Methodology to improve hotels’ online marketing results

Forrester Research estimates that 32% are online hotel booking and travel industry generally assigns 29% of its marketing budget to digital media. The figure is increasing year after year. An overwhelming 77% of survey respondents said their website traffic is growing and 70% confirmed that revenues in this way also increase.

HSMAI Foundation is an association that analyzes marketing strategies and spreads knowledge to improve and optimize the online market. This institution has published a study with the purpose to serve as a guide for the hotel market. This study is fragmented into three main categories: websites, marketing, and measurement and analysis.

Website

Hoteliers who are part of this study highlight the importance of integrating ecommerce within its business strategy and having a website with interesting content and a modern and attractive design. They highlight 5 aspects to consider in a hotel website, ordered by their relevance: adaptability, flexibility, browsing, demand generator for content and visual appeal.

Internet Marketing

The next step, immediately after building a website fulfilling all the requirements, is designing an effective online marketing strategy. From the study interesting facts emerge: almost 70% monitors customer feedback, over 50% has designed a campaign on social networks, 42% spends one-fifth of its budget on online marketing strategies and 70% argues that the highest ROI is achieved by online media. And the incidence of different marketing initiatives undertaken are:

Measurement and Analysis

The study determines that it is important to measure progress and setbacks, if any, to gauge the impact of our actions. You need to regularly monitor your online presence, evaluate and identify the ROI per channel, track dropouts on booking page and the time spent on it, and calculate annual progress.

Again, this study highlights the complexity and the large number of areas that e-commerce cover. Web design, website content, booking engine, marketing and email campaigns, banner ads, SEO, PPC, GDS, mobile marketing and social media... is virtually impossible for a hotelier, no matter how small, you can perform a good online strategy, successful and profitable. In many cases, the outsourcing of a team of experts creates greater visibility and investment is pleasantly rewarded long term.