3 Hospitality Marketing Trends You Should Consider In 2019
These days having an effective marketing strategy is the key to success. It helps a lot to attract new customers and build trust around your brand, especially in the hospitality industry. In this article, you’ll find the latest hospitality marketing trends that should be taken into consideration by all hotel owners in 2019.
Video Marketing
One of the main hospitality marketing trends today is creating short videos about hotels, resorts or restaurants, and placing them on different websites and social media platforms such as YouTube, Instagram, Snapchat, etc.
The aim of these videos is to show people the benefits of hotels and to affect their decision making process. According to statistics, 54% of people who are planning trips watch videos when choosing a destination and deciding which accommodation to stay at. So if you add a couple of videos to your website, you’ll increase the chances to get more hotel guests and more bookings.
Besides that, videos are perfect for increasing your brand awareness and drawing attention to your hotel. For example, you can interview your hotel guests, create short promotional videos highlighting hotel features or stream hotel activities to make your potential customers get more interested in your brand.
However, this is just an approximate list of activities that you can use to improve the performance of your hotel. In fact, the number of opportunities is endless and you can come up with your own ideas of using this marketing strategy.
User Generated Content
Another hospitality marketing trend in 2019 is concentrating on user generated content (UGS), rather than on content created by your marketers.
In simple terms, user generated content is a kind of content created and shared by users. It can be comments, blog posts, memes, reviews, different publications on social media, etc.
When a potential customer tries to find any information about your hotel, he or she usually reads customer reviews about your brand on other websites. People trust people more than brands, so if you use user generated content correctly, you will be able to increase your brand awareness significantly.
Besides that, this strategy will help you get more room bookings. For example, when hotel owners regularly run contests or create photo opportunities at their hotels such as unique hotel room design, they encourage their guests to share their experience on social media. Such actions increase the popularity of hotels and make them more attractive to travelers and hotel guests.
Influencer Marketing
Another hospitality marketing trend that opens a wide range of opportunities for hotel owners is the so called influencer marketing. According to statistics, almost 75% of all advertisers used this marketing strategy in 2018 and the trend is still upwards.
Actually, influencer marketing is a digital version of the traditional word-of-mouth advertising when average people or celebrities actively share information about your business. They can create podcasts, videos, blog posts or any other types of content that will drive more traffic to your website.
When using this marketing strategy, you can reach a much larger audience and attract more customers to your hotel business than you could originally. For example, if you know who your potential customers are, you can start cooperating with YouTube influencers who have a similar audience. It will help you easily find your potential clients, attract their attention to your brand and convert them into your regular customers.
Here were 3 hospitality marketing trends that you have to take into account if you’re going to develop your hotel business and significantly improve its performance. Although these marketing strategies seem easy to implement, you’ll need to work hard to achieve success in the hospitality industry.
