Whether you’re operating as an individual hotel in a quiet rural area of the country or manage rooms in a metropolitan city, promoting it online will attract a wider range of customers and grow your revenue.
In this article, we’ll talk about the basics of marketing your hotel business online along with actionable ideas and real life examples from hotels in India.
Contents
Create a website for your hotel business
You’re going to need a website to capture attention and drive bookings. A website will be the core of your hotel’s online promotional.
You can get started by signing up on Instamojo, where you can easily create a branded website for your hotel services even without any technical knowledge. Choose a theme, add in images of your property, and set up payments. You can then use the custom scripts feature to collect details of customers. Your website is now ready to get bookings.
To start promoting your hotel online, the first step is to create an attractive website to showcase your services and collect bookings. Your guests can book rooms and services seamlessly through mobile or desktop.
The next step is to make your website discoverable to people who search for places to stay in your location. This can be done with the in-built SEO tools available on Instamojo.
Now that you have a website for your hotel, start building a social media presence. Among the many social platforms, the top three platforms for building a brand presence as a hotel are Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube. You can start with one platform and expand to others over time.
Start by posting high-quality images and videos of your property. Describe what amenities you have, add-on services you offer, and what your guests can expect.
Along with promoting your hotel, promote what the location. Let your audience know what your city/town/village is most famous for. Market local events, attractions, restaurants, and other activities travellers can look forward to in the location.
Here’s a great example from Tentgram. They describe the local experiences guests can enjoy if they stay at the property. In this post, they talk about the unique trekking path of 900 kandi located nearby their property:
View this post on Instagram
Go very specific when it comes to promoting your hotel. A good place for workations? Shoot content with that particular concept and post it.
Gradually, reach more people through social media and build a community of travel enthusiasts.
Partner with travel influencers
Influencers engages with their audience on a personal level and can create durable and trustworthy relationships with their followers. Through influencer marketing, you’re tapping into this audience who can be your future guests.
Browse through social media and find influencers who might be a good fit to promote your hotel. Although travel and lifestyle content creators are good fits, you can also explore other niches. You can ask them to visit your property, create content, and share it on their social platforms. Having special promo codes for influencers to share among their audience is also a great way to gain more bookings.
Email marketing for your business
A more personalised way to promote your hotel online is by running email marketing campaigns. When done right, email marketing will generates an increased engagement and ultimately revenue, as a majority of marketers have claimed.
The first step for running email campaigns is to build an email list. As a hotel business, you have two main way of doing this — collect emails from guests during the booking process online or create an exclusive offer or content that people can access if they give you their email address. You can also embed an enquiry form on your hotel’s website.
Here’s a great example of a promotional email sent by June hotel. The email describes the beautiful experience that awaits travellers in a few words. The reader also gets access to a special discount for the summer. Key takeaway: Take advantage of the best season of your area and create content around that.
Once you have a social media presence, you can put out gated content to collect contact details. Some examples are a free downloadable city guide, a voucher, or a must-visit checklist of the area.
You can sync all contacts and build campaigns with the help of an email marketing tool like MailChimp. If you create a website on Instamojo, you can run email campaigns directly from your store dashboard.
Manage online reviews of your hotel
It’s no wonder that a majority of people frequently read reviews before booking any kind of stay.
Provide good hospitality and keep your property clean to get satisfied customers. Then, nudge your guests to leave reviews online on websites such as Expedia, Tripadvisor, Trivago, and Google Reviews..
Once your hotel starts getting more guests, reviews will start popping up across different platforms. Your job is to monitor and manage them across different platforms people visit to leave reviews. Never ignore negative reviews. If you come across complaints and dissatisfaction, respond to them and assure that you’ll solve the problem. Take them as lessons to learn from and provide your future guests with even better experiences.
Run ads for more reach
Running Google Ads will help your hotel website reach people who are actively searching for hotels like yours in the location its situated. This will allow you to set up a feed with up-to-date information on availability, room types, and pricing.
Facebook ads is another paid marketing strategy you can use to gain more exposure. You’ll be able to target an audience that’s interested in visiting your locality.
There are many ways you can start promoting your hotel online. Take it one step at a time. If you don’t have a website yet, create one and start adding your service. From there, establish a presence on social media. You’ll gradually understand the best digital marketing strategies for your hotel brand and double down on it.
