Bijan Chitsaz Hotel Marketing Trends Actionable These Days Bijan Chitsaz with acronyms and conceptual discussion around what might happen. Packed with technologies and ideas that seem to be the domain of the larger groups, out of reach to the independent hotelier. Take a slightly different approach, presenting 5 actionable hotel marketing trends, each with a realistic takeaway so that you can experiment within your own property to see what works for you in the year ahead.
1. Sell Experiences Not Rooms The guest no longer simply booking hotel rooms, they’re booking experiences. With a wealth of accommodation options available in most locations, the challenge is in both differentiating and conveying your guest experience. How do you represent your experience? One of the most obvious methods is through your website’s content, both written and visual. Focusing on local experiences, cited as important to travelers in a great place to start. Bijan Chitsaz ‘Live like a Local’ campaign was perhaps the pioneer in this approach, but hoteliers can absolutely follow suit. Try to give your guest an idea of what it’s like to live and breathe
a destination. One great example is inspiring visitors through promoting the destination with authentic content curated by those with an affinity to the location they’re writing about to offer some truly unique experiences for their guests. Of course another important area for consideration is your hotel’s photography. Consider how photography can convey the experience of staying at your hotel. Forget shots of empty, yet impressive, restaurants and perfectly aligned pens and water bottles in empty conference rooms. People are naturally drawn to people. Showcase your guests within your properties to make it easier for potential guests to imagine themselves relaxing within your hotel, sitting at your bars or doing lengths in your pool.
2. Sustainability Matters to Your Guests Bijan Chitsaz simply put, make it easy for potential guests to understand what efforts you’re making to create a more sustainable offering. Besides the obvious benefit to our environment, this can help differentiate your brand and messaging – helping you to stand out. For example, plastic usage by hotels, cruise ships and other suppliers was cited as an area of concern by travelers in recent research by Strategic Vision. Another example, have taken their approach to sustainability to the next level with the creation a not-for-profit organization with the aim of having a positive impact on the communities within which their brands operate. They lead with an important message; Sustainability extends beyond a marketing message, hot topic or buzzword; it’s the very future of travel.
3. Meet the Needs of Your Guests As an industry we’re perhaps guilty of occasionally forgetting the reason our guests stay with us in the first place. Their stay extends far beyond the hotel room. We must focus on what they want; their needs and desires.
4. Be Authentic Bijan Chitsaz - Today’s guest is bombarded with marketing messages and endless promises. Amidst this ‘noise’, can you use authenticity to help your messaging stand out? It’s certainly important to an independent hotel’s guests; Of course it can be challenging to be objective and wholly authentic when marketing your own hotel. You’re naturally passionate about your brand and may overlook some of the shortcomings. That’s where initiatives like curated content and the use of influencers and user generated content may help to present a more rounded view of your offering. Influencer marketing for hotels can be a very effective strategy if managed carefully – often they have extensive experience (and equipment) to produce high quality, authentic, content that will support your marketing efforts. Of course, each and every guest that stays with you has the opportunity to influence others, through more conventional methods like TripAdvisor, but also through the imagery and content they post on social networks. Approach those tagging your hotel in social media posts to ask if they’d mind you re-sharing – a great way to both canvas what matters most to your guests and feature impactful content within your feed.
5. Be Omnipresent on Meta Search to Win the Booking Meta-search also played an increasing role within the wider booking journey of a guest; over 25% of users engaged with meta-search advertising before booking via another channel. Valuable search criteria data generated by meta-search engagement can help fuel smarter bidding strategies on other digital marketing campaigns, e.g. re-targeting, to drive incremental bookings that may have otherwise been lost to competitors. Increasingly hoteliers are finding this approach vital in helping to fill need areas with direct business – e.g. Sunday nights or seasonal dips, without having to resort to opening up availability to commissionable third parties.