Top Marketing Strategies In The Hospitality And Tourism Industry In 2023
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In the fast-paced, ever-evolving, and increasingly competitive landscape of the hotel and tourism industry, growing business in 2023 requires staying ahead of the competition by implementing effective marketing strategies that resonate with today's travelers.
In this article, we explore the top 5 strategies necessary for effectively marketing, advertising, and branding hotel and tourism businesses in 2023.
By understanding and implementing these strategies, industry professionals can enhance brand visibility, engage with their target audience, and ultimately, drive hotel personalized upselling in an increasingly competitive market.
Social Media Marketing: Reach Potential Guests on a Personal Level
In recent years, social media marketing has emerged as one of the most effective marketing strategies in the hospitality and tourism industry, and one that helps connect businesses with their target audience in a personal and meaningful way. Beyond just showcasing stunning visuals and videos of your property, social media platforms offer a unique opportunity to showcase the human side of your brand – by featuring real people, their stories, and brand interactions in your content.
Whether it’s photographs of your staff, or testimonials from happy guests, social media offers the opportunity to bring authenticity, relatability, and a sense of familiarity. Essentially, social media connects directly with individuals in your audience on a very human level that’s simply not possible with traditional, sales-oriented marketing and advertising techniques.
This human touch helps to cultivate a stronger relationship between your audience and your brand, making them more likely to choose your hotel for their stay. Another added benefit of social media is that it can help expand your audience exponentially through well crafted pieces of genuine, resonant content – with a bit of luck, your content may even end up going viral!
Influencer Marketing: Exponentially Expanding your Audience
While we’re on the subject of social media marketing in 2023, influencer partnerships are rapidly proving to be amongst the most effective marketing strategies in the hospitality and tourism industry.
By working with established influencers brands can exponentially increase the reach – and credibility – by leveraging the influencer’s legion of dedicated and loyal followers who implicitly trust their recommendations and opinions. By collaborating with relevant influencers, brands can tap into their established audience base and expose your offering to a wider demographic, generating awareness and attracting customers from a previously unexplored audience pool that may not have been aware of your hotel or destination.
An additional benefit is that Influencers are perceived as experts and trusted sources within their niche. When they endorse your hotel or destination, their followers associate their positive experiences and recommendations with your brand. Luckily, partnering with highly reputed influencers does not need to include a huge outflow of cash. For example, you could partner with an influencer to offer your hotel as a venue for an influencer's event – this ensures that your property will be featured in all the content they share with their legions of followers.
Alternatively, offer influencers a complementary at your property, giving them the chance to experience (and rave about!) your stunning hotel, the beautiful scenery, and the delicious culinary offerings.
Video Marketing: An Immersive Visual Experience
With the rise of TikTok in recent years, video marketing has dominated in a range of industries – and hospitality and tourism proves no exception. As video content provides a more immersive and captivating experience compared to static images or text, it is a highly effective way to create some of the more intangible aspects of a stay at a destination or hotel property.
For example, to showcase the unique experiences, the atmosphere of the destination, or the warmth and welcoming nature of the people and staff at a particular property or place. The immersive nature of video content also helps potential guests imagine themselves staying in a particular destination, and evoking an emotional response, much more effectively than text or imagery – and certainly more effectively than a sales oriented ad.
An added advantage of video marketing is that you’ll be able to hold the viewer's attention for longer periods, increasing engagement with your content and brand. Examples of effective video content could include tours of the destination, staff interviews, or behind-the-scenes footage that help convey some of the unique experiences and stories potential guests will find at your destination.
Alternatively, evoke the intangible by showcasing a montage of experiences, events, and aesthetically appealing scenery – complete with ambient music to set the mood.
Keyword Advertising to Capture Receptive Audience Segments
One of the most effective ways to convert audiences is by targeting those individuals who are already halfway through their journey down the marketing funnel, and engaging with ideas of traveling to the destination you’d like to attract them to. For example, by advertising on search engines, social media platforms, or other websites to people who are searching for keywords related to your destination, hotel property, or brand.
Essentially, such ads ensure that someone who Googled, for example “travel tips in Croatia”, will see advertisements for your 5-star hotel in Dubrovnik the next time they’re scrolling through Instagram. By reminding potential customers of their previous interest, you can reignite their curiosity and encourage conversions.
Ensure that these sponsored ads include strong calls to action, attractive discounts, or complimentary products that can help further drive conversions, by providing the motivation for an individual to stop simply dreaming about their vacation, and actually begin planning it.
A huge benefit of sponsored advertising on Google, social media, and many other websites is that you can choose from a range of payment structures, including cost-per-lead or cost-per-click, ensuring that you’re only charged for genuinely interested leads that are actually engaging with your ads.
Re-Engaging Former Guests to Incentivize Rebookings
When it comes to effective marketing in 2023, you might be tempted to only focus on the untapped ocean of new audiences – but encouraging loyalty is also a critical pillar of tourism and hospitality marketing.
After all, previous guests who have already experienced and enjoyed their stay at your hotel are even more likely to convert into repeat customers. And since they are familiar with your property and have had a positive experience, they are already predisposed to choose your hotel for their future stays.
By leveraging marketing emails, you can directly reach out to this receptive audience and encourage them to re-book. An added benefit is that, with the wealth of data you have about these previous guests, you’ll be able to highly customize these marketing emails to specific guest profiles or even individual guests, catering to their preferences, needs, and interests.
For example, if a family with kids stayed with you previously, you can offer free child-care services. For business travelers, complimentary rides to and from the airport may be just what is needed to incentivize a rebooking. However, don’t just look at marketing to previous guests as a way to incentivize immediate rebookings – it also provides the more long term benefits of brand building and recall, reinforces the positive impression they have of the destination, and ensuring your business is top-of-mind for any of their future travel plans.
Pedro Hernandez contributes to Enterprise Apps Today, and 11Press, the technology network. He was previously the managing editor of Internet.com, an IT-related website network. He has expertise in Smart Tech, CRM, and Mobile Tech, Helping Banks and Fintechs, Telcos and Automotive OEMs, and Healthcare and Identity Service Providers to Protect Mobile Apps.
