Social media can determine the flow of a business and has become a fundamental necessity for marketers across all industries and businesses. A hotel chain, whether a famous brand or a small boutique, can utilize social media to expand its reach, interact with potential clients, and as a consequence increase its sales. From our specialization in business marketing for the hotels, we have noted how social platforms like Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and TikTok have transformed the marketing landscape fully allowing hotels to interact with their clients in real time with targeted marketing solutions.
Over a third of the respondents in the Statista survey indicated that they use social media to organize their vacations. This data demonstrates a staggering opportunity for advertisers to uplift their social media advertising efforts while making the hotels responsive to comments and suggestions. As the number of social media users looking for inspiration and recommendations continues to rise, hotels that actively promote their services will certainly get more customers.
With this guide by our Hotel Marketing Solution, we provide you with actionable strategies and examples to take your hotel’s social media game to the next level. After reading our post, you can expect to become better at:
- Increase brand awareness – Establish an online presence that attracts potential travellers.
- Increase guest engagement – Generate a loyal fan base and engage with guests on a personal level.
- Increase direct bookings – Turn social media fans into actual bookings, alleviating the stress of third-party booking sites.
- Increase guest experience – Offer never-before-seen levels of service through social media as part of the guest experience during and after post-stay.
Article Summary
- What is Hotel Social Media Marketing?
- The Numbers of Today’s Social Media Landscape: Why Hoteliers Need to Care
- What Impact Does This Have on Hotel Social Media Marketers?
- Key Strategies for Successful Hotel Social Media Marketing
- Case Studies of Successful Hotel Campaigns
- Conclusion: Why You Should Trust in a Hotel Marketing Platform to Boost Your Bookings
What is Hotel Social Media Marketing?
Hotel social media marketing is about promoting the hotel’s brand and engaging with existing and prospective clients on social media to drive bookings. It encompasses many other aspects including, but not limited to, content development, social media advertisements, influencer marketing, and even customer support.
Importance of Integrating Social Media into Hotel Marketing Strategies
Integrating social media into your hotel’s marketing strategy is essential for several reasons:
- Better engagement: Social media marketing brings profound benefits to hotel businesses by enabling them to create special offers well ahead of time, shipment of engagements, and build connections with potential guests.
- Broad visibility: With social media, hotels can market themselves globally. Creating eye-catching engaging materials can help hotels get more potential clients from different parts of the globe.
- Increased ROI: Social media marketing is inexpensive compared to other forms of advertising. With an effective plan, hotel businesses can get substantial returns within a short time frame when on a tight budget.
- Guest insights: Social media provides useful information on guest activities and preferences. This information is invaluable in marketing strategy development, which can enable a hotel to tailor the services presented and take them to a higher level.
- User-generated content: People actively post their travel experience on social media platforms. Hotels can use this user-generated content by establishing trust and reliability with potential clients.
The Numbers of Today’s Social Media Landscape: Why Hoteliers Need to Care
As noted earlier in this article, travelers are increasingly turning to social media when deciding on travel, based on what they view online. In addition, the importance of good hotel reviews has become a core element in these choices. It is thus important to examine the present landscape of social media use in the travel industry.
- 75% of visitors are influenced by social media in selecting a destination. (Statista)
- 97% of millennials take and post a photo or video on social media of their vacation. (Toppan)
- 48% want to go somewhere they can “put on social media.” (Statista)
- 49% claim the main reason for traveling is to go somewhere that will look good on pictures or video. (Statista)
- 40% select a hotel based on how Instagrammable it is. (Independent)
- 70% of mobile millennials on-the-go make hotel bookings through their smartphones, emphasizing the need for mobile optimization. (Emersion Wellness)
What impact does this have on hotel social media marketers?
- 80% of travel marketers use Facebook to launch paid advertising campaigns (Mize)
- Facebook has 2.93 billion monthly active users, presenting an unparalleled global scale for connecting with travellers.
- 80% of Instagram users choose to follow at least one travel brand account, presenting an opportunity for hotels to take advantage.
- User-generated content on social media increases bookings 2.5x compared to branded content alone. (Emersion Wellbeing)
- 45% of hotel guests indicate that they are inclined to book promotions they find on social networks. (Emersion Wellbeing)
- Twitter generates a 20% increase in visits to hotel pages when properties are active, proving its effectiveness, especially during crises due to its immediacy. (Emersion Wellbeing)
- TikTok has 1 billion monthly active users, making it the fastest growing platform.
- Guest Centric reports that 49% of hoteliers consider social media the second most important marketing and sales priority.
- Reviews shared on social media contributed to an impressive 6.4% increase in occupancy rates.
- According to Revenue Hub, 73% of consumers prefer to see social media posts about discounts and sales.
- Gen Z travellers now book hotels and plan their travel activities based on recommendations they find on TikTok. (Hospitality Net)
- Spending on hotel advertising on digital platforms represents 34% of the budget, more than traditional formats.
Key Strategies for Successful Hotel Social Media Marketing
Let’s now examine more closely the top hotel social media marketing tips for success:
1. Audience Insights and Market Research
Finding the right audience is paramount to any successful social media marketing campaign. Hotels must learn about their potential guests and shape their content to fit their needs and interests. Existing guest analysis is where you start; from analyzing their gender, age, location, and interests, hotels can learn more about their target audience. Besides, through analytics tools like Google Analytics and social media statistics, one can easily know what existing followers resemble and how they conduct themselves. Surveys also provide the opportunity to gain first-hand insight from the guests regarding their interests and travelling behaviour, invaluable for the personalization of social media campaigns. Moreover, analyzing followers of the competitors’ social media accounts can reveal target guests that will be future customers of your hotel as well.
The interests and behaviour of guests must be thoroughly understood to develop content that will reach your audience.
Areas of importance to focus on:
- Content preferences: Discover what kind of content your audience engages with most. This may be videos, images, articles or interactive content like quizzes and polls.
- Engagement patterns: Discover when your audience is most active on social media. This will enable you to post in an effort to maximise engagement.
- Reviews and feedback: Keep track of feedback and comments posted by visitors on review websites and social media. This could tell you what visitors enjoy and what needs to change.
- Travel trends: Keep abreast of current travel trends and interests. This could enable you to design current and pertinent content that will capture the attention of potential visitors.
2. Selecting the Sites and Developing a Strategy
Each of the social media websites suits different kinds of content and audiences; select those websites that would be best suited for your hotel’s image and marketing strategy.
Facebook is best for posting all kinds of content like pictures, videos, and other media because of its vast user base which makes it a site for reaching a large audience. Instagram is visually driven and ideal for sharing high-quality photos and videos of your hotel, amenities, and local area. Twitter is ideal for real-time communication and engaging with guests in short, concise messages, so it’s a great platform for addressing customer service issues. LinkedIn is more suitable for business-oriented content and B2B marketing, where you may promote your hotel’s business amenities and network with business people. TikTok, being a young-oriented platform, is most suitable for producing brief, punchy videos showcasing your hotel and its individuality.
To get the most out of your social media campaign, it is vital to match the choice of platform with specific marketing goals. For brand development, Facebook and Instagram work well for reaching large numbers of people with eye-catching visual content. For direct booking, Facebook and Instagram targeted ads paired with compelling call-to-action buttons can direct customers to your booking website. For real-time engagement with guests, Twitter and Instagram Stories work well, as they enable you to reply immediately to guest inquiries. It is easy to market business facilities on LinkedIn since you can connect with business people and market your hotel’s conference and meeting facilities.
3. Content Strategy and Planning
The brand voice of your hotel is a crucial element in your social media strategy. It allows you to project a consistent and recognizable presence across all sites. To this end, it is necessary to determine the major traits that characterize your hotel’s personality. Is your hotel luxurious, adventurous, family or environmentally friendly? In the second step, choose the tone that best suits your brand personality: formal, informal, friendly or humorous. Then, consistency makes your communication work across all channels.
Now, when it comes to content strategy, we need to be definite about what kind of content works best for us. For instance, make sure you include good-quality photos of your hotel rooms, amenities and places of interest nearby in order to attract potential customers.
Brief videos are perfect for highlighting your hotel’s differentiators, guest activities and nearby events that can be very compelling. You can utilize Instagram and Facebook Stories for behind-the-scenes footage, live streaming and guest reviews that can also be used to promote user-generated content and encourage your guests to post about their stay on social media.
Another crucial type of content that we consider indispensable is to have an ongoing blogging strategy where you can disseminate informative articles and posts about travel tips, local attractions and hotel news. Finally, if you want to engage with your audience, surveys, questionnaires and Q&A sessions are ideal for connecting with your audience.
As a final tip, don’t ignore the power of cultivation through affiliate programs and travel influencers; with these concepts in mind, you can monitor the success of your campaigns so as to measure impact and ROI.
4. Paid Advertising and Promotions
Paid advertising and social media promotions can significantly boost a hotel’s online presence, increase bookings and raise brand awareness. Hotels can use a variety of social media platforms to run targeted advertising campaigns that reach specific demographics, interests and behaviours, ensuring their promotions are seen by potential guests who are more likely to convert and optimising their ROI. Examples of paid advertising types include Facebook and Instagram ads, Google hotel ads, TikTok ads, Twitter ads and LinkedIn ads.
To implement social media ads effectively, hotels should adopt a structured approach:
Steps to running effective social media ads
First, state your objectives clearly, whether it’s increasing brand awareness, encouraging bookings or promoting special offers. This clarity helps to shape your advertising strategy and gauge success.
Next, develop compelling advertising content that captures attention and concisely conveys your message. Use high-quality images and videos that showcase your hotel’s unique features and offerings.
Targeting the right audience is crucial. Employ social media advertising tools to identify specific demographics, interests and behaviours relevant to your potential guests. This targeted approach ensures that your ads reach those who are most likely to interact and convert.
Now, think about your promotional strategies: you can run ads for seasonal offers, such as holiday packages or special rates. Other types of promotions include retargeting campaigns, where you can target users who have already visited your website or interacted with your social networks, encouraging them to complete a booking.
After running your ads, monitor their performance closely. Track metrics such as click-through rate (CTR), conversion rate, cost per click (CPC) and return on ad spend (ROAS). Adjust your strategy based on this data to optimise results on an ongoing basis.
Budgeting for Social Media Advertising
Allocating a budget is key to maximising the effectiveness of your campaigns. Start by defining clear goals aligned with your advertising objectives. Start with a small budget to test different ad formats and targeting options before increasing investment.
Rigorously monitor the return on investment (ROI) of your ad campaigns. Important metrics such as CTR, conversion rate and ROAS provide insight into the performance of your ads. Adjust your budget based on these metrics to ensure optimal use of resources and maximise results.
Adapting Strategies Based on Performance Data
With data collected from analytics tools, you can refine and adapt your social media strategies to improve performance.
- Identify Strengths and Weaknesses: Examine your KPIs to determine which elements of your strategy are working well and which need improvement.
- Test and Experiment: Continually test various types of content, posting schedules and ad formats to identify what resonates best with your audience.
- Adjust Based on Feedback: Use guest opinions and reviews to make informed changes to your social media strategy.
5. Case Studies of Successful Hotel Campaigns
Now, let’s learn from some effective social media marketing campaigns run by large hotel chains that served as a model and inspiration for more hotels to recognise the relevance of investing in these digital channels.
Case Study 1: Marriott Hotels
Campaign Overview:
Marriott Hotels launched a social media campaign to promote its new mobile app, which allows guests to book rooms, check-in and access hotel services.
Strategies Used:
- Influencer collaborations: Partnered with travel influencers to create authentic content that showcased the app’s features
- User-Generated Content: Motivating guests to share their experiences using the app with a branded hashtag.
- Targeted Ads: Targeted Facebook and Instagram ads to reach potential guests interested in travel and technology.
Results:
- Significant increase in app downloads and user interaction.
- Favourable feedback from guests on the usefulness of the app.
- Increased brand recognition and visibility on social media.
Case Study 2: The Ritz-Carlton
Campaign Overview:
The Ritz-Carlton launched a social media campaign to commemorate its 100th anniversary, highlighting the hotel’s rich history and luxurious offerings.
Strategies Used:
- Historical Content: Historical photographs and stories from the hotel’s archives were shared, showcasing the hotel’s legacy and evolution.
- Guest Testimonials: Featured testimonials from frequent guests and celebrities who have stayed at the hotel.
- Interactive Content: Competitions and sweepstakes were run on Instagram and Facebook, inviting followers to share their own memories of The Ritz-Carlton.
Results:
- High levels of follower interaction and engagement.
- Increased follower growth and brand loyalty.
- media coverage and increased bookings.
These examples highlight successful hotel chains that have embraced innovation, leveraging technology beyond its core benefits to enrich guest experiences. We hope these learnings inspire you to move forward with innovation and fully unlock your hotel’s potential.
The Final Word on Hotel Social Media Marketing
As technology and social media platforms evolve, several trends will influence the future of social media marketing for hotels. These include the implementation of augmented reality (AR) for virtual tours, increased personalisation through advanced data analytics and AI hotel marketing, the growing prevalence of video content on platforms such as TikTok and Instagram Reels, and a stronger focus on sustainability in response to travellers’ environmental concerns.
To effectively leverage these strategies and increase bookings, employing a specialised hotel marketing solution is crucial. These platforms provide centralised management of social media accounts, advanced analytics to monitor campaign success, automation of repetitive tasks and, ultimately, improved ROI through optimised marketing efforts.
In conclusion, a strategic approach to social media marketing helps hotels increase visibility, engagement and bookings. By utilising technology, understanding audience preferences, and applying effective management tools, hotels can thrive in the digital environment and achieve significant growth.
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About WIWT
WIWT - Wish I Was There is an AI powered Hotel Marketing Solution.
With our cutting edge Travel Affiliate Program technology hotels can easily connect to influencers, content creators and our AI Travel Assistant.
