Whether you are just starting out in tourism or you have been in it for a long time, building an effective marketing strategy for your vacation rental business or your hotel matters.
For a new business, the key to successful marketing is adopting inventive strategies that catch a guest’s interest and earn their trust. I would advise you to read the 7 tips here carefully, because they are what carry a business to long term success. One thing is certain: “Without a good marketing plan, failure is unavoidable for any business.” The good news is that hotels and vacation rentals have plenty of marketing options, and you can use these tools to reach an audience and pull in customers. In this article we will look at seven effective ways to market a vacation rental or a hotel.
I wrote this piece out of what I have learned in the tourism advertising I have been doing since 2005. If you want to market your hotel online and raise your booking numbers, I should add that this will be a superb resource for you.
Build a Website
Being listed with agencies works, and you will take bookings through those channels, but having your own website is enormously important. You save more when guests book through your site rather than through a listing channel. Listing means paying commission to distribution partners, and you cannot set all the terms of the transaction yourself. A website of your own helps you stand out as an independent operation.
Your website sits at the center of the types of digital marketing. It has a direct effect on almost all of them, from email marketing to content marketing. Not just any site, though: a hotel site that follows the rules properly.
Our hotel management web software at Türk SEM comes with Google Hotel Ads API integration and covers every core need a hotel has. Every component that will serve you in digital marketing is available through our web design services.
Getting Listed With Travel Agencies
Listing your hotel with travel agencies is another fine way of getting your property in front of people. There are plenty of agency sites, each with its own standards and its own customer base. Some of them are Booking.com, Airbnb.com, Expedia.com, Agoda.com and Hotels.com. Picking more than one listing channel makes this work harder for you and puts your hotel in front of a bigger audience.
Some websites are not built for hotels but for stays like villas or bungalows, so check the details before you commit to a listing channel. You should also weigh up software requirements, payment transfer options, the traffic the site gets and the agency’s track record. If you run a large hotel, partnering with the bigger agencies is best, because they hold wider ad inventory and spend more on advertising.
Working with well known tour operators abroad, not only the ones in your own country, will get you in front of a larger audience.
Hotels currently work with agencies on an average commission of 30%.
Large directories and travel agencies have bigger advertising budgets for reaching potential customers and generating clicks, but those portals ask for high commissions. If your property is smaller, consider niche portals operating on a smaller scale. They usually have a focused audience, though you will need to look at the details to be sure they suit the way you work. Check everything at the start so you are not chasing an agency later to collect what you are owed.
Inspiring topics: we put together agency and hotel ads from around the world for you. These are striking campaigns that managed to leave a mark in people’s memories.
Social Media
Social media is still one of the most effective marketing tools most businesses have in this digital age. Having an active presence there matters, both for connecting with your guests and for staying in touch with your customers. You should be sharing video and images of your vacation rental or your hotel on your business social media page. Social media can also serve as a source of traffic to your website. Between good posts and consistent posting, it is close to ideal for reaching new guests and reminding old ones that you exist.
Through social media you can build a specific target audience and create and run targeted ads that speak to it. Many social platforms offer advertising options at reasonable prices. Twitter, Facebook, Pinterest and Instagram lead the pack as advertising platforms, because they hold huge numbers of active users.
Alongside ads, influencer marketing is another excellent way to market your hotel or vacation rental on social media. You have to be very careful with this kind of content, though, because it can shape how the public sees your business.
Update: I noticed afterwards that I had skipped a small point. Do not think of social media as a handful of portals and nothing more. With the right ad setup you can reach exactly the right potential customers through YouTube as well. For instance, you can place your hotel’s ads on the YouTube videos of competitors whose audience overlaps with yours. When the hotel we work with has a high room count, this is a campaign we turn on.
Keep in Touch With Previous Guests
Pulling in new guests is one thing, but staying in touch with the ones who keep coming back matters just as much. Once a guest books your hotel, you have to keep the communication going so they book again. Beyond that, previous guests will recommend your hotel to other people. Work out who your most valuable customers are and target those specific customers.
Once a guest completes a booking, we recommend sending an automatic email that thanks them for it and gives them all the information they will need. That kind of communication adds to how much you are worth in their eyes. What you should not do is spam your customers with repeated or pointless emails. The best approach is sending relevant emails periodically, with news about promotions, new deals or other information that concerns them. The aim is to keep your guest informed and the lines open, not to spam them.
Create a Unique Experience
The standout features that separate you from your competitors can bring in new guests and help you hold on to the old ones. Rather than marketing the typical features of your hotel, advertise a whole experience, one unique enough to make people decide to book with you. You can analyze your competitors or the bigger operators to get ideas about how to improve your services and offer your customers more value. Compete on value rather than on price.
Google Hotel Ads carries several important advantages for marketing your hotel. You can read how to set up the API connection with Hotel Ads and integrate it with your site.
Instead of marketing your hotel or vacation rental as the low cost option, let potential customers see they will get their money’s worth. Plenty of travelers are ready to pay more as long as they get better value than your competitors offer. Delivering a unique guest experience will earn you good customer reviews online, which in turn means less money spent on advertising and marketing. It is also one of the most effective ways to build your brand and create a personal identity for your business.
Photo and Video Marketing
In marketing any holiday, potential customers will want to see what your hotel or vacation rental looks like before they book. Nothing is more disappointing for a traveler than arriving at your hotel and finding a different place from the one in the photos. So be honest when you build your property’s digital identity. That is exactly why photos and videos can help you market your hotel effectively. If you are 3 km from the sea, do not write that it is within walking distance.
Shooting low quality photos or video on a phone and sending them off to agencies makes no sense. Hire a professional photographer to shoot high resolution photos and video of your hotel’s best features in the right light and from the right angles. The photos and video should highlight what is unique about your place, and you should share them regularly on your website, on your social pages and in your targeted ads. It is an effective way of getting potential guests to look favorably on booking your property, and it makes deciding easier and faster for them.
Build Partnerships
You can partner with local businesses near your property, such as restaurants, shops, studios or cafes. Building relationships with local owners can be an opportunity to market your hotel. What starts as contact with another business can turn into the two of you promoting each other. You could create joint promotions and discounts for your customers, for instance. This is an old, simple and effective way of marketing your brand.
Conclusion
Marketing plays a large part in deciding whether you win customers or not. The tips listed above have been tested by Türk SEM and they hold up. For better results, they can be combined with one another. Ideas may be excellent, but they only do your business any good once you put them into practice.
At Türk SEM we have been doing serious work on hotel advertising for many years. We have written up the work we did for the hotels whose advertising we ran in our success stories category. Those case studies will show you what we do for our hotels.
