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Whether you’re new to hotel advertising or looking for ways to revitalize your current strategy, you’ll find tips, tools, and best practices to boost your marketing power below.

1. Improve hotel SEO content. Boost where your hotel ranks in search engine results by optimizing online content linked to your business. Ensure that hotel information is accurate and up-to-date across all listings and platforms, including:

• Main hotel website
• Brand.com site
• Venue/directory listings
• Third-party booking sites
• Social media pages
• Google business page

If you haven’t already, find and claim your Google My Business listing. Activate geolocation services to help your hotel appear in common keyword searches for your area, such as “hotels in San Antonio” or “waterfront hotels Myrtle Beach.” Maintain the same voice and communication style as you engage with audience members across different platforms. Use relevant keywords in review responses, website copy, and social media posts, and drive more referrals with backlinks.

2. Create targeted marketing campaigns. Design unique offers and packages that appeal to different types of hotel guests and use them to attract travelers from target market segments. Whereas digital nomads may find video ads that feature in-room technology and flexible community workspaces appealing, social media campaigns promoting spa or entertainment packages may appeal more to leisure guests.

3. Tell a story. Storytelling helps consumers connect with your product, increasing the likelihood that they will remember your property later. Think of hotel advertising as a vehicle to tell your business or brand story in an exciting new way. Celebrate what makes your property unique and what you do best.

4. Embrace experiential marketing. In addition to telling clients and potential customers what’s great about your hotel, encourage them to experience it for themselves. Virtual hotel tours, engaging social media challenges, and interactive floor plans are valuable experiential marketing tools. Invite travelers to explore hotel guest rooms or take a virtual stroll through the lobby. Offer clients a collaborative event planning experience with interactive floor plans. Planners can view event setups, alter the layout, add meeting items, and see their changes reflected in real-time.

5. Advertise where the planners are. Serve ads to planners actively sourcing across the Cvent Supplier Network highlighting the hotel’s features, amenities, and brand identity. Target critical channels to attract attention from planners looking for accommodations in your area, and show them why your property is perfect for their booking.

6. Create a distinguishable brand identity. Celebrate what sets your hotel apart from the competition with branded advertisements. Consumers should immediately associate branded marketing materials with your hotel. Build a distinguishable brand identity with your logo, font choice, color scheme, and other creative design elements. Cultivate a brand that represents your property and tells guests what to expect from a stay with you.

7. Promote rewards for direct and repeat bookings. Build customer loyalty and attract more travelers to your brand page with exclusive rewards. In addition to encouraging return business, driving direct bookings helps hotels avoid losing revenue to online travel agent (OTA) fees, AAA bookings, and discounted rates.

8. Build a prominent social media presence. Create a profile for your hotel on major social media platforms and design marketing campaigns that incorporate the most powerful features of each. For example, you could:

• boost Facebook posts to increase their reach.
• run paid ad campaigns on Facebook and Instagram simultaneously.
• show exciting behind-the-scenes renovation updates via Instagram Stories.
• start a viral hashtag challenge on TikTok.

Partner with industry influencers for cross-promotional marketing and boost the profile of both of your brands while expanding your marketing reach. Look for content creators with a brand, mission, and aesthetic that matches yours.

9. Focus on mobile-friendly marketing. Mobile advertising is marketing content optimized for mobile viewing, and it comes in many forms, including mobile apps, search ads, video, display ads, text, and others. Design mobile-friendly text message marketing campaigns, advertise your mobile app, and employ a hotel chatbot to improve mobile guest communications.  

10. Analyze each campaign’s return on investment (ROI). Track spending and ROI to determine which campaigns are successful, which channels the hotel should continue to invest in, and which poor performers you should eliminate. Track your SEO success on a platform like SEMRush, Ahrefs, or Google Keyword Planner. Track opens, impressions, and clicks from your digital advertising to stay on top of what’s resonating with your audience.

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We shared in our previous blog that in today's day and age, hotels will be working with a different customer – one who has adapted to this digital world, and who will expect digital solutions from suppliers. 

This means that hotel digital transformation is no longer an option. It’s not a “nice to have” anymore – it’s table stakes for keeping up with the changing times and meeting both planner and guest expectations.

In this blog post, we cover a handful of ways to embrace hotel digital transformation so you can be ready to maximise your group business, accommodate safe meetings and events, and keep your guests satisfied for years to come. 

Let's continue with number 5.

5. Help planners create immersive virtual experiences.

Hybrid events require the right technology onsite to succeed. As a venue, this is something planners will likely expect you to provide, or have the right partnerships in place in order to accommodate.

Make sure you have Wi-Fi and a dedicated internet connection specific to that event, meaning no one else on the property can use it. Planners will want to know they can trust your connection to have enough bandwidth and not bog down or fail during a live stream. Work with an A/V company for the camera, microphone, and lighting needs, and a vendor to handle the live stream portion and make sure everything goes smoothly. Some planners might have their own vendors for these elements already, but it’s always good to have relationships in place in case they're needed. In addition, consider having your own tech team onsite to help with any technical issues that may arise.

But it’s not just about having the right equipment and the right team to back you up. Hybrid events are really two events in one – the in-person portion and the virtual attendee experience. The key is making the virtual experience just as engaging and enriching as the in-person one. As a venue, you can help planners by creating room space for the virtual side of the meeting that is designed for on-camera engagement – cavernous ballrooms don’t play well in the virtual environment, so consider how you can rethink some of your spaces to make them more intimate and showcase the planner’s brand. 

6. Utilise diagramming technology.

Cvent Event Diagramming helps hotels and venues work with event professionals to design successful events. Simply upload your floorplans, show off your event space, and collaborate in real-time with planners to demonstrate how your property or venue is uniquely suited to meet their requirements. Turn planners' visions into reality and:

• Showcase your space. Interactive Floorplans allow planners to visualise their event at your venue like never before.
• Deliver stunning site tours. Photo-realistic 3D will give planners the ability to realise their vision down to the finest detail and ensure that your property meets their exact needs.
• Collaborate in real-time. Invite planners, teammates, and other stakeholders to watch and comment live as you make changes to a diagram they can see from anywhere in the world.
• Design safer meetings. Automatically check layouts against customisable guidelines, add objects like temperature stations and social distancing signs, and much more.

7. Include interactive elements on your website.

To provide a memorable and user-friendly experience for planners researching your venue on your website, consider adding interactive elements. If you’re not sure where to start, think about the planner and what kinds of things they’d like to see on your website.

“Imagine you are the planner who will look at your hotel for an event,” says Matthes of Amadeus. “What will they see? What kind of information will they be able to get? Looking at what the experience is like through the lens of your customers is a really healthy first step.”

For example, on digital marketing expert and entrepreneur Neil Patel’s blog, instead of a simple filter or search box, he has an interactive filter. It says, “I want to learn about …” and users can select which topics they want to read about from a drop-down menu.

Another option could be having users complete a quick three-question quiz so you can offer them personalised content based on what they want to read about, or direct them to the corresponding pages on your website. This can help with lead generation and segmentation, and it makes for a better user experience on your site.

As an example, the hair product company oVertone uses a short quiz to provide product recommendations for each customer. Their quiz asks a few questions about what your goals are for your hair, what type of hair you have, and what colours you’re looking for. They then provide a personalised list of their products that are applicable to you and will fit your needs.

While haircare is different than event planning, it’s easy to see how this kind of quiz can be utilised to discover the needs of the individual planners on your website and direct them to the content they want. Your hotel’s quiz could ask planners questions about what industry they work in, the size of their meeting, what kind of space they’re looking for, and what elements are most important to them, and then provide a recommendation of your available meeting spaces or amenities that fit their requirements.

8. Go contactless.

Four Sisters Inns implemented a messaging platform that guests can use to communicate with hotel staff and make requests, all in a contactless fashion. Other things like contactless payments, check-in/check-out, ordering room service, and mobile room keys can all be accomplished through a mobile app or online. Peppermill Casinos, for example, partnered with Agilysys rGuest Express for self-service check-in/check-out, restaurant reservations, room-ready messaging, and mobile room keys.

To create a safer working environment for hotel staff, providers like InvoTech Systems use RFID technology to offer contactless solutions for linen and laundry management. With this technology, staff can keep a safe distance from soiled linens and track the daily movement of inventory, so the storerooms are always well-supplied.

9. Implement smart technology within guest rooms.

Hotel Internet Services conducted a survey to determine how in-room entertainment and technology expectations have changed. Over 60% of guests surveyed said they would use voice control technology if present in the room and nearly 70% would use it for in-room amenities like thermostats and light controls. In addition to this kind of technology, 67% of guests also want the ability to cast personal content from their own devices to the room’s TV.

To bring the contactless experience into guest rooms, Google and Volara partnered to enable hotels to run the Google Nest Hub. This allows guests to use voice commands to request amenities, control the TV, change room temperature, adjust the lights, and more. Several properties are already using this technology, like The Gale South Beach and Viceroy Hotels & Resorts.

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If you are a hotelier longing for consistent MICE business growth, here are the five fundamental and actionable ideas you can use – along with some advice on how to get started:

1. Understand your audience: Create event planner personas

• First things first: Know who you’re talking to
• A good first step is to create event planner profiles or personas
• Look for trends in event amenities, size, and demographics

2. Get real: Invest in augmented and virtual reality

• By now we all know how important technology is to events and the event business
• Then there’s virtual reality and augmented reality
• Augmented reality gives a digital overlay to the real world

3. Stay relevant: Use digital marketing

• It’s a digital world, so it makes sense to promote your venue on the right digital channels
• Invest in Online Ads
• If you have a sizable database of opted-in contacts, email is still very effective
• Think Big about Content
• Make Decisions based on Data and Analytics

4. Find the opportunity: Make leads a priority

• A successful digital marketing plan usually results in plenty of quality leads, so make that your top-of-mind priority
• Lead Scoring
• RFP Best Practices
• Analyse and Apply Learnings

5. Leverage technology: Optimise room block management

• The meetings and events industry has undergone a digital transformation – that’s true
• The process of helping every delegate reserve quickly and efficiently is core to what a hotel offers event planners; doing it efficiently is a major first step to making them happy. Most event planners simply want efficient room block management because the alternative is time-consuming, error-prone and painful.

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Your event is a reality. It’s time to start kicking your event marketing into high gear. An email marketing campaign is an effective and inexpensive tool that can increase interest, drive registrations, and share information. It’s hardly a one-and-done endeavor--it's an actual campaign, and you’ll need a clear plan to execute to the best of your abilities. So, what types of emails do you need to send? What types haven’t you considered? The goal is never to inundate interested individuals or attendees but provide information that they want. Here are eleven types of emails to send before your event.

11 Types of Emails To Send Before Your Event

Generate Interest and Promote

This email is sent early on. Generally, it has a hook or is fairly creative. You want it to grab the attention of those who receive it so that they are moved to go and look at the event website.

Discounts

Don’t have the number of attendees you hoped? Send a discount! Start a flash sale or offer twenty percent off of registration. Everyone loves a good discount and by

Registration Confirmation

While this email should be automatic, triggered by a registration, make sure it exists. It’s important to send confirmation so attendees know that their registration went through. You can use this email to promote an exciting announcement or direct them to the mobile event app. 

Agenda Live Announcement

Most likely, you won’t have your agenda set when you create your website and begin to promote your event. This is a great email to send to registrants and prospects.

Keynote and Speaker Announcements

These are used for promotion and to inform registrants. A great speaker can convince a prospect to attend your event.

Room Block/Housing Information

This email falls under key information. Attending an event is stressful for attendees and one of their major stressors is figuring out how to get to the event and where they’ll be staying.

Download the Mobile Event App

This doesn’t necessarily require it’s own email, but your mobile event app should be promoted before the event. This can be a secondary CTA on a larger email.

Contest Promotion

If you’re running a contest of some kind, promote it! This can be an email on its own or lumped into another announcement.

Sponsorship Information

You can send a promotional email to drum up sponsorships with a list of options and benefits. For those who have booths at your event or are sponsoring some aspect of the event, send them an email with the information they need to know.

Segmented Information

Build segments based on attendee interest and send information pertaining to the different segments. These emails can promote networking sessions, speakers, or need to know information.

Know Before You Go

This email provides key information like recommendations for what to pack, directions, weather information, and more. It covers where to go for registration and when it opens. This email would be sent a week or two before the event.

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