This document provides a comprehensive guide to online marketing for hotels, resorts, and restaurants in 2020. It discusses the importance of digital marketing and having an online presence. It also outlines some key challenges independent hotel owners face, such as lack of resources, awareness of technology, budget constraints, and unwillingness to embrace technology. Additionally, it covers current market trends, developing a digital marketing strategy, types of travelers to target, areas of focus for hotel digital marketing including social media, content, email, messenger, and visual marketing.
2. If you are from the hospitality and tourism industry, you already know
how difficult the online market is. To survive the competition, you
need to have a strong digital marketing plan.
If you’re new to the term digital marketing, this comprehensive guide
will help you understand (and apply) the concept better.
It’s important for all businesses to have a strong online presence.
Maintaining an effective website and implementing strong Internet
marketing techniques, including social media, are great ways to
bring in more leads and make your website work for you.
This is even more significant for hotels, where customers have many
options and may not know the area.Digital marketing is the
promotion of products or brands through online.
In recent days the demand of digital marketing in hotels has become
increasingly high with Social Media Marketing (SMM) which works
with social networking sites and Search Engine Optimization (SEO)
making the website to appear in search results, and advertisement
on Google and online magazines by Search Engine Marketing (SEM),
video marketing through Youtube and websites.That’s a lot to
process!
But, worry not, this guide is intended to help you take one step at a
time.
Introduction
2Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
3. Registered hotel owners have a broad set of responsibilities for
regular operation of their hotels. In addition, the rising levels of
competition just adds to the worries.
There are huge challenges related to the digital marketing strategy of
an independent hotel.Reason–travelers are getting tech-savvy, and
there are times when hoteliers lose the desire to embrace
technology.
Internet marketing of your hotel rooms is more than just posting on
the OTA websites. To promote an online hotel, you will need a
combination of skills, tactics and, of course, the best use of smart
technologies.
4 Challenges Independent
Hotel Owners Face
3Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
4. Independent hotel owners face the challenge of maintaining large
teams specific only for marketing. Juggling hotel operations with
marketing is an almost impossible task.
4Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Lack of Resources1.
The Challenge:
The Solution:
Automation of tasks brings down dependency on multiple
resources and reduces chances of manual errors.
5. Independent hoteliers, with their limited resources and staff, find
adaption of technology a major challenge. The benefits of online
marketing remain unknown.
5Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
2. Lack of Awareness
The Challenge:
The Solution:
Use cloud-based property management system to market your hote
accorss multiple OTA's on social media to reach out to a wider range
of audience.
6. Independent hotel owners cannot hire expert marketers due to
budget constraints.
6Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
3. Budget Constraint
The Challenge:
The Solution:
A cloud-based Project Management System is suitable to perform
a host of tasks. All within a limited budget
7. The reluctance to embrace technology itself acts as a deterrent for
progress. Hotel owners need to be willing to upgrade to technology.
7Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
4. Unwillingness to Embrace
Technology
The Challenge:
The Solution:
Instead of being afraid, embrace new age technologies like cloud
based project management system and mobile hotel pms.
8. 8Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Current Market Trends
New travelers (millennial generation) are taking over, and hotels have
already started making accommodations to attract these new
customers.
In an industry that is highly human centric and guided by
experience, hotel owners have started understanding the need to get
out there and attract the next guest
.“The new age traveler is concerned with authenticity and crafted
experiences. And they are listening to others on where to find it.
Millennials represent the largest generation to date, making up
31.5% of the world’s population at 7.7 billion, according to
Bloomberg. This generation has an estimated $200 billion of
spending power, certainly a compelling financial reason to pay
attention to them for travel companies."
Travelers are seeking where to find the next destination from none
other than fellow travelers. They would also rather rely on trusted
peer reviews and popularity across digital platforms as an indicator of
quality.
VACATIONS ARE OVER...
MICRO-CATIONS ARE IN!
9. 9Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Digital Marketing Strategy
There’s much to consider when developing a marketing plan for your
hotel. The scope and opportunities are massive in our current climate.
What offline channels are still available and useful to you?
What online channels should you prioritise?
How do you optimise the tools you use?
How do you track and measure results to make adjustments?
Who do you work with to help achieve your potential?
These are all very valid questions. However, before you reach this
point there are two more important decisions to make. You must
decide on:
YOUR BRAND MESSAGE1.
2.YOUR KEY TARGET MARKET
If you don’t know what voice to speak with, or who you want to hear
it, business is unlikely to boom.
These two focus points will then inform how you plan the rest of your
hotel marketing strategies, and both are linked to each other. The
brand message you run with will ultimately impact the kind of guests
you attract.
10. 10Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Types of Travelers
Want to get the best out of their trip. Often travelling with young
children, they have a medium income and largely fall between the ages
of 25-34. They rely heavily on reviews to help them find what they need,
preferably a trip near the beach, and usually research on a smartphone.
Value Seekers1.
2. Luxury Travelers
Are focused on enjoyment and willing to spend more to obtain it. They
often travel in a couple aged 25-49. They seek cities that are hot and
coastal and tend to look closely at online reviews.
3. Social Travelers
Focus on sharing and engaging with others, usually travelling in friend
or family groups. Their groups often include children so they appreciate
babysitting and child services. While they have high to medium income
they put a lot of faith in word of mouth and recommendations from
other travellers. They tend to fall in the 25-49 age group.
4. Independent Travelers
Like to have a lot of control over their trip and thus love to travel solo
looking for adventure and cultural experience over any particular
climate. They’re usually low or high earners who are relatively young and
quite likely to share reviews and engage with social media.
11. 11Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Maintain a very particular approach to booking their trips. They want to
make sure their experience is as good as it possibly could be. They not
only thoroughly research their destination and accommodation but also
restaurants and activities. Given this, a lot of it is done on laptop devices.
They’re commonly higher earners travelling as a couple aged 25-49.
Each stage of the journey is usually backed up listening to the voice of
other consumers through sites like TripAdvisor.
5. Researchers
6. Habitual Travelers
Look for simplicity and convenience by travelling to the same
destinations repeatedly. They place more stock in relaxation than
activities and are commonly in the 35-64 age bracket. Mostly male, they
tend to be lower income travellers.
The type of hotel you run – budget, boutique, luxury, independent, or a chain –
will make a huge difference to how you market your hotel and who you
market to, so the initial research and analysis you do is extremely important.
Once you have confirmed your brand and target market, that’s when you can
divert your attention to all the nuts and bolts of marketing your hotel and
making it a visible, viable booking option for travellers.
12. 12Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Areas for Hotel Digital Marketing
With social media becoming so important in the everyday lives of
consumers there is no doubt that it presents a significant opportunity
for hotels to capture the attention of potential guests.Scrolling through
social media feeds has become part of the everyday for most people
now, no matter where they are or what they’re doing.
Not all content will engage them but travel-related content likely will
because it activates your guest’s imagination. Used creatively, travel
content on social media can have a great effect on viewers, inspiring
them to go on their own journey.
Social media also offers your hotel business a range of options when
distributing your content, meaning strategy and targeting uses become
extremely valuable.
Social Media Marketing1.
Facebook
You should claim your business page on Facebook. It is FREE and gives you
a lot of tools to market your resort online.
Set up your business page with a beautiful cover photo and your brand
logo (make sure to be consistent across all platforms). Next, add all relevant
tabs (contact, booking, etc.) and set-up the Messenger for your business
page.When it comes to content for Facebook, the best option is to use
short video clips in addition to high-res images.
Consider the fact that by 2021 video will account for 82% of all Internet
internet traffic worldwide. Video also adds a lively vibe to your resort
business. There are plenty of free tools to help you make videos, and you
can also upload your videos on Instagram and YouTube .
13. Add links to Facebook on your website and emails
Engage on posts that mention your business
Fill your profile page with searchable information
Keep a consistent logo, contact details, and brand name.
Cross promote your page on other social networks
Post good quality content consistently
Offer incentives and host contests
Experiment with paid Facebook advertising
A great way to increase engagement and reach on Facebook is by running
contests and offers for the target audience. There are lots of ways to have
more and more customers interact with your brand on Facebook.
To get more likes and engagements, follow these tips :
13Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Suggested Read:
https://yaszamedia.com/social-media-marketing-for-resorts/
Instagram
Instagram is one of the most effective social media marketing platforms
available to hotel owners in today’s social and digital environment.
In fact, Instagram now has more than one billion users.It offers a simple,
clean feed, it’s completely mobile, and it makes everything look great.And
the good news for hoteliers is that it’s particularly popular with travelers
and holidaymakers.
Harness the power of hashtags on Instagram. As mentioned earlier,
Instagram is a hotspot for visual content promotion. And, when you mix
images/videos with relevant(and high volume) hashtags, you will see a
surge in the number of queries.
14. 14Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Highlight your hotel’s facilities
Give your staff selfie missions
Go beyond your hotel
Use hashtags
Share External Content
Connect with Influencers
Experiment with Paid Ad campaigns
Always research on trending hashtags to gain extra visibility for your
resort’s Instagram post. For instance, you are offering discounts for
poolside parties in his resort on 15th and 30th of every month
Here are some ideas to help your hotel create Instagram-worthy posts:
.
Suggested Read:
https://yaszamedia.com/food-photography-tips-for-restaurants
15. 15Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Content marketing for restaurants (when applied correctly) will help
attract, engage, and retain customers. The core idea of content
marketing for hotels is to create and distribute relevant content that will
help boost your restaurant’s outreach and brand value.
When it comes to the hospitality industry, customers expect restaurants
to have online presence. Hotels/Resorts need to provide informational
content to the customers without being pushy or salesy.
Thus, it is important to strategize and balance the hotel content
marketing strategy.
2. Content Marketing
The platforms you will be using. Spend some time to figure out which
types of content marketing will work best for you. Learn about the
different types of content.
The type of business you run (B2B or B2C). A successful content
marketing strategy starts with categorizing who you want to target
as a business. Read more about the basic differences between B2B
and B2C Content Marketing.
When you start planning the content strategy for your restaurant
business, you need to consider two things:
Here are some trending ideas that you can use to create content for
your restaurant business :
Diets | Recipes & Ingredients| Podcasts | Travel Guides | Local and Event
Dining Tips | Keto, Paleo, and Organic| Food Chef Interviews
Food Stories (for local cuisines and events) Tasting
Suggested Read:
https://yaszamedia.com/food-photography-tips-for-restaurants
16. 16Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Restaurant/hotel email marketing isn’t something that is totally
different than what you already know.
The only difference is how you plan and execute.
An effective restaurant email marketing campaign has to follow a
sequence. You don’t want to overwhelm the target audience (and, end
up in Spam).
3. Email Marketing
Keep the branding consistent on your emails.In order to get better
results, you need to segment your emails into different lists.
Segmentation helps create personalized content based on individual
subscriber’s wants and needs. You will also get the flexibility to add
personalized elements in the outbound emails. Personalization is a
powerful tool, and it helps increase the average open-rate and
conversions.
Coupons and other promotional items are a must restaurant email
marketing. They help engage and retain customers. When you send
coupons and offers, it is a great idea to personalize them to an extent
(offer a custom barcode, a unique Customer Relationship Number,
etc.) to make it easier for customers to redeem the offers.
You don’t want to bombard the customer’s inbox, nor do you want to
send too few so as to drop out of their contact lists. Make sure that
you don’t overdo it. A great idea is to keep a frequency of 1 email
every 15 days. However, it might vary depending on the
demographics and your business goal(s).
Here’s what you need to do before you start sending out emails :
Suggested Read:
https://yaszamedia.com/restaurant-email-marketing-strategy/
17. 17Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Messenger marketing is slowly (but steadily) turning out to be one of
the most important marketing channels within the tourism and
hospitality industry.
A well-defined messenger marketing strategy can help a tourism
business increase the customer footfall and even boost online
bookings.Messenger marketing is a lot like email marketing, but with a
lot more of Artificial Intelligence (AI) than email. It helps automate
business processes which save you time, effort, and money.
4. Messenger Marketing
Chatbots are suitable for companies and customer-centric
destinations. They will act as customer service experts on the 24/7
front end. Gone are the days of your blog, website, and social media
platform responding manually to comments and inquiries.
When time spent on hold waiting for inquiries to be answered is
reduced / removed, customers can be served quickly.
Chatbots directly reduce overhead costs (manpower and CSRs)
Chatbots help manage relationships. As counter-intuitive as it
sounds, bots are great at managing human relationships. Chatbots
will complement the whole travel experience with intelligent pre-
programming, starting with automated pre-arrival reminders, to
recommend nearby entertainment spots and transportation facilities
at destination.
Here’s how chatbots in tourism are shaping a new vertical –
”
Suggested Read:
https://yaszamedia.com/chatbots-messenger-marketing-strategy/
https://yaszamedia.com/facebook-messenger-marketing-startup-guide/
18. 18Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
Images, videos, GIFs - everything beyond chunks of text is visual
marketing. Well-thought graphics can give your brand a competitive
advantage while setting a unique online identity.For instance, you own
a tourism company.
You’ve a website and multiple social media profiles, yet the number of
queries are less. Your website has low organic traffic and the posts do
not get much engagement. This is a common problem with most
business owners. You might have tonnes of awesome content, but
missing out on visuals is a major concern that needs to be addressed
immediately.
5. Visual Marketing
Use Instagram to post images, videos, and GIFs of your property. Oh
wait, you don’t need to be everywhere posting the same videos and
images (check out our epic guide on Social Media Marketing for
Resorts)
Video marketing should be at the core of any visual branding efforts,
because it has the power to make hotels, their rooms and facilities,
memorable.
Hoteliers who haven’t played with 360-degree Facebook videos
should do so. It can be an excellent way of drawing attention to the
room features and through click-through levels on their pages and
websites.
With 10-second video bursts, Snapchat, Facebook, and Instagram
Stories allow hotel brands to effectively draw out views. Plus,
converting these story views into purchases and guest stays has
never been easier with the inclusion of swipe up links to your website.
Here are a few things that hotels should do :
Suggested Read:
https://yaszamedia.com/visual-marketing-guide-2020/
19. 19Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
The Audience.
The Brand Elements.
The SEO Plan.
Ease of Use.
User Experience
Mobile Responsiveness
Loading Speed
High-resolution Images
Current booking rates and room availability
A Reservation or Book Now button
Websites for hotels should be attractive and beautiful – there’s no doubt
about it! A well-designed website says a lot about your brand. It also
goes a long way in increasing direct bookings. But, having a beautiful
website is just one part of the puzzle, there are many other things that
hotels, resorts, and villas need to do before they see a constant stream
of bookings.
Whether you’re operating as an independent hotel in a quiet getaway,
or managing a chain of hotels in some of the world’s most visited
destinations – you’ll need to know how to create a website for hotels
that captures your target market’s attention and drives bookings.
Your hotel’s website is an important part of the entire online marketing
strategy, and you will need to consider (and implement) each
component carefully while you create an awesome website.
Things to consider when designing a website for your brand
6. Website & Graphics
Suggested Read:
https://yaszamedia.com/website-for-hotels-2020/
20. 20Comprehensive Guide to Online Marketing in 2020 for Hotels, Resorts,
and Restaurants
If you are thinking of getting your hotel business online, the first thing
you need to do is work on building an elegant website.
You can do it on your own (using existing themes and templates) or get
it done by professionals. Either way, it is your brand, and you know
what’s best for you and your customers.Claim your business listing on
Google, create accounts of social media platforms, and let your creativity
flow.
If you need professional assistance, just visit www.yaszamedia.com and
connect with us.
Conclusion
Sources:
https://www.hotelogix.com/blog/2018/04/20/top-challenges-in-hotel-digital-marketing-faced-by-independent-hotel-owners/
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