Hotel marketing has become increasingly challenging in times of a global pandemic when everyone is thinking about social distancing rather than traveling. This has led to many hotels, both big and small, struggling to survive.
Luckily, there are some marketing trends in the industry that you can follow to help you state afloat. Hence, here are the latest hotel marketing trends you should know and apply in your own advertising.
#1 Personalization Is Common
First and foremost, you as a marketer or a hotel business owner need to realize just how vital personalization has become. In fact, it is so common nowadays in all industries that it has become a requirement rather than an optional element you might consider branching out into once in a blue moon.
Most customers expect you to deliver a personalized experience to them – and so, you must find a way to do this. Through personal promotions and gifts, exceptional communication, and other perks, you will be able to create the kind of personalized approach your customers want to see from your hotel.
#2 Influencer Marketing Has Emerged
With the rise of social media, influencer marketing has emerged and is quickly becoming a staple of social media marketing in a variety of industries. Indeed, more and more hospitality businesses are starting to use this marketing technique to promote their brands in an almost seamless way with the help of a built-in audience.
Influencer marketing can help you significantly improve brand awareness by getting more exposure. Moreover, if you choose the right influencers to work with, your investments could lead to very good results meaning that your ROI will stay quite high.
#3 User-Generated Content Is Popular
User-generated content or UGC is a type of content created by your audience usually on social media platforms. Such content relates specifically to your business with users often tagging businesses directly to bring attention to their work.
As Bruce Colbert from the writing services reviews site Online Writers Rating says:
“User-generated content is becoming more popular for its unique set of benefits for businesses of all kinds. By using UGC in your strategy, you will be able to reduce the workload of your content creation team and establish a stronger connection with your customers.”
#4 Video Marketing Is Still Very Effective
Video marketing has been around for what seems like forever now and even though some skeptics may be saying that videos will be replaced with a different type of content, it seems unlikely that video marketing will be going anywhere soon. In fact, it remains one of the most effective types of digital marketing around.
Using videos is a great way to introduce potential customers to your business as well as educate your existing customers. Videos are also very versatile, so you can pretty much use them on any marketing channel, including social media, emails, YouTube, website or blog, store, and so on.
#5 Remarketing Ads Are Also Around
With the COVID-19 pandemic raging on for over a year now, many brands are showing gratitude during social distancing and showing their customers that they are mindful of the current situation. However, this doesn’t mean that businesses have abandoned their usual ways of marketing – and so, the remarketing technique is still around.
Remarketing ads are used to target users who have interacted with your business before in some way (e.g. visited your website, watched your video on YouTube, liked your social media posts). Such ads help you turn potential customers that have forgotten about you into actual customers – and maybe even returning ones.
#6 Customer Experience Can Be Improved by Using Chatbots
For many companies, customer service remains a challenging aspect of doing good business. Customers expect to get a good experience with the business and want support agents to be helpful – after all, nobody likes having to hear promises from customer support while nothing is actually done (or not even hearing any promises at all).
Luckily, technology has come to the aid and many businesses are now using AI-powered chatbots to provide basic customer support. Having a chatbot on your hotel’s website can help you answer all the questions a user may have and turn them into a customer.
What is the best way to combine human touch and technological efficiency to provide the ultimate customer experience in the hotel industry? In this episode of Hotel Cast Tv, we invite world-class experts Christine Trippi and Calvin Stovall to give you tips on how you can incorporate warmth and effectiveness into your hotel service:
Humans & Tech in Customer Service
#7 COVID-19 Safety Requirements Are Often Stressed in Marketing
As mentioned earlier, businesses are trying to acknowledge the difficult times and adjust their strategies to the needs of their customers. Likewise, COVID-19 safety requirements are often being stressed in marketing.
Hotels and other businesses in the hospitality industry should be particularly attentive to this. All the changes you make in your hotel to accommodate for social distancing requirements (such as relocating the tables or cleaning more frequently) need to be stressed in marketing.
Check out how Asksuite chatbot helps hotels to communicate about the changes in operations:
The new trends in Hotel Marketing
To sum up, following the latest marketing trends in the hospitality business is a sure way to create an effective marketing campaign that will help your business remain profitable no matter what.
Use the trends listed in this article to help you create your own effective hotel marketing strategy that will yield outstanding results both in the short term and in the long run.
About the author: Frank Hamilton has been working as an editor at essay review services Online Writers Rating and Writing Judge, an author at Best Writers Online. He is a professional writing expert in such topics as blogging, digital marketing and self-education. He also loves traveling and speaks Spanish, French, German and English.
