Having the right marketing strategy is crucial for today’s highly competitive hotel business. It helps attract guests in different ways, sell more rooms, increase occupancy, and drive profitability. Marketing conveys your hotel brand’s USPs and lets your target audience know why you are better than others, and it also gives them compelling reasons to book with you. This copy will help you find some of the traditional marketing strategies for your hotel chain to consolidate your effort in gaining a competitive edge.
Understanding traditional marketing concept
You must be wondering why we are stressing traditional offline marketing in today’s era of digitization, right? Let us be very clear on this – even if today’s marketers talk a lot about digital or online marketing, the good old offline marketing is not dead yet. Many organizations still look at traditional methods as core to their marketing strategies.
Traditional marketing is all about promoting your chain hotel’s brand via billboards, print media, bus/taxi wraps, and fence signs, etc. It could be anything that grabs your target audiences’ attention. However, conceptualizing and driving a successful traditional marketing campaign is a challenge. Mostly, the process of deciding on the time, medium, and the right mix sometimes become overwhelming.
Here are a few proven and widely practised hotel marketing ideas –
Airport ads
If you are a premium hotel chain serving leisure and business travelers, airports are the best places to promote yourself. Here, we are talking about different types of marketing activities. You can use huge backlit displays, wraps and clings, banners, benches, shelters, shuttle buses, and many more. Keep in mind that creatives are located near the entrance, security check area, and waiting area. You ensure that those are nicely designed with top-notch content and are breathtakingly appealing. You may consider partnering with airlines to buy ad space in their in-flight magazine. Through such marketing activities, you get to meet your target audience where they are.
City and local ads
Work with local marketing agencies to successfully pull this off. Consider placing your billboards in the central business districts, critical intersections, highways, IT and manufacturing hubs on the outskirts, railway stations, local tourist attractions, city buses, bus shelters, taxis, and even popular malls and theatres. Tie up with sporting events and sports bodies to advertise your chain hotel in the stadium and other vantage points. Here too, get creative. Your content and images should describe who you are, and they should help you stand out and influence a person’s booking decisions in your favor.
Print media ads
This is another area of traditional marketing that still enjoys respect and pays you back when done nicely. Pick up the most-read lifestyle magazine and spend some money on regular advertisements. Be it a one-page or two-page, make sure to promote your amenities – like your signature in-house restaurant. The same goes with the most circulated national and vernacular daily newspaper.
TV and radio ads
If you are seriously thinking about upping your game in traditional marketing, then you must look at spending on TV and radio commercials. You must work with a renowned advertising agency to get the script of your commercial right. Plus, find the right prime-time slot to get the most of your efforts.
Some other activities you can do at your property –
Special events
Consider organizing a local dining experience at your hotel – say with a theme around the local cuisine. Invite leading food critics and experts working with top food and beverage publications houses, showcase what you have in that genre. You stand to get your share of publicity and branding when food critics/experts mention your brand as a host in their write-ups. When the magazine version works well as part of your traditional marketing, the web version of the same copy brings you another set of benefits. This is a great way to market your property. All your communications during such an event should have this message – you are a chain hotel offering world-class services at X, Y, and Z locations.
You can even do this – tie-up with a leading IT company to organize and host an event like a hackathon. This allows you to promote yourself as the exclusive hospitality partner of the event. You may even think of co-branded gifting materials as handouts to all the participants. In this case, too, you get to see multiple benefits in terms of enhanced branding.
Connect your traditional marketing with online marketing
Yes, this is possible. Think about this – your traditional offline marketing asks your target audience to come and visit your hotel, right? Now, what if you place a QR code in your offline marketing materials? People wanting to know more about your hotel brand will scan it. And the moment they do it, they land on your website. From there, a chatbot on your website can guide them through the rest of their queries. In short, it becomes easier for your target audience to get in touch with you for more booking and pricing-related information.
When it comes to traditional marketing, you need to ensure that all of them are effective, relevant, and strategically thought out, keeping your hotel chain’s essence in mind. Use big, bright logos, high-resolution images, and promote all your destinations along with their food and culture in your pitch.
Hotelogix Editorial Desk
Hotelogix‘s team of researchers and writers are constantly innovating to share the latest trends from the travel and hospitality space. Got suggestions? Write to us on editorial@hotelogix.com.
