The New Strategies of Marketing Hotels
While traditional marketing strategies have worked well for the hospitality industry, the new economy comes with new problems and new technologies. Marketing hotels is no longer about which brand segment and how to fill up rooms, it is about experiential marketing, using the social media to advertise through offers and promotions, using search engine optimisation (SEO) on the website to pull in web traffic, building networks, offering rewards and of course committing to excellence in service. While there are many approaches to how hotels market themselves, listed in this article are a few new strategies that a majority of the hotels have probably heard of but have yet to put into effect.
Internet marketing initiatives are a must for any hotel. This is one of the strategies that delivers the highest returns on investments (ROI) and generates revenue. A few factors to take care of in this strategy include website redesign, SEO, paid search marketing and email marketing. These are just the basics that can deliver the bookings and revenues in this economy. It is estimated that about 75 – 80% of bookings are a result of these four initiatives. Marketing hotels in this manner, will not only allow for maximum impact for every penny spent but also ensure that the hotel is poised for growth as the new economy builds up.
Multi-channel marketing is another buzzword that needs to be scrutinised. Travellers today are opting to book hotels by using a variety of media including social networking platforms like facebook, asking their friends and family for the best places and rates, looking at websites and promotions online and through their mobile phones – basically using a variety of different channels to reach a decision. It is an important part of marketing hotels to be wherever the client is looking for a deal. The convergence of interactive and offline marketing channels can help deliver the results.
Other strategies for marketing hotels include the use of video to showcase the hotel premises and amenities offered on their websites, social marketing initiatives that give out promotions through the use of platforms like twitter and facebook, making the direct online channels the centrepiece of any new marketing plans, real-time marketing and communication with customers using web chat and mobile chat, enhancing the hotel website using web 2.0 features that make it user friendly and so on.
One of the key things to remember is that the internet is an interactive platform and it takes more than delivering information to help a potential client make a decision. Using the interactivity to create a smoothly delivered, well thought out experience is what most hotel marketers should be concerned with. A website that is hard to navigate, takes forever to load and is not optimised to deliver a customer friendly experience will probably never deliver the results no matter how much money is spent on creating it.
Summary
The new strategies in marketing hotels require some out of the box thinking, some concentration on what promises the highest returns on investments and perhaps most importantly, reaching out to the consumer in the format he or she is comfortable with. This is what makes sense in the new economy. Customised content is made to delivering specific benefits and a great user experience. In the end, this is what will make the difference between a fully booked hotel and one that is trying to get there.