7 Tips for your hotel online marketing
The Hotel industry is currently witnessing the signs of a recession and this is likely to last throughout 2009 and even into 2010. To understand how this might influence your business, let’s looks back to the recession of 1990.
- RevPAR declined by 7.7 % between 1990 and 1992
- It took 5 years for average room rates to reach pre-recession levels.
- Occupancy rates declined first, followed soon after by average room rates.
- The recession widened the market opportunity for budget hotels.
- As demand fell, the number of hotels and bed spaces declined as many small independent hotels were forced to close. Registered hotel numbers reduced by 1,562 between 1990 and 1993
- The consumer started putting more pressure on room rates and started expecting more ‘value for money’ from the hotel industry.
In the current economic climate, the temptation is to reduce or cut back on marketing and promotion. While this may seem like a sensible course of action, it has the potential to harm your business in the long term. 3Sconsulting , an Internet Marketing Services Company, provide the ‘top 7’ online marketing tips for surviving the recession.
1. Consider Revenue Management Software
Revenue Management software such as REVPARGURU offer the ability to instantaneously manage and optimizes your hotel rates to achieve maximum occupancy and unbeatable REVPAR. The benefit of this system, aside from the time saved, is the control you have over your rate, a complete automated update of all Distribution Channels and a truly integrated solution customized to fit each hotel’s needs. All REVPARGURU hotel clients report average occupancy of 95% or more with increase revenues of 25% to 65%
2. Invest in your Website
Your website is your shop window to leisure customers and corporate customer segments. It should be an accurate reflection of your product; if you hear guests saying the hotel is “so much nicer than on the website”, you need to invest in your site. Your site should include an image gallery featuring the rooms and bathrooms. It should be 100% up-to-date and include useful information on events, local attractions, what to see and do. If you need a professional website for your hotel have a look at 3swebdesign.com
3. Analyze your competitors to tell you the keywords you need to know
Ah...thought that would get your attention. Next, you need to discover the keywords that drive online business in your city or region...there are a few ways to do this, but here is an easy one. Go to Google or your favorite Search Engine and search for "your destination" and "hotel" (ex;
Somewhere near the top you will see some coding called "title", "meta name="keywords" content=", and "meta name="description" content=" ...unless they have been particularly sneaky, you should be able to see an indication of the words that the webmaster thinks are important to include on the page to enable Search Engines to find it.
Do this for the next three or four sites on the Search Engine listing and you will start to see a pattern emerge...great isn't it? Don t you love it when the competition starts telling you how to improve your SERP ranking
Now click on the Tools or Keyword Tools tabs or buttons and you will be lead through how to find even more keywords based on the ones you already have. Using common sense and some discussion amongst your team and perhaps even a guest or two, build up a list of your preferred 20 keywords/phrases.
Your website should be optimized for brand and location searches minimum. This means when someone Google’s your hotel name, it appears first in Google. Your site would also ideally appear in the top 5 results for “hotel plus location” based searches. In very popular cities this might not be possible due to competition. If your site does not appear
5. Make your web site the default browser and on all the PC's hotel
Why I hear you ask? So that every time you or one of your team open a browser, you are confronted with your Home Page...when was the last time you really looked at your website? Pretty soon you will begin to get bored with the way it looks or the content...as do your customers! And you will do something about it...our research has proven that web sites that regularly update their content do much better in the search engine ranking than static sites. Plus, regular visitors to your site will also gain a good impression...and sales conversion levels will go up too.
Follow closely with me as we are going to do this NOW ...Open your favorite browser, enter your URL (www.yourwebsite.com) in the address bar, click go. Once your web page has loaded, click on Tools at the top of the page and select Internet Options. A dialogue box will open and on the General Tab you should see Home Page...now click on Use Current (the instructions are very similar for the Firefox browser)...your website will now load every time you open a browser. And suddenly its profile has become much more important to you.
The other interesting thing that will happen is that your team members will also start to give you suggestions and feedback on your website...they too will see it every time they open a browser. Many will start to write material or supply images from events that you can include on some sub-pages...and your website will come alive.
6. Monitor your online reputation
Web 2.0 has forever changed how consumers find and select hotels to stay in. Increasingly customers use sites such as trip advisor and other social network sites in order to find the most recommended hotels and to read customer reviews.
Are you aware of what is being posted in reviews about your hotel and are you responding to negative reviews in order to protect your brand? If not you should commission an agency to monitor your online reputation and receive a weekly report containing all the reviews that have been posted about your hotel across many hotel / travel related sites.
This will enable you to identify key problems within the hotel that needs to be addressed and you can post a response on the relevant websites in order to apologize and explain what is being done to address this.
7. Respond to Market Conditions
The Dollar has never been cheaper against the Euro. Capitalize on favorable Euro conversion rates by having landing pages translated and optimized with your rates and packages. Look at marketing opportunities in
Closing Comments… In summary, challenging times lay ahead for the hospitality industry, but if your website and online presence are in order, the internet sales channel can be an area of revenue growth for your business in 2009-10.
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