The document outlines key strategies for hotel growth in 2022, focusing on digital transformation, budgeting, and customer engagement. It highlights significant recovery trends in U.S. hotel occupancy and presents various case studies illustrating successful marketing strategies implemented by Milestone. Additionally, it provides ten actionable tips for enhancing hotel performance and securing growth in a competitive landscape.

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Top 10 Tips for Growth in 2022
July 22, 2021
Adapt and Evolve

2. Agenda
1. About Milestone
2. Digital Transformation
3. Budget Planning
4. US Recovery Trends
5. Occupancy Growth
6. Group Business Growth
7. Awareness
8. Takeaways: Top 10 Tips for Driving Growth in 2022

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About Milestone
Digital Discovery
Local Listings • Reviews • Insights • Analytics
Digital Experience
CMS • Schemas • FAQ Manager
Digital Marketing Services
Design • Content • SEO • Paid • Analytics
We drive online customer acquisition by amplifying content to reach the right audience
Increases traffic, leads,
and revenue by 15-25%
Lowers customer
acquisition costs
Bridges the resources
and skills gaps
Silicon Valley • Chicago • DC • Bangalore • Ahmedabad

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Your Speakers
Alyssa DeClement
Customer Success Account
Director, Milestone Inc.
Patrick Combley
Senior Customer Success
Manager, Milestone Inc.
Kelly Kavanaugh
Senior Customer Success
Manager, Milestone Inc.
Timothy Talreja
Associate Product Marketing
Manager, Milestone Inc.
(Moderator)

5. Digital Transformation

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Digital Transformation Is Here To Stay
• Enable and empower hoteliers to make strategic, revenue-generating decisions
• Digital will continue to be a large revenue generator
• Digital interaction increased while in-person exposure decreased

7. Planning in Today's Climate

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Planning In Today's Climate
• Evolving budgeting process
• Historic data will play a different role
• Mix of sales, channel shifts, increasing ADR,
demand drivers vs. overall occupancy growth
• Customer needs have changed –
new expectations (i.e. social distancing)

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Make a Plan & Make the Case
How do I get my
plan approved?

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Four Planning Considerations
1. Hotel Alignment
• Align your budget with hotel goals
• Align your budget with number of hotel rooms and/or meeting space capacity
2. What does your market look like? Budget spend according to market demand and
seasonality
• Monitor STR for trends in market
• Review sources for travel demand insights and queries
• (i.e. Google Trends, Destination Insights by Google, CoStar)
• Review sources to better understand historic performance and competitor insights
• (i.e. Milestone Presence Cloud)
3. Good, better, best planning
• Should you create multiple versions of your 2022 budget?
4. Timelines
• When should you start the process?

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Poll Question #1 – Have you started your budget process for 2022?
• A. Yes
• B. No
• C. Multiple Properties – Yes
• D. Multiple Properties – Some
• E. Multiple Properties - No

12. US Recovery Trends

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Increasing Travel Demand in the United States

14. U.S. Hotel Occupancy Reached Its Highest Weekly Level Since Early November 2019
https://str.com/press-release/str-us-hotel-results-week-ending-12-june

15. STR Research: Majority of U.S. Now Within 10% of 2019 Hotel Demand
https://str.com/data-insights-blog/50-state-demand-state-level-recovery-lines

16. Occupancy Growth

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Increasing Travel Demand in New York

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Challenge
Milestone’s team redesigned their OTA widget and
displayed the widget on the homepage. This allowed users
to see their direct rate and benefits compared to OTAs
during the research phase, which was once hidden within
the Book Now button.
A hotel in New York City needed to increase direct
bookings and shift share away from the OTAs. Early results: 55 days after
implementation
Solution
Results
NYC hotel
increases booking
engine entrances
and revenue,
resulting in
shifting share
away from the
OTAs using
Milestone’s OTA
Widget feature.
Before
After
400%
increase
in booking engine
entrances share
1,452%
increase
in revenue over that time
period
573%
increase
in OTA widget booking
engine entrances
618
OTA widget views

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Challenge
Milestone’s team redesigned their abandonment emails
and reconfigured the strategy to deploy emails based on
the following triggers:
1. Email 1: Triggered 1 hour after abandonment
• Reminder messaging
2. Email 2: Triggered 24 hours after abandonment, if user
did not book from email 1
• Book direct offer incentive messaging
A hotel in New York City needed to increase conversions
and decrease their abandonment rate on the booking
engine. They had abandonment email reminders
deploying, but it wasn’t enough to close the gap.
91 days after
implementation
Solution
Results
NYC hotel recovers
abandoned
revenue and
increases
conversions using
enhanced Revenue
Recovery Cart
Abandonment
strategy.
Before After
432%
increase
In saved revenue
193%
increase
in conversions
41%
increase
in conversion rate
8%
increase
in email open rate

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Increasing Travel Demand in Arizona

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Challenge
Milestone approached the problem with an
integrated solution through the Milestone
CMS. The CMS was mobile-optimized, user-
friendly UI/UX and ADA-compliant website
was developed to improve site engagement.
AMP, PWA, and an Events Calendar were
added to the site to drive SEO performance
and mobile reach.
The main objective of the client was to
develop a responsive website, improve their
SEO performance and drive increased online
revenue.
Within 3 months of
launching the new website
the customer achieved:
Solution
Results
Historic Hotel
Increases Direct
Revenue by 16%
and Mobile Traffic
by 23% with a new
Website and
features.
These results were achieved
during and despite the
Covid-19 pandemic
“Our experience with Milestone on our new website was second to
none, we found them to be responsive, efficient, and extremely
knowledgeable. I am delighted with the result, and the increased
analytics speak for themselves!”
– Jill Clark, Resort General Manager
9%
increase
in website visits
41%
in wedding RFPs
submitted on mobile
devices
51%
increase
in direct bookings

22. Increasing Travel Demand in Missouri

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Challenge
Milestone approached the challenge by deploying the
following key recovery strategies:
1. Targeting: Geo locations targeting was focused to
three states based on historical performance. It helped
increase website bookings 73% and conversion rate 21%.
2. Ad Copies & Ad Extensions: Text ad copies were
revised with recovery message and safety measures
increasing the CTR. Ad copies and ad extensions were
focused on guest safety, which boosted confidence of the
audience.
3. Keywords: New trending keywords were added: “Open
hotels near me,” “Safe hotels.”
4. Device Bid: Bids were adjusted to make sure that the
hotel runs ads on devices
A lake resort wanted to increase website traffic
and audience engagement in order to drive higher
number of bookings after relaunching their paid
marketing campaign during the new normal
pandemic recovery
Solution
Results
A Lake Resort
in Missouri famous for
family vacation with
outdoor recreational
activities, including
golf, tennis, and boating
needed to capture local
leisure demand.
73%
increase
in bookings
45%
increase
in ROAS
12%
decrease
cost per booking

24. Group Business Growth

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Group Demand Comeback

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Zero-Click Is a Major Trend
Budget for Schema-Wrapped FAQs & Content to Increase Visibility
Location
Schemas
Rich Topic
Paragraphs
Maps
Lists & FAQs
Rich content snippets
• Paragraph
• Bullet list
• Schema
• Image or video
Impact
1. Increase visibility
2. Saturate SERP
3. Organic traffic

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77 days after
implementation
Results
Challenge
Milestone’s team created wedding related frequently asked
questions and added the FAQs to their website Weddings
page. Milestone’s error-free advanced schema was
wrapped around the FAQs, resulting in search engine
results page saturation, bringing customers to the website
and generating incremental wedding leads.
A hotel in Florida needed to grow group business, with a
focus on weddings. They were receiving leads through
their website request for proposal form, however wanted
another opportunity to capture leads.
Solution
Florida hotel
increases wedding
leads by enhancing
wedding related
Frequently Asked
Questions (FAQs).
18%
increase
In group leads
76%
increase
in group lead
conversion rate
17%
increase
in average time on
wedding page

28. Awareness

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Build Awareness Through Local Presence
• As hotels begin to open, it’s important to optimize your local listings and ensure the correct information is displayed.
Budget to optimize profiles and listings and make updates as needed
3 UNAP
2 Photos
Map
Marker
6 Amenities +
COVID
protocols
5 Description
7 Reviews
8 Q&As
4 Paid
Metasearch
1

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Poll Question #2 – Where are you focusing your dollars in 2022?
• A. Content
• B. Social Media
• C. New Website
• D. SEO
• E. Website Features
• F. CRM/email Marketing
• G. Technology
• H. Reputation Management
Select all that apply

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Takeaways: Top 10 Tips for Growth in 2022
1. Optimizing platforms for digital capabilities to achieve goals
2. Training and exposure for all hoteliers on digital platforms
3. Understand your hotel, market, and demand and align budget accordingly
4. Balance budget according to goals: rooms revenue/occupancy vs. group business
growth
5. Budget for conversion optimization
6. Get in front of the customer during research phase
7. Create a plan to recapture unengaged users
8. Anticipate and answer questions your customers may have
9. Secure budget to enhance group leads
10. Build awareness as part of your foundation

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https://go.milestoneinternet.com/audit

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