HOTEL MARKETING: EVERYTHING YOU SHOULD KEEP IN MIND

To succeed in a huge but highly diverse industry like the hotel and hospitality sector, which is constantly evolving, keeping up with the latest trends is essential to avoid being left behind. Hotel marketing is one of the things that any hotelier should pay close attention to.

The demands of today’s guests will become history tomorrow, so you must constantly move forward to guarantee the survival of your business and provide a great customer experience. Therefore, it is important to stay up-to-date with the latest developments in hotel marketing to find new opportunities that translate into more reservations and loyal customers.

Here are some trends that will help you promote and improve your hotel marketing.

Increase protection directly.

The bankruptcy of Thomas Cook has been a landmark for the industry highlighting the importance of diversifying distribution strategies in hotel marketing and the need to innovate and implement new technologies and work processes. In this sense, companies and businesses will need to invest more time and resources in changing marketing strategies to build real customer loyalty, build their reputation and increase direct hotel reservations.

Hotels must rethink their distribution and independence in marketing to be ready to compete in a changing market. It will be important to be prepared for changes in trends, as well as having the technical, financial and human resources to make this possible.

This means paying attention to loyalty strategy: Attracting new customers is much more difficult than building loyalty. The key here is to get existing customers to repeat their stays and bookings through direct channels rather than using third parties.

Hotel Marketing: Everything You Should Consider

How to get it?

By creating a quality database: This means that it should be validated in real time and comply with GDPR (the latest EU personal data regulations). For example, this can be done through hotel Wi-Fi. Automating this process allows us to obtain validated data for between 60% and 95% of the total guests staying at each establishment.

Another strategy is to offer rewards during and after the stay, which will improve brand perception.

Maintain consistent and thoughtful communication – Be proactive and anticipate customer wishes, such as using a survey during a stay or wishing them a happy birthday. These communications are also easy to automate.

Finally, running a segmented email marketing campaign with a database gained over time is also an effective strategy.

While it is true that all these strategies may require a lot of time and effort, there are tools in the market that automate these processes and can be integrated with hotel PMS.

With these integrations, it is even easier to monitor bookings coming from direct channels, and since the use of automated and segmented email campaigns means less reliance on third parties, this represents savings on commissions. Is.

Once you’ve accomplished the primary goal, which is to get a standard database through the establishment’s Wi-Fi, the next challenge is to get the most out of it. But before considering any further strategy, it is important to see if the database can be improved.

How can I improve my database?

To take advantage of the database, it is recommended to connect or link it with PMS, allowing you to optimize it and run better segmented campaigns: country of origin, age, with or without children. Customers, repeat customers etc.

With a CRM that allows for the inclusion of this data, one can automate email marketing campaigns targeting all types of customers, including repeat visitors, and even email those May be able to stop shipping for those who have already made a reservation. The future of marketing lies in micro-segmentation and this approach allows hotel marketing campaigns to make the most of it.

Email marketing

Email marketing is one of the most effective communication strategies with the highest return for hotel managers, especially when it comes to attracting returning customers.

The market is still evolving and offering new tools that can help us get more customers, but email marketing is still the star and offers the highest return on investment (ROI). Is.

However, for it to be effective, we must take it to the highest level: using the right marketing tools and strategies.

Therefore, it is important to work with professional tools that are capable of managing and distributing large amounts of data. This can mean savings in costs and especially in time.

Other major traffic sources (AdWords, display, affiliate, and search aggregators) don’t typically convert into returning visitors to generate direct sales, but the cost of new customers and customer acquisition is high.

Hotel Marketing: Everything You Should Consider

Improving Hotel Online Reputation

It is a fact that social media and reviews

With the rise of sites, a customer is more aware of a hotel’s reputation than ever before. So knowing what they say about the establishment and where they say it becomes important when it comes to loyalty.

Thanks to technology, it is possible to automate processes that allow users to leave feedback on major review sites.

For most sites, the way to work your way up the rankings is not just through average rankings, but frequency and volume of reviews. A customer satisfaction survey system during the stay allows to detect problems and offer solutions that satisfy the guests. A good option would be to automatically invite a guest to write a review on a site in their geographic location after a stay.

It is important to be featured on these sites as they are the starting point for many direct reservations.

Hotel Marketing: Everything You Should Consider

The adoption of technologies applied to tourism is redefining the way in which operations are carried out and hotel services are offered. Digital transformation is accelerating, and more and more hotels are using new technologies that simplify everyday tasks and allow them to offer guests more personalized experiences that increase their overall satisfaction. happens.

The most common technological advances will also evolve in 2020: artificial intelligence, mobile apps, chatbots, automation, blockchain, IoT and facial recognition continue to impact the industry, but it may be too early to invest in them all. At least until the full deployment of 5G, which is still in its early stages.