IN DEPTH || THE COMPLETE GUIDE TO HOTEL MARKETING
MARKETING YOUR HOTEL
on Instagram
Each Issue, we will be serialising a section of the Complete Guide to Hotel Marketing, an eBook by our partners, SiteMinder.com
INSTAGRAM is one of the most effective social media marketing platforms available to hotel owners in today’s social and digital environment. In fact, Instagram now has more than one billion users. It offers a simple, clean feed, it’s completely mobile, and it makes everything look great. And the good news for hoteliers is that it’s particularly popular with travellers and holidaymakers. Marriott Hotels’ Instagram account has 287,000 followers while Hilton Hotels & Resorts has 226,000 followers, and IHG’s InterContinental brand has 146,000 followers. Some noteworthy observations of Instagram include: • Advertising for brands is available Recently there’s been a rollout of advertising for brands on Instagram. Many pages already have the action buttons to ‘Call’, ‘Email’ and ‘Get Directions’. Now select businesses will be able to include ‘Book’, ‘Get Tickets’, ‘Reserve’, or ‘Start Order’. As for direct messaging, businesses can now see important new customer messages in their main inbox, instead of in the pending folder. They can also mark messages with a star and filter conversations to make it easier to follow up with enquiries.
• A Facebook-style news-feed algorithm. Gone are the days when Instagram was a free-for-all: based purely on chronological order. Instagram itself says you can now ’see the moments you care about first’, through the help of a highly complex algorithm determining which content Instagram believes a user would like to see. This is based on: 1. Likelihood you’ll be interested in the content 2. Your relationship with the person posting 3. Timeliness of the post If hotels provide the high quality, aspirational content that Instagram users are looking for, the Instagram algorithm could actually be highly advantageous. • Instagram is growing in popularity with older users Don’t assume that Instagram users are outside your target demographic. Although skewed towards the young, it is growing in popularity among older age groups.
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luxurybbmag.co.uk/sum20-instagram 32 || Luxury BnB || June / July 2020
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