Hotels are wasting 99% of their Marketing Budgets!

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Bold statement isn´t it, but how do we know it is true?

Just imagine this scenario in your hotel or Resort:

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You announce an open day where you are going to show off your hotel or resort for a wedding fair, you publize the day through newspapers & radios ads as well as bill boards to gain maximum visibility.  The day arrives, you have a registration desk in your lobby area with the incentive of being a winner in a competition you have created especially for the event, so that they leave you their email address in order for you to target them later.  Sound familiar?  So why are hotels not doing the same online!

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As part of your online strategy you invest in SEO as well as retargeting and adword campaigns, have an mobile optimized website with user friendly booking engine.   Most likely, you will have a community manager publishing content across your social media connections.  You are increasing the amount of visits to your website and increasing Facebook & twitter fans,  you are also seeing a gentle upward curve in your online conversions.  This is all great, but what if you could get even better value for your investment in digital marketing.

We all know that travelers tend to visit around 20 websites before making a hotel reservation, so by being the first website is not necessarily the best.  What is important though is that by applying the same theory as in the scenario above with the wedding fair, you are creating a bigger database in which to target and to convert into potential future business.  A) Invest to get them to visit your website, B)Gain their contact information and C)Target them afterwards.

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An average mid size hotel has around 15,000 visits per month to their website.  How great would it be that even a mere 10% of those visitors is leaving their details with you. That´s 1500 more people per month that you are connecting with, which is 18,000 more people in a year than you are gaining today.  By asking potential clients to provide you with their email address, will allow you to reconnect with them automatically, making the investment you are doing in online advertising offer better value for your hotel and increase your online conversions. As Google is evolving to become the new OTA online, not only is it important to understand what you need to do to maximize your visibility, you also have to capture the clients once they get to your website. By doing this, you will not be wasting 99% of your marketing budget!

Hotelient is a company which understands that the majority of independent hotels do not have the major budgets or infrastructure to compete with the major chains, but we also know that by working smarter online, you can position your hotel to compete with their online conversions levels.  We have over 15 years in Hotel & Digital Marketing Sales and can provide your business with the techniques and technologies to maximize your online conversions.  Call us for further information.

About the author

John Kearney has over 20 years of Hotel Sales and General Hotel Management experience working for both Independent 4 & 5* Hotels & Resorts as well as with Intercontinental (IHG) and Radisson SAS for Hotels based in London as well as across Spain.

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