After a rocky few years, it appears that the travel industry is very much back — and the even better news? All the signs point towards significant growth in the years ahead, and that’s especially pleasing to hear if you’re a hotel operator. Hotels account for the largest market within the overall travel industry.
That all adds up to an environment in which hotels can succeed. The problem? Competition for guests is fierce, and with guest expectations higher than ever, snagging a share of the market can be challenging.
In this post, we’ll run through a few handy strategies for helping your hotel stand out from the crowd, including marketing approaches, streamlining the booking process, and offering an experience so outstanding that your guests recommend you to their friends and family.
Figure Out Your Ideal Guest
It’s much easier to reach your next guest if you speak to them directly. And it’s much easier to speak to them directly if you know who they are. While you’ll likely get guests from across the spectrum of travelers, more often than not, you’ll find that they’re of a certain type — for example, similar ages, incomes, preferences, and so on.
No business ever regrets conducting market research that tells them more about their guests. Not sure where to start? Hire a market research company to do the job on your behalf.
Refresh Your Website
A hotel’s website sets the tone for the visitor’s experience. In a hyper-competitive market, the strength of your website can be the difference between your hotel receiving a booking and one of your competitors receiving a booking. In an age where consumers have as high expectations for the websites they visit as they do the hotels they visit, a cookie-cutter, basic hotel website simply can’t be expected to produce results. If your website is looking a little dated, then look at working with a boutique hotel website design company to bring it into the modern era. Remember: the hotel’s website is often its first opportunity to make an impression on potential guests.
Get Serious About SEO
Done correctly, your website will provide all the motivation that a potential guest needs to make a booking, but that’ll only happen if they’re able to find your website. If the hotel is located in a popular tourist destination, then there’ll be a lot of hotels in the area — and they’ll all be jostling for space towards the top of the SERPs (search engine result pages).
Ensuring it’s your website that your potential guests see — and not one of your competitors — depends on the strength of your website’s SEO (search engine optimization). There’s much we could write about the best hotel SEO practices, but unless you have considerable time and resources to dedicate to this aspect of your marketing, we’d argue that it’s probably best to simply hire a marketing team and let them do the job for you.
Encourage Reviews
Your potential guests will be interested in what you have to say about what they can expect when they book a stay at your hotel, sure. But they’ll be more interested in what your previous guests have to say. Social proof counts for a lot in all industries, but it’s especially vital in the travel and tourism industry. After all, while you can send back an item if it turns out to be a dud, you can’t redo a travel trip — at least not easily — if the hotel turns out to be a disappointment. Guests want as close to a guarantee as possible that they’ve made the right decision. Your reviews can provide that guarantee.
As much as you wish it wasn’t the case, your happy guests won’t automatically leave a positive review. A gentle nudge that tells them how important reviews are to your success, and how much you’d appreciate it, can be the motivation they need.
Sell the Dream on Social Media
Social media marketing is tricky for most businesses. After all, the vast majority of businesses have nothing glamorous or “Instagram-worthy” to share on their social media channels.
But that principle doesn’t apply to hotels, which are in a unique position to really sell a dream to their potential guests on their social media channels. Putting together quality photographs and videos of your hotel, the guest experience, and the surrounding area can have such a powerful impact that it can motivate people to stay with you even if they weren’t planning a trip.
There are other ways to use social media to attract potential guests. Partnering with local tourism bureaus or connecting with travel influencers can both be highly effective for not only expanding your reach but also offering a more intimate insight into why a traveler should choose your hotel.
Make Booking Easier
The journey from your hotel appearing in your potential guest’s consciousness to them actually arriving for their stay is long. Some points of the journey — say, them choosing a competitor — are somewhat beyond your control. Some, such as ensuring that they complete a booking, are very much in your hands. A study found that some 75% of consumers decide not to complete their booking. It’s your job to minimize booking friction and make it as easy as possible for them to complete their booking. Offering a variety of payment methods — including Apple Pay and Paypal — or allowing for no-credit-card-required bookings can help to get people over the line.
Offer an Outstanding Guest Experience
Finally, perhaps the best way to attract more stays at your hotel: offering an outstanding experience. This won’t just encourage your happy guests to stay with you again the next time they’re back in town, but will also encourage referrals.
Looking to improve your guest’s experience, but not sure how? Put yourself in their shoes, and ask yourself what aspects of your hotel they would enjoy, what aspects might be a little frustrating for them, and what elements you’re not doing at all but probably should be. Even a few minor improvements can make a difference.
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