7 Proven Hotel Marketing Strategies to Increase Bookings in 2024

The travel industry is one of the most competitive out there. Therefore, it can sometimes be challenging to know how to stand out from the competition, especially when it comes to marketing for hoteliers.
 

In response to the question ‘how do hotels promote themselves?’, hotel owners have many options for hotel marketing, each with its own advantages. 
 

But focusing on the right approaches for your business not only saves time, but ensures you’re reaching the right audience at the right time. This is a critical factor in any marketing strategy, but especially in the fast-paced travel marketing industry.
 

In this article, we explore the best hotel marketing solutions available depending on your type of business that can make a big difference to your property. Take note of them as you read on!
 

Partner With a Global Distribution Company

Working with a global distribution specialist is one of the most effective ways to enhance exposure to your end customers, increasing occupancy rates, and improving competitiveness.
 

At Hotelbeds, we specialise in facilitating connections, linking travel buyers and sellers in the marketplace. As a global distribution company, we empower businesses in an ever-changing industry to drive growth in a way that may not be possible for them to do on their own. 
 

Partnering with a specialist in hotel distribution like Hotelbeds provides:
 

• Access to 66,000+ travel distributors, including travel agencies, wholesalers, tour operators, airlines, affiliates, among other relevant partners to efficiently promote your hotel, or hotel chain.
   

• Higher exposure in hard-to-reach, high-value, and in-market segments without competing with your direct or brand.com strategy.
  
  In fact, around 60% of bookings from our network at Hotelbeds are from non-domestic source markets, as a result of our ability to connect travel buyers and hoteliers on a global scale.

Among our hotelier offering, we have the following hotel marketing products aimed at increasing your visibility.

Star Collection Programme

Divided into 4 sponsorship levels, the Star Collection Programme provides individual hotels, regardless of their size, with access to different channels, materials and markets. This will give your property maximum exposure in the highly competitive B2B market.
 

Depending on your sponsorship level, these are some of the benefits you could expect:
 

• Hotel visibility boost: you’ll be placed higher on the booking platform ranking (meaning our clients will find your property easier), and will also have the opportunity to feature in a dedicated hotel placement on Hotelbeds’ and Bedsonline’s login and home pages. There is also the opportunity to feature in banners across our booking engines, among other benefits.
   

• Hotel exposure: you’ll be listed on the Star Collection Microsite, which is available in 7 local languages and in all 12 flagship markets. This website is seen by thousands of travel agents and travel bookers daily.
   

• Training & Intelligence: you’ll have access to emerging markets training. You'll also receive HBX updates and the Star Collection Programme report each month.
   

Star Brochure

Every year, there’s a new digital travel brochure available. This brochure showcases properties with dynamic content, allowing travel agents to create their own marketing materials based on the property portfolio. Additionally, it also offers a direct sales channel to our portfolio to seamlessly drive more bookings. 
 

With the Star Brochure, you get:
 

• More exposure: you'll provide your hotel's information to travel agents so they can create their own customised brochures including your property. These brochures will be shared with end customers.
   

• Advertising spaces: Depending on your needs, circumstances and budget, a variety of available advertising spaces may be available. Select from dynamic, engaging content formats such as images, videos, articles or advertorials, to name a few examples.
   

• Easy bookings: direct booking buttons are available, which streamline the booking process and significantly boost your ability to gain occupancy.   

New Hotel Pack

This is a digital marketing programme designed exclusively for hotels opening for the first time, re-opening after major refurbishment or new to the Hotelbeds portfolio, on a tight budget.
 

The ‘New Hotels’ section is promoted across all digital platforms: login banners, banners on the booking engine homepage, banners on the public website, social media posts, banners in our monthly client newsletters and direct emails to our sales community.
 

Besides, your property will be promoted in exclusive spaces for up to 3 months.

A la Carte

A la Carte is a hotel marketing product designed exclusively for hotel chains and clusters - with any type of budget. 
It offers a pick & mix selection of the best marketing suite products. You’ll be able to create a personalised package of marketing products that best suits your needs. 
 

With A la Carte, you can combine different marketing products including Star Brochure, Star Collection Programme, New Hotel Pack, Booster Packs (which are pre-made, ready-to-go packs with a selection of our best exposure spots) and other visibility add-ons.
 

Interested in learning more about each hotel marketing programme? Visit our Hotel Marketing Suite page for further information. 
 

Search Engine Optimisation (SEO)

Search Engine Optimisation is the specific process of optimising numerous user-experience and technical attributes of a hotel’s website to improve the position, or ranking, of the website on search engine results pages, like Google’s results page. 
 

Hotel digital marketing solutions such as SEO are highly beneficial and one of the most crucial because not only do they drive organic traffic to your website, but they can also reduce customer acquisition costs. 
 

Some of the main considerations to consider when undertaking search engine optimisation as part of your hotel marketing strategy are:
 

• Build domain authority: this is a major ranking factor for search engines like Google. It's crucial to create valuable content that’s link-worthy, gain high-quality referring links from other websites, and perform regular technical audits. 
   

• Target long-tail keywords: if your hotel’s website has lower domain authority, let large-scale brands compete for those generic search terms, and target longer, more niche keywords that are easier to rank more highly for.
   

• Create valuable content for your blog: one of the most important factors of SEO is content. Not only does having engaging, up-to-date content on your hotel’s website improve the chance of being discovered online, but it adds value for your customers and increases the likelihood of conversion.

Email Marketing for Hotels 

As one of the most direct and cost-effective methods of marketing your hotel, email marketing strategies can help you boost direct traffic and increase sales by reaching guests directly.
 

Email marketing is one of the best ways to market hotels and hotel chains because it has one of the highest returns on investment. Prior to implementing email marketing in your hotel marketing plan, you should: 
 

• Build your email database: gain quality potential leads by using sign-up forms on your website, providing gated content, requesting guests to opt-in to email marketing and getting sign-ups from social media campaigns.
   

• Analyse current email performance: consider key metrics like open rates, click through rates and conversion and unsubscribe rates. This lets you see what kind of email communications are the most valuable and converting - and which aren’t.
   

• Segment your email audiences: sending the right email at the right time, to the right audience, is essential.
   

• Optimise your content: carrying out A/B tests helps you determine what content drives the most valuable reactions.
   

• Create email flows to follow up: focusing on Customer Lifetime Value and retaining existing customers can significantly lower acquisition costs.
   

• Keep tracking! 

Luckily, our hotel marketing specialists at Hotelbeds are on hand to provide dedicated solutions. Through bespoke email campaigns, we showcase our partner hotels to thousands of key travel buyers in our network, significantly increasing their visibility on a scale that is otherwise expensive and hard to manage.
 

Social Media Marketing for Hotels 

Advertising and being active on social media is an excellent opportunity for hotels to grow as a brand, gain visibility and ultimately, reach potential guests.
 

In fact, Instagram has over 1 billion monthly active users, Facebook almost 3 billion, and WeChat (the China exclusive social media platform) has 1.2 billion!
 

‘Influencing’ your ideal customers’ decisions on social media is the name of the game, especially when social media and online hotel marketing continue to have a significant impact on travel decision-making, from destination assessments, hotel-booking intent, to in-destination activities.
 

Here are some things to consider if you think you need to refresh your social media as part of your wider hotel digital marketing strategy: 
 

• What are your goals with your social media presence? Maybe you’re looking to enhance your visibility, create a community, establish authority and gain recognition within your sector…
  
  There are many different goals you can set for your social media presence, and it’s important to have them clear to implement one strategy or another.

• Which social media platforms are most appropriate for your property? Depending on the target audience you have, you might be more interested in having a stronger presence on TikTok (for instance) than on Facebook.
   

• Do you understand your target audience's needs and know your competitors? It’s crucial to be aware of how your social profiles are performing (in case you already have a track record), who your audience is, what similar properties are doing, what topics they commonly share, and which posts perform best for them.
   

• Having an editorial calendar established is key to effective time management and planning. Have you already created one?
  
  Social media content is not only about beautiful pictures and memes. There are different types of content depending on your goals: educational content, engagement content, inspirational content, sales content... Got any ideas?
   

• Finally, what about the various initiatives and growth tactics to amplify your visibility, apart from content creation? 

These are the main aspects to consider when creating a strong social media strategy for hotels. Whether you are unfamiliar with some of the points mentioned above or would like to delve deeper into some of them, we have good news for you.
 

As part of our mission to help hotel owners increase occupancy rates, we have created a free, comprehensive guide to leveraging social media for hotels. In this guide, we’ve covered each of the points mentioned and provided useful tips so you can take action easily. Where can you find it? You can download your copy at the end of this article!

Choosing the Right Hospitality Marketing Solutions

There are many aspects to how to market a hotel. Each aspect provides differently weighted benefits for each hotel, depending on whether you’re a boutique hotel, or a large chain. 
 

Besides the options mentioned above, consider implementing other equally successful hotel marketing strategies such as hotel reputation management, offer loyalty programmes, develop upselling techniques, among many other marketing strategies.