The events of 2020 have improved the playing field for hotels across the industry. Implementing a strong hotel marketing strategy is more important than ever today. According to a recent study by HubSpot, 70% of companies are investing in a digital marketing strategy.
In this age of technology, intuitive and relevant hotel advertising should be the center of your hotel’s marketing strategy. By marketing your hotel, you can increase reach, attract more guests and increase hotel revenue. Despite these advantages, few hotels have a well-planned marketing strategy. The others make avoidable mistakes that cost them their reputation and business.
While we were discussing those before Best practices in hotel marketingNow let’s look at some common marketing mistakes.
# 1 No concrete hotel marketing strategy
Digital marketing is one of the most fruitful ways to generate sales. However, most companies make the mistake of marketing in the hospitality industry without a specific plan. Without prior experience, research, or persistence, hotel promotion efforts can produce minimal to no returns.
The first step in getting your hotel marketing campaigns right is creating 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 build a strong brand presence online. Marketing your hotel on social media can be tricky. Use the available data before making 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 lower your brand value. This will ultimately lead to greater losses. For a successful online hotel marketing campaign, you offer value while staying relevant. Start by delivering valuable content – insights into local attractions, current affairs in your area, and travel trends. You can further improve guest care by providing value-added services and amenities during their stay.
Additionally, Create a pricing strategy based on competitive analysis and market research. With a versatile PMS like Hotelogix, you can create intelligent data-driven pricing strategies and predict trends using our robust reporting system. You need to redefine your hotel marketing strategy so that guests will want to choose your hotel over your competitors.
# 3 Everyone is talking and no delivery
Hoteliers sometimes use flashy marketing gimmicks to differentiate themselves from their competitors. This often has a backlash in the form of disappointed customers. Avoid flashy offers like free drinks, free coupons, extravagant meals, or event passes and focus on getting the basics right first. Stay true to the amenities in your hotel – cater to the needs of your guests and want to give them a more personal stay. Train the staff to be kind and respectful. This high quality service contributes significantly to improving guest satisfaction.
With Hotelogix PMS you can securely store guest information, settings and other information 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 companies use their social media platforms to find customers and generate sales (SEMrush). So if you’re not building an online presence, it’s as good as giving away money to your competitors.
Inconsistent posts or irrelevant content can have a serious impact on your brand image. Social media marketing in the hotel must be consistent (at least two to three times a day), engaging and interactive. Responding to comments, polls and messages leads to positive expectations from guests. If you think you don’t have enough time to manage posts, you can also use tools like Hootsuite and Buffer to automate them.
The Hotelogix PMS allows you to make more direct bookings using the Web Booking Engine 2.0, available for both your website and Facebook. Customize offers, login details, discounts and promotions so your followers can make their reservations right away.
# 5 Not responding to guest feedback
Regardless of the type of review, you can connect with your guests online. Actively solicit and respond to guest feedback to make guests feel valued. If you’ve got positive reviews, you can use them to further improve your marketing efforts. After all, there is no better marketer than a guest with a great stay experience. Even with critical reviews, a quick and polite response helps potential guests that their experience is important to you. And with this little act, you’ll build more trust in your brand.
Get in touch 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.
With a one-stop solution like Hotelogix PMS, you can access all of your reviews from a single dashboard. Dealing with guest reviews has never been easier.
# 6 Don’t treat your employees with respect
Your staff is your hotel. Dissatisfied or dissatisfied employees may not directly affect your marketing efforts, but they can indirectly affect the guests’ experience of your hotel. Staff who are dismayed can be headstrong or apathetic towards your guests. On the flip side, happy employees would strive to do their best to uphold the ideals of the hotel they work for.
Train your employees, give them ample opportunities to grow, treat them well, be empathetic with their needs. With an online training program like Hotelogix ACE, you can keep employees safe and train them in a simplified and interactive way.
Remember, it is a difficult and uncertain time and your staff is the first point of contact for your guests. Enable them to make quick decisions about your hotel – an easy-to-use PMS like Hotelogix gives them the ability to provide discounts, allowances, free services and more in a single dashboard. Because human interaction is the key to successful hotels.
Conclusion
You don’t always have to learn from your own mistakes. A brand’s reputation can sometimes be irreversibly damaged, and learning how to do things right the first time is important. Building marketing strategies for hotels can be difficult, but with the right technology and support, this can be easily accomplished too. With the 360 degree solution from Hotelogix, you get all the advantages of a powerful hotel management system in connection with the versatility of numerous integrations from third-party providers such as channel managers, accounting systems, revenue management systems and more.
About HotelogixHotelogix PMS is a full-stack hospitality solution that streamlines your entire hotel operations. With our central dashboard, you can efficiently manage tasks from reservation and administration to financing and accounting. The user-friendly platform facilitates employee productivity and enables business improvements. You can also automate tasks and learning with the benefit of our no-touch hospitality suite designed for the “new normal”. In addition, Hotelogix’s award-winning support is available around the clock and guarantees innovative solutions for all of your hotelier needs. Hotelogix PMS is the best in class comprehensive hospitality solution for small and medium-sized businesses.
