Online Travel Agents. At the beginning of the decade of the 2010s, we can already see a shift happening to digital marketing.

Hotel digital marketing is the response to consumer changes – consumers are much more “educated” in travel search, and they use “multi-channel”: OTAs, direct website, review sites, social media, mobile.

Never before were there so many search products: OTAs, meta-search like kayak.com, the new Google Flight Search and Hotel Finder and hipmunk.com, the “cool” new search interface on top of Orbitz’s inventory. In addition, the planning tools market is exploding. TripIt and TripCase are more traditional travel planners, but a whole slew of new social tools is emerging with Gogobot leading the pack, but also with new competitors like gtrot, flymuch and others. Lastly, new products are now transactional online: restaurants at OpenTable, tours and activities using Viator and even derivative accommodation products using AirBnB, a new darling of Silicon Valley VCs.

So, against this backdrop of exploding choices, how does a hotel manager make its brand visible online?

Mass marketing vs. Niche strategy

Hotel managers need to be realistic. Large OTAs spend tens of millions per MONTH on SEO/SEM, and advertise on hundreds of thousands of keywords. So, becoming the #1 on “hotels in New York” is probably not an option.

But a niche strategy may work. Let’s consider New York City, one of the most competitive hotel markets in the World.

When searching for “Cheap Hotel in New York” the results are dominated by advertising from booking.com, hotels.com, kayak.com, airbnb.com and organic search results from hotels.com, hotelclub.com, etc.

However, just by focusing on the brand identify and location provides immediate differentiation. Let’s look at three examples:

1- “boutique hotel in New York close to the Jacob Javits Center”
2- “economy hotel in New York in soho”
3- “corporate hotel in New York in chelsea”

Boutique hotels near the Jacob Javits Center

When searching more specifically for “boutique hotel in New York close to the Jacob Javits Center” the results are very different as can be seen from the screen capture below.

By focusing on brand and location, four things happen:

• While there is still some advertising, it is now dominated by specific brands (in our example morganshotel.com, royaltonhotel.com, thetimeny.com).
• The pay-per-click costs are lower
• The organic search results are now dominated by independents (#2 and #3 are ink48.com and indigochelsea.com)
• You have a good chance of showing up on the map

Let’s now try the other two searches and see if the same results apply:

Economy hotels in SOHO

Advertising is still very competitive with booking.com, hotels.com and kayak.com. But by focusing on brand and location, three of the four things happen once again:

• The pay-per-click costs are lower
• The organic search results are now dominated by independents (#2 is thesohotel.com)
• You have a good chance of showing up on the map

Corporate hotels in Chelsea

In this last scenario, advertising is again very competitive with booking.com, hotels.com and kayak.com. But by focusing on brand and location, three of the four things happen once more:

• The pay-per-click costs are lower
• The organic search results are now dominated by independents (#1 is hotelchelsea.com)
• You have a good chance of showing up on the map

Experience tags differentiate further

Another element to differentiate your hotel is to associate experience tags with it. Let’s take a look at two examples: golf and wine for hotels in california.

When searching for “golf hotel california” we expect to see high levels of competition:

And, as expected, golf is a pretty wide term, and highly competitive with golf-oriented tour operators bidding no the keyword.

Surprisingly, the results for “wine hotel california” are quite different:

There is almost no competition, therefore an SEM/SEO strategy will work well for a hotel that is located in california and tied to the california wine experience. So, a quick search on the experience terms you can associate with your destination will probably provide a good benchmark of which keywords you should be optimizing for.

Conclusion

In conclusion, whether you are in a highly competitive market, or in a secondary market, three simple items will provide in-destination differentiation for you search optimization strategy:

• Your brand identity: economy, corporate, boutique, budget…
• The location of the property: landmarks around your hotel
• Experience tags relevant for your destination: gourmet, horses, relax, nightlife, wine, museums…

Using these three items will not necessarily make your hotel #1 on Google in your market, but you will have a good chance of having great occupation rates with guests that are going to enjoy the experience at your property.

Digital marketing for hotels is becoming increasingly complex. Hotel managers need not only to service guests, manage rooms, availabilities and pricing, but now are also expected to compete for guests in new channels and digital communities that emerge every day. Hence, many hotel managers are asking themselves how they can expand their brand online while still having the time to run their business.

The obvious choice has been to hire additional staff, but this tactic is just a temporary solution, because demand for digital marketing is unstoppable and the problem will continue to grow. The breakthrough solution for this complex problem is a digital marketing architecture and tools that provide a consistent multi-channel experience to hotel guests and prepare hotels for future digital marketing demands.

This article provides a quick checklist on five important items hotel managers should consider when defining a digital marketing strategy for their hotels:

Top five items in a hotel digital marketing strategy

• Hotel website and booking engine are Number One. This is probably nothing new to you, but your hotel’s website is the best opportunity that you have to engage and sell to your guests. On average, guests spend 6 minutes on hotel websites. 6 minutes is ample opportunity to engage your future guests with bold pictures, easy-to-read room descriptions and attractive offers that make the decision to book simple and predictable. One additional important item is to show what guests will experience when they come to your destination: ensure video is part of your web strategy and you will mesmerize your guests. So, when was the last time you updated your website? If the answer is more than 2 years ago, your website could probably be a lot better.
• 60% of consumers are social travelers. According to Forrester, 60% of guests use one or more social networking platforms during their search, shop and buy process. Hence, it is critical to manage tripadvisor ratings, have a professional-looking presence on facebook, and allow guests to engage over twitter. And to use the social network to amplify your message, ensure that good experiences your guests write about are shared on the different digital communities. For photos we see the best results using Flickr and for videos a dedicated YouTube channel. And don’t forget email: it is still the most widely mechanism used to share itineraries and ideas of trips.
• Mobile consumers will demand optimized content in 2012. Mobile traffic is the fastest growing category in digital marketing, and to no surprise also in travel. Google research states that 19% of all hotel searches are already executed on a mobile device. If you deployed a mobile solution in 2011, you will realize that mobile consumers have a much more utilitarian behavior – they are looking for the hotel’s address, phone number, or want to book a room for tonight or tomorrow night. Hence, the experience to conclude those tasks must be optimized in 2012. While success can be found using mobile as a stand-alone media, it provides the largest rewards when it is used as an integrated, multi-channel engagement platform. If you can provide consistent messages across web, social and mobile, while ensuring that the most relevant offers are prioritized then you truly have provided multi-channel digital marketing.
• Diversify online distribution channels. Recent studies indicate that booking.com is driving a whopping 50% of all hotel online bookings in Europe. This dominance is threatening to hotels as they become more dependent on (and therefore vulnerable to) a single channel that is already demanding higher commissions based on results. Therefore, it is critical to diversify your channels. If you are the manager of a boutique property you should consider signing up with tablethotels.com, mrandmrssmith.com or jetsetter.com. One good source of information for the latest trends in accommodation websites you should consider signing up for is tnooz.com’s roundup of top travel websites per market.
• Innovate with marketing campaigns. Digital marketing is not a one-time project. It is a new discipline that must be embraced by hotel managers. However, digital marketing does not necessarily require learning a lot of new tools and hiring a lot of new staff. Using the appropriate tools, hotel managers can use their existing e-commerce and reservations staff to create campaigns, follow-up and reap the rewards of increased marketing exposure: more and better bookings. So, choose your tools to minimize setup costs and provide maximum flexibility when creating your campaigns.

In conclusion, a successful digital marketing strategy must provide a consistent multi-channel experience to hotel guests. This can be achieved by using a multitude of tools or an all-in-one hotel digital marketing platform. But no matter which tools you select, at the core of your strategy should be a digital marketing architecture that prepares your hotel for future digital marketing demands.

If you want to learn more about what GuestCentric can do to improve your hotel’s digital marketing chat to one of our specialists online or sign up for our Coffee with GuestCentric webinar.
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