Right now, more than 4.2 billion people have direct access to your hotel or resort’s website, each one a potential booking, or at least an opportunity to spread the word and build buzz around your brand.
Tapping into even the tiniest fraction of this potential can dramatically boost bookings and drive revenue. The question is: How do you, as a hospitality professional, harness this potential? How do you connect your product to the greatest possible share of guests?
Brian Anderson is head of digital at Bangkok-based marketing agency Quo Global.
There is no single correct answer to this. Every hotel brand and property is different and every target audience has different needs and behaviors. There are simply too many moving parts to give a one-size-fits-all solution. There are, however, some tried-and-trusted techniques that will help any hotel move in the right direction.
Where I see most hoteliers miss their chance to attract more direct bookings online is by failing to create a brand.com that does these three things:
- Utilizes user data to personalize the online experience and make it an extension of the guest journey
- Realizes its full potential as a direct sales tool, and
- Operates as an integrated part of an expanding digital ecosystem
These are complex and intricate changes that benefit from slow and careful adoption and adaptation. But fortune favors the bold, so let’s break the possibilities down into bite-sized pieces.
Leveraging brand.com as a selling tool
Websites are revenue generators. Yes, online distribution gives range and scale, but your website offers control and adaptation, and with the right tactics, it can be the main point of online sales for your brand.
This is not only applicable to web-based retailers, but to any business with a web presence, including hotels. Where previously, brand.com functioned as an interactive brochure for your hotel, today it should be treated as a transaction platform – an e-commerce site that caters to your customers and lets you identify and manage supply and demand, on your own terms. If you’re not doing this, you simply aren’t harnessing the full potential of your site to generate revenue and promote your brand.
So how to realign your website as your premium selling tool? There is a wide array of tactics, many very simple, that you can use to build your audience away from expensive third-party distribution channels.
First, here are a few things to consider for your site that you can start working on immediately:
- Live chat. Start talking to people directly from your website. Be proactive, solicit questions and enquiries, and build relationships.
- If a photo sells your hotel, imagine the impact of video (more on that below).
- Turn your content into a mix of compelling stories and information delivery. Share it on social media.
- Website visitors want to feel what it’s like in your property. Present your product “guest first,” with imagery and video of real people.
- Get in your customers’ faces. Pop-up forms and offers have become an acceptable way to educate and solicit engagement.
- Solicit contacts and connections. Don’t be shy to offer additional benefits to site visitors to encourage them to remain in touch. They are your prospect funnel.
- Get creative, but prioritize the user journey from arrival to booking.
Beyond the website
You should also be thinking about how to engage guests and build relationships outside the confines of your website. Here are a few tips to get you started:
- Thank your guests for authentic reviews, good or bad, and genuinely learn from the bad ones. You can easily turn a detractor to a promoter with a genuine and empathetic response.
- Authenticity is the keynote of a confident team and prompts recognition and trust. Bring real stories of real people to the front of your social media campaigns. Show real guests enjoying real holiday time.
- SEO is a key tool in the overall armory of competitive online marketing and is likely to be for some time to come. Make sure your site is fully optimized and follows Google’s best-practice guidelines.
- SEM is still the high road to tactical success. Make sure you’re bidding higher for your brand names. If you have best available rates on your brand site, and can communicate that quickly and clearly, you will start to win back market share immediately.
Beyond this, we are entering the world of expert marketers and advertisers, of advanced segmentation, video marketing and content marketing. When you’re ready to make that investment, my advice is to make sure you are working with partners who put your ROI first. The top agencies will see your success as their own, ensuring they will be fully responsive and committed to your needs.
