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Defining a hotel digital marketing strategy

November 29, 2011 3 min read

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Defining a hotel digital marketing strategy

Reading Time: 3 minutes

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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21 Comments
  1. Abhishek Prabhat

    In continuation of the argument to diversify channel managers, it may be added that there are new ways of hotel rooms availability and discovery based on technology coming up. Consider a fusion of old way - placing a phone call to hotel front desk - and the new way - online booking through OTA - which is being offered by quinchy.com. It provides platform wherein customers discover hotel and connect (over internet) to the hotel in real time to discover a) availability, and b) best price as on time. Plus it time slots the room for part day booking for the current day for customers who want to avail short stay. The pricing control vests entirely with the hotel front desk and that too in real time, almost like answering a phone call from an interested customer, but through two clicks on the mobile device.

  • Sanjana Dixit

    Framing the right strategy for hospitality industry is very crucial and laying a plan for the same needs some technical expertise and intensive planning. It would be extremely helpful and beneficial if the strategy is laid out properly. This post would be very helpful for the digital marketers who handle clients from the hospitality industry. Kudos to the author of the post who has given a perfect blog post for the readers.

  • chinna gampa

    such a nice article this post is useful for hospitality who handle the digital marketing. it is readability this information is more useful

  • Niranjan

    Such a nice article regarding the "Digital Marketing" in Hospitality industry. This post gives a energy for Digital marketers, how to tackle in Hospitality Digital marketing in such a way. Keep doing...!!!

  • jeff thomson

    Each kind of company required online digital marketing now days even restaurants because the world is becoming more digital day by day.

  • Bidhu Bhusan Maharana

    Nice article showing the digital marketing tactics used in case of hotel managements. The classification of the customers and as per their classification the how to use the digital marketing strategy. I gained some ideas from your article. So, thanks Sir.

  • Moksha media

    very informative..

  • Gayathri

    thank you here your provide the nice article regarding digital marketing strategy and i gained some idea of campaign.

  • digital marketing jobs

    This post would be very helpful for the digital marketers who handle clients from the hospitality industry. And explained well regarding top five items in a hotel digital marketing strategy

  • Kimberly Bruck

    It has helped so much with my activities...!!! Nice post. Thanks

  • Jack Son

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  • Payal Pawar

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  • Wollermann Business Brokers

    Digital marketing is an important part of marketing now a days and it can give amazing results if executed properly. Thanks for the tips.

  • DEE HARMOR

    This is a very helpful article. Thanks.

  • Monika

    Thank you for sharing such in-depth article on digital marketing with us. This is really a complete guide-book on digital marketing. I am sure you have put great efforts in collecting these detailed information. Great Job!

  • Hoei Huang

    great post

  • Harsh Mehra

    very nyc

  • John

    Thanks for sharing valuable information!

  • Aman Singh

    Great! your article help me alot! Love from NYC

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