The hospitality industry is very competitive today, with hoteliers and online travel agencies (OTAs) competing with each other for direct bookings. Hotels, especially the small ones, must necessarily have a proper digital marketing strategy in place if they want to reduce their reliance on the travel agents.
Hotel marketing firms can significantly help in this regard. The website and online booking system of the hotel can provide great control over margins, brand positioning, rates, and image. Running regular hotel marketing campaigns can help attract more customers directly to the website and increase the number of direct bookings.
Here are some of the things that you can do to increase the traffic to your hotel’s website improve bookings.
Advertise the best rates on your website, not the OTA’s
A common mistake that hoteliers make is to allow the OTA to list a lower booking price than what is listed on their own website. The best rates must be listed on your website; allowing anyone else to provide a lower booking rate will naturally veer the traffic to them and put you at a disadvantage.
Optimize the hotel website
Optimize the website in such a way that it gives visitors a feel of what they can expect when they come to your hotel. Ensure that the navigation is easy, all the details are up to date, and that you have a gallery of images that showcases the hotel in the best light.
Generate back links to the website from other reputed domains
Hotel marketing agencies can help you create good quality back links to the website. Listing contact information, address, and the website URL on relevant travel websites can help generate a lot of traffic to your website.
Be active on social media
One of the key aspects of effective hotel marketing is an active presence on social media networks. Social media provides the unique opportunity for hoteliers to communicate directly with customers at a very low cost. Ensure that you publish promotional offers, reviews, and interesting updates about your hotel on the social media page. Invite your fans to talk to you and keep the conversation going. Deserted social media pages can put prospective customers off, so make sure that you maintain an active presence.
Optimize your site for mobile devices
Tablets, smartphones, and other mobile devices are here to stay. According to an eMarketer estimate, mobile travel sales will touch almost $50 billion, which would be 30% of all digital travel sales, by 2017. If you neglect to optimize your website and booking system for mobile devices, you would be leaving a lot of money on the table.
Today, even small hotels have the opportunity to build a really positive brand image online like big hotel chains, and reduce their dependence on OTAs. Following the above simple measures will help increase your hotel’s website traffic and increase the number of direct bookings that you get.