Are you ready to start engaging with your hotel guests online and offline?
Hotel marketing covers a broad spectrum of strategies, skills, and techniques. All of them are equally important for effective engagement with guests. If you want your business to stand out amongst the competition, you need to cover your bases with tact and innovation.
The travel and hospitality industry has taken some severe knocks since the Coronavirus pandemic first hit. But the demand for high-quality services and accommodation has not gone anywhere.
International travel is slowly waking up, and people will continue to flock towards establishments that excite, engage, and impress them. In 2021, both online and offline marketing has hit new strides, thanks to the analytics tools and data available on current consumer needs.
Whether you’re trying to connect with guests in the digital world or the real one, your brand needs to remain up to date on all the latest marketing and engagement trends. In doing so, you’ll gain a competitive edge and maintain a healthy reputation amongst consumers.
In this in-depth guide, we’ll look at current marketing and engagement trends for hotel services across the world that recognize the need for fresh engagement methods. Especially those that make sense from a post-pandemic perspective.
Focus on mobile-based marketing
Any business or brand seeking to spark engagement with their audience should direct a large portion of their attention towards mobile-based marketing. That means creating content that targets mobile users more than any other type of consumer.
Mobile web traffic is responsible for 54.8% of all internet traffic, and the average American adult spends up to 2 hours and 55 minutes every day on the mobile phone. Ecommerce websites are seeing higher traffic and conversion rates than ever before, and it’s all down to the high demand for quality content accessible via the modern smartphone.
If you want to see high engagement levels with your target audience, you need to focus on the mobile sector. Investing in a thorough mobile-based marketing campaign or even launching a downloadable mobile app will help your brand get the visibility it needs to connect with guests.
Utilize the power of virtual tours and video marketing
High–quality visuals are a really important part of successful marketing and engagement campaigns. Especially when it comes to marketing locations and physical experiences.
During the pandemic, some of the businesses that revolve around physical locations or experiences (such as art galleries, castles, hotels, and others) opted to provide virtual tours that display what’s on offer in an attractive and compelling virtual tour video.
Virtual tourism has been a huge hit amongst consumers all over the world who wanted to travel and have fun. But were restricted by lockdown rules and travel regulations.
If virtual tourism sounds like a bit too much of a budget stretch, there are other options. Investing in high-quality video footage of your hotel is still a strong engagement technique that millions of businesses have seen positive results from.
Take advantage of OTAs
Online Travel Agents (OTAs) are one of the most valuable assets a hotel can utilize for effective marketing and engagement results.
OTAs have the ability to list hotel names and branches in their inventory, and many consumers will trust the recommendations they observe on an OTA’s website. In fact, over 52% of online travel consumers will discover the hotel website they book for via an OTA, and make the booking right then and there.
Being listed on metasearch engines such as Google Hotel Finder, Trivago, and TripAdvisor also has its benefits. This provides potential guests the opportunity to find your website through safe links and trusted search engines.
Email marketing isn’t dead
Contrary to popular belief, email marketing remains a huge part of a successful brand-to-consumer engagement. 81% of businesses rely on email marketing as their main channel for customer acquisition and up to 80% for customer retention.
Customer engagement often happens alongside personalization. Emails are a great way to strike up a dialogue with new and old guests who want to be kept in the loop about offers, specials, and other features or activities your hotel is currently advertising.
With video marketing and engagement from earlier in the article, incorporating a video into your newsletters could see engagement rates soar up by a whopping 300%. Email newsletters are a powerful resource when curated properly.
Communicate health and hygiene protocols
With no thanks to the wildly contagious Coronavirus that erupted in March 2020, the level of paranoia around health, hygiene, and wellness have catapulted upwards. Now, guests want to know that your company is doing something to protect them from it.
Make sure that your hotel communicates thoroughly the efforts you have gone through to ensure everyone’s risk of infection is as low as possible. And that all legal health and hygiene protocols are neatly in place.
The infection rate of the Coronavirus may be going down over time. But the concerns around wellness will continue to linger amongst the masses. Your hotel needs to diffuse these concerns if it wants to see a healthy flow of guests and engagement.
Identify and engage with your target audience
Knowing who your target audience is will drastically improve your ability to engage with them. In the hospitality and travel industry, several guest categories each look for different qualities in a lodging.
Value seekers
These guests often come in the form of families or large groups and are looking to make the most out of every penny spent. Usually, of medium-income and between the ages of 24-40, they look to reviews for information and do most of their research on a smartphone.
Independent travelers
Solo travelers can be of low or high income and tend to pursue interesting cultural activities and adventures. Independent travelers are highly likely to post about their experience on social media, typically fitting into the Millennial or Gen Z age bracket.
Luxury travelers
Luxury travelers have their sights set on enjoyment and are willing to splash out in the quest for the ultimate experience. Often choosing warm or coastal locations, these guests tend to be older and take advice from word of mouth.
There are plenty more traveler types your hotel could target, with carefully planned marketing and advertising campaigns. But identifying which ones you want to attract will help substantiate your engagement tactics and develop a more succinct ability to create meaningful connections with guests.
It’s never been more important to engage with your guests in any way possible. Online and offline, you need to shape your marketing strategies to connect, communicate, and create relationships that last.
