The events of 2020 have leveled the playing field for hotels across the industry. Implementing a strong hotel marketing strategy is crucial now more than ever. According to a recent study by HubSpot, 70% of businesses are investing in a digital marketing strategy.
In this age of technology, intuitive and relevant hotel promotion should be the center of your hotel’s marketing strategy. Marketing your hotel helps increase its reach, attract more guests, and boost hotel revenue. However, despite these advantages, only a few hotels have a well-planned marketing strategy in place. As for the others – they end up making avoidable mistakes that cost them their reputation and business.
While we have previously discussed the best practices in hotel marketing, let’s now look at a few common marketing mistakes.
#1 No Concrete Hotel Marketing Strategy
Digital marketing is one of the most fruitful ways to generate sales. But, most companies make the mistake of marketing in hospitality without an actual plan. With no prior experience, research or consistency, hotel promotion efforts can yield minimal to no profits.
The first step to getting your hotel marketing campaigns right is to make a plan. Include the six main pillars of marketing in hospitality- content marketing, advertorials, pay-per-click ads, search engine optimization, social media marketing, and email marketing. Use the appropriate tools to find and reach your audience, and create a strong brand presence online. Marketing your hotel on social media can be tricky. Make use of the data available before big decisions and remember to learn from the mistakes of others.
#2 Marketing Based on Discounts Alone
Offering uncontrolled discounts may attract more customers but it will also bring down your brand value. This will eventually lead to greater losses. For a successful online hotel marketing campaign, you provide value while staying relevant. Start with offering valuable content – insights on local tourist sites, current affairs related to your area, and travel trends. You can further enhance guest relations by providing value-added services and amenities during their stay.
Additionally, create a pricing strategy based on competitor analysis and market research. With a versatile PMS like Hotelogix, you can create smart data-driven pricing strategies and predict trends with our robust reporting system. You need to redefine your hotel marketing strategy to make guests want to choose your hotel over your competitors.
#3 All Talk and No Delivery
Hoteliers sometimes use flashy marketing gimmicks to get ahead of their competitors. This often has a backlash in the form of disappointed customers. Avoid flashy offers like free drinks, free vouchers, extravagant meals, or event passes and focus on getting the basics right first. Stay true to the amenities in your hotel – address guest needs that your hotel can provide and aim to give them a more personalized stay. Train staff to be friendly and respectful. This quality service will go a long way in improving guest satisfaction.
Hotelogix PMS allows you to store guest information, preferences, and other information safely on a cloud-based server. Personalize the stay experience for each guest with custom packages, and reward them with loyalty programs.
#4 No Social Media Life
94% of businesses use their social media platforms to find customers and generate sales (SEMrush). So, when you’re not building an online presence it’s as good as giving away money to your competitors.
Inconsistency in posting or irrelevant content can have severe repercussions on your brand image. Hotel social media marketing needs to be consistent (post at least 2 to 3 times a day), engaging and interactive. Responding to comments, polls and messages create positive guest expectations. If you think you don’t have enough time to manage posts, you can also automate them using tools like Hootsuite and Buffer.
With the Hotelogix PMS, you can drive more direct bookings with the Web Booking Engine 2.0- available for both your website and Facebook. Customize offers, login details, discounts, and promotions to help your followers directly make their reservations.
#5 Not Responding to Guest Feedback
Regardless of the type of review, engage with your guests online. Actively ask for guest feedback and reply to them to make guests feel appreciated. Upon receiving positive reviews- you can use them to further improve your marketing efforts. After all, there is no better marketeer than a guest with a great stay experience. Even with critical reviews, a quick and polite response will help let potential guests know that their experience is important to you. And with this small act, you are building more trust in your brand.
Engaging with guests online is also a great way to understand their expectations. You can make changes to your service delivery or improve your hotel to be more successful.
A one-stop-solution like Hotelogix PMS allows you to access all your reviews on a single dashboard. Engaging with guest reviews has never been easier.
#6 Not Treating Your Staff Respectfully
Your staff is your hotel. Unhappy or unsatisfied staff may not directly impact your marketing efforts, but they can indirectly influence guest experiences with your hotel. Distraught staff may adopt a stand-offish attitude, or be apathetic towards your guests. On the other hand, happy staff would strive to do their best to uphold the ideals of the hotel that they work for.
Train your staff, provide them ample opportunity for growth, treat them well, be empathetic to their needs. With an online training program like Hotelogix ACE, you can ensure staff safety while training them in a simplified and interactive way.
Remember, it’s a tough and uncertain time and your staff is the first point of contact with your guests. Empower them to make quick decisions on behalf of your hotel- a user-friendly PMS like Hotelogix will give them the option to make discounts, allowances, give complimentary services and more within a single dashboard. After all, human interaction is the key to successful hotels.
Conclusion
You don’t always have to learn from your own mistakes. Damage to a brand’s reputation can sometimes be irreversible, and it’s important to learn how to do things right from the get-go. Creating marketing strategies for hotels can be tricky, however, with the right technology and support, this too can be easily achieved. With Hotelogix’s 360- degree solution you get all the advantages of a capable hotel management system coupled with the versatility of numerous 3rd party integrations such as a channel manager, accounting system, revenue management system, and more.
About Hotelogix
Hotelogix PMS is a full-stack hospitality solution that streamlines all your hotel operations. Our centralized dashboard allows you to efficiently manage tasks from reservations and housekeeping to finance and book-keeping. The easy-to-use platform facilitates staff productivity and delivers business improvement. You can also automate tasks and learning with the advantage of our touchless hospitality suite curated for the ‘new normal’. Furthermore, Hotelogix’s award-winning support is available 24×7 and guarantees innovative solutions for all your hoteliering needs. Hotelogix PMS is the best-in-class comprehensive hospitality solution for small and mid-sized businesses.
