Any hotel wants to attract the largest number of travelers. This is a sign of good management, high customer satisfaction and therefore an excellent brand reputation. Of course, the facilities in your hotel, the quality of the staff and, overall, the offer, will determine your good reputation. But digital marketing plays, nowadays, a fundamental role in your image, and neglecting it is not an option.
Nowadays, any journey begins on the Internet. Almost all travelers do a previous search on the web to check the prices of flights and destinations, and once they have chosen, they find out about interesting places to visit, activities to do and, of course, where to stay. In any sector, and especially in tourism, if you don’t exist on the Internet, you don’t exist at all. In this article we are going to discuss the importance of a good digital marketing strategy for hotels and the keys to set it out. Let’s get into it!
How to set out a hotel digital marketing strategy
Tourism and the hotel industry continue to adapt at record speed to new trends and consumer needs. Today, to achieve this it is mandatory to apply a digital marketing strategy, however, it has to be perfectly customized to the needs and type of each hotel.
The truth is, for your potential guests to find you, you must be very present on the web, differentiate yourself from your competitors and highlight your service from the rest. The options are numerous, from generating traffic to your website organically or paid, to strategies for social media or email marketing. To assess which actions are most appropriate for your establishment, you must consider the following aspects:
- General market situation and competitor.
- Latest trends in the hotel industry.
- Hotel goals.
- Current brand positioning.
- Profile of your potential guests.
- Marketing strategies that carry out the competition.
- Budget.
- Services offered by your hotel.
Marketing ideas for hotels
Once you have assessed all these aspects and have a complete study of the market situation, what your competitors are doing, your goals and the budget that you can allocate for your hotel marketing strategy, it is time to start thinking about the available options.
Here are some marketing ideas for hotels if you are looking for some inspiration for your digital marketing strategy:
- Search engine marketing. An essential strategy to ensure that your hotel website appears in the top positions of the search results. To do this, we can apply organic content strategies, paid content, or a combination of both. In the case of paid content, bids are made for keywords, and the return on investment (ROI) is usually very profitable.
- Optimize SEO. SEO is one of the bases of a good online presence, so taking maximum care of it is essential if you want to have an important gap in the web. Correctly optimizing the SEO of your website favors your position in the search engines, and this happens by carrying out a good study and implementation of keywords, accompanied by creating valuable content, both on the website and on the blog of your hotel, and by, of course, continuous monitoring to implement improvements.
- Marketing in social media. Undoubtedly, one of the characteristics that best define digital travelers is their willingness to share their reviews online and their trust in the opinions they find on social media and travel platforms. Tourists are increasingly connected and informed, so your image and digital footprint is more important than ever. Marketing in social media is one of the most powerful tools for selling and improving online reputation. Nowadays, 46% of travelers write comments about the hotel online and 76% share photos on social media. The strategy can be purely organic or can be complemented with social ads.
- Influencer marketing. Beyond the publications on our own social media, it is interesting to take advantage of the influencer boom, since these digital figures are the true experts in sharing experiences and advising brands to their audience. By sharing a review on their social media, they can also offer a discount code or even a contest to win a stay in the hotel. Of course, it is important to choose these profiles correctly, so that they are perfectly aligned with the ‘travel’ theme and with the hotel values.
- Email marketing. Email marketing is one of the most profitable tools to connect with former and potential guests. It is a good way to obtain direct reservations and retain customers who have already visited our hotel. A loyal and satisfied guest is more likely to choose us again for their next vacation and to recommend us to their relatives or on tourism portals.
In conclusion, digital marketing for hotels is already essential for any hotel accommodation. The digital era offers a lot of possibilities for the hotel sector: social media, blog content, influencers campaigns… Reinforcing our online brand image is the best investment for your hotel, since travelers anticipate their vacations searching the internet opinions and experiences of other guests.
