Using Viral Marketing Effectively to Increase Hotel Profit

Many hotel revenue managers have the misconception that effective viral marketing online requires a huge budget. But this is not necessarily the case as tourism authority for Hamilton Island, Queensland demonstrated. Basically, their campaign is simple: hire a blogger to talk about the island. The job, “Best Job in the World” was conceptualized. All the blogger needs to do is tour around Queensland, blog about his experiences, and get paid. The results of the campaign was astonishing, aside from the 7 million visitors recorded on the site, 34,000 people submitted their video application.

A 34-year old British guy named Ben Southall got the job. Tangible results of the viral marketing campaign are already being seen. Virgin Blue is not flying direct between Hamilton Island and Sydney. In addition, large Australian firms are also looking into the area for their events and conferences. There are some parallels between this tourism strategy and the hotel revenue management. And there are a few lessons that hotel revenue managers can use to increase RevPAR and boost profitability.

The most important aspect that should be recognized in this campaign is not the fact that they were marketing, but the fact that they were using social channels to achieve this level of success. Some tips to increase hotel profits using social media remembering that it’s not about the amount of budget you set aside – a big benefit of viral marketing is that it can create a big impact on a limited budget. In short, there’s no need to pay much to get the desired result. The main thing you need to remember is to have something worthwhile to share so people will talk about it.

Also, focus on content rather than traffic. The ultimate goal of most hotel revenue managers is to increase their site traffic, and hope that this will increase hotel sales. But to encourage people to share your products and services with their friends, content is more important.