Whenever you plan to book a hotel the most important 3 points that come to mind are
- Price Range
- Customer Reviews
- Hotel’s Website
Being among the most affected industries globally during COVID and even after is the Hotel industry. It completely changed its marketing strategy from direct or offline marketing to unique digital marketing for hotels.
In this article, we will be discussing how digital marketing for the hotel industry can help in growing through a hotel digital marketing strategy.
More and more clients are being serviced online, particularly via websites, tablet devices, and smartphones, thanks to various digital marketing channels. With the use of an article, audio, email, and video travel web marketing may become viral for any given demographic.
What is Digital Marketing for Hotel
Activities done to increase the online visibility of your hotel is called digital marketing hotel. It includes the hotel website, social media presence, aggregator websites, and other referral links of your hotel’s online presence.
Digital Marketing for Hotel helps to Grow Business
Back in 2019-2020 (before the COVID pandemic), there were many ways to promote your hotel business like outdoor promotions, and making huge budget payments to commercial ad agencies for making 15-30 sec ads. Many big hotel chains also do B2B tie-up with corporates and travel agencies giving them huge discounts out of their profit. Many hotels were on aggregator sites like MakeMyTrip, Yatra.com, etc. for survival as they charge a high amount from each sale they make. Many hotels and resorts have their social media handles used mostly for posting content on special occasions wishes.
But everything collapses after the pandemic. With almost no sales and no revenue, many hotels either closed their business or lay off their manpower to survive.
Digital marketing help many hotels not only to survive well but also to gain new business opportunities. Decision makers nowadays are well aware of doing digital marketing for their business. But the question comes where they are improvising all the necessary points to improve their hotel’s online marketing strategy.
1. Listing Your Hotel on Google
Take it as a good habit of listing your business on Google can generate good leads. Previously sites like “JustDial” & “Yellow Pages” have the contact information of listed hotels that travelers used to call.
But now preferences have changed as the potential buyers want to contact the hotels directly. From a fast food corner in your city to world famous Hyatt Hotels, almost every business is listed on Google.
As a hotelier, you might think:
- Is it free to list my Hotel on Google?
- How can I list my Hotel?
Yes, it is absolutely free to list your business on Google or I can say Google My Business ( GMB ). Google My Business not only helps your business to list on Google but also shows your location on Google Maps. According to a survey done by statistica, 59.5% of the global population are active internet users which comes to a number of 4.6 billion and growing.
Coming to the second question how can you list your hotel in Google which is a bit complicated as the terms for updating the information subsequently changes as per Google guidelines. Here are some of the following things which are required to enlist your business in Google My Business:
- Company Logo
- Office Images – Your office building from the outside, Office Interior, Office workplace, etc.
- Company Description Content within 750 words
And many more.
You can check the detailed process of listing your business in Google My Business.
2. Get Your Own Hotel Website
Doing digital marketing for your hotel on a website is much more impact as compared to working on common online platforms. Talking about a website doesn’t mean 2-3 lines of description supported by poor images.
Basically, a Hotel website consists of proper information regarding that hotel like amenities, rooms, location, restaurants, and the rest of all the features of your hotel. We also encourage that booking information must be visible clearly for hassle-free customer booking.
Mobile responsiveness is also a major factor if you have or planning to have a Hotel website. According to Datareportal, 92.1% of internet users across the globe are mobile users as compared to approximately 62% are available on Desktops, Laptops, etc. It’s a huge number that you shouldn’t be missing out on.
3. SEO For Website Visibility For Direct Hotel Booking
Getting direct website booking increases the chances of repeat orders. Behind the website traffic which works to increase your organic search result visibility is SEO. This is the backbone of any digital marketing activity.
Competing with OTAs such as MakeMyTrip.com, Yatra.com, Booking.com, etc will be a tough nut to crack. But we can show the relevancy in the search result to increase our ranking. SEO activities can be segmented into 3 main categories:
- On-Page SEO
- Off-Page SEO
- Technical SEO
In case you have any confusion on how to do SEO or you want to outsource us to do the activity on your behalf feel free to contact us.
4. Gain Trust By Email Marketing
According to a survey over 49% of potential customers confirmed that they receive emails from their favorite brands or those brands that they had purchased in the past. This is only because of that brand’s email marketing campaign which gives the highest rate of return as compared to any other campaign. It’s easy to communicate relevant information to your customer/guest.
You can use email marketing campaigns for the following purpose:
- Sending planned scheduled email newsletters.
- Sending special offers, discounts, and add-ons to potential customers.
- Sharing existing customer loyalty program offers to make an advance hotel booking.
- Sharing news and updates regarding the Hotel’s new service and features.
5. List Your Hotels On Popular OTAs
Talking about OTA platforms, they have thousands of daily users searching for their requirements. According to an article published by PhocusWire shares that over 57% of travelers prefer to book their hotels through an OTA – Expedia Group. Even the conversion rate on these platforms are also higher than normal bookings.
So it’s better to create a listing in OTA platforms like MakeMyTrip.com, Yatra.com, Booking.com, etc. which might give you an additional booking at a particular time or season.
6. Ad Campaign for Promoting Your Hotel
This is the most tricky segment, choosing the right platform is the big question. This is the only quickest option to compete with OTAs which helps in decreasing dependency and increasing direct website booking.
There is the top option for running an ad campaign for the Hotel business:
- Google Hotel Ads
- Facebook Ads ( Running on both Facebook & Instagram )
We would recommend hiring an expert agency that will work professionally because any ad campaign required an expert brain to manage the campaign and also the ad budget which includes commercials.
Do not worry about searching for a PPC ad campaign expert company that will help in running a successful ad campaign for the respective hotel. Hiemind Digital best digital marketing company in India is here to help you out.
7. Engaging In Social Media With Your Guest
Conclusion
Digital marketing for hotels plays a very important role in their revenue generation model. We have already discussed that without proper online visibility, it’s nearly impossible to sustain in 2025 and so on.
So in the current situation, your potential customers are likely to have some good offers, an easy-to-handle website booking page, a mobile-friendly website, best-in-class service, etc.
