Online Hotel Marketing and Social Media Engagement

Thoughts on Online Hotel Marketing in 2009

A change is certainly afoot in the way that hotels are connecting with customers. Hotels and hoteliers from New York to New Zealand are leveraging new forms of hotel marketing to reach a technology savvy customer base.

In fact, on the customer side, the search data for “hotels” is certainly telling. Google search data indicates that 618,000,000 searched for hotels in March up from an average of 414,000,000 despite the fact that were in a marginal economy. It seems that even though overall travel numbers may be down or stagnant, that people are going online to find their travel solutions. Here is a collaborative project to better understand the changing landscape in hotel and destination marketing, including insight from Todd Lucier of Tourism Keys, Patrick Landman of Xotels, and others:

Thoughts Online Hotel Marketing 2009

• Consumer influences on one another will be much more pronounced with wider acceptance of social media and giving and receiving advice on tools like Twitter, Tripadvisor and Facebook.
• Tourism businesses better be good and have ways of encouraging good word of mouth and monitoring the attitudes of visiting guests.
• Lets go back and look at the hotel websites from a guests perspective. What does he want, how will he be able to find your hotel website. Stop thinking as a hotelier and become more of a destination marketer…
• [M]aking sure that your Hotel website is based on a CMS system that allows internal staff to update the website content, news, offers and images with ease.
• Also of high importance is the ability to offer visitors a “Best Price Guarantee”. When users arrive at your website, they should know that they don’t need to go anywhere else to shop for prices.
• Information such a prices, photos, offers, room types and booking should be easy to navigate to and above the page fold.
• Search Engine Optimization & Geo Search – One of the most cost effective methods of driving traffic and reservations online is a robust and effective SEO strategy. There is no charge per click, once an initial investment has been made, the sky is the limit for the benefits achieved through SEO.
• Hotels need to make sure that they are registered as a minimum with Google local and Google maps and all of the correct information is present within their listing. Hotels that have successfully optimized a map listing were able to jump to top position in Google for broad keywords like “Hotel in [Insert City]”
• Work with a professional company to optimize your website for increased performance within the Search Engines. This is a cost effective means of driving increased traffic to you website. A good SEO company will work with you to make sure that a professional and effective revenue driving strategy is in place and you
are getting good return for your initial outlay. Regular reporting and campaign analysis should be conducted to achieve optimal performance and benefit tracking both ranking and more importantly traffic gained from the Search Engines.

Where do you think hotel and destination marketing is heading in 2009 and beyond?

Hotel and Travel SEO: What is the Return on Investment for Travel Marketing?

Whether your a hotel in Hawaii or a luxurious travel destination in Tokyo, Japan, travel SEO can provide you a better customer acquisition funnel online as well as creating better customer relations by making people lives richer and ultimately easier. Providing reviews, maps, and recommendations in a way that is search engine savvy and pays attention to the relevant search engine algorithms can give you a distinct advantage over your competition.

I’ve outlined what I think are the 12 most important advantages of hotel seo and online travel marketing:

• Relationship and lifestyle marketing. Content about your travel destination for your users helps develop better and more sustainable relationships.

• Create a better marketing funnel. This amounts to a comprehensive marketing analysis and paradigm shift.

• Improved customer service. Its a digital concierge for one tenth the price of what you’re paying your employees now. Increased customer service and relationship branding for long term business relationships.

• Increased SEO Means Business. Increased traffic and search ranking translate in more rooms booked and better relationships with business organizations.

• Expertise has its Priviledges. You become the online destination for information about your locale and a hub for online activity. You become a virtual visitors bureau for the area. How powerful is that for your customers? How powerful is that for your customer relationships? How powerful is that for collaborating and marketing with local vendors?

• A Solution that Pays for Itself. Potential affiliate and advertising revenue. What local venues do you recommend to patrons? Why not make revenue based on your recommendations.

• Efficient Business Communication. Quick, easy, and affordable content management. This value alone is incredible in an age of speed we live in.

• Understand Your Customer in Strategic and New Ways. Increased ability to see and evaluate metrics for your online marketing campaigns.

• Conversion optimization. This is an add on benefit of an increased focus on a full range of your customer user data and online behavioral patterns.

• Content Optimization Means Free Public Relations. Interesting and relevant online PR hooks by creating a relevant and compelling resource for customers online.

• A New Window on Your Customer Base. SEO campaign, the data they create, and the focus they inspire help tapping unparalleled psychographic info about your customers.

• The value of now. Seizing the day now is absolutely critical. Its time to be an industry leader and not a follower. It is 10 times better to act now than playing catch up in 6 to 12 months.

Travel Marketing and Search Engine Optimization
Whether your traveler is searching for a flight for a holiday vacation or for a business trip, the online environment allows you to provide niche targeting in a way that no other travel marketing platform can.

Providing information about maps, hotels, vacation tours, travel packages, and tourist tips can help your customers make better travel decisions. And ultimately potentially travels place great trust in Google results and who they can can create a relationship via social media.

If you need hotel marketing or travel SEO, don’t hesitate to contact us at (615) 974-9662. I look forward to speaking with you and discussing your online marketing strategy. Content is ultimately about communication and at the end of the day communication, trust, and relationships are at the very basis of marketing and all successful businesses.