Instagram Reels and TikToks have re-shaped content, or in other words, cut it out into small pieces, but instead of blaming the pandemic for the decrease in global attention span, hotels can capitalize. The domination of short-term videos paired with increased mobile consumption is a unique opportunity for hotels to capture their audience’s attention.
While many hotels are excluding videography from their marketing campaigns, others are focusing on long-term forms such as property tours or promotional videos.
Generally, promotional videos last between 60 – 120 seconds, while the average attention span has been reduced to 8 seconds. Thereby, many hotels cannot reevaluate their marketing campaigns due to the low engagement rates and inability to track bounce-rates.
On the other hand, excluding videography can be a missed opportunity, as a well-developed video campaign can increase conversions by 86%, but how can independent hotels enjoy the benefits without the high investment costs?
One answer – ”visual escapism”.
Visual escapism is the ability to, through content, transport the viewer to another state of mind. The reason why it is on the rise is that people are turning to social media in order to escape the stress and monotony of everyday life.
For tourism, visual escapism is an opportunity to differentiate itself from competitors and offer an emotional connection to the audience. In the long term, it can lead to an increase in consumer loyalty and brand value.
When creating a promotional video, the challenge is to include as many features and facilities as possible, which affects the quality of the video.
The goal when creating short-term content is to create visually striking and emotionally engaging content. Including all facilities can be possible, but only through more distinctive pieces of content. This allows the different facilities to be filtered according to the viewer’s interests, as the power of the algorithm is not only the reach but also the tailored approach to recommendations.
Moreover, Instagram and Tiktok are an opportunity for hotels to present user-generated content, which can present an authentic and memorable experience to numerous potential guests. Offering visually appealing and unique features, hotels can encourage their guests to take their own videos. Reposting those videos is a multi-benefit, as it crafts an emotional bond with the guests, but also adds fresh and unique ideas from individuals external to the hotel’s marketing team.
With that in mind, are short videos the future of hotel marketing? Our answer is yes. Short content can become a very important part of the hotel industry as it can use its visual components to drive urgency, and bookings, and increase occupancy.
With short videos, the opportunities are unlimited. Hotels can tailor their campaigns towards promoting time-sensitive deals or promotions through TikTok and Instagram. This can be used as an effective strategy to increase bookings during offseasons or periods of low occupancy, while it can also be used to promote new facilities, features, or products.
