The Importance Of Hotel Marketing
Hotels have always put different techniques into practise to make themselves known and increase their business volume. With the passage of time and advances in new technology, hotels must adapt to new marketing strategies in order not to miss out on business opportunities.
The hotel sector has known how to keep up with the times and the trends set by the public, adapting to their tastes and preferences and attempting to attract more clients by offering unique services. Traditional marketing has worked well for decades, with things like magazine ads, booklets, leaflets and posters being just some examples of things that work well. Take a look at this page if you want to go down the more traditional route, or take a look below at the online ways to market yourself in a digital world.
ELEMENTS OF ONLINE HOTEL MARKETING
SEO POSITIONING
To reach a client, it’s necessary that your hotel has a good website and to take into account a very powerful tool: SEO. It’s one of the most robust tools for driving traffic to the website. Its strong point is that after its initial implementation, it continues to generate revenue and its results last throughout time. Hiring a top digital marketing agency in los angeles can make sure that your website is SEO optimized.
SOCIAL NETWORKS
Social networks are a very appealing channel of communication between clients and the hotel because they bring significant traffic, thanks to their reach.
EMAIL MARKETING
Hotels’ databases allow for different actions to be taken to advertise promotions and promote client loyalty, which can be done through the practice of email marketing. The more data we have on our clients, the more specific and effective the segmentation of our audience will be.
ONLINE ADVERTISING
Creating paid campaigns is a fundamental technique for gaining exposure, directing quality traffic to the website, and converting it into direct reservations. An example of this is the campaign conducted by the Hilton chain. It tried to communicate to users what they defined as “Feel the Hamptonality” through a series of videos considered to be “Hampton Moments”, in which they told real client experiences.
CHANGES IN MARKETING STRATEGY
The growth of the competition is noted both in the growing number of hotel companies and establishments and in the incorporation of new tourist destinations. This causes greater pressure from tour operators. Faced with this, companies must respond by expanding the offer of services with greater added value. The increase in bargaining power of tour operators and travel agencies can be seen as a consequence of the business integration and concentration they are undergoing.
Traditionally, the intermediaries, as direct interlocutors with the end clients, have always been the ones who know the market best. The hotel may have been able to know its clients’ preferences and needs once they arrived, but it did not have many opportunities to learn about the general characteristics of the potential demands of the market.
HOTEL MARKETING – NEW TECHNOLOGY
New technology is an extraordinary help to the hotel in achieving this result. The internet is a fundamental channel for communication and management of clients’ relationships with the hotel, given that it offers the possibility of directly improving the hotels’ knowledge in this regard.
Through direct online sales, it is possible to obtain data that expands the hotel’s knowledge of its clients’ tastes and preferences.
The integration of data acquired via the internet into the hotel’s CRM (Customer Relationship Management, the management of a company’s business relationship with its clients) allows for, amongst other things, grouping different clients into segments and providing them with personalized offers.
In addition to learning the preferences and tastes of a hotel’s clients, it is very important to know the value of each client. A meticulous and organized use of the data allows for the average expenditure per client to be determined, a key piece of information when it comes to deciding the best type of personalized marketing action to take for each of them.
New technology, in which the internet plays a very important role, also allows us to know what to offer the client before, during, and after their stay. In addition, it can help the hotel to improve the client’s overall experience through the introduction of new services such as electronic check-in, sending personalized information, and more.
In short, we can affirm that technology allows for the general perception of the hotel’s brand image and its revenue to be improved.
