With COVID-19 restrictions slowly declining, more and more people are planning family vacations, romantic weekend getaways, and road trips with their friends. If you’re a hotel owner, you need to promote your business so you can grasp the attention of avid travelers across the country. Industry expert and guest writer Are Morch shares his tips with us.
Effectively marketing your business online is crucial. Here are some tips to help you get started on making your hotel business stand out online.
1) Website Design
Few people will book a vacation at a hotel if its website is poorly designed. In fact, Sweor writes that it takes only 50 milliseconds for website users to form an opinion on your website. Within that time, a user will decide whether they’ll stay on your website or leave.
You want web visitors to instantly take a liking to your website. Therefore, it’s worth it to invest in web design services from an experienced and modern web development and design company that’ll make your business website look unique and exciting to browse through. Web pages that offer visual interest will capture the attention of visitors.
2) Visual Content & Virtual Tours
When travelers are planning their next vacation, they seek destinations that contain beautiful features. This is why you also need visual content on your hotel website that instantly pops.
Hire a professional photographer to take groundbreakingly handsome pictures of your hotel. Make sure photographs of the lobby, front desk, hotel rooms, and amenities are clearly displayed. Your hotel’s beauty and cleanliness must be expertly captured.
Forbes recently pointed out the importance of safety when it comes to traveling post-pandemic, and hotels that can easily accommodate social distancing may have an advantage now more than ever. Therefore, every page on your website should include strategic pictures and videos that accentuate your hotel’s aesthetics and safety features.
Your hotel’s website should also feature virtual tours. With light music, a soft voice-over, and clear captions, virtual video tours can be a great way to showcase your hotel’s amenities with more detail than a photo can display.
If your hotel sits on a beach or in the middle of a beautiful city, make sure the views the rooms offer are displayed via video. You want website visitors to see these virtual tours and instantly love the look and feel of your hotel and its location.
3) Promote Your Hotel’s Location
Your hotel’s location is a primary reason travelers are viewing your business’s website. This is why you need to spotlight it. Cite small businesses, restaurants, museums, and other businesses and activities within five miles or even five minutes of your hotel. You may want to include sections for particular travelers, like:
- For Families With Teens
- For Families With Young Children
- For Couples
- For Your Romantic Weekend Getaway
- For Your Honeymoon
- For History Buffs
- For Foodies
- For Elderly Travelers
- For Travelers With Mobile Disabilities
- For Adventurists
Travelers appreciate having a bunch of important and helpful information at their fingertips, as it makes planning a vacation a bit easier. Your hotel should conveniently offer this information on your website in an attempt to win over vacation planners seeking lodging for their trip.
4) Proper SEO Techniques
You also need to direct your digital marketing efforts to your specific location. When travelers search “hotels in Chicago,” you want your Chicago hotel to be among the top Google results, and that goes for your hotel business in any city across the United States. Excellent SEO services will optimize your website so you stand out among your competitors.
5) PPC Ads
Pay-per-click (PPC) advertising is an efficient and effective way for hotels to gain business. Therefore, for hotel owners looking to book hotel rooms that have ensured last-minute cancellations or openings, PPC ads may be the way to go.
Your hotel’s PPC ads can be placed on business websites for airports and popular restaurants in your area. Website visitors trying to book a last-minute hotel for the night in the case of a canceled flight or a spur-of-the-moment weekend trip can easily spot your hotel’s ad, see how fantastic your business website looks, and book their stay.
You want your hotel business to flourish. Now that we are navigating a post-pandemic world, it’s time to step up your game. Consider investing in new web design, visual content, SEO services, and PPC advertising to make your website look fantastic and engaging.
Are Morch is a Hotel Marketing Coach driven by his passion and love for Hotels. He provides dedicated high-value Social Media marketing services for the Hotel Industry. Together with his Social Media management team, his mission is to help Hotel brands achieve rapid growth and a dominant presence in the ever-changing digital landscape.