Heated debates surrounding the fairness of Trip Advisor reviews and OTA (Online Travel Agent) commissions are flaring up on a regular basis. What is surprising though, is the fact that despite strong disagreements and frustrations from the hotels’ side, hoteliers and sales managers seem to accept the notion that without these platforms, they are unable to market their hotels successfully.
While OTAs have been crucial and valuable marketing channels over the past decade, ever developing technologies and online user habits have cleared the path for hotels to take back the reins.
What OTAs offered
OTAs became successful because they offered consumers an online reservation system that provided them with an easy way to book entire travel arrangements. While convenience and price were and still are important factors for users, a number of other factors have changed.
With literally everyone having an online business presence today and savvy online consumers knowing how and where to find information, the need for a platform that coordinates it all has ceased to be a necessity. From a consumer’s viewpoint, the advantages of these platforms are now mainly price driven and to a lesser extent convenience.
The perception that OTAs always offer the best price has made them hugely popular. You can see just how much by searching for your hotel via a search engine. Enter the main keywords, your hotel’s name and location, and your hotel should appear on top of the page. But it’s more likely, that you will first have to scroll down past Trip Advisor and a few OTAs before you reach your hotel’s own website – not the best starting position to attract more direct bookings. But there is also good news.
The opportunity
Marketing studies have found that consumers will nearly always visit the hotel’s website for more information before they return to the OTA’s site to make the final booking.
Here is your opportunity – provided that you are able to pull in your prospective guest and persuade them that your hotel is exactly what they are looking for. But more often than not, this doesn’t happen. Why?
Apart from the fact that the OTA probably has most of your inventory and offers it at much lower rates than available on your site, your hotel’s website probably does not provide any real differentiators. There is no compelling reason for a site visitor to choose your hotel over the competition, and with the lack of such a reason, it’s once again all reduced to price. Yet despite this, a healthy mix of using traditional marketing tools and combining them with the advantages of OTA platforms might help to turn this situation around.
Give them a reason
People ARE willing to pay for a great customer experience and a memorable stay, but you need to give them a reason to do so.
Look at your website. Does it reflect the kind of hospitality and atmosphere you want to convey and that your guests can expect? (Hint: Listing room categories, and restaurant details, and assuring that service is outstanding is not likely to have the effect you are looking for.) Does your presentation reach prospective guests on an emotional level? Do you feel they connect with you when visiting your site? Do you attract the kind of guests you want to attract? Does your site come across as offering a commodity or instead, as being an irresistible offer of quality, benefits and value to the guest?
The mindset that everything about a hotel is price driven is so engrained into our minds that, if you visit the home pages of some hotel websites, they remind you of supply stores – coming across as purely selling rooms and beds to sleep in with an “offer of the day”. With such an impersonal and distant appearance, it is no wonder that the people who used to closely talk to you and your staff are now instead discussing your business with third parties, such as Trip Advisors and Yelp. Your input into the whole matter is one of reaction and more often than not one of defense. Proactively building good relationships with your customers, however, is the first step towards a brand that is valued and appreciated.
Communicate your personality
Stop going down the road of me-too and come up with innovative ways to communicate the unique personality of your hotel.
Find your own voice, even if your hotel is part of a franchise that provides sales and marketing support. Create the brand within the brand. You could for example simply add a powerful “about page” to the website that conveys what makes your property special and different.
Landing pages are great marketing tools to draw attention and to point out the benefits of your product that are not directly obvious. They lead readers through your unique sales points and vividly show the benefits of staying with you – in the style and tone of your brand. A good landing page achieves even more. It creates an emotional connection and gets visitors excited about your product. It drives traffic to your hotel’s website and it sells your product.
You could increase the effect by using more than one landing page to target different guest segments and audiences: Tailor one to address the issues and requirements of conference and convention planners and another one to guests who are interested in Spa services. You could target the wedding niche, business travelers or families. Working with analytical tools and measuring your site’s conversions helps you see what works and what does not so you can adjust your approach accordingly.
“White papers” for your sales teams and for interested customers are a great way of showing your insight and understanding of the issues and requirements of your customers. Once your “expertise” has been established it is so much easier to position yourself as the ideal host for let’s say the next big function of an event planner. The benefits of choosing your hotel or property will simply become obvious.
The same effect can be achieved with the creation of an ebook that displays your expertise in conference handling, spa treatments or wedding coordination and shows customers how well you understand their needs and how capable you are of handling them.
Find uncommon ways to present your product and services. Maybe a product video is the answer. Visual content presented in video format seems to drive engagement. U.K. marketer Zabisco found that 40% of people responded better to visual information than plain text. U.S. based e-commerce portal Internet Retailer reported that viewers are 85% more likely to purchase a product after watching a product video.
An unexpected add-on to your room sales could have a strong impact – something that really takes your guest’s needs and wants into consideration. Take a tired business traveler arriving late at night. Maybe he would much appreciate an added feature that would allow him to also order a sandwich and a cold beer or a hot chocolate together with his room. No searching for restaurants that are still open, no ordering from room service necessary, no waiting period – just instant gratification and a feeling of being welcomed.
There are endless ways to create pleasurable moments and wow effects. If you think like a host instead of an accommodation provider, your marketing success won’t be long in coming.
And, last but not least
When everything is in place, make sure, it is really, really simple for your guest to book directly with you, on your website.
About the author
Bärbel Pfeiffer is a former hotel executive turned marketer who helps hotels create a distinct online presence that will make them stand out. She is the founder of Text Spot On, a communications agency that assists hoteliers with creative marketing concepts that engage, generate leads and drive business.
During her 20-year career in the industry, Bärbel worked for Hilton International, boutique hotels in Germany and Switzerland and hotel resorts in the Caribbean. You can reach her at textspoton@gmail.com.
