Armin Gögele, last updated on August 16, 2023
Online hotel marketing describes all measures to market hotel services online. Accordingly, there are various goals of online hotel marketing, with profit maximization clearly in the foreground. Online, the hotel industry reaches the desired target group in a more defined way than with offline measures (high wastage), especially thanks to a comprehensive guest database. This creates an advantage over the competition and increases awareness of the hotel brand.
What is online marketing for hotels?
A synonym for online marketing is digital marketing. Hotel marketing efforts include all digital channels that need to be leveraged online to attract guests. Mainly, online marketing is done through a hotel website, paid advertising (SEA and social media ads), email marketing and organic social media posts (social media hotels).
What are the main goals of online hotel marketing?
The primary goal of digital marketing is to attract potential guests to the hotel and inspire them to make a reservation or convert existing guests into satisfied regulars.
Secondary goals of online marketing include increasing reach, reaching new audiences, and collecting guest leads or guest data for further online hotel marketing efforts. For example, lookalike audiences can be created with guest data from the hotel's email newsletter. This allows advertising platforms to reach new target groups that are similar to existing prospects.
Online hotel marketing - automation measures
Online marketing is essential for hotels today and offers great potential for optimizing hotel occupancy and revenue goals. At the same time, planning and executing the right activities at the right time with the right message for different guests is almost impossible to manage manually. So-called data-driven marketing, based on data and facts that come directly from a hotel's property management software, for example, opens up new possibilities for hotel marketing.
Marketing automation for hotels can help hoteliers in this regard, as most promotional activities can be automated with CRM systems or software solutions (marketing automation in hotels). For example, automatic welcome emails can be sent to new guests, and discounts, vouchers and offers can be sent to existing guests to encourage them to book again.