With over 4.5 billion internet users, the digital world has officially risen to the forefront for most of the globe. The hospitality industry has not been left behind within this shift. In fact, search is reported by Google to be the number one channel that customers marked as ‘high value’ turn to when planning their trips. Customers can use search to fulfill a variety of needs, from finding and booking lodging to planning excursions and activities during the stay.
Brands that want to remain competitive in the industry, therefore, need to understand how to use digital marketing to reach these customers and build a presence that will empower them to be present when customers come searching.
The importance of qualified marketing strategies
There are a number of different strategies that marketers can use today to engage these prospective customers. Customers tend to use a variety of different platforms as they conduct their searches. For example, they might seamlessly move from desktop to mobile to email and social media, and they expect the brands they interact with to be ready to do the same.
We have compiled a list of the top ten trends that hospitality brands should familiarize themselves with so that they can build a marketing strategy ready for the modern digital consumer.
Trends in the hotel industry
1. Customer experience marketing
For hotel brands, the customer experience creates the cornerstone of marketing efforts. Each organization needs to understand that customers pay more for what they experience than a specific product. They can book a number of hotel rooms, for example, but they remember a particular hotel for the experience created there.
From a hospitality perspective, every interaction a customer has with a representative of the brand has the potential to shape their opinion, and therefore the organization’s reputation and their ability to bring the customer back for another purchase or to encourage them to pass a recommendation on to their friends.
To create this outstanding experience, all hospitality businesses need to focus on delivering unique experiences, creating a superior range of service options that meet the needs of customers and exceed their expectations. Companies that lead their industries in customer experience can expect to outperform those who do not prioritize this important metric by an incredible 80 percent.
2. Voice search
With the rise of personal assistant devices and other forms of voice-generated queries, it is no wonder that voice search has become an important part of marketing to the modern traveler. One study found that over half of travelers worldwide used voice search at some point during their trip, with China and Turkey rising to the top with over 70 percent of travelers from these countries using voice search at least once.
The prominence of voice search in the hospitality industry has led to the rise of apps such as the Virtual Concierge Service, which provides personalized answers to voice searches that customers make about their rentals. Relationships between tech companies, such as Amazon, and various hospitality chains have also made it easy for customers to use voice search when on the go.
Brands should focus on making sure that they provide quick, clear answers for frequent questions that can be delivered to users through voice search programs. Optimizing for these common queries and looking for ways to incorporate voice search into the services they provide customers can help those in the industry remain ahead of the competition.
3. Artificial intelligence
Artificial intelligence can play a range of roles within the hotel industry. To improve the customer service that customers receive online, for example, AI can help power chatbots equipped with business information and ready to answer customer questions, regardless of the time of day.
AI can also empower brands to better track customer behavior, noting data surrounding guest services, needs, rides to the airport, and more, helping them better prepare to provide these experiences for customers.
4. Influencer marketing
Influencer marketing taps into the power of social media and the following that some stars have built for themselves. By working with these digital personalities, who have thousands of people following their accounts, hospitality organizations can get their message out to large audiences at once and attract more customers.
Those interested in taking advantage of this potential should carefully investigate the audience demographics of a particular influencer to check for a proper fit. Also, consider carefully the message and experience you want the influencer to broadcast and how that can best be accomplished, such as by providing the influencer with a particular stay or other experience in exchange for digital broadcast content.
5. Virtual reality
Virtual reality is an emerging technology that has recently begun to transition away from its role as more of a fun game or trick and into a serious marketing strategy. It uses headsets that help customers feel as though they have been transported to a particular place.
When marketing to customers, businesses can use virtual reality to provide previews of hotel or sightseeing tours, enticing customers to get a taste of what they could experience in person. Rather than displaying a picture of a hotel room, for example, customers can feel as though they stand within one and look around while deciding where to book a stay.
Once the customer has booked a room, hotels can also provide VR tours of local destinations or other points of interest to enhance the experience and help the customer decide how to best plan their day.
6. User-generated content
User-generated content can help brands get their message out to customers through a far more trusted platform than traditional advertising. User-generated content includes the variety of different types of content customers can create about a location, such as reviews, pictures of their vacation, and even recommendations to others interested in the spot. These types of content easily get shared on social media and can end up broadcasting the brand to countless prospects.
Ninety percent of customers say that authenticity helps them determine which brands to support. User-generated content helps to broadcast this authenticity because it comes from real customers, and not the brand itself.
7. Personalized marketing
Personalized marketing creates a more targeted approach to promotion. Rather than broadcasting a message to large groups of people, it targets a specific person based on their wants and needs. It incorporates data to better understand what this customer wanted to see from hospitality brands so that they can then generate deals or recommendations that align well with the needs of the customer.
Customers generally appreciate this level of personalization. Therefore, the strategy can produce 5-8 times the ROI for organizations that give their customers this level of attention.
8. Augmented reality
Augmented reality has many similarities with virtual reality, as they both use digital technology to create virtual experiences for customers. With augmented reality, however, the digital world is laid over the real one and can create personalized, interactive digital environments.
Hotels can use the potential of augmented reality in a variety of ways. For example, they can create interactive games that customers can play throughout the hotel or city. They can also place interactive maps of the local area in hotel rooms to allow customers to engage with them through their smartphones.
9. Video marketing
YouTube boasts that the video platform receives over 2 billion users each month and that each day, users stream over a billion hours of video. Customers have clearly indicated their enjoyment of videos, which can carry over into your marketing strategy.
Video provides an excellent chance to engage with prospective customers and create content they will appreciate. These videos can easily be shared through social platforms, making it simple to spread the content and bring more people into the sales pipeline.
Videos can be used to highlight a variety of different types of information about the establishment. Consider making videos about:
- Behind the scenes looks at the organization
- Interviews and reviews of guests
- Tours of popular features
- Live looks at exciting events hosted at the location
- A chance to preview new and upcoming features
10. Remarketing
Many businesses in the travel and hospitality industry remain plagued by the pressing problem of cart abandonment and customers not following through with their purchases. Both airlines and the travel industry report a cart abandonment rate that exceeds 80 percent.
However, retargeting provides these businesses with the chance to reach out to those who walked away from their carts and re-engage them. These ad campaigns specifically look for those who had progressed towards making a purchase but did not follow through. If the customer had simply gotten distracted or otherwise forgotten, it provides an excellent opportunity to encourage them to finish their conversion.
These ads can be highly personalized, showing customers exactly what they had forgotten in their carts. When this strategy is used correctly, it has a high success rate of bringing customers to the end of the purchasing process and thus bringing in new customers. It boasts an ability to increase engagement with customers by 400 percent.
Conclusion
The hotel industry is ripe with competition, and brands that stand out from the rest understand the importance of creating a quality marketing strategy that will help them attract customers. With the digital trends that have become increasingly prominent in other industries, it is no wonder that they have also risen in importance here.
Those who want to make sure that their marketing strategy is ready to handle the changing digital world will consider the marketing strategies discussed above. They can help businesses of all sizes build their reputation and reach within their consumer segment.