There's no way around it. The digital revolution has firmly settled in and continues to innovate the hotel industry, and marketing strategies are no exception.
Alongside this, the need for digital marketing shows no signs of slowing down. While workable strategies are a step in the right direction, successful SEO for hotels rests on various factors.
Keep reading as we unpack these factors, the current state of hotel digital marketing, emerging trends to watch, and how to get guests through the door through digital marketing.
Digital Marketing & the Hotel Industry: Current Trends
As the need for improved, innovative, and pioneering digital marketing continues, we continue to see trends geared toward streamlining and enhancing the process. Let's run through the most significant, taking hospitality marketing by storm.
It's All About Guest Experience
Guest preferences have shifted from wanting extensive amenities towards a requirement for the most memorable overall experience. Potential customers now expect a highly personable time with your brand, from your digital booking process to their actual stay.
Guest satisfaction drives more bookings, and with the adoption of digital booking platforms and methods, subtle inclusions within marketing strategies can indicate a pleasant or unpleasant experience.
Guest Reviews & Feedback Remain Relevant
The success of digital marketing plans is in part determined by online visibility, revenue generated by more guests, and sustained positive reviews. On average, 80% of potential guests read between six and 12 online reviews before booking.
This has showcased how vital online reputation remains and how it impacts direct bookings. Readily available on search engines, positive and negative reviews play a significant role in the efficacy of hotel businesses' digital marketing strategies.
Sustainability Is Key
There's never been a better time for hotel brands to consider sustainability and its impact on existing and new customers. Highlighting key elements defining a brand's sustainability views and procedures in engaging content shapes a successful hotel's digital marketing.
Publicly displaying a commitment to a greener future through marketing efforts, mainly social media marketing, is a surefire way to draw attention. Beyond this, demonstrating a genuine interest in sustainability on your hotel website remains paramount.
Adopt Innovative Social Media Strategies
These days, social media sells, and the idea of social selling is becoming an integral part of social media marketing strategies. Venturing into the industry without a solid social strategy as part of your digital marketing strategy is too risky.
Far removed from the simple product or listing content, social media and the marketing efforts behind these campaigns are dominated by building lasting relationships. Using these relationships, social media marketing can systematically improve brand awareness.
Videos Create Engaging Content
Although it might seem obvious, there's been an increase in guest satisfaction as a result of better content. Essentially, web and marketing content that takes advantage of the potential of video is reaping the biggest rewards.
Content marketing using short-form videos allows hotel businesses to give their potential customers bite-sized insights into the property and brand identity. Including content that sparks curiosity about local attractions completes the experience by allowing guests to cement travel itineraries easily.
Email Marketing Continues to Play Its Part
Any marketing strategy currently within the hotel industry that's not focused on email marketing should be heeded. It was recently revealed that email marketing still produces the highest return on investment at $36 for every $1 spent.
This is good news for your marketing tactic, but tying into personable experiences, guests have shown a reluctance to continue interacting with bland and generic messages. Finally, email marketing campaigns have to adopt imaginative storytelling to catch attention.
Next Read: How to Craft a Successful Email Marketing Campaign
Hotel SEO Is More Important Than Ever
Hotel online marketing has rapidly become a varied landscape. Recently, Backlinko revealed that less than 1% of searchers ever make it to the second results page. This isn't good news if you're firmly positioned on the wrong side of search engine optimisation.
Naturally, hotel brands must pay attention to elements of excellent SEO, such as valuable, personalised, and optimised creative content. This is even more crucial to successful digital marketing after Google released updates rewarding helpful, quality content.
Augmented & Virtual Reality
There's no denying the value of striking images and engaging videos. While these do a good job of showcasing property strengths to potential guests, augmented reality (AR) and virtual reality (VR) take things to a new level.
Allowing hotel websites to integrate interactive maps onto their sites, AR is an incredibly accessible asset for better digital marketing on mobile devices. Beyond this, VR is paving the way for enhanced event marketing by allowing for the creation of virtual event mock-ups.
Creating Future-focused Hotel Digital Marketing Strategies
Further proving the importance of digital marketing for the hotel industry, as the number of emerging trends rises, so does the amount of actionable, accessible strategies. Let's dive into the most popular of these.
Crafting a Compelling Brand Voice & StoryExisting customers and fresh perspectives are increasingly growing accustomed to brands that establish personal relationships through marketing and interaction. For hotel marketers, this means creating brand strategies.
When a hotel business can effectively communicate its values and services to potential visitors, a sense of community is created. Brand messages, stories, logos, and visuals should evoke emotion, sustaining and increasing direct bookings.
Having an Effective Online PresenceAs crucial as a well-executed hotel digital marketing strategy is, it's only as good as the overall online presence behind the strategy. Hotel marketing in the digital world begins with a seamless, unique, and user-friendly website.
Website? Check. What's next? Aside from simply being present online, optimising your pages is still a tried-and-tested method of driving organic traffic and direct bookings. Optimised content, in-depth keyword research, and meta tags are only a few ideas to use for a successful digital marketing plan.
Influencer Marketing & CollaborationsSocial media influencers are an invaluable asset and a powerful tool for hotel promotion. Partnerships with relevant influencers with dedicated followings authentically showcase a hotel's offerings.
Influencer marketing campaigns and user-generated content go hand-in-hand, both playing roles in an excellent social media marketing strategy. Then, there are collaboration possibilities with travel-related businesses and online travel agencies, which have proven to get more direct bookings.
The GA4 ShiftAlthough GA4 hasn't been around for long, the Google advertising and analytics platform has impacted the hospitality sector. Successful hotel businesses are now using GA4's ability to provide advanced analytics and data tracking.
What is the benefit of this data for hotel digital marketing? Hotels operate in a dynamic industry where personalised experiences and nurturing campaigns drive guest bookings.
Integrating GA4 data into digital marketing is essential for businesses to collect important information about guest behavior, preferences, and engagement (on social media platforms, for example).
Effective Ad RetargetingConsidering the industry's invigorated competitive nature, not many marketing budgets aren't under strain. Creating effective ads, whether on Google Hotel Ads or Facebook Ads, remains costly.
This results in the efficacy of ad retargeting as part of your digital marketing efforts. Utilising cookie data, targeted advertising can suggest ads based on recent search data. Doing so allows you to continue serving additional content during the decision-making process.
Wrapped Up | Unlock Growth Through Hotel Digital Marketing
The jury is out. Hospitality businesses that dedicate time and marketing efforts to utilising the latest hotel digital marketing trends are at the forefront of the industry. Looking ahead, there is a lot of room for excitement.
As more digital marketing trends turn into habits that become the eventual norm, the best news is that getting accessible, effective digital marketing isn't difficult.
Crafting innovative digital marketing strategies can seem intimidating. But with the proper background knowledge and future-focused thinking, there's no reason to shy away from it. If this year is an indication of the future, your hotel's online marketing strategy will thank you.
